Word: northerners
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...WITH THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE...
...Osema wanted was a bag of onions. The soft-spoken former nurse, who had moved to northern Afghanistan from Kabul to flee repressive Taliban rule, was making her first trip to the local market. Around her face, she wrapped an embroidered green scarf; her lips were painted red. By the time she had passed the turnip and tomato stalls of Yang-e-Qale town, a crowd of jeering men had formed. It was a woman who delivered the first blow, then the men joined in, pelting her with stones. Children finished the job by kicking up swirls of yellow dust...
...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. "Peace will be good for the Afghan people," says Hajira, a refugee from Taloqan city, who lives in a canvas tent with her seven children. "But it is too late for women my age. Maybe for my daughters' daughters, life will be better...
...future of women depends on who ends up running the country. The Northern Alliance, the loose coalition of former mujahedin fighting the Taliban, could play a major role. Abdullah Abdullah, the Alliance's smooth-talking Foreign Minister, vowed last week 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...
...Northern Alliance also points to schools like the one in Yang-e-Qale, a remote hamlet a 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...