Afghan woman killed for giving birth to a girl

[Zostrianos]

I don't really know what to say after reading this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16787534)...

A woman in north-eastern Afghanistan has been arrested for allegedly strangling her daughter-in-law for giving birth to a third daughter.
The murdered woman's husband, a member of a local militia, is also suspected of involvement but he has since fled.
The murder took place two days ago in Kunduz province. The baby girl, who is now two months old, was not hurt.
The birth of a boy is usually a cause for celebration in Afghanistan but girls are generally seen as a burden.
Some women in Afghanistan are abused if they fail to give birth to boys. And this is just the latest in a series of high-profile crimes against women in the country.
Late last year a horrifying video emerged of the injuries suffered by a 15-year-old child bride who was locked up and tortured by her husband.
'Crime against humanity' This murder took place in the village of Mahfalay, in the district of Khanabad in Kunduz.
Khanabad's police chief, Sufi Habib, told the BBC that "the mother gave birth to a third girl two months ago. The husband and mother-in-law strangled her for giving birth to a third daughter".
Senior officials told the BBC that the mother-in-law, known as Wali Hazrata, tied the feet of the 22-year old woman, who was known as Stori, while Stori's husband strangled her.
He is thought to be a fighter with an illegal armed militia which is is believed to have some political support. Local villagers say that Stori often urged her husband to lay down his arms.
"She lived in a hell not a house. But then she also asked her husband to stay home and avoid going out with these thugs," one neighbour who wished to remain anonymous told the BBC.
While militia groups have some political support, they have often been accused of violence against women, robberies and extortion.
Afghan women's rights activists brought this case to the attention of the media.
The Director for Kunduz Women's affairs, Nadira Gya, condemned the incident saying: "it was a brutal crime committed against an innocent woman".
Local religious and tribal elders in the district also condemned the killing, saying it was an act of ignorance, and calling it a crime against Islam, humanity and women.
They called for immediate punishment. Wali Hazrata appears to have made no public comment as yet.

[ColonelCossack]

Da Fok? That's disgusting.

What's the origin of this sort of thing?

[Zostrianos]

Da Fok? That's disgusting.
What's the origin of this sort of thing?

It goes hand in hand with honour killings, but I don't know how this got started (I assumed it was Islam, but they also happen in India so I don't know)

[seventeethdecember2016]

It goes hand in hand with honour killings, but I don't know how this got started (I assumed it was Islam, but they also happen in India so I don't know)
India has a great deal of influence from Islam, thanks to the Mughal Empire.

[GPDP]

At this point, it hardly matters where such practices originally come from. The fact they still happen in this day and age has much more to do with Afghanistan being a nation that has literally been bombed back to the stone age. In a nation rife with extreme poverty and violence, one can only expect those who inhabit such a setting to resort to barbarism to survive, even if it sometimes entails something as irrational as blaming women for having girls and even torturing or killing them as punishment.

Afghanistan needs social and economic development if it is to get out of this situation. Sadly, its immediate future only seems to point to more bombs and more bodies littering the streets.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

Yuck! Soooo fucking midevil.

[Ostrinski]

It's the extreme underdevelopment and geographical bullshitism that give way to this social backwardness. It will only be overcome after the west either lets them develop or burns to the ground. Given the improbability of the former, I say we stay bent on the latter.

[Zostrianos]

What amazes me most is in these cultures where there are honour killings, arranged marriages, dowry, etc. it seems that the notion of love as we know it in the west is nonexistent. Boys are born to work for the family, and girls are useless unless they can be married off and thus serve as reproductive tools to perpetuate the bloodline, and even then they're an inconvenience because (e.g. in India) the bride's family has to pay heavy dowry to the groom's family, otherwise the latter may use violence against the bride and her family (there have been many honour murders because of shit like this). And this is why there's many abortions of girls in these cultures. I once saw a documentary where they were interviewing this Indian man who had a 6 year old daughter, and he was talking about marrying her off when she became of age; they asked him what would happen if she fell in love with with a boy before that, and he said without hesitation "I'll kill her", with no emotion or hesitation...

[#FF0000]

i seriously doubt it started with islam.

