TIME’s Epic Distortion of the Plight of Women in Afghanistan

[Prometheus Bound]

TIME’s Epic Distortion of the Plight of Women in Afghanistan
By: Derrick Crowe Saturday July 31, 2010 12:55 am

Tomorrow, TIME Magazine will treat newsstand customers everywhere to one of the most rank propaganda plays of the Afghanistan War. The cover features a woman, Aisha, whose face was mutilated by the Taliban, next to the headline, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." Far more people will see this image and have their emotions manipulated by it than will read the article within (which itself seems to be a journalistic travesty, if the web version is any indication), so TIME should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for such a dishonest snow job on their customers. Readers deserve better.

Let’s clarify something right off the top when it comes to this cover: Aisha, the poor woman depicted in the photograph, was attacked last year, with tens of thousands of U.S. troops tramping all over the country at the time. This isn’t the picture of some as-yet-unrealized nighmarish future for Afghan women. It’s the picture of the present.

Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) recently published report on this issue, The "Ten-Dollar Talib" and Women’s Rights, provides key context for the struggle for women’s political equality in Afghanistan:

<snip> The Afghan government, often with the tacit approval of key foreign governments and inter-governmental bodies, has empowered current and former warlords, providing official positions to some and effective immunity from prosecution for serious crimes to the rest. Backroom deals with abusive commanders have created powerful factions in the government and Parliament that are opposed to many of the rights and freedoms that women now enjoy. As one activist told us, “We women don’t have guns and poppies and we are not warlords, therefore we are not in the decision-making processes.”

This is something that folks who put together TIME’s cover better understand right now: the fox is already in the hen-house. There is a very powerful set of anti-women’s-equality caucuses already nested within the Afghan government that the U.S. supports. These individuals and groups are working to reassert the official misogyny of the Taliban days already, independent of the reconciliation and reintegration process. Given the opportunity, these individuals and groups in the U.S.-backed government will manipulate the reconciliation and reintegration process and leverage armed-opposition-group participation in the process to push through policies they’d prefer already as compromises with their "opponents." This is why the propaganda of TIME’s cover is so pernicious: the women of Afghanistan are caught in a vice already, stuck between their opponents in the insurgency and in the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. If one is concerned about the rights of women in Afghanistan, the question is, how do we give women the most leverage possible in this situation?

<snip>

Let’s talk about just a couple of these obstacles: Hajji Mohammed Mohaqiq and his Amnesty Law. Mohaqiq was one of the leaders of the notorious Hezb-e Wahdat, which in late 2001-early 2002 targeted Pashtun civilians for violence because of their ethnic ties to the Taliban. According to Human Rights Watch, Hezb-e Wahdat was: implicated in systematic and widespread looting and violence in almost every province under their…control, almost all of it directed at Pashtun villagers. …here were several reports of rapes of girls and women. In Chimtal district near Mazar-e Sharif, and in Balkh province generally, both Hizb-i Wahdat and Jamiat forces were particularly violent: in one village, Bargah-e Afghani, Hizb-i Wahdat troops killed thirty-seven civilians.

Mohaqiq’s militia also became widely feared and loathed for their practice of kidnapping young girls, “forcibly marrying” them (what a useless euphemism for rape), and ransoming them back to their parents. They seemed to especially enjoy snatching girls who were on their way to school, leading many parents to keep their girls home rather than risk their abduction and rape.

Following the overthrow of the Taliban, Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq managed to get himself appointed as a vice chair of the interim government and as Minister of Planning.....

Much more: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/62743

[patrice]

1. K & R

[katandmoon]

2. K&R. And the U.S. invasion of Iraq just did WONDERS for Iraqi women.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/nadje-al-ali-us-invasion_n_161486.html

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Yes, for all his faults, Saddam was a secularist and had no patience with

Islamic restrictions on women's activities.

When Bush said, "Girls in Iraq are going to school now," he counted on the average American's ignorance. Girls in Iraq have been going to school for years.

In Saddam's Iraq, women could be educated, hold any job they were qualified for, and dress as they pleased. Now they have to cover in public or risk being attacked by fanatics.

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. Here's a link to the cover alone, which alone was enough to make me come here

And share it with you. If Time did this to advocate a liberal position (not that Time has been anything other than a right-wing publication that advocated for Fascism and Hitler in the 30's) they would be lynched.

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. For example, replace the words with "What Happens If We Stay In Afghanistan"

What would the response be?