The faith of Taliban women
Recently the world was staggered by the image of Bibi Aisha, a 19 year-old Afghan woman, who was brutally mutilated by her Taliban husband. Her photograph placed on the latest cover of the Time magazine shocked everybody. Her story takes us to a world of everyday brutality and women abuse, to a world where the is no escape and no one to protect you.
Aisha like many Afghan women got married in a very young age. Her husband was a member of a Taliban family, placed somewhere in the middle on the ladder of the local society. Aisha was frequently abused and tortured by her father-in-law and her 10 brothers-in-law, with the full approval of her husband and the whole family. Being almost beaten to death, treated worse than the households animals. she decided to escape. A lonely woman, terrified and unable to live on her own in an Islamic state, could not run for long. Aisha was captured and handed over to her husbands family custody. A local Taliban commander in charge of the tribal judicial system was supposed to decide her faith. Neither marks of previous brutality nor the woman’s story could convince him to withdraw the charges of bringing shame upon her husbands family. In this way Aisha was sentenced to mutilation on the basis of a crime against honour.
The sentence was carried out by her husband. He and two other members of the family, imprisoned Aisha in a dark room, than he took out a knife and sliced off her ears. After that he butchered her nose. Aisha had massive blood lost she passed out. When she woke up she couldn’t even see due to all the blood. She was walking alone along the countryside until a group of American construction workers found her and delivered to a hospital.
Aisha was placed in a secret woman shelter in Kabul, where she received psychological and medical treatment. A foundation from the States promised to help Aisha and provide money for her re-constructive surgery.
That was not the first and unfortunately not the last case of violence against women in Afghanistan. Actually the problem concerns most Islamic states and even Muslim societies in the Western World. Yet Afghanistan is still the main front in the fight for women rights. As long as the war against the Taliban goes on there is progress, as Western values start to leak into the Afghan society, however there is still the question what will happen after the war is won.
It is more often said that to achieve long-lasting peace it is necessary to negotiate with the Taliban leaders. Only together with them the new Afghan government could fully control the whole country. Is that not a step backwards? The whole war started to beat the Taliban terrorists and partisans. And those are the same people who officially approve of violence against women. Will it be possible to improve the situation of women, if you reach a settlement with people who brutally mutilate and kill women?
That is a question the Afghan government has to ask itself.
MP