[Ostrinski]

What amazes me most is in these cultures where there are honour killings, arranged marriages, dowry, etc. it seems that the notion of love as we know it in the west is nonexistent. Boys are born to work for the family, and girls are useless unless they can be married off and thus serve as reproductive tools to perpetuate the bloodline, and even then they're an inconvenience because (e.g. in India) the bride's family has to pay heavy dowry to the groom's family, otherwise the latter may use violence against the bride and her family (there have been many honour murders because of shit like this). And this is why there's many abortions of girls in these cultures. I once saw a documentary where they were interviewing this Indian man who had a 6 year old daughter, and he was talking about marrying her off when she became of age; they asked him what would happen if she fell in love with with a boy before that, and he said without hesitation "I'll kill her", with no emotion or hesitation...You pretty much just described the west a few centuries ago. Again, it's underdevelopment, not Islam.

[Fennec]

What amazes me most is in these cultures where there are honour killings, arranged marriages, dowry, etc. it seems that the notion of love as we know it in the west is nonexistent. Boys are born to work for the family, and girls are useless unless they can be married off and thus serve as reproductive tools to perpetuate the bloodline, and even then they're an inconvenience because (e.g. in India) the bride's family has to pay heavy dowry to the groom's family, otherwise the latter may use violence against the bride and her family (there have been many honour murders because of shit like this). And this is why there's many abortions of girls in these cultures. I once saw a documentary where they were interviewing this Indian man who had a 6 year old daughter, and he was talking about marrying her off when she became of age; they asked him what would happen if she fell in love with with a boy before that, and he said without hesitation "I'll kill her", with no emotion or hesitation...

What a load of Orientalist bullshit. Stop generalising and invoking stereotypes. This example only shows that "the liberation of Afghan women" under the US occupation is nothing but a myth of the bourgeois media: only the names of the warlords who oppress the people changed, everything essentially remained the same. As GPDP noted, Afghanistan has been bombed back into the stone age.

[Zostrianos]

You pretty much just described the west a few centuries ago. Again, it's underdevelopment, not Islam.

There has to be more than just underdevelopment. I mean, we've had honour killings here in Canada as well, among families that were well to do, middle class and otherwise naturalized:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16783354
I still think there's a patriarchal Islamic element in there, but they're not the only factors. There must be something else, but I just can't figure it out.


This example only shows that "the liberation of Afghan women" under the US occupation is nothing but a myth of the bourgeois media: only the names of the warlords who oppress the people changed, everything essentially remained the same.

Yes, I pointed this out a couple of times before in other threads. The "liberation" of Afghanistan (like most of America's "liberations") was a crock of shit, and absolutely nothing has changed for women. They still suffer the same abuse, and they still walk around in burqas. The Karzai government didn't do shit for women's rights - on the contrary, they continue using the old "if you get raped you go to jail for adultery" laws.

[khad]

In some Pashtun areas women aren't allowed to inherit property; not even the Taliban went there.

[gorillafuck]

Da Fok?this is inappropriate for the topic at hand.


Yuck!this is also a pretty weird response to a topic about a woman being strangled to death.

[Zostrianos]

In some Pashtun areas women aren't allowed to inherit property; not even the Taliban went there.

I had read that the Northern Alliance guerrillas (which were the rivals of the Taliban, and were supported by the US during the fight to defeat them) routinely mutilated women and cut off their breasts. Here's an old news article (http://www.thefreelibrary.com/WAR+ON+TERROR%3A+FREEDOM+FIGHT%3A+Prisoners+skinne d+alive,+women+raped,...-a079947043) from around 10 years ago that addresses this:

HE has a reputation for brutality and treachery that is horrific even by Afghan standards.

His troops have raped children and women and cut off their breasts. A soldier caught stealing (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Caught+stealing) was punished by being crushed under a tank.

But General Abdul Rashid Dostum (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Abdul+Rashid+Dostum), 47, is not a member of the Taliban. He is a Northern Alliance warlord (http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/warlord) now feted by America and Britain.

Dubbed a modern-day Attila the Hun, his soldiers recaptured the key town Mazar-e Sharif on Friday.

In his 23-year military career, he has fought for most of the big players in the region. He was once even allied to the Taliban.

His disloyalty (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disloyalty) is typical of the career warrior the Northern Alliance relies upon. And his human rights record is anything but unique. The skinning alive of victims has been a favourite of warring groups, along with throwing prisoners into wells.

But it does not stop there. Northern Alliance warlords (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Warlords) are key players in the heroin trade.

A UN survey showed 83 per cent of the opium produced during the past year in Afghanistan came from Northern Alliance-controlled areas.

Yet Washington's relationship with such commanders, who are likely to feature in any future Western-sponsored government, grows warmer by the day.

