WP: Afghan Women Put Lives on Line To Run for Office

[Pirate Smile]

Afghan Women Put Lives on Line To Run for Office

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 29, 2005; Page A01

CHARKH, Afghanistan -- The note slipped under Mahmoud Shah's front gate was written in a tidy, graceful hand. But the message brimmed with venom: "If you don't stop campaigning for Noorzia Charkhi, your life will be in danger. Also tell Noorzia Charkhi that she should give up her candidacy. Aren't you ashamed to put up posters of your family's women in the bazaar?"

Charkhi, 36, is a journalist based in the capital, Kabul, who is campaigning for a seat in Afghanistan's new parliament. But in this mud-walled village in Logar, the home province she hopes to represent, Charkhi's candidacy is such a challenge to tradition that she and her relatives, including her cousin Shah, have faced repeated threats.


Candidate Noorzia Charkhi, holding a poster, has received repeated threats. "I'm not going to quit," she said. "But definitely I fear for my life." (By N.c. Aizenman -- The Washington Post)

"I'm not going to quit, because I want to show people that a woman should be able to do these things. But definitely I fear for my life. . . . The people who did this already have blood on their hands," Charkhi said during a visit to Shah's home, 50 miles south of Kabul. "I'm even more afraid that they will smear my reputation," she added. "That would be worse than death."

Charkhi's situation underscores both the difficulties facing female candidates running for office in the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections and the determination many have expressed as they embark on an unprecedented bid for political power.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/28/AR2005072802271.html

[Psephos]

1. Gotta give her credit. n/t

[Pirate Smile]

2. Damn right.

[barb162]

3. the deep embedded hatred of women in some of these places

reminds me of blacks in this country before the Civil War