July
20,2000
AP News
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan --
Hard-liners among Afghanistan's ruling Taliban appear to have won
the battle against allowing women to work in international relief
agencies, a senior U.N. official said Thursday.
"I am very disappointed
because I thought we would have a situation where everything would
be going back to normal,'' Erick de Mul, head of the United Nations'
Afghan operations, told The Associated Press in the Pakistani
capital after returning from Afghanistan.
De Mul's comments came eight days after he said that the Taliban
had agreed to rescind a new edict barring women from working for
international relief agencies. The edict was issued earlier this
month.
The Taliban, which rules roughly 90 percent of Afghanistan,
espouse a harsh brand of Islamic law and have imposed strict
controls on women since taking control of the Afghan capital, Kabul,
in 1996.
When they took over, the Taliban ordered all girls' schools
closed and all women out of the work force.
But they later made concessions in the areas of education and
health, and women began to return to work for foreign aid
organizations, wearing the all-encompassing burqa that covers them
from head to foot.
De Mul said last week that every organization was careful to
ensure that men and women are segregated. Even the most lenient
among the Taliban oppose the mixing of men and women.
The United Nations has given the Taliban one week to return with
its final decision about whether it will reverse the new edict, de
Mul said.
If the answer is no, it's not clear whether the United Nations
would cut back on its already reduced presence in Afghanistan.
De Mul said he began his negotiations on an optimistic note --
the result of earlier meetings with the Taliban Foreign Minister
Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, who said the edict would be reversed.
But for now it seems the hard-liners, particularly the ministry
of vice and virtue have won the day, de Mul said.
The Taliban's radical minister for vice and virtue, Mullah
Mohammed Turabi, is one of the strongest proponents of strict
control over women.
An orthodox minister who lost a leg and an eye fighting Soviet
soldiers in the 1980s, Turabi is considered among the most rigid of
the Taliban leaders. He swept into Kabul in 1996 and launched a
campaign to beat women who did not wear a burqa or who ventured from
their home without a male relative. He also ordered residents to
paint their first-floor windows black to ensure that passers-by do
not catch a glimpse of women inside.
The Taliban's strict code against working women has meant a
drastic increase in women and children begging in the street. On the
rocket-ruined streets of Kabul, women hidden within their burqas sit
in the middle of the road, their hands outstretched.
Many are widows. The United Nations estimates there are about
28,000 widows in the Afghan capital. Devastated by relentless
fighting between rival Islamic factions, most of the 750,000 people
living in Kabul survive on international assistance.
