Women of Kabul Gather for Faltering First

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Women of Kabul Gather for Faltering First
March.


Reuters. 20 November 2001.

KABUL -- Shedding their head-to-toe burqas, hundreds of women gathered
in the Afghan capital on Tuesday to demand their rights after five years
of stifling Taliban rule.

On a bright, crisp day in a Kabul suburb, women in leather jackets,
skirts and flowered headscarves met to call for the right to work,
education for their daughters, and a political voice.

Led by former politician Saraya Parlika, the plan was to march to the
United Nations office in the center of city.

But military police of the Northern Alliance, who seized  control of
Kabul from the Taliban a week ago, said they had been given no warning
and postponed the march for a week.

"They say it was a security problem but we'll do it again next week,"
said Parlika, as men hung out of their apartment windows, amazed at the
spectacle beneath.

"I don't think we are asking for much. We want a government that gives
our children an education and allows us to work and live our lives in
peace,'' said Shukria, a former administrator.

"I need to support my family. This isn't about politics, it's just about
a normal life."

But Parlika, chairwoman of the 100-member General Coalition of Women, a
human rights organization that has operated in secret since 1996, had
more ambitious plans.

"We met yesterday to draw up our short-term agenda," she said. "We
decided we should shed our burqas and march to the U.N. to demand our
political voice."

Parlika is pushing for women to be represented at a meeting of Afghan
groups to discuss the shape of a future government that the U.N. is
working to convene.

But despite the concern to ensure all Afghanistan's ethnic groups are
fairly represented in the new government, the rights of women seem to
have been left behind.

U.N. special envoy Francesc Vendrell has held meetings in recent days
with the exclusively male Northern Alliance and other political leaders,
but not with Afghan women.

Even before the Taliban took power, Afghanistan was a male-dominated
society.

[N.B.] "Now we have to start the women's struggle all over again," said
Parlika, who was a senior member of Afghanistan's communist party in the
1980s.

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Barry Stoller
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
with continuing coverage of WWIII