"Women joining Afghan Air Force ranks; Pilots are making history as they train in the US" by Paul J. Weber, Associated Press / July 17, 2011
SAN ANTONIO - For women in Afghanistan, said Masooma Hussaini, it’s not like “it was in Taliban times.’’ Her sisters are in school, women work in offices, and, by next year, Hussani and three other young women could be among their country’s first females piloting military helicopters.
Their training in the United States is significant. The Afghan military has a small but growing female rank, yet the skies are almost an exclusive province for men, except for one Afghan woman trained in the Soviet era.
Afghanistan remains a male-dominated culture....
“We’re going to open the door for ladies in Afghanistan,’’ second Lieutenant Sourya Saleh said. “It’s a big deal for us to open this door for the others. That these other ladies who have the dream and think they can’t do it, we want to show them.’’
The four women, all in their 20s, arrived at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio last week to continue their training. They will stay in Texas until they master English - the international language for aviation - and are scheduled to transfer to Alabama early next year for actual hands-on piloting.
“We are just at the beginning right now in terms of what’s happening in Afghanistan, in terms of gender integration. But this is a huge step,’’ said Colonel Eric Axelbank, commander of the 37th Training Wing at Lackland. “Having female officers who will become pilots, a traditionally male-dominated field in the Middle East, is groundbreaking.
“Not just in Afghanistan, but in the entire Middle East.’’
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Then I got to thinking how the oppressive Muslims view there women. Put aside the veil for a minute, and consider that the woman -- fairly or not, your decision -- is viewed as a life-giver and raiser of children. Then consider the tight family units of the culture.
No wonder the Muslim world is under attack from the West. It is huge impediment in the way of the New World Order.
"A slow pace for women in Afghanistan" July 05, 2011|By H.D.S. Greenway
WHEN AFGHANISTAN was ruled by the Taliban, there was no issue that galvanized Americans against the group more than its treatment of women. Yet, in the last 100 years there is no issue that has riled Afghans more than when changes in the traditional role of women are introduced by reformers or foreigners.
When the Taliban first took power, the United States supported it for bringing stability out of chaos. But by 1997 America was turning against the Taliban, “driven by the effective campaign of American feminists,’’ according to Ahmed Rashid who wrote the book, “Taliban.’’ Movie stars and celebrities joined the anti-Taliban campaign in those pre-9/11 days, prompting the Washington Post to write: “Tibet is out. Afghanistan is in.’’
A-hem:
"The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban's reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. "The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul," adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw "nothing objectionable" in the Taliban's plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: "The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan." "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that," said another U.S. diplomat in 1997."
How about that, huh?
Nothing like opinionated distortions in the newspaper, 'eh?
The advancement of women was one of late-20th-century America’s great causes, and quite rightfully so. But today the United States is desperate to get out of the Afghan quagmire, and thus desperate to make a deal with the Taliban. Would women’s rights be compromised?
How are women's rights being advanced by obliterating them, their families, and their villages with missiles and bombs?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said, “It is essential that women’s rights and women’s opportunities are not trampled on in the reconciliation process.’’ Yet the sad truth is that the status of women in many places in Asia do not conform to western ideals.
And the sad truth here is the West never lives up to western ideals when it comes to brown people.
Reform and the rights of women in Afghanistan have waxed and waned. In 1919 Amanullah came to the throne excited by the reforms of Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk and Shah Reza in Iran, both of whom sought to change in the status of women. Amanullah set about bringing his deeply conservative country into the modern world by promoting industry, education, and women’s rights. It was the latter, however, that caused the most resentment and pushback in rural areas outside the capital.
Women were encouraged to go bare-headed, and his queen, Soraya, dramatically unveiled herself in public. Like Ataturk, Amanullah insisted on Western dress. Turbans were out. Homburgs were in.
But Afghanistan was not Turkey, and soon enough a conservative backlash forced Amanullah to retreat. Revolt followed revolt. Amanullah tried to backpeddle and close some girls’ schools, but it was too late. He was forced from the throne.
Later, when the Communists came to power in the 1970s, they too promoted women’s rights. Once again conservative tribal customs, especially among the dominant Pashtuns, were threatened. Revolt followed revolt against reform until the Russians invaded to save the Afghan Communists. The Mujahideen resistance that America helped organize may have shared our ideas about forcing the Soviets out, but they had entirely different ideas about women’s rights than we did.
Yes, dear readers, AmeriKa was behind "Al-CIA-Duh." Where do you think the CIA got the list of names?
Toward the end of Soviet rule Mikhail Gorbachev tried to backtrack, like Amanullah did before him. “You have to revive Islam, respect traditions… ,’’ he told his generals. After the Soviets had left, their former puppet, Najibullah, in order to survive undid many of the rules about women’s rights that the Communists had installed. And survive he did until the Soviet Union itself collapsed and aid was no longer forthcoming.
The Taliban brought measures against women never before seen in Afghanistan except in the most backward parts of the rural Pashtun hinterland. The restrictions were as radically against tradition in repressing women as the Communists had been promoting women’s rights.
It is unlikely that any compromise with the Taliban would bring back the harshness toward women of the Taliban years. Afghanistan has moved on from the prostrate state in which it found itself when the Taliban took over. And in the age-old tension between urban and rural Afghans there are far more city folk today in proportion to rural than ever before. A return to Taliban harshness would no longer be tolerated.
But the lesson of Afghanistan is that you have to go slow and be patient when pushing reforms on a deeply conservative rural population, and the rural Pashtuns where the Taliban thrives are nothing if not conservative. History shows that it is a mistake to move too fast and too far when confronting local customs and traditions lest the pushback make matters worse.
No doubt empowering women could be of great economic and social value to the future of Afghanistan. However, it will be the Afghans who must decide its pace, and what that balance between urban and rural traditions will be.
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"Afghan civilians killed in airstrike; NATO says they were near battle" July 08, 2011|By Jack Healy, New York Times
KABUL - NATO forces said yesterday that they had unwittingly killed several women and children a day earlier during an early-morning air attack against militants in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan. The US-led coalition also said it was investigating separate reports of civilian deaths in a nearby province.
The fatal airstrike Wednesday in Khost Province, which Afghan officials say killed eight children and two women, ignited outrage in neighboring villages....
Hey, it is all in the name of liberating them.
In Khost, villagers angry over the deaths flooded into the streets. Hundreds of them blocked the main road to the capital and urged the Afghan government to investigate and punish those responsible. One of the villagers, Haji Mir Baz Khan, of the Dowamanda district, said that if the government could not prevent such attacks, “this nation and tribe will announce jihad against them.’’
Captain Justin Brockhoff, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, said the women and children killed in Wednesday’s airstrike in the Shamal District of Khost were family members of militants who had been close by when the fighters attacked a combined Afghan-NATO patrol from behind a line of trees.
Implying they were what, legitimate targets?
NATO forces, under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, fell back and called for air support as the militants continued firing, Brockhoff said.
He did not say how many fighters or civilians had been killed, but he said the fighters were members of the Haqqani network, an insurgent group aligned with the Taliban that operates along Afghanistan’s lawless eastern border.
Oh, the Haqqanis!
"Haqqani.... credited with introducing suicide bombing to the region.... cultivated as a "unilateral" asset of the CIA and received tens of thousands of dollars in cash for his work.... He may have had a role in expediting the escape of Osama Bin Laden.... In July 2008, CIA officials confronted Pakistan officials with evidence of ties between Inter-Services Intelligence and Haqqani. Haqqani has been accused of involvement in the 2008 Indian embassy bombing in Kabul.... The Haqqani Network is based in Pakistan and is believed to have links to Al Qaeda."
The provincial police chief, Sardar Mohammed Zazai, said at least four fighters were killed, among them a prominent Haqqani commander. Zazai offered a slightly different account of the airstrike, saying that the NATO bomb had hit a home where the fighters had tried to take refuge.
In a statement, NATO forces also said they and Afghan officials were jointly investigating accusations of civilian casualties in Ghazni Province, also in the east, where an airstrike killed a militant who had been planting a roadside bomb. Brockhoff said the military’s early reports indicated that only the fighter had been killed.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, 14 police officers were killed in two roadside bombings....
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