Afghanistan women using Internet to reach out

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

By ANWAR IQBAL

SAN FRANCISCO, March 24 (UPI) -- Despite inhuman restrictions imposed by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, Afghan women are reaching out to the world to reveal what has been happening inside their homeland. Now they have a Web Site to share their woes with other women and men who care.

Besides news, articles and poems; the site also has a collection of disturbing but rare pictures from Afghanistan that tell the untold story of those who have been suffering silently for more than two decades.

The pictures show men being shot in the head by their Taliban executioners. Some are seen hung upside down after their execution. Women who burned themselves alive out of desperation. Drought affected children, dying of hunger.

"They are not for the weak but those who care may realize how important it is to help the women of Afghanistan. It is important to speak up for them and to do so now," says a a spokesman for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan or RAWA, which runs the website.

Founded in 1977 by a group of Afghan feminists struggling against male tyranny for decades, RAWA has managed to survive against all odds. It opposed both the Soviet occupation forces and the religious fundamentalists leading the Afghan resistance, a position difficult to take in a country where an opponent is seen as an enemy and is destroyed on the first available opportunity.

The group's founder, Meena, was killed in 1987 but the Association lives, operating from Peshawar in neighboring Pakistan. It has been arranging protest meetings, rallies and demonstrations all over Pakistan and in other countries to draw the world's attention to atrocities and human rights abuses committed against women, first by the Mujahideen rulers and then the Taliban who captured Kabul in 1996.

"Now they have turned to the internet, hoping that their website will increase international awareness of the plight of women in Afghanistan," says Zarmeena Khan, an Afghan woman activist in Fremont, California.

RAWA has around 2,000 members who work both outside and inside Afghanistan. It has to work secretly even for something as simple

Since floating the website, RAWA has been receiving threats via the internet, many of which had been vulgar and salacious. The Taliban want the group to stop anti-Taliban publicity as educating women because the Taliban have forbidden education to women.

"Even something as essential as providing medical care to an ailing woman has to be done clandestinely as Taliban do not allow male physicians to see women," says a RAWA supporter in California who requested not to be identified as it could harm her relatives in Afghanistan., but RAWA has no plans to oblige them. "We will continue to publicize our cause, hoping that one day the world will notice us," said another RAWA supporter.

Although the group believes in non-violent change, RAWA supporters have been attacked both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Last year Taliban supporters attacked a RAWA rally in Pakistan and forced them to disperse.

"The Taliban also have issued a fatwa or a religious edict against RAWA members, ordering their forces to any RAWA member they see and stone her to death in public," said an Afghan feminist.

A United Nations report on religious extremism in October last year said women in Afghanistan had been reduced to pariah status by the Taliban who have forced them withdraw from public and social life and live in seclusion.

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According to the Amnesty International under the Taleban women were being

punished for violations of the Taliban's moral code by stoning to death.

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Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), March 26, 2001

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-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), March 26, 2001.

I seem to recall that our government was a major player in helping the Taliban take over Afganistan. Our CIA and State Department naively believed that religious fanatics could be bargained with and would act rationally. Now the blood of many good people is on our government's hands.

-- Sad But True (-@we.keep.on.meddling), March 26, 2001.

I seem to recall that our government was a major player in helping Afghan rebels defeat an occupying Soviet military. After that, the rebel forces fell to fighting among themselves.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), March 26, 2001.

America's imperialistic meddling in benighted Afghanistan has enabled the forces of reaction to prevail. When Afghanistan was a Soviet puppet, it was not bothering anyone.

-- (LeonTrotsky@rational.terror), March 26, 2001.