>I think credibility's the loser
Credibility gets lost when you make a false claim, for sure. Take a look at the following link from the RAWA website:
***** 'Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had links with KGB' The News International October 8, 1992
PARIS: The US House Republican Research Committee of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare has severely criticized the Central Intelligence Agencies and Inter-Services-Intelligence for their gross negligence and cover-up of the misconduct of the Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan during the 13 year Afghan civil war.
The report also alleged that the ISI propped Hekmatyar as an ultimate Muslim choice, while knowing all along that he was actually working for the ex-Soviet KGB, the intelligence agency of the Soviet Union....
<http://rawa.fancymarketing.net/gul-kgb.htm> *****
It appears that whoever is putting together the RAWA website doesn't mind stooping to conspiracy theory.
>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?
Yes. As you may gather from Ahmed Rashid's _The Taliban_ and other sources, there was a period when the US government was "romancing the Taliban" in the "battle for pipelines." It was as wrong then as it is now to convey inaccurate information about the oppression of women in Afghanistan & to hope to use the power of the US government to "liberate" Afghan women. Then, propagandizing on "gender apartheid" became even more problematic once the US/UN put sanctions on Afghanistan.
***** When the United States moved to impose sanctions on Afghanistan after the Taliban regime offered to protect suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, the United Nations team urged the United States to consider human rights in the terms of their sanctions. Kamal Hossain, special rapporteur of the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights, asked U.S. policy makers to approach the Afghanistan sanctions with a "comprehensive" approach rather than focusing simply on bin Laden.
"Grave breaches of humanitarian law have occurred," Hossain said, pointing to violations that included "destruction of homes and sources of livelihood, and abduction of and violence against women."
<http://societypolitics.chickclick.com/articles/1318p1.html> *****
In my view, sanctions did no good to women in Afghanistan, and they wouldn't have even if they had been comprehensive & conditional upon the Taliban's record on gender oppression.
BTW, what's ironic about it all is that today the US government and Western feminists alike are using the Soviet-backed Afghan communist government's record on women -- which the US government and others worked hard to destroy -- as the benchmark by which to evaluate the Taliban!
***** New York Times 2 December 2001
AFGHANISTAN'S WOMEN
Hope for the Future, Blunted
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
...Thirty years earlier, a 1964 constitution, one of several written in the last century, had opened the way for four women - two from Kabul, one from Herat and one from Kandahar - to be elected to a new Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of a national parliament.
BUT the late Louis Dupree, who examined early modern politics in Afghanistan exhaustively in his classic history, "Afghanistan" (Princeton, 1978), noted that although women had the right to vote, few outside the cities were exercising it. The rural-urban divide remains, and it led the Taliban to especially ferocious attacks on city women while leaving rural women undisturbed.
Laili Zikria Helms, whose two grandfathers were royal ministers during Zahir Shah's reign, said that in any case voting was often indirect, with tribal councils choosing candidates. Except for a brief period in 1977, no woman has ever sat on the Loya Jirga, or grand council of tribal elders, the highest decision-making body.
The State Department and Western women's advocacy groups often cite as a norm the 15 percent of national parliamentary seats won by women in the 1970's or the 50 percent of government jobs Afghan women held before the Taliban appeared.
But Rina Amiri, a senior associate in the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, cautions against using the 1970's and 80's, when leftist or Soviet-installed governments were in power, as a model.
"THERE was a real Marxist ideology behind leveraging women's roles, and part of that agenda was to destroy tribal culture," Ms. Amiri, who was born in Afghanistan, said in an interview from Bonn, where she has been taking part in talks among independent Afghans that are running parallel to the main conference....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/weekinreview/02CROS.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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