RedCeltic
5th December 2001, 03:01
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 6, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BEWARE THE SIREN SONG:
WOMEN'S LIBERATION & AFGHANISTAN
By Minnie Bruce Pratt
As U.S. bombing and troop presence has intensified in
Afghanistan, the mainstream media have issued a barrage of
articles, photographs, opinion pieces and interviews
claiming this war will liberate Afghan women. They present
it as a "collateral benefit," that the war will reverse the
Taliban's cruel oppression of women and even give women a
chance to get political rights under a new government.
Government officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney,
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Secretary of
State Colin Powell have addressed the same subject in news
conferences, briefings and interviews.
Most dramatically, "First Lady" Laura Bush was in front of
the microphone on Nov. 17, instead of her husband, for the
president's usual Saturday radio address, so she could
testify about the oppression of Afghan women under the
Taliban.
This media blitz has been orchestrated through the
governmental Coalition Information Center, set up to counter
any criticism of the U.S. war. The campaign is coordinated
by spin-doctors like public relations industry legend
Charlotte Beers, former chair of giant ad agency J. Walter
Thompson. Four of the key "gatekeepers" of this campaign are
women, including chief Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke
and Mary Matlin, chief political adviser to Vice President
Cheney.
Matlin said of these women's commitment to advocating for
the war: "I think we probably bring--and I don't mean this
to sound sexist--but we probably have more of a subconscious
outrage at these issues...This is something that crosses my
mind every day: a third of these women in pre-Taliban days
were doctors, lawyers and teachers. You can't help but be
outraged." (New York Times, Nov. 11)
THE REAL OUTRAGE
What pre-Taliban days is she talking about? The outrage is
ours if we look at the real history of women's liberation in
Afghanistan. Yes, terrible things have been done to women
under the Taliban rule. But how did the Taliban come into
existence? And what was the role of the United States?
In 1978 a revolution created a secular government in
Afghanistan that tried to liberate the workers and peasants
from the grip of feudal landlords. The secular government
was based on a young socialist movement, the Progressive
Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The revolutionaries
cancelled mortgage debts of laborers and tenants; these
debts had been inherited over generations so that feudal
warlords held land workers as virtual serfs. And they
promoted the welfare and liberation of women.
This revolutionary government immediately moved to improve
the terrible conditions women had endured. It set up
literacy programs especially for women, whose illiteracy
rate was 96 percent. It trained more teachers and published
textbooks in local languages. It organized brigades of women
to go into the countryside to provide medical services and
by 1985 increased hospital beds by 80 percent.
Decrees were issued abolishing the bride price so women
could be free to choose their marriages and prohibiting the
punishment of women for losing their virginity before
marriage. Women were able to train and then work as doctors,
teachers and lawyers.
Did the U.S. government know of these things? These facts
about the Afghan revolution can be found in a book published
by the U.S. Department of the Army entitled, "Afghanistan--a
Country Study for 1986."
Yet it was this enlightened government that U.S. President
Jimmy Carter set out to overthrow by organizing a massive
counter-revolutionary army of religious fundamentalists in
1979. This CIA-orchestrated and funded war forced the Afghan
government to call for Soviet military assistance. What
followed was a bitter conflict that lasted more than a
decade and eventually overthrew the progressive regime. More
years of war followed as the Taliban, the Northern Alliance
and other factions, all of which drew their power from the
feudal landlord class, fought for supremacy. (Workers World,
Oct. 10, 1996)
The CIA facilitated the formation of Osama bin Laden's
organization back in the 1980s to attack the progressive
government in Afghanistan. As vice president, George Bush
Sr. oversaw the operation. Subsequently, bin Laden's troops
murdered teachers, doctors and nurses, disfigured women who
took off the veil, and shot down civilian airliners with
U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles. (Workers World, Oct. 4)
WHAT THE U.S. DOES CARE ABOUT
Now Bush and the generals claim to care about the rights of
women living in the counter-revolution they financed and
engineered. But the U.S. has consistently disregarded the
plight and status of women in Afghanistan. The White House
and Pentagon knew the reactionary position of the U.S.-
financed and trained fundamentalist groups towards women.
