Recently at MareZilla.com

Recently at MareZilla.com:
#TrumpDay – Hardcore Edition

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Once Upon a Time in Afghanistan...

Women were treated like human beings, people were free, and music could be enjoyed by all. Then the Taliban came, women were oppressed beyond what most people can even imagine and they were often tortured and killed, music was banned, and any semblance of freedom was destroyed.
Queen Soraya of Afghanistan - from the website Afghanistan Old Photos

The following are excerpts from a September 25, 2001 article in The Gazzette (Colorado Springs) by Cary Leider Vogrin about how life was for women in Afghanistan before the Taliban took over.
Soraiya Edressi Totakhail pushes a piece of paper across her desk toward a visitor. On it is a grainy, black-and-white computer printout of Queen Soraya, who helped rule Afghanistan in the 1920s.
"Look at what she's wearing," Totakhail said Monday, pointing to the queen's sleeveless gown. No Afghan woman, she said, would dare dress like that today for fear of being stoned - or even executed - by the Taliban.
To Totakhail, the picture illustrates the "human rights catastrophe" that has occurred in her native country under the Taliban rule.
"The Taliban really did a systematic destruction of culture," said Totakhail, a Muslim. "They are just a bunch of terrorists. They are ruthless. They have no respect for human life. To me, they are just a bunch of murderers. I'm embarrassed to even call them Muslims. They do not represent the Afghan people."
...
"Their (the Taliban's) senseless violence, strict segregation and restrictions based on gender - not allowing women to go to school or work - turned professional women to beggars on the corners of streets," she said.
"They have turned the women to the dark age."
Totakhail, 43, also mourns the destruction of the capital city of Kabul, where she was raised.
"My roots are all destroyed. There is not much left. It's all crumbled," she said. "It was very Western, very open.
"You were allowed to go out alone in public. You could participate in sports. It was a Third World country, but basically people were educated.
"I had all the privileges of the male members of my family. It was a free country."
RTWT
A November 17, 2001 report by the U.S. State Department, Taliban's War Against Women, describes the plight of women after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan. Here are some excerpts:
Prior to the rise of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were protected under law and increasingly afforded rights in Afghan society.  Women received the right to vote in the 1920s; and as early as the 1960s, the Afghan constitution provided for equality for women. There was a mood of tolerance and openness as the country began moving toward democracy. Women were making important contributions to national development. In 1977, women comprised over 15% of Afghanistan's highest legislative body. It is estimated that by the early 1990s, 70% of schoolteachers, 50% of government workers and university students, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women. Afghan women had been active in humanitarian relief organizations until the Taliban imposed severe restrictions on their ability to work. These professional women provide a pool of talent and expertise that will be needed in the reconstruction of post-Taliban Afghanistan.
...
Afghanistan under the Taliban had one of the worst human rights records in the world. The regime systematically repressed all sectors of the population and denied even the most basic individual rights. Yet the Taliban's war against women was particularly appalling.
Women are imprisoned in their homes, and are denied access to basic health care and education. Food sent to help starving people is stolen by their leaders. The religious monuments of other faiths are destroyed. Children are forbidden to fly kites, or sing songs... A girl of seven is beaten for wearing white shoes.
    -- President George W. Bush, Remarks to the Warsaw Conference on Combating Terrorism, November 6, 2001
...
The assault on the status of women began immediately after the Taliban took power in Kabul. The Taliban closed the women's university and forced nearly all women to quit their jobs, closing down an important source of talent and expertise for the country. It restricted access to medical care for women, brutally enforced a restrictive dress code, and limited the ability of women to move about the city.
The Taliban perpetrated egregious acts of violence against women, including rape, abduction, and forced marriage. Some families resorted to sending their daughters to Pakistan or Iran to protect them.
Afghan women living under the Taliban virtually had the world of work closed to them. Forced to quit their jobs as teachers, doctors, nurses, and clerical workers when the Taliban took over, women could work only in very limited circumstances. A tremendous asset was lost to a society that desperately needed trained professionals.
As many as 50,000 women, who had lost husbands and other male relatives during Afghanistan's long civil war, had no source of income. Many were reduced to selling all of their possessions and begging in the streets, or worse, to feed their families.
...
"The life of Afghan women is so bad.  We are locked at home and cannot see the sun."
-- Nageeba, a 35-year-old widow in Kabul
The Taliban also required that windows of houses be painted over to prevent outsiders from possibly seeing women inside homes, further isolating women who once led productive lives and contributing to a rise in mental health problems. Physicians for Human Rights reports high rates of depression and suicide among Afghan women. One European physician reported many cases of burns in the esophagus as the result of women swallowing battery acid or household cleaners--a cheap, if painful, method of suicide.
...
In urban areas, the Taliban brutally enforced a dress code that required women to be covered under a burqa -- a voluminous, tent-like full-body outer garment that covers them from head to toe. One Anglo-Afghan journalist reported that the burqa's veil is so thick that the wearer finds it difficult to breathe; the small mesh panel permitted for seeing allows such limited vision that even crossing the street safely is difficult.
...
Even the accidental showing of the feet or ankles was severely punished. No exