"Afghans see dramatic boost in health care" December 01, 2011|By Patrick Quinn, Associated Press
KABUL - Afghans are living longer, fewer infants are dying, and more women are surviving childbirth because health care has dramatically improved in the past decade, according to a national survey released yesterday.
The war was such a good idea -- except for all the dead people.
The survey indicates that increased access to health care in Afghanistan, more hospitals and clinics, and more trained health care workers and doctors have significantly contributed to an overall improvement in the health of most Afghans.
“There have been many changes in the health sector and that is why we have so many positive changes,’’ said Bashir Noormal, director general of the Afghan Public Health Institute.
Then why am I starting to feel sick?
Conducted by the Afghan Health Ministry in 2010, the survey was sponsored and funded by international groups such as UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the US government, and the British Department for International Development.
Translation: It is an agenda-pushing, public relations report.
It was the most comprehensive to date in Afghanistan, despite the exclusion of some rural areas in the south where international forces were fighting insurgents....
Pfffft!
Still, one Afghan woman dies about every two hours from pregnancy-related causes, and while childhood mortality is declining, it is still the highest in the region....
And ignore those bombs and missiles being dropped on them.
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Let's toast the ladies while we are at it.
"Afghan rape victim pardoned, told to marry her attacker" December 02, 2011|By Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times
KABUL , Afghanistan - When the Afghan government announced yesterday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women whose lives have been ground up by the Afghan justice system.
But when the announcement also made it clear that the woman, Gulnaz, was expected to marry the man who raped her, the moment revealed the ways in which even efforts guided by the best intentions to redress violence against women here run up against the limits of change in a society where cultural practices are so powerful that few can resist them, not even the president....
That last part is true of all societies.
The decision is all the more poignant coming as Western forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, underscoring the unfinished business of advancing women’s rights.
No offense meant, but I'm sick of the woman card being whipped out every time a war effort needs supporting be it the lying media or mass-murdering government. Thank the Lord we liberated so many Afghan women from their icky men and children if not their very lives.
Indeed, what prompted the government to act at all was that Gulnaz was featured in a recent documentary commissioned by the European Union - and then suppressed by it. Supporters of the filmmakers charged that European Union officials were shying away from exposing the sort of abuses Afghan women routinely suffer for fear of offending their host government.
That very well may be true; however, how does destroying villages and polluting the environment with depleted uranium help women?
While Gulnaz’s pardon is a victory for both Clementine Malpas, a filmmaker who spent nearly six months on the documentary, and for Kimberley Motley, an American lawyer here who took Gulnaz’s case on a pro bono basis, it also shows that for women in the justice system, the odds are stacked against them.
It's class and a certain religious identity that does it in AmeriKa.
The banned film, which was seen by the New York Times, profiles three Afghan women who were in prison. One was Gulnaz, then about 19, who gave birth to the child of her rapist in prison, after initially being sentenced to three years. In a second trial, during which her sentence was increased to 12 years, a judge on camera offered her a way out: Marry her rapist.
The verdict could be tantamount to a death sentence. A second woman in the film was abused by her husband and ran away with a man she fell in love with; both are now in prison for adultery. The third woman was a child of 14, who appeared to have been kidnapped but was held as a runaway and has since been returned to her family.
After the film was completed, the European Union banned its release, effectively silencing the women who had the courage to tell their stories. The reason given for the ban was that the publicity could harm the women, because an Afghan woman who has had sex out of wedlock can become the victim of an honor killing. The women had not given their written consent to be in the film, said Vygaudas Usackas, the European Union’s ambassador to Afghanistan.
However, an e-mail obtained by the Times from someone supportive of the filmmakers suggested that the European Union also had political reasons for the ban.
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