President Bush has called the Northern Alliance "our friend".....

[The Stalinator]

I hate to ruin the tone of this discussion, but may I add that the perpetrator (if it wasn't clear enough already) is a fucking idiot? It's the man's sperm that determines the sex of the child. If the dumbass wanted to kill someone for causing the kid to be female, he ought to have killed himself.

[Hiero]

This undeveloped idea is "orientalist bullshit" as Fennec noted.

You will actual find that in some of the most under-developed regions of the world is the most resistance to social oppression. For instance it is in the most under-developed regions of India that the Maoist rebellion is prominent, where patriachy is challenged.

Brospierre and Poimandres completly miss-direct attention away from social relations (patriachy) onto underdevelopment and Poimandres onto Islam.

[Zealot]

I would just like to note that in Arabia, at the time of Muhammad, killing baby girls out of shame was a common practice and Muhammad actually tried to abolish it and put it on the same scale as murder. The so-called burden of having a girl is mostly cultural and infanticide was, it could be argued, an evolutionary advantage at one time when the world was underdeveloped. And that's what these countries are, thanks to capitalism and imperialism.

This BBC article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/medical/infanticide_1.shtml) does a fairly good job covering female infanticide and the discrimination against female babies.

[Fennec]

Yes, I pointed this out a couple of times before in other threads. The "liberation" of Afghanistan (like most of America's "liberations") was a crock of shit, and absolutely nothing has changed for women. They still suffer the same abuse, and they still walk around in burqas. The Karzai government didn't do shit for women's rights - on the contrary, they continue using the old "if you get raped you go to jail for adultery" laws.

Exactly, but that has nothing to do with culture but with warlords who serve the US occupation. Your talk about the supposed backwardness and inferiority of Islam is a classic example of Orientalism (as defined by Edward Said, not to be confused with the writings of Maxime Rodinson, Ignác Goldziher and other great scholars who identified as Orientalists).

[Zostrianos]

Exactly, but that has nothing to do with culture but with warlords who serve the US occupation. Your talk about the supposed backwardness and inferiority of Islam is a classic example of Orientalism (as defined by Edward Said, not to be confused with the writings of Maxime Rodinson, Ignác Goldziher and other great scholars who identified as Orientalists).

My reference to Islam as a possible factor does not stem from "Orientalism", but rather from the generally low and inferior status women have in Abrahamic religions (e.g. in the Old Testament if a woman is raped and she doesn't scream out for help, she is to be stoned to death). Since Islam is also an Abrahamic faith and, just like in the other 2, appears to regard women as inferior (e.g. in Sharia law, where they are disadvantaged against men on many issues), it's reasonable to assume that things like mistreating or killing women for adultery if they get raped (which happens often in Islamic countries) may be due to religious influence (q.v. my reference to the Old Testament earlier).

[Fennec]

My reference to Islam as a possible factor does not stem from "Orientalism", but rather from the generally low and inferior status women have in Abrahamic religions (e.g. in the Old Testament if a woman is raped and she doesn't scream out for help, she is to be stoned to death). Since Islam is also an Abrahamic faith and, just like in the other 2, appears to regard women as inferior (e.g. in Sharia law, where they are disadvantaged against men on many issues), it's reasonable to assume that things like mistreating or killing women for adultery if they get raped (which happens often in Islamic countries) may be due to religious influence (q.v. my reference to the Old Testament earlier).

Nonsense you wrote about "our" notion of love being nonexistent in Islam reminds me of Bernard Lewis's Orientalist senility (http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/03/orientalist-senility-bernard-lewis-on.html), as comrade As'ad called it, about the supposed lack of "casual sex, Western-style" in the Muslim world.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I hate to ruin the tone of this discussion, but may I add that the perpetrator (if it wasn't clear enough already) is a fucking idiot? It's the man's sperm that determines the sex of the child. If the dumbass wanted to kill someone for causing the kid to be female, he ought to have killed himself.

The man doesn't determine the sex of the child and neither does the female; both parents give part of the DNA which helps in establishing the sex of the child.

[KrasnayaRossiya]

Nonsense you wrote about "our" notion of love being nonexistent in Islam reminds me of Bernard Lewis's Orientalist senility (http://www.anonym.to/?http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/03/orientalist-senility-bernard-lewis-on.html), as comrade As'ad called it, about the supposed lack of "casual sex, Western-style" in the Muslim world.
tho "casual sex" in most countries there can get you stoned pretty easily ;)