Good point though I am not sure so much about the 60's and 70's overall. When I was in Afghanistan in the 70's all the Afghan women we could see were covered. However the women who lived in outside villages were frequently not. Shortly before the Soviet invasion there was a lot of work done on liberating women and other liberal moves and that caused friction between different bands.
Afghanistan had a fairly mild form of Sharia law before the Soviet invasion and women had had times of greater and lesser liberty.
The big problem came after the war when first the Northern Alliance went mad and then the Taliban got in and if we are going to be honest that was because the US saw the fanatic's like Bin Laden as a better bet than decent pro democracy Afghan warriors like Abdul Haq and allowed refugee children who would become the Taliban to be taught by the Saudi's who gave them the most extremist education at expense of a proper education covering all the basics and their own heritage.
I loved the Afghan people. My heart goes out to them the way they have been used and abused....and women fighting for liberation in nothing new in Afghanistan. RAWA have been doing it since 1978. They are the people who the US should have been helping but you will find they are very critical of what the US has done.
Great women, always working for women and for a democratic Afghanistan. Unfortunately the US turned a blind eye when the Al Qaeda mob bumped off most of the democratic warriors of Afghanistan and failed both to listen to Abdul Haq before they attacked and protect him when he himself went in. They even ignored the information he gave them on where they could find Bin Laden. Abdul Haq was possibly the only person left who could have united the tribes of Afghanistan.
I knew I would get started if I came in here!!
RAWA News I actually went looking here for details of this march and did not find it as recent news. Is this the march they had went Karzai was going to take away the new rights they had been given a year or two ago? because they certainly had a march then.
Well if you say you were there in the 70s I'll take your word for it, what I have read about Afghanistan in the 1970s was that the situation was way better for them at the time, they could go to school without being harassed or assaulted, they wouldn't be beheaded if they went outside without a burka, they could actually go to school and pursue a career. etc it is the polar opposite of what is going on now in Afghanistan, it is like they went from one end of the spectrum to another, it will take decades for Afghan women to regain what was lost during all these wars.
There is no question the situation was way better for them and this is before the Soviet invasion. I am sure they went to school like children anywhere. I am just saying that I never met an Afghan adult woman who was not in a burka. I have also read that they were supposed to have had this enormous emancipation but that doesn't fit in with what I saw.
I have no difficulty believing that girls were being educated and were able to join professions. I understand that Afghanistan was going through a strong process of liberalisation at the time. However when I was there most adult women were in Burkas.
I read an article which may be what you are talking about which spoke of this amazing sort of westernisation of Afghanistan. I am not sure that it does not come from rose tinted glasses because it does not go with what I saw and if there had been so much liberalisation of women in the 60's and 70's, RAWA would have had no reason to come into being.
As far as I am aware it was the speed of the push towards secular democracy including liberalisation of women that created in some of the tribes in for instance Kandahar region, the situation of unrest which allowed a window for the Soviets to come in.
Totally agree with you that Afghanistan was completely different to how it was after the Taliban had been ruling.
It was a country with decent proud people. As a young Western woman I walked the streets in western tops and suffered no problems at all. As I said it had mild Sharia law. No one was stoned, no one was getting their head chopped off, girls were not molested on the way to school, none of the things you suggested - just not as Westernised as you were suggesting which I suspect came from someone who probably was better off and did have those opportunities in Afghanistan and where I am sure Afghanistan could have gone if she had not been invaded, but where she had not yet got.
The situation that Afghan women suffer now is imo a direct result of the US Afghan Soviet war and the financing of fanatical Arabs who were allowed out of Arab jails to fight in Afghanistan instead of democratic Afghan warriors and the turning of a blind eye to a) the murder of Afghan's who would not listen to their foul ideas and b) to the fanatical salafi education given to Afghan refugees.
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