The Guardian reports on a cunning plan from lawmakers in Afghanistan.
A new Afghan law will allow men to attack their wives, children and sisters without fear of judicial punishment, undoing years of slow progress in tackling violence in a country blighted by so-called “honour” killings, forced marriage and vicious domestic abuse.
The small but significant change to Afghanistan’s criminal prosecution code bans relatives of an accused person from testifying against them. Most violence against women in Afghanistan is within the family, so the law – passed by parliament but awaiting the signature of the president, Hamid Karzai – will effectively silence victims as well as most potential witnesses to their suffering.
That’s family values. The family comes first, and outsiders must never mess with it. That’s how it is with the Amish, for sure – abused women and children are supposed to forgive, not report.
Under the new law, prosecutors could never come to court with cases like that of Sahar Gul, a child bride whose in-laws chained her in a basement and starved, burned and whipped her when she refused to work as a prostitute for them. Women like 31-year-old Sitara, whose nose and lips were sliced off by her husband at the end of last year, could never take the stand against their attackers.
“Honour” killings by fathers and brothers who disapprove of a woman’s behaviour would be almost impossible to punish. Forced marriage and the sale or trading of daughters to end feuds or settle debt would also be largely beyond the control of the law in a country where the prosecution of abuse is already rare.
But maybe Karzai won’t sign the law?
Don’t get your hopes up.
“We will ask the president not to sign until the article is changed, we will put a lot of pressure on him,” said Selay Ghaffar, director of the shelter and advocacy group Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan. She said activists hoped to repeat the success of a campaign in 2009 that forced Karzai to soften a family law enshrining marital rape as a husband’s right.
But that was five years ago, and since then Karzai has presided over a strengthening of conservative forces. In the last year alone parliament has blocked a law to curb violence against women and cut the quota for women on provincial councils, while the justice ministry floated a proposal to bring back stoning as a punishment for adultery.
It’s strange to see lawmakers actually promoting and protecting violence against women. “Vote for a better Afghanistan, with more violence against women.”
H/t Al Lee
This culture is utterly hopeless. Trillions of dollars and 12 years later nothing has changed.
No culture is “hopeless.” All cultures change over time. But Afghanistan certainly does seem to be rejecting the concept of human rights for women in the short term.
Now, we men are people. And people make laws, have jobs, govern the world, have fun, get on with each other, fight, jostle for position, feel things, have fun, love each other, hate each other, help each other, put each other down, defend each other, kill each other, and all those things that people do.
And then there are women. Obviously, women are there for people to enjoy, and that’s just so important, and even the Real Pee-Booh says so; but they also upset things, and complain and complain and tempt and tempt and just don’t stay where I want to put them, so they just have to be controlled. Now, when you and I bash our wives or the kids, it’s because we have to, see? — obviously! they’re just not getting it straight, they’re being really annoying, and why should a person put up with it? It’s obvious that they have to just get on with it and shut up. Otherwise, how would anybody live? How would anybody cope? You know, they even try to make me think about things, as though there’s anything to think about! I mean, why should anybody have to bother, for Pee-Booh’s sake!
Honestly, if I have to — you know — show them a thing or two, then I just have to — you know how it is — and obviously we can’t just let them go around complaining. Oh by the Real Pee-Booh’s majestically unphotographed great hairy
ballsface no!How disgusting.
Those who make and use this new Afghanistani law and those who support such a shameful fouled up “culture” have no honour and are a disgrace to themselves and the human species generally.
Shame on them. They are bullying, gutless worthless cowards who want to silence and brutalise the weakest and most vulnerable and the world should NOT let them get away with it.
How can anyone seriously defend or rationalise or sympathise with a religion and a culture where this is considered in any way acceptable?
Sod Afghan culture, sod its president and lawmakers and sod Islam! May the fleas of a million camels infest the armpits and groins of those who thought this latest bit of barbarity up and wish to use it to escape justice.
@2. Friendly : “All cultures change over time.
This Afghan / Muslim culture is lo-oong overdue for change then!
