On International Women's Day, a "celebration" was held inside the Canadian military compound at Kandahar. For some media outlets in Canada, this was literally the only IWD event reported as "news." The corporate media here ignored the real tragedy - that conditions for Afghan women have not improved under their "protectors", the warlord-based Karzai government.
A recent article by Terri Judd in The Independent (UK) reported that "Grinding poverty and the escalating war is driving an increasing number of Afghan families to sell their daughters into forced marriages. Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited from going to school. With little recognition of the illegality of the situation or any effective recourse, many of the victims are driven to self-immolation - burning themselves to death – or severe self-harm."
Judd's conclusion is based on "Afghan Women and Girls Seven Years On," a new study from the British organization Womankind. The report finds that 87 per cent of Afghan females have been victims of violent abuse (half of it sexual), and that over 60 per cent of marriages are forced. Despite a law "banning" the practice, 57 per cent of brides are under the age of 16. The illiteracy rate among women is 88 per cent, with just 5 per cent of girls attending secondary school.
One in nine women dies in childbirth, the highest in the world alongside Sierra Leone. More than one million widows have no rights, left to beg in the streets along with orphans. Afghanistan is the only country in the world with a higher suicide rate among women than men.
The banned practice of offering money for a girl is still rampant, along with exchanging her as restitution for crime, debt or dispute. The going price for a child bride is as much as three years salary for a labourer; many grooms take loans or swap their sisters instead, according to Partawmina Hashemee, the director of the Afghan Women Resource Centre.
Hashemee says that in Kabul, there has been greater recognition of women's rights since the fall of the Taliban. But the capital remains a dangerous environment and female MPs, activists and journalists still live under constant threat of death.
