Shiite men in Afghanistan now have the legal right to starve their wives

[acheron]

I was under the impression the reason we were over there fighting against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda was to prevent this kind of thing from continuing.


August 17, 2009, 12:39 PM
Afghan Husbands Win Right to Starve Wives
By ROBERT MACKEY

Ahmad Masood/Reuters
Afghan women at an election rally this month in support of Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai.
Bowing to international pressure and unprecedented protests by hundreds of women on the streets of Kabul, the Afghan government promised in April to review a new law imposing severe restrictions on women in Shiite Muslim families.

Last week, though, Human Rights Watch discovered that a revised version of the Shiite Personal Status Law had been quietly put into effect at the end of July — meaning that Shiite men in Afghanistan now have the legal right to starve their wives if their sexual demands are not met and that Shiite women must obtain permission from their husbands to even leave their houses, “except in extreme circumstances.”

Ahmad Masood/Reuters
In June, some Afghan Shiite women signed a petition in support of a new law placing restrictions on them that human rights activists and Western leaders had opposed.
The new law was signed by President Hamid Karzai, who is depending on support from Sheik Muhammad Asif Mohseni, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric, in this week’s presidential election. Shiites, who were oppressed by the Sunni-led Taliban government, are believed to make up between 10 and 20 percent of Afghanistan’s population. Sheik Mohseni and scholars close to him were allowed to write the first draft of the new law, and he was reportedly unhappy that Parliament had introduced a provision that banned men from marrying girls under the age of 16.

When the law was first approved, President Barack Obama called it “abhorrent,” but has not yet responded to reports that it has now been revised and put into effect, perhaps because Afghanistan’s election is just days away.

In April, Al Jazeera visited Kabul’s main Shiite mosque to record Sheik Mohseni expressing his displeasure at the controversy over the law, and reporters from the news station spoke with some Shiite women who endorsed it:

(video)

Days later, my colleague Abdul Waheed Wafa shot this video of women gathered outside the mosque and a madrasa run by Sheik Asif Mohseni to protest the law in the face of the taunts of a larger group of men who supported it:

(video)

Although the law applies only to Shiites, Soraya Sobhrang, commissioner for women’s rights at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said in April that it could influence a proposed family law for the Sunni majority and a draft law on violence against women. She told The Times in April, “This opens the way for more discrimination.”

According to Human Rights Watch, the new law also “grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers” and “effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her.” Brad Adams, the Asia director for the human rights group, said that President Karzai “has made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in return for the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election.” On Saturday, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kabul took a less dim view, calling the fact that the law was amended at all, “a step forward.”

Jerome Starkey explained on Saturday in The Independent why support from Shiite leaders was so important to Mr. Karzai:

Most of Afghanistan’s Shias are ethnic Hazaras. They are Afghanistan’s third largest ethnic group, with about six million people, and like most Afghans, they vote according to orders from community leaders. With a roughly 50-50 split between Afghanistan’s southern Pashtuns and the rest of the country, the Hazaras are seen as the kingmakers.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/200...-starve-wives/

[derek]

sdrawkcab gniog

[erika]

this is so depressing
I'm just finishing The Swallows of Khabul by Yasmina Khadra; highly recommended reading if you want to get a flavour for life over there these days.

[Eclectic]

That's really shiitey.

Lame, I know

[Boss Hog]

Originally Posted by acheron

I was under the impression the reason we were over there fighting against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda was to prevent this kind of thing from continuing.

We're never going to be able to influence how Afghans run their country, and if we did there would be repercussions for years to come.

The change is going to have to come from within.

[orchid]

pretty disgusting, all of it.

even if something is legal, doesn't a sense of right from wrong prevail in a reasonable person's mind? ie. starving someone will cause them physical harm, and that's fucking mean so I won't do it!? get a clue fuckwads! this is the problem with these cultures with their archaic beliefs that the men actually OWN women. fuck 'em all.

[EffinHard]

Originally Posted by Boss Hog

We're never going to be able to influence how Afghans run their country, and if we did there would be repercussions for years to come.

