Word: burkas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Today, when Osema, 32, walks through the bazaar, only her dark eyelashes are visible from underneath a burka, a billowy head-to-toe shroud with mesh over the eyes. Call it a reality check for those who think Afghan women would be freed from years of oppression if the U.S.-led military campaign brings down the Taliban regime. Osema?s ordeal shows that even in the Taliban-free northern swath of the country, women suffer severe discrimination...
...coalition of former mujahedin fighting the Taliban, could play a major role. Abdullah Abdullah, the Alliance?s smooth-talking Foreign Minister, vowed recently that women would be part of any government he helped form. But in the Alliance?s garrison town of Khoja Bahauddin women walk soundlessly in full burka. "The majority of Afghan men do not believe women should have rights," says Farahnaz Nazir, head of the Afghanistan Women?s Association, the only women?s organization operating openly in the country today. "Taliban or Northern Alliance, there are fanatics everywhere...
...Alliance can claim some progress: it allows Nazir?s group to exist. But she is the only woman in Khoja Bahauddin who doesn?t wear a burka in public. Her privileged status as an overseas-educated aid worker partially protects her from the beating Osema received. But when Nazir shakes hands with a Western man, she looks around furtively. It is the same motion countless Afghan women make every day, the rapid adjusting of veils to cover their faces or the eyes quickly downcast when men enter the room. To help empower women, Nazir runs workshops that include reading...
...school?s 17-year-old history instructor, who asked not to be named, studied the subject for just two years. She giggles shyly when asked to cite examples of Afghanistan?s heritage. "We invented the burka, I think," she says, after much thought. Just then, the male principal peers into her classroom. She adjusts her veil modestly. "But, I tell you," she adds, in a whisper, "I don?t think the burka was a very great invention...
...half-hour's jeep ride from Khoja Bahauddin, as proof that it promotes women's rights. More than 50 veiled girls crowd the Yang-e-Qale school's first-grade class, reading the Koran. But in the eighth-grade class, only 12 students sit at the desks, their burkas hanging on hooks in the back of their classroom. Many parents believe a couple of years' education is all their daughters need to become good housewives. Other girls in the area attend classes only because international aid groups give extra food to refugee families that send their daughters to school. Most...