Fact And Fiction

So what are the facts? And how do we get them straight? It is vitally important here to actually delve into the pictures painted by Afghan writers themselves, because only they can give a first-hand account of the reality.

Abdullah Qazi, who runs a popular Afghanistan-based information portal, Afghan Web, has given a rather bleak outlook. He says that repression of women is still quite prevalent in the rural areas of Afghanistan. "They (girls) are still forced into marriages and denied a basic education. Numerous schools for girls have been burnt down and little girls have even been poisoned to death for daring to go to school," he writes. He, however, says that urban Afghan women have an easier time as they get education and participate in public life.

The economic and political conditions are not very encouraging either. The Centre for Research on Globalization, a Canada-based research organization and media group, has challenged the claim that the Afghan government is working towards a pro-women agenda. In his article, John W. Warnock has pointed to legislation passed in early 2008. "...the new legislation limited guardianship of children to fathers and paternal grandfathers, that a wife could not leave her house without the permission of her husband, that women could only inherit moveable property, and that the wife is "bound to preen for her husband, as and when he desires." A wife is allowed to work outside the house "unless her work affects the interest of the family in a negative way," he writes. Warnock is adamant that life even for an urban Afghan woman is not easy.

A report by ‘Womankind Worldwide' (UK-based group) in February 2008 reinforced this. It basically stated that the legal system in Afghanistan does not practically support women. There are elaborate laws which favor women; however, such laws are hardly implemented, with the result that quite a lot of innocent Afghan women land in jail.

Other statistics by ‘Womankind Worldwide' are not very encouraging either - 60% of marriages are enforced upon women by their families while 87% of the women surveyed had undergone abuse on a physical and psychological level.

Reading "official" and "unofficial" versions of what is really happening in Afghanistan, one does get the impression that large scale information propaganda is going on. The highly positive stories and pictures of Afghan women, which sound too good to be true, are actually as fictitious as they can get. In-depth interviews with common Afghan women portray the real side of the picture - a picture not pretty at all. Afghan women are still the victims of a patriarchal mindset, and no law can ever change that. Is anyone willing to take the government to task and make things better? Or will everyone, international governments included, continue to feed us the false stories?