TOP
WOMEN'S OFFICIAL IN SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN
"EXECUTED" BY GUNMEN
SHE DEFIED THE TALIBAN, AND
PAID WITH HER LIFE
By Kim Sengupta,
The
Independent (London)
September 26, 2006 Tuesday
Safia Amajan promoted women's education and work -
a fairly ordinary job in most places - but in the Afghanistan of a
resurgent Taliban it was a dangerous path to follow. She was a target,
and yesterday she was gunned down outside her home.
Five years after the "liberation" of Afghanistan by the US and Britain,
with promises of a new dawn for its downtrodden women, her murder was a
bloody reminder of just how far the country is slipping back into a land
of darkness.
Public figures, including the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, lined up
to praise Ms Amajan.
Yet this support was signally lacking while she lived. The former
teacher worked in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, and also the
place where women have faced the most virulent discrimination and
mistreatment. It is also where Nato forces are fighting a ferocious
insurgency. Ms Amajan had asked for, and been refused, a protective
vehicle, or bodyguards, despite repeated death threats.
She was in a battered taxi when two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire
with automatic rifles. Her nephew, Farhad Jan, said: "She died on the
spot. There was no time to give her treatment." In a place of fear where
one can sign one's death warrant with the wrong choice of words, Farhad
was careful not to blame anyone for the killing. All he would say was:
"We had no personal enmity with anyone."
A Taliban commander, Mullah Hayat Khan, declared that Ms Amajan had been
"executed". He said: "We have told people again and again that anyone
working for the government, and that includes women, will be killed."
Ms Amajan had taken over the post of women's welfare officer soon after
Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, fled with the fall of his regime. With
the return of the Taliban, as the "war on terror" moved onto Iraq, aid
workers - foreign and Afghan, men and women - were intimidated into
leaving the region.
Ms Amajan was one of the few who refused to flee. Her secretary,
Abdullah Khan, said: "She was very brave. She was also very
hard-working. She was always trying her best to improve education for
women."
As well as defying the Taliban, Ms Amajan made the mistake of being
successful in what she was doing. In Kandahar alone she had opened six
schools where a thousand women had learnt how to make and then sell
their goods at the market. She was also instrumental in setting up
tailoring schools for women, with some of the products making their way
to markets in the West.
At the official end of the Afghan war, America's first lady, Laura Bush,
was among those who declared that one of the most important achievements
of overthrowing the Taliban was emancipation of women. However, since
then female social workers and teachers have been maimed and killed,
girls' schools shut down and female workers forced to give up their
jobs. The few women out in the streets in Kan-dahar and other places in
the south are covered in burqas. A report by the Afghan Independent
Human Rights Commission spoke of the "systematic and violent campaign"
directed against women.
Statistics paint a bleak picture of women's lives with 35 female
suicides in Kandahar alone and nearly 200 attempted suicides in the
Herat region - one third of which were successful. Rights groups
estimate that between 60 and 80 per cent of marriages in the country are
forced. And the majority of those marriages involve girls under the age
of 16.
Ms Amajan's funeral yesterday, in a Shia ceremony, was attended by the
provincial governor and hundreds of mourners, including tribal elders.
In Kabul, President Karzai said: "The enemies of Afghanistan are trying
to kill those people who are working for the peace and prosperity of
Afghanistan. The enemies of Afghanistan must understand that we have
millions of people like Amajan."
Fariba Ahmedi, a female member of parliament, who attended the burial,
said: "Those enemies who have killed her should know it will not derail
women from the path we are on. We will continue on our way."
Human rights groups point out, however, that the battle for women's
rights is in serious danger of being lost. There are now entire
provinces where there is no girls' education' of the 300 schools shut or
burnt down, the majority were for girls. The death rate at childbirth is
the second highest in the world, and the number of women who have
committed suicide, mainly through self-immolation, has
risenby30percentin two years.
Life gets worse for Afghan women.
VIOLENCE
50 per cent of Afghan women say they have been beaten, while 200 women
in Kandahar ran away from domestic violence this year.
In the past year, 150 cases of women resorting to self-immolation have
been reported in western Afghanistan, 34 cases in the south-east.
197 women in Herat were reported to have attempted suicide last year, 69
successfully.
57 per cent of girls are married before the legal age of 16.
EDUCATION
85 per cent of women in Afghanistan are illiterate.
The number of girls going to school in Afghanistan is half that of boys.
300 schools were set on fire across the country this year.
HEALTH
70 per cent of tuberculosis deaths are among women.
Death rate of mothers in labour is 60 in 1000 - (60 per cent higher than
developed world).
Only 5-7 per cent of women in Zabul and Helmand province have access to
health care.
VOTING
41 per cent of the 10.5 million registered voters are women. Women's
registration rates in southern provinces were much lower than the
national average: Zabul (9 per cent), Uruzgan (10 per cent) Helmand (16
per cent), and Kandahar (27 per cent)
SOURCE: AIHRC, UNICEF, HRW
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