But this was immaterial to the goal of the U.S. government
to support the interests of oil corporations that have been
trying to get a pipeline through Afghanistan for about 10
years.
In a May 26, 1997, New York Times article, John F. Burns
wrote: "While deploring the Taliban's policies on women and
the adoption of a penal code that provides for the
amputation of thieves' hands and the stoning to death of
adulterers, the United States has sometimes acted as though
a Taliban government might serve its interests.
"The Clinton administration has taken the view that a
Taliban victory would end a war that has killed 1.5 million
Afghans; would act as a counterweight to Iran, whose Shiite
Muslim leadership is fiercely opposed to the Sunni Muslims
of the Taliban, and would offer the possibility of new trade
routes that could weaken Russian and Iranian influence in
the region.
"For example, a proposal by the Unocal Corporation of
California for a $2.5 billion pipeline that would link the
gas fields of Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan
has attracted strong support in Washington, though human
rights groups are likely to object to the plan. ... The
Afghan project, strongly endorsed by the Taliban, is part of
a broader concept under which the vast mineral resources of
the former Soviet republics would be moved to markets along
routes that would offer these countries a new autonomy from
Moscow."
In May 1998, Time magazine reported that the CIA had "set up
a secret task force to monitor the region's politics and
gauge its wealth. Covert CIA officers, some well-trained
petroleum engineers, had traveled through southern Russia
and the Caspian region to sniff out potential oil reserves.
When the policymakers heard the agency's report, [Secretary
of State Madeleine] Albright concluded that 'working to mold
the area's future was one of the most exciting things we can
do.'"
'FREE TO BEG'
As U.S. Marines dig in and direct air attacks near Kandahar,
the U.S. continues to try to mold the future of Afghan
istan, Central Asia and the Middle East--but not out of
concern for the future of women. On the first day of this
war, U.S. bombs struck a Kabul hospital and killed 13 women
in a gynecological hospital.
Now, after weeks of bombing, U.S. newspapers enthuse that
Afghan women "are uncovering their faces, looking for jobs,
walking happily with female friends on the street."
Yet, at the same time, Bush administration officials admit
that they will not publicly insist women be included in
talks about a post-Taliban coalition government. In fact, in
the Bonn meeting scheduled by the U.S. and allies to arrange
Afghanistan's future, only three token women have been
included: the widow of a mujahedeen commander killed
fighting against the former secular socialist government,
and two backers of the long-deposed king. (New York Times,
Nov. 26)
As the women of Afghanistan emerge into the horrifying
destruction and chaos unleashed by U.S. bombing, what kind
of freedom and what kind of rights will be theirs? A Nov. 19
New York Times article entitled "Behind the Burka" concluded
by focusing on a 56-year-old woman with no schooling, eight
children and a dead husband.
The last line of the article sums up her "liberated" future
under imperialist subjugation: "Now, at last, she is free to
beg."
STOP THE WAR!
And that is a future this Afghan woman shares with many
women in the United States--women on welfare who soon will
be "free to beg" under the so-called Welfare Reform Act.
Passed during the Clinton administration, it basically
eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children and set
up a strict limit on the time length of benefits. The cut-
off date of Dec. 1 is now fast approaching for thousands of
already impoverished women. Some will be evicted in the
middle of freezing winter. Others will be forced to place
their children in foster care. Still others will be denied
the most basic health care and reproductive services for
themselves and their children.
And the astronomical economic cost of the U.S. war on
Afghanistan will take an even greater toll on the poor in
this country--especially women and children.
The war against Afghanistan has never been about the
liberation of women, not even as a "collateral benefit." It
is about imperialist domination for capitalist profit.
Opposition to this war, and this economic system, is the
only thing that will help bring about the full liberation of
women.
[Minnie Bruce Pratt, an anti-racist activist and lesbian
author, is a long-time leader in the struggle for women's liberation.]
