What has US occupation given to the women of Afghanisatn?

Vanguard March 2104 p. 7
Nick G.

The much-vaunted “liberation” of Afghanistan’s women -  key justification for US imperialist invasion and occupation of that country – is to receive yet another set-back at the hands of the Karzai regime.

The Afghan parliament, the Loyal Jurga, is set to pass a law that will allow people to attack their wives, sisters and daughters without fear of punishment.

The law will stop relatives of an attacker from testifying against them -- effectively silencing women who experience domestic violence, along with other members of their family who have witnessed the abuse.

The proposed law reflects the strength of reactionary patriarchal ideology within the Loyal Jurga, as well as the  Karzai government’s determination to welcome the anti-women Taliban into the government.

In a statement last year on the occasion of the twelfth anniversary of the US occupation of Afghanistan, RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, commented:

“The US government and its allies promised our people democracy, but imposed upon them the most undemocratic, corrupt, and mafia government of our history; they spoke of ‘war on terror’ but brought the murderers and terrorists of the Northern Alliance, gun-lords and drug kingpins to power, and have now extended their hands in friendship to the Taliban; the US used human rights and women’s rights as an excuse, but Afghanistan still faces the worse kinds of human rights violations and horrifying catastrophes against its women; they promised our people liberation and freedom, but practically turned our country into a narco-state and the center of their longest-running criminal war.”

An international campaign is underway to force President Hamid Karzai to refuse approval for the new law.

As RAWA has consistently pointed out, human rights abuses and the oppression of women will only be able to be dealt with in an independent Afghanistan freed of US imperialist occupation, and with a democratic government prepared to confront the militarists, the drug lords and the reactionary leaders who demand women’s oppression.

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See also: http://www.rawa.org/index.php