The change is going to have to come from within.

Sally Armstrong,
Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan
Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots: The Uncertain Fate of Afghanistan’s Women

the women of afghanistan have been trying for decades.. this is a major step backwards.. karzai is not the right leader for that country.

[wakipaki]

i dont' want to downplay this, but its somewhat irrelevant, regardless of the law, men could probably already do this and still get away with it, in Afghanistan and probably 50 other countries in the world,

if there's no infrastructure to enforce laws it doesn't really matter what is illegal and legal

[wakipaki]

Originally Posted by EffinHard

Sally Armstrong,
Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan
Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots: The Uncertain Fate of Afghanistan’s Women

the women of afghanistan have been trying for decades.. this is a major step backwards.. karzai is not the right leader for that country.

lol and who the hell is? he only controls kabul and a 20Km radius around it, barely a leader, more of the head of the council of independant warlords or soemthing

[Dirty Girl]

these women need to obtain large masses of guns and take out all the men.
no men = happy land

[acheron]

The Week The Women Went: Kabul Edition

[Boss Hog]

You know where else there's a problem?

Here.

[EffinHard]

Originally Posted by Boss Hog

You know where else there's a problem?

Here.

cause that's even remotely related.

[Boss Hog]

Sure it is. It's not the first time we've seen this kind of thing in Canada and yet it continues to happen. How can we point at Afghanistan and tell them how they should treat women if we have shit like that going on here?

[EffinHard]

Originally Posted by Boss Hog

Sure it is. It's not the first time we've seen this kind of thing in Canada and yet it continues to happen. How can we point at Afghanistan and tell them how they should treat women if we have shit like that going on here?

sorry, I must have missed the legislation we passed that turned women into second class citizens or slaves.

this is about a government reducing individual rights of women..

[Boss Hog]

Ah, legislation should fix it. Or another generation of occupation.

[janiecakes]

Originally Posted by Boss Hog

Sure it is. It's not the first time we've seen this kind of thing in Canada and yet it continues to happen. How can we point at Afghanistan and tell them how they should treat women if we have shit like that going on here?

i think this is a hilarious and bizarre way to look at the status of women in canada and afghanistan.

[Boss Hog]

maybe we should all go over and fix it.

[Flashy_McFlash]

Or anything really. We have to make Canada into a utopia before we can care about the problems elsewhere? Really?

[Boss Hog]

Totally!

[m0ff]

Originally Posted by acheron

I was under the impression the reason we were over there fighting against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda was to prevent this kind of thing from continuing.

No kidding.
I was furious when I saw this news last week.
I have friends in the CF currently serving in, are about to serve in, or who have lost their lives in Afghanistan, and this move by their government seemingly completely voids everything Canadians have been over there trying to promote.

Should we keep our men and women there in light of this? I don't know anymore.

[Lysistrata]

i distinctly remember an argument similar to this recently on tribe, perhaps at election time or something, where some of our resident neo-cons were arguing that until we've solved all of our internal problems we basically shoudn't even have a foreign policy. surprising for BH to be agreeing with the neo-cons, but all's fair in love and war, right?

[Boss Hog]

Originally Posted by Lysistrata

i distinctly remember an argument similar to this recently on tribe, perhaps at election time or something, where some of our resident neo-cons were arguing that until we've solved all of our internal problems we basically shoudn't even have a foreign policy. surprising for BH to be agreeing with the neo-cons, but all's fair in love and war, right?

This is what I love about tribe 'debate'. The ability to jump to conclusions about what has or hasn't been said. Yep, I'm totally a neocon.

Here's hoping that 10 more years of our money, soldiers and your wishes save 'em.

[Muad'ib]

seems perfectly reasonable to me.

[Lysistrata]

Originally Posted by Boss Hog

This is what I love about tribe 'debate'. The ability to jump to conclusions about what has or hasn't been said.

Here's hoping that 10 more years of our money, soldiers and your wishes save 'em.

all you've "said" is "we can't judge how their government legally treats their women because of the way criminals illegally treat our women."

i'm not even sure what your second sentence is implying.