Saying it may change is also no excuse for what it is now and won’t help it change any.
It may not be hopeless in everything but it is certainly hopelessly misogynist and dreadful right now ain’t it?
It’s times like this when the idea of a monoculture is both comforting (because only one need be changed) and frightening (because there’s no escape).
Are you surprised? I know this may sound crazy, but people generally don’t fall over themselves to adopt the values of foreign military forces that invade their countries and kill their families. If anything, they tend to reject those values very strongly, even if they didn’t have such strong feelings on them beforehand. By associating democracy, education, and human rights with foreign military occupation, we’ve probably set Afghan society back decades. I dread to think what the backlash is going to look like once it really gets going.
Dunc?
I’m surprised, yes. You can’t possibly believe the reason women’s rights are violated so horrifically in Afghanistan is due to a backlash against foreign military occupation. And treating women like human beings isn’t exactly a value that is all that prevalent in the U.S. military.
Why would anyone hurt and abuse their own female family members as a retaliation against foreign military forces invading their country and killing their families? That doesn’t make sense.
Dunc, did you really just… tone troll the Afghanistan war?
Sure, women’s rights etc. were collateral to the main goal of that war- but even if they were, do you think it’s more likely that the Taliban and associated culture would have changed their stance on women’s rights if we just asked them nicely enough?
No, of course I don’t believe that’s the only, or even the primary reason. However, given that this is a culture which mostly regards this sort of thing as right and proper, and where the pressure to improve matters is coming from a small and marginalised minority, I don’t think that associating the idea of human rights with foreign occupation has helped matters at all. You already have a bunch of entrenched conservative forces opposing any improvement, and we’ve handed them a major propaganda point on a silver platter. It’s one more factor in the mix, which has made things substantially more difficult for reformers within Afghan society.
People do all sorts of crazy shit that doesn’t make sense. If you think that it’s perfectly normal to hurt or abuse your own female family members,and the only people telling you that you shouldn’t are associated with foreign military forces invading your country, that’s probably not going to help, is it?
Backlash is a real thing. Just take a look around – in the US, you have all sorts of people fervently opposed to policies which would actually improve their lives, simply because those policies are supported by people they don’t like. For example, people who happily supported Romney’s health reforms in Massachusetts (aka “Romneycare”) are now furiously opposed to the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”), despite the fact that they’re exactly the same thing. Now, imagine that instead of tinkering around with private health insurance, you’re trying to fundamentally change the basic concepts of society, and instead of partisan politics, you’ve got a full-blown civil war going on, with a major (and widely hated) foreign power involved on the side that’s most favourable to reform. This is not a recipe for progress.
I think there’s a lot more possibility of progress if it happens organically from within a society than if some foreign power attempts to impose it externally through military force.
@ 10. Dunc :
And the alternative of leaving the Taliban in charge (& sheltering Bin Laden and Al Quaida terrorists) is better and says something more worth saying to everyone else on the planet why exactly?
If you think that then you are lost!
You think we’re making things worse? How can we make it worse than that?
Some say Westerners don’t value Muslim lives. I disagree. I think we value their lives more than they do -ad the pattern of their behaviour (homicide -suicide bombers are great!)and ours (hey, let’s minimise casualties and educate your daughters!) bears this out.
Standing by and saying “Oh that’s their culture, gotta respect that because, uh, their culture and their culture is thus their business no matter the suffering!” is cool why?
Makes things better how?
Well, duh.
That means we should tremble and do nothing but fill our pants at the thought of actually speaking up and stepping in because, y’know, the nasty idiots will be angrier nasty idiots and resent us pointing out that their women and children deserve better treatment if we do? Better to sit back and let other people suffer agonies because we’re afraid of the backlash from these dishonourable, bullying wrong and nasty scumbags?
Stuff ’em!
Y’know what t’do ’bout this backlash?
Lash back at it and beat it.
Explain and show and break past why they are wrong and keep moving forwards towards a situation where the people – especially women – in this and other nations aren’t treated so horrendously.
