I think credibility's the loser here and your credibility perhaps more than others. You've a stronger archival capacity than I but I have to wonder why you would want to seek out more accurate pictures of Afghan women now as opposed to before, especially those that cast a light on the Taliban in such a way as to show that repression or restriction isn't what the opposition makes it out to be. Your political project hardly guarantees more accuracy in your search since it seems that the overriding political goal is to highlight the workings of ideology in organizing the opposition to the Taliban. But isn't ideology a key to the Taliban - that it or they pursue a more theoretically informed theology part of which is explains the need for repression and restriction of women? And so the complexities on the ground showing the Taliban less monolithic are partially offset by a clearer and more precise theory of women that informs their treatment? Isn't it interesting to understand (and therefore distinguish) the Taliban from its Afghan opponents because it operates far more effectively as an ideology compared to the relative weak hold or use of religion by the warlords?
Or simply put, if the US was allied to the Taliban in a fight on terrorism - or even drugs - would it be as important to get an accurate picture of the complexities of the treatment of Afghan women? Or would the political project dictate accentuating the repression, perhaps pointing out that the other groups who opposed the repression didn't go far enough in showing the affinity between the US and the Taliban ?
I'd think the Taliban stand out as a particularly distilled and fermented disdain for women however complex the picture might of actually existing Taliban rule. Your substantive point is agreeable enough but I do wonder about the process through which you arriived at it.
Dennis Breslin
> >Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> >>What I want to know is whether what Rubin said before the Taliban's
> >>rise to the status of America's No. 1 Enemy is a more accurate
> >>picture of Afghan women than what the Feminist Majority says about
> >>the same.
> >
> >Wow. Sometimes you sound like a 70-year old male Leninist.
> >
> >Doug
>
> As a feminist & marxist, I'm first of all interested in how different
> classes of women in Afghanistan actually live and work in different
> regions (urban vs. rural, north vs. south, etc.), the subject that
> apparently interests few (except "70-year old male Leninists"???).
> If you got better studies from better sources than what's posted, you
> might present them here, instead of being coy.
> --
> Yoshie
>