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[email protected] For subscription info send message to:
[email protected] Web: http://www.workers.org)
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 6, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BEWARE THE SIREN SONG:
WOMEN'S LIBERATION & AFGHANISTAN
By Minnie Bruce Pratt
As U.S. bombing and troop presence has intensified in
Afghanistan, the mainstream media have issued a barrage of
articles, photographs, opinion pieces and interviews
claiming this war will liberate Afghan women. They present
it as a "collateral benefit," that the war will reverse the
Taliban's cruel oppression of women and even give women a
chance to get political rights under a new government.
Government officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney,
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Secretary of
State Colin Powell have addressed the same subject in news
conferences, briefings and interviews.
Most dramatically, "First Lady" Laura Bush was in front of
the microphone on Nov. 17, instead of her husband, for the
president's usual Saturday radio address, so she could
testify about the oppression of Afghan women under the
Taliban.
This media blitz has been orchestrated through the
governmental Coalition Information Center, set up to counter
any criticism of the U.S. war. The campaign is coordinated
by spin-doctors like public relations industry legend
Charlotte Beers, former chair of giant ad agency J. Walter
Thompson. Four of the key "gatekeepers" of this campaign are
women, including chief Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke
and Mary Matlin, chief political adviser to Vice President
Cheney.
Matlin said of these women's commitment to advocating for
the war: "I think we probably bring--and I don't mean this
to sound sexist--but we probably have more of a subconscious
outrage at these issues...This is something that crosses my
mind every day: a third of these women in pre-Taliban days
were doctors, lawyers and teachers. You can't help but be
outraged." (New York Times, Nov. 11)
THE REAL OUTRAGE
What pre-Taliban days is she talking about? The outrage is
ours if we look at the real history of women's liberation in
Afghanistan. Yes, terrible things have been done to women
under the Taliban rule. But how did the Taliban come into
existence? And what was the role of the United States?
In 1978 a revolution created a secular government in
Afghanistan that tried to liberate the workers and peasants
from the grip of feudal landlords. The secular government
was based on a young socialist movement, the Progressive
Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The revolutionaries
cancelled mortgage debts of laborers and tenants; these
debts had been inherited over generations so that feudal
warlords held land workers as virtual serfs. And they
promoted the welfare and liberation of women.
This revolutionary government immediately moved to improve
the terrible conditions women had endured. It set up
literacy programs especially for women, whose illiteracy
rate was 96 percent. It trained more teachers and published
textbooks in local languages. It organized brigades of women
to go into the countryside to provide medical services and
by 1985 increased hospital beds by 80 percent.
Decrees were issued abolishing the bride price so women
could be free to choose their marriages and prohibiting the
punishment of women for losing their virginity before
marriage. Women were able to train and then work as doctors,
teachers and lawyers.
Did the U.S. government know of these things? These facts
about the Afghan revolution can be found in a book published
by the U.S. Department of the Army entitled, "Afghanistan--a
Country Study for 1986."
Yet it was this enlightened government that U.S. President
Jimmy Carter set out to overthrow by organizing a massive
counter-revolutionary army of religious fundamentalists in
1979. This CIA-orchestrated and funded war forced the Afghan
government to call for Soviet military assistance. What
followed was a bitter conflict that lasted more than a
decade and eventually overthrew the progressive regime. More
years of war followed as the Taliban, the Northern Alliance
and other factions, all of which drew their power from the
feudal landlord class, fought for supremacy. (Workers World,
Oct. 10, 1996)
The CIA facilitated the formation of Osama bin Laden's
organization back in the 1980s to attack the progressive
government in Afghanistan. As vice president, George Bush
Sr. oversaw the operation. Subsequently, bin Laden's troops
murdered teachers, doctors and nurses, disfigured women who
took off the veil, and shot down civilian airliners with
U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles. (Workers World, Oct. 4)
WHAT THE U.S. DOES CARE ABOUT
Now Bush and the generals claim to care about the rights of
women living in the counter-revolution they financed and
engineered. But the U.S. has consistently disregarded the
plight and status of women in Afghanistan. The White House
and Pentagon knew the reactionary position of the U.S.-
financed and trained fundamentalist groups towards women.
