Author: Robyn Dixon
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 7, 2001
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=1153922321
ALAI BALLA: : When the Vice and
Virtue police caught sight of 14-year-old Farkhanda, with her naive eyes
and childish face, they gave chase with their sticks and beat her.
As she walked home from a family
wedding in the capital, Kabul, three weeks ago, Farkhanda crossed the line
from carefree girlhood to fearful womanhood, simply by showing her face.
With one glance, the police from
the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice -Afghanistan's
religious enforcers -decided that she should be wearing the burqa.
"I was terrified. I was crying.
I ran as fast as I could," she said, describing the ordeal after fleeing
to this village in the small slice of northern Afghanistan controlled by
opposition forces battling the strict Islamic Taliban regime.
Girls younger than 14 don't wear
the burqa, but women must. Farkhanda's family didn't think that she had
to wear it yet, but the Vice and Virtue police deemed her too old to show
her face.
Life under the Taliban is so repressive
for Afghan women that many of them now see US military action against the
regime as their best hope for a freer life.
In Taliban-controlled areas - about
95 percent of the country - there are even rules on the way a woman can
walk. She should not walk too energetically lest her feet slap too hard
on the ground, making an unseemly noise, or lest she kick up a corner of
the garment, showing a glimpse of ankle. Kerima, a woman in her early 30s
who's related to Farkhanda, never seemed to get it right. She fled Kabul
with Farkhanda and other family members just more than a week ago. "I was
beaten so many times," she said, referring to the Vice and Virtue police.
"Every time I went to the bazaar, I was beaten because my ankles were showing.
They would hit me on my head, back or my arms. Everyone was afraid, all
the women."
When the Taliban came to power,
women were banned from almost all jobs and Kerima lost her post as a teacher.
After her husband was ousted from his job this year, the family had no
income. Kerima expresses the anger lurking under the burqa anger that now
haunts the Taliban leadership, which is fearful of insurrection should
the US bomb Afghanistan and the opposition Northern Alliance forces use
the opportunity to attack Kabul.
"It was so boring to sit in the
house all day, but we didn't have any way out of it," Kerima said. "I was
afraid of the Taliban, and we were kept isolated from education and knowledge,
even our children. I was busy with the household, and I cried when I was
alone."
So fierce is the anger among many
Afghan women about conditions under the Taliban, some people suggest that
women will rise up and join the military fight to depose the Taliban should
the US launch bomb strikes.
It's a notion that seems a little
farfetched, given that women have been largely isolated from society since
the Taliban came to power in 1996 and have no experience in weapons use.
But Zohal Zarra, 45, who runs the
Association for Islamic Women in Gulbakhar, 55 miles north of the capital,
says she would fight to oust the Taliban, and she's convinced that other
women will, even without guns. "There are many women who will fight," she
said, "even if they take up stones, or sticks or boiling water."
LATWP Svc
