Last week on morning TV, Laura Bush announced that the United States was liberating Afghan women. Women in Afghanistan, as dramatically demonstrated by the cover of Time, could actually show their faces. You can sleep well tonight, America. I was livid.
In the 1960s, Afghanistan had a remarkably egalitarian culture, according to \Revolutionary Afghan Women"" by Kathleen Richter in the November 2000 issue of Z Magazine. In Kabul, women made up 40 percent of doctors, 70 percent of schoolteachers, 50 percent of university students and 60 percent of professors.
Indeed, as the media are so fond of pointing out, the Taliban is responsible for the degradation of the status of women in Afghanistan. What the media don't point out is that we supported and aided the Taliban at the time'with no regard for women's rights. Then, as now, the United States was more interested in its political goals than women's lib. The United States, the great liberator, is partly to blame for the plight of Afghan women in the first place.
All this time, the women of Afghanistan, those victimized, passive and needy girls whom the brave bomb-droppers of America have so valiantly rescued, have been courageously risking death to fight for the rights of women. For decades they have been screaming out to their people and to the world for justice. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan has been organized and active since 1977, desperately trying to make headway against the powers that we enabled.
What has the United States been doing? Nothing. We didn't care about Afghan women when we helped the Taliban gain power. We didn't care about Afghan women between then and now. And, frankly, we don't care about Afghan women today. We do care, however, about making ourselves look good. And isn't it convenient that Laura Bush can point her finger at women's faces in Kabul, smile and pat the United States on the back? The women in Afghanistan are tools. We are strategically using their glimpse at a fraction of freedom.
Today, as we often do, America is operating on the principle that the enemies of our enemies are our friends. We have happily allowed Northern Alliance soldiers to do the dirty work for us. We were glad to have a desperate and despicable group of men to fight in our places. And we are not averse to working with nasty people if it gets us what we want. That's why we trained and funded Osama bin Laden in the first place.
In fact, the Northern Alliance's humanitarian record is only slightly less atrocious than the Taliban's. The Alliance's position on women is only minimally less oppressive. The Northern Alliance has already twice banned a planned women's freedom march in Kabul and, though it opened a movie theater (what liberation!), women aren't allowed in it. Time had the audacity to suggest that one woman's collection of lipsticks, eyeliners and hair sprays was a symbol of freedom. When the Northern Alliance settles Afghanistan down, the United States will not look back to ensure women's positions are improved.
So women get screwed again. The United States is not truly interested in the liberation of the women of Afghanistan. Instead, we are going to use the issues to make the United States look good. In a public-relations war, President Bush sees the women of Afghanistan as valuable, but only as pawns. We will use them, some of the most oppressed people in the world, to justify a military campaign that only exacerbates their miserable circumstances. And we will do what is useful to us'then turn a blind eye.
