L'Alleanza del Nord probisce marcia delle donne a Kabul

[Paola Lucchesi <paola.lucchesi@mail.inet.it>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Northern Alliance bans women's freedom march in Kabul
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 14:22:34 -0500
From: "Ritu Sharma" <rsharma@womensedge.org>
Reply-To: <rsharma@womensedge.org>

Northern Alliance bans women's freedom march in Kabul

by Chris Foley

KABUL, Nov 27 (AFP) - A planned women's freedom march through the
streets
of Kabul on Tuesday was banned by Northern Alliance interior minister
Younis Qanooni, organisers said, setting back their hopes for restored
liberty.

"They said it was for security but that is just a pretext ... they don't
want women to improve," said Soraya Parlika, who runs the newly formed
Union of Women in Afghanistan.

Parlika said Qanooni personally rang her two days ago, before leaving
for
the talks on Afghanistan's future outside Bonn, and said the march was
not
to go ahead.

"He said we should wait for an unspecified time."

As women began gathering at her home early Tuesday, hopeful the decision
would be reversed, Parlika received a follow-up call from an interior
ministry official again refusing the march.

It was the second time in a week the women had been refused permission
to
walk from Parlika's suburban home to the main United Nations compound,
with
security given as the reason both times.

"I don't believe that. There would not be a problem, we have no need for
security," Parlika said.

About 50 members of the newly formed Union of Women in Afghanistan were
packed into her apartment, many of them wearing light head-scarves
instead
of the much-hated burqa, the all-encompassing garment covering the face
and
body which women were forced to wear after the Taliban captured Kabul in
1996.

They were among the first to show their faces outdoors in the capital
after
the Northern Alliance retook the city on November 13.

Although the Northern Alliance, not as hardline as the Taliban, has told
women they were free, the statement was received with scepticism.

"They announced that women are free, but it is not freedom to throw off
our
veils. That is not the liberty we want," said a disappointed Nafeesa,
17,
who has recieved no formal education for the past five years.

"Right now the situation in Kabul is not good. It is not what we
wanted."

Under the Taliban, women were banned from attending schools and
universities, denied the right to work, and countless widows from two
decades of war were forced to rely on relief aid or turn to begging to
support their families.

Nadir, a chemistry teacher until the Taliban forced her to stop, feared
the
dreams of women to be treated as equals in Afghan society would not come
to
fruition under the Northern Alliance

There have been a few advances in the past two weeks with women
broadcasters included in the return of television and radio, but that
was
seen as a token gesture.

"We want to fulfil our rights, but they won't let us," said Nadir, 29.

The various Afghan factions at the Bonn talks were expected to highlight
support for women in response to calls from the United Nations,
Washington
and other Western capitals to grant women a role in post-Taliban
Afghanistan.

But Parlika, a former communist and secretary general of the Afghan Red
Crescent, was bitter about the female representation in Germany and
harboured few hopes progress would be made.

The Northern Alliance representative at Bonn, Amina Afzali, lived in
Iran
and only arrived in Kabul a few days before flying to Germany.

"They have sent a representative to Bonn who was not selected by the
women
(of Afghanistan) and she doesn't know the suffering of the Afghan
women."

With the rights of women in Kabul far from clear, Parlika said she would
not plan any further marches until the outcome of the Bonn talks was
known.

Copyright (c) 2001 Agence France-Presse Received by NewsEDGE/LAN:
27/11/2001 11:02