That so had to grasp for ya?
Dunc, you and those like you see evil and injustice and people suffering and say, “hey dude that’s cool that’s their cult’chya so oakaay, leave it be. Let it continue.”
Whilst I and those like me say, “Dude, that stuff ain’t cool – its gotta change and we gotta do our part in changing it!”
I don’t care if Muslims in Afghanistan or elsewhere have been abusing women and others for one year, ten years or ten thousand years.
I don’t care if its one line in their Quran, twenty lines, ten hundred lines or just some later mullahs messed up misinterpretation.
Bashing up and oppressing women and others is wrong. Always.
You don’t let that sort of rubbish go and stand idly by.
You don’t excuse it, you don’t fret about no backlash, you don’t let others suffer because another groups culture is vile and wrong and hurting folks.
You do the right thing and stand up for those who are being harmed by injustice when you see it.
Don’t you?
The standard you walk past ..
I’ve never been convinced by the argument that basically goes “we’ve got to do something, war is something, so let’s do war!” It completely ignores the fact that there are many other ways to bring pressure to bear on a situation that have better chances of success. War is not the only form of diplomacy, so you’re presenting a false dichotomy here. We didn’t end apartheid in South Africa by going to war. We didn’t end the Troubles in Northern Ireland (at least the worst of them) by flattening Dublin with air strikes. There are options other than “do nothing” and “kill large numbers of people”.
@ Dunc : I didn’t say “lets do war.”
I didn’t suggest no false dichotomy. I’m not saying zero-sum. I’m not saying nuke ’em all. Not necessarily.
I said we don’t accept it as just their culture and look away. I say we do something to stop it.
(Also we cannot change the past – you wanna prove me wrong? Got a time machine? Then how bout ya go back and make Mohammad and their ancestors see sense if ya can.)
So.
What do you suggest we do?
How do you talk to and convince people like the flippin’ Taliban that they’re wrong without war?
How do you suggest convincing them that women and gays and atheists among many others groups are fellow humans who deserve to be treated respectfully and well.
You can go demonstrate if you can – I just hope you survive the process – tip : try and communicate with them from a long way away. They ain’t going be receptive.
If it could’ve been done , it would’ve been done by now I suspect.
@ Dunc :
1.) Name ’em.
2) The Taliban were under sanctions for a while if I recall right – didn’t do stuff all.
3) I didn’t say kill *large* numbers of people – killing the worst people who are intractable and causing the problem and then deprogramming those who’ve been brain-washed may be worth a try. I wish we diidn’t have to kill anybody – but then that’s the same as wishing the Taliban and Al Quaida and, hell, Islam didn’t exist in the first place,which, yeah,I also wish but just ain’t the reality. I’m a realist and I think you have to accept that things are the way they are. I’m also an idealist and want to make things better at the same time so, yeah, some conflict here. But reality doesn’t go away. You can’t make the Taliban reasonable people who can be negotiated with peacefully and convinced to treat woman and others decently just because that’d be ideal however much you (& I) may wish it were so.
Oh, well, that’s reassuring…
I’m not saying that we should. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t be surprised that making war on people does not encourage them to become more tolerant and liberal. There is a great deal of evidence that people who feel threatened tend to become more conservative, and more likely to engage in bigotry and violence.
Well, the first thing we should do is not make things worse. Sometimes it’s not up to us to charge into other people’s societies and try to fix them by blowing shit up. Probably the best thing to do would be to actually ask reform-minded Afghans how we could best help them – they’ve probably got some ideas of their own. But, for example, we could provide non-military political and diplomatic support for reformist elements within Afghan society. We could supply humanitarian aid. We could offer asylum to anyone fleeing the country. We could broker talks between the various factions in play. We could assist with economic development. We could bribe people. And so forth… Certainly, not the sort of thing that provides quick results, but then we’ve not done so well at producing quick results so far.
In Afghanistan we have a culture that very badly needs mass deprogramming – smashing the power and influence of the overgrown cult that is their version of Islam and Islamic ideology -and I think we should’ve made a much stronger attempt at doing that.
