N. Afghan women retreat behind veil in fear of lives

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-23 07:56
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MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan - Women living in Afghanistan's safest region are retreating behind the veil amid fears they are being stalked by a resurgent Taliban determined to trample their rights.

An Afghan woman sits at the Rawz-e Sharif shrine in Mazar-e Sharif. Women living in Afghanistan's safest region are retreating behind the veil amid fears they are being stalked. [Photo / Agencies]
Human rights groups are concerned that plans by the Afghan government to make peace with the Taliban could lead to an erosion of women's liberties.
On Tuesday, about 80 international representatives, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gathered in Kabul to endorse President Hamid Karzai's program of reconciliation and reintegration with the Taliban leadership.
But as attacks escalate across the previously peaceful north, and the insurgency's footprint expands, women are losing confidence that their hard-won rights are inviolable.
Clinton used part of her speech to defend Afghan women. "If they are silenced and pushed to the margins of Afghan society, the prospects for peace and justice will be subverted," she warned.
In Mazar-I-Sharif, the largest city on Afghanistan's northern plain, fewer women are venturing out in public with bared faces, and the burqa is making a comeback, not as a fashion accessory but as protection, many said.
"The atmosphere is changing, women on the streets of Mazar are covering their faces, they are retreating behind their burqas because they fear the Taliban are getting closer," said Hamid Safwat, manager of an independent shelter for distressed women.
"Women are living in great fear of a peace deal with the Taliban because of what it will mean for their rights," he said. "If they are not already here physically, their presence, their proximity is being felt."
Women at the shelter, one of only a handful in the country, said they worried that an already tough existence could become worse.
Gul Andaman spent a year in prison for refusing to marry a man selected by her brothers, and came to the shelter after her release because they threatened to kill her, she said.
Now, after three years at the safe house, she said her brothers were still insisting she return to the family home and marry the man of their choice.
"What can a woman do?" she said.
"Life for Afghan women is just so bad but if President Karzai does talk to the Taliban, and they become more powerful, then of course things will get even worse."
Karzai's plan for making peace with the Taliban has won broad support from the international community as the war becomes increasingly unpopular with the Western public, and leaders struggle to develop an exit strategy.
The broader concept of reconciliation involves talks with the Taliban leadership, based in Pakistan, on power sharing, third-country exile and removal from a UN list of terror suspects.
Until recently, women in Mazar-I-Sharif said they believed they lived in the safest and most liberal part of the country.
Not any more, said Safwat.
"Even the vague possibility that the Taliban are coming makes women afraid, makes everyone afraid because here in the north they have a lot to lose."