HYPOCRISY OVER AFGHAN WOMEN'S RIGHTS
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
About two years ago, the Fund for a Feminist Majority brought more than
10,000 women to the Baltimore Convention Center to hear speaker after speaker
address women’s rights issues. Two of the speakers were from Afghanistan.
Through an interpreter, they spoke of the impact the Taliban had on their
lives. Their educations had been interrupted, their mobility constrained.
Though the women did not speak English, the trembling in one voice as she
described having her nails pulled out prompted a sharp intake of breath in
the crowd, even before the interpreter translated her words. The trembling,
we all thought, could only describe something horrible.
As horrible as the treatment of women in Afghanistan has been, it has not
been a focus of United States foreign policy. Indeed, were it not for the
terrorist attacks of September 11, it is unlikely that anyone in the White
House would be talking about the brutality against women and children in
Afghanistan. It was ironic that President George W. Bush turned his weekly
radio address over to First Lady Laura Bush to launch a worldwide effort to
focus on the status of women and children by the Taliban regime. While Mrs.
Bush spoke eloquently, her remarks raise many questions for me.
Our country needs to stop being hypocritical. If we are going to claim
the moral high ground on women’s rights, we should make it an ongoing
priority in our foreign policy, instead of arguing for women’s rights only
when it suits our other interests. Mrs. Bush talked about the oppressiveness
symbolized by the burka that Afghan women must cover themselves with, but she
was silent about the abayas that Saudi women must wear. Like Afghan women,
Saudi women are b eaten, often with sticks, if they do not cover themselves
with heavy black cloaks. But Saudi Arabia is an ally so we are silent.
If the United States is going to make women’s rights a priority, it ought
to be a priority in our country, too. Yet one of the Bush Administration’s
early acts was to abolish the White House Office on Women. Like Afghanistan,
we signed but did not ratify, the United Nations Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. One hundred and
sixty-eight nations had signed and ratified the convention by June 2001.
Laura Bush said that seventy percent of the Afghan people are
malnourished. In some ways Afghanistan is typical of other developing
countries. Almost 800 million people, one-sixth of the world’s population
suffer from hunger. According to the Bread for The World Institute, in the
last 50 years, about 400 million people have died of hunger. Nearly half of
all women between 18 and 35 in the developing world do not eat enough to meet
caloric requirements for proper mental and physical health. And 200 million
children in the world are malnourished. Is Mrs. Bush suggesting that we are
at war with Afghanistan because people are hungry? Is she suggesting that
our concern about hunger is such that we are prepared to increase our foreign
aid to countries where the hunger problem is particularly acute? While most
of us decry hunger in the United States (where there are millions of hungry
children) or in other parts of the world, it seems that Mrs. Bush is using
Afghanistan’s hunger problem selectively.
“One in every four children won’t live past the age of five because
health care is not available,” Laura Bush said. “Women have been denied
access to doctors when they are sick.” This is true, not only in
Afghanistan, but in the rest of the developing world. A study ranking 133
countries found that women in Africa and other poor nations die in pregnancy
or childbirth at a rate 33 times higher than women in Europe, the United
States, and other rich nations. The ten highest risk countries were
Ethiopia, Angola, Chad, Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Mali, Niger,
Congo, Sierra Leone and Lesotho. Is the lack of medical care in Afghanistan
a function of Taliban brutality, or economic conditions? Are we as concerned
about the women and children who don’t have access to health care in other
high-risk countries (or in the United States for that matter)?
While it is absolutely appropriate for the Bush Administration to be
concerned about the status of women in Afghanistan, no one should be fooled
into thinking that this concern is independent. We are at war with the
Taliban and with Afghanistan, and we didn’t enter that war to protect the
women and children of Afghanistan, who have been suffering for years.
President Bush hides behind his wife’s skirts when he sends her out to raise
awareness about women in Afghanistan. He doesn’t need to feign concern for
women – a concern that we have not exhibited at home or in other countries --
to justify our current war effort.