If that meant blowing up (empty) mosques and burning Qurans and re-educating people that Mohammad and his ideas were really nasty and harmful and wrong and replacing it with secular ideas of ,well, reality and better governance, then so be it.
I think in many cases the US & Coalition military forces and government has been too respectful towards so ideas that deserve and merit no respect at all and too unwilling to confront an ideology that is downright toxic for so many people and has destroyed so many lives on all sides.
@ 16. Dunc :
Good.
Well ya could’ve fooled me mate. Kinda seems like that actually.
Counter example and suggested course to emulate : Japan post WWII.
Sure.
But if their ideas equate to, well, you just sit back and do nothing while we take, oh say forever, to make things different as oft seems – then, no.
Yes. If that actually makes a difference *& changes things. Ya reckon it does?
We could supply humanitarian aid. We could offer asylum to anyone fleeing the country. We could broker talks between the various factions in play. We could assist with economic development. We could bribe people.
Pretty sure we do all that and have been for a while.
Pretty sure its made sod all diff.
Hmm … one year the Taliban were in power and control of the nation the next they were out.
I’d call that pretty quick results.
Of course we failed to follow that up well enough.. in part because people kept talking about respecting and working with without trying to really change a toxic culture that has earnt and merits no flippin’ respect at all.
I’m also not saying its going to be quick. I am saying we should take a stand and if we believe in women’s rights, LGBTQI rights,freedom of religion – and for no religion – and freedom of expression, etc ..we need to make that very clear and do something more than pay lip service whilst letting them continue as before with the “honour killings”, the sharia law hangings and stonings, the burka, the oppression of non-muslism and non-right sect / ethnciity of different groups of Muslims, the brain-washing racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic misogynist madrassehs, ad nausem..
Did you read the OP at all? Things are now getting very much worse again (not that they were ever that great – the Karzai regime was never noted for its respect for human rights, even at the best of times), and I’ll wager that it’s going to go a very long way downhill from here.
Personally, I’ll continue to look to the likes of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan rather than the likes of you. I think they probably have a better idea of how to improve their situation than you do.
Dunc,
I agree with you about focusing more on helping organizations like RAWA and other activists in Afghanistan who are trying to make positive, long term changes. I just don’t think military causes a backlash against Afghani women or that women’s human rights are a Western idea that the people of Afghanistan are rejecting due to military occupation.
I don’t get this attitude that Muslims don’t understand that it’s wrong to abuse women. I think it’s incredibly insulting to Muslim people. Women are abused and denied their rights all over the globe, even in supposedly democratic countries. People who are supposedly concerned about racism are being pretty racist in my opinion when they suggest that “it’s just their culture”.
@20 theoreticalgrrrl
You don’t think that if you were raised with every single person telling you to believe something, with everyone telling you that everyone who believed otherwise was evil, and with barely any access to alternative points of view, that you might believe the thing everyone was telling you to believe?
I’m not defending moral relativism, but you need to realize that *everyone* is ignorant by default, and correcting this ignorance requires means that are not universally available.
I think (and correct me if I’m wrong) that what theoreticalgrrrl was getting at was the idea that being ignorant of the wrongness of abusing women is a uniquely Muslim problem (which is clear enough from a) other pro-abuse non-Muslim religious groups, and b) a vocal contingent of atheist speaker who will never admit to being pro-abuse, but are vociferously opposed to opposing it, so to speak). Sure, we seem to be living in a time where Muslim groups occupy more than their fair share of the thick end of the wedge, but there’s plenty of others up there with them, and of course, you can always find Muslims opposed to gender-based violence as well – even in Afghanistan.
Yes, YES, David Hart. That’s what I was trying to say.
If you criticize Islam, there are quite a few atheists (*cough*somepharyngulacommenters*cough*), who completely lose it and start calling you nasty things because they think it’s racist to point out misogyny in Islam, or they tell you that Christianity is equally abusive towards women so shut up about Islam being misogynistic.