TIME Magazine Doesn’t Give a Rat’s Ass about Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

[Joanne98]

In the Spring of 1978, Afghan minister of social Affairs, Anahita Ratebzad, wrote, "Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country … Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention." Soon afterward, the United States spent about a billion dollars to help keep her vision from coming to light.

Anahita Ratebzad was one of the founders of the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan. It was socialist, anti-clerical, anti-multi-national, and very pro-education. During its brief ascendance, the upward trajectory of women’s rights in Afghanistan reached its peak, only to rapidly decline as the battle between Soviet forces and their puppet Afghan government on one side, and covert U.S. forces and resurgent Muslim fundamentalism on the other side, ended in chaos. From that chaos emerged the Taliban.

The United States, in backing the fundamentalist Mujahidin, spent about a billion dollars to defeat the only regime in Afghan history that mandated equal educational rights for Afghan women.

One might hope that TIME Magazine, in an article on the plight of Afghan women, might make a passing reference to Anahita Ratebzad. It might have added depth to their incredibly shallow article, had they considered interviewing Ratebzad, who is 80, and from what I can tell, still alive.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/62822

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Joanne.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Whenever the war profiteers' Forever War gets bad press they drag out the poor Afghan women

whose only hope to improve their lives was the socialist government backed by the Russians. That really is the truth of the matter. Our multinational corporate/war profiteer rulers have no more concern about the rights of women in countries that are of strategic importance to their plans for world domination--or for anybody's rights; yours, mine--than they do about unborn children or "traditional marriage." They are above all issues, in the uppermost realms of super-wealth and super-power, and their sole concern is perpetuating and expanding their control of everything and everybody.

The upshot of the Forever War will be another period of utter lawlessness and peril especially for women and children, in Afghanistan, with war lords run amok, like the aftermath of the last U.S. war in Afghanistan. The ancient tribes on the artificially drawn (by the Brits) Afghanistan/Pakistan border will "win"--they will drive the U.S. out like they have done for more than five thousand years to every "great army" that has ever tried to conquer them. IT'S POSSIBLE that they will then revert to prior Afghan custom regarding women (not as maniacal as the Taliban--a more relaxed rugged mountain culture) but then again they may not, if they have to depend on the Taliban to deal with the war lords whom the U.S. has once again unleashed. It could be a couple of thousand years before Afghan women regain the relative freedom of tribal life in their wild, inaccessible landscape.

The U.S. corpo-fascist establishment's occasional, opportunistic freakout about the lot of Afghan women--whenever people start questioning the war budget-- is so hypocritical as to go well beyond "Alice in Wonderland," beyond even "Dr. Strangelove"--the black humored truthfulness of which I thought we could never surpass-- into territory that we have never trod before. It is even worse than "mutually assured destruction"--which had a kind of grand exit for the human race. Caboom! The current Beltway war palaver lacks that kind of pizzazz. It is petty and pleading. It's all about "human rights" and stuff. 'See, your "human rights" is why we kill you. Get it? No? Call in more drones! Get it now!'

They've even eliminated the gung-ho USAF pilot from the equation, riding the "bomb" down. We kill you coldly to protect your "human rights." Antiseptically. From a distant video screen. You never knew what hit you. 'Now you are free of this mortal coil. You can be equal in Heaven!'

The U.S. of the "Cold War" was insane. The U.S. of the "war on terror" just sort of has the flu, over and over again, with lots of vomiting.

:puke:

[femrap]

6. Arm the women. nt

[Triana]

3. Worse, the United States, which Time Magazine exists within...

...doesn't give a rat's ass about women's rights in Afghanistan. Or here either, much.

[architect359]

4. +1 eom

[w4rma]

5. Because the super wealthy are at war against "socialism" and democracies.

Why do the super wealthy act like the Saudi Royal family and why do they seem to hold the same ideals?

[IndianaGreen]

7. Since the days of Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, TIME has been a CIA tool

and it apparently remains so to this day.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

8. for the media, women everywhere are nothing more than a prop

we're convenient either for our sentimental value (Ohhs! the poor tender victims!) or our prurient value (sex sells!)

either way, they profit off us.