The new Afghan government has promised public stonings will continue but only with small stones

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http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_2_66/ai_83246166

Progressive, The, Feb, 2002

Afghan law does not currently give women a great deal of power: "Children legally belong to their fathers, who retain them after a divorce," pointed out the Los Angeles Times. "Children are also passed down the male line of a family in the event of the father's death, meaning a widow cannot take her children from her husband's extended family if she remarries." And, notes the article, "For now, the only work available for most Afghan women is that which men won't do. Tending kitchen gardens, baking bread, and midwifery are about the only pursuits that allow Afghanistan's many widows to feed their children."

Nevertheless, the vicious oppression of women the Taliban imposed has eased. That is a good thing.

There are those who will say this war is surely justified, given the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban. But we fear that the American "Daisy-Cutters" and cluster bombs have not ended their agony. We side with Afghan women who opposed the war because of the violence it would cause and who now warn about the unsavory resumes of the Northern Alliance. Nor are we fooled by the rhetoric of the Laura Bushes of this world. This war was not a war for women's liberation; it was a war of revenge. And it was the utmost hypocrisy for George and Laura to shed tears over the oppression of women in Afghanistan when women are treated essentially as badly in Saudi Arabia, and the First Family doesn't say a word about that. What's more, it was the United States that supported the Taliban when it came to power, knowing full well their savage treatment of women.

War rarely is the elixir it is made out to be. A case in point: Afghan law appears resistant to dramatic change. In a late December announcement reported by Agence France Press and noted in Alexander Cockburn's syndicated column, the new Justice Minister, Abdul Rahim Karimi, said the interim government would continue to impose Sharia Islamic law on all Afghans, but would do so with less force. "For example, the Taliban used to hang the victim's body in public for four days. We will only hang the body for a short time: say, fifteen minutes," said Judge Ahamat Ullha Zarif, a member of Kabul's high court. As for using sports arenas for public executions, that is now in the past, said Zarif. "The stadium is for sports," he said. "We will find a new place for public executions." Public stonings would also continue, said the judge, "but we will use only small stones."

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1. ...dateline 2002...

although the last six years have been a blur.