But this was immaterial to the goal of the U.S. government
to support the interests of oil corporations that have been
trying to get a pipeline through Afghanistan for about 10
years.
In a May 26, 1997, New York Times article, John F. Burns
wrote: "While deploring the Taliban's policies on women and
the adoption of a penal code that provides for the
amputation of thieves' hands and the stoning to death of
adulterers, the United States has sometimes acted as though
a Taliban government might serve its interests.
"The Clinton administration has taken the view that a
Taliban victory would end a war that has killed 1.5 million
Afghans; would act as a counterweight to Iran, whose Shiite
Muslim leadership is fiercely opposed to the Sunni Muslims
of the Taliban, and would offer the possibility of new trade
routes that could weaken Russian and Iranian influence in
the region.
"For example, a proposal by the Unocal Corporation of
California for a $2.5 billion pipeline that would link the
gas fields of Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan
has attracted strong support in Washington, though human
rights groups are likely to object to the plan. ... The
Afghan project, strongly endorsed by the Taliban, is part of
a broader concept under which the vast mineral resources of
the former Soviet republics would be moved to markets along
routes that would offer these countries a new autonomy from
Moscow."
In May 1998, Time magazine reported that the CIA had "set up
a secret task force to monitor the region's politics and
gauge its wealth. Covert CIA officers, some well-trained
petroleum engineers, had traveled through southern Russia
and the Caspian region to sniff out potential oil reserves.
When the policymakers heard the agency's report, [Secretary
of State Madeleine] Albright concluded that 'working to mold
the area's future was one of the most exciting things we can
do.'"
'FREE TO BEG'
As U.S. Marines dig in and direct air attacks near Kandahar,
the U.S. continues to try to mold the future of Afghan
istan, Central Asia and the Middle East--but not out of
concern for the future of women. On the first day of this
war, U.S. bombs struck a Kabul hospital and killed 13 women
in a gynecological hospital.
Now, after weeks of bombing, U.S. newspapers enthuse that
Afghan women "are uncovering their faces, looking for jobs,
walking happily with female friends on the street."
Yet, at the same time, Bush administration officials admit
that they will not publicly insist women be included in
talks about a post-Taliban coalition government. In fact, in
the Bonn meeting scheduled by the U.S. and allies to arrange
Afghanistan's future, only three token women have been
included: the widow of a mujahedeen commander killed
fighting against the former secular socialist government,
and two backers of the long-deposed king. (New York Times,
Nov. 26)
As the women of Afghanistan emerge into the horrifying
destruction and chaos unleashed by U.S. bombing, what kind
of freedom and what kind of rights will be theirs? A Nov. 19
New York Times article entitled "Behind the Burka" concluded
by focusing on a 56-year-old woman with no schooling, eight
children and a dead husband.
The last line of the article sums up her "liberated" future
under imperialist subjugation: "Now, at last, she is free to
beg."
STOP THE WAR!
And that is a future this Afghan woman shares with many
women in the United States--women on welfare who soon will
be "free to beg" under the so-called Welfare Reform Act.
Passed during the Clinton administration, it basically
eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children and set
up a strict limit on the time length of benefits. The cut-
off date of Dec. 1 is now fast approaching for thousands of
already impoverished women. Some will be evicted in the
middle of freezing winter. Others will be forced to place
their children in foster care. Still others will be denied
the most basic health care and reproductive services for
themselves and their children.
And the astronomical economic cost of the U.S. war on
Afghanistan will take an even greater toll on the poor in
this country--especially women and children.
The war against Afghanistan has never been about the
liberation of women, not even as a "collateral benefit." It
is about imperialist domination for capitalist profit.
Opposition to this war, and this economic system, is the
only thing that will help bring about the full liberation of
women.
[Minnie Bruce Pratt, an anti-racist activist and lesbian
author, is a long-time leader in the struggle for women's liberation.]
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[email protected] For subscription info send message to:
[email protected] Web: http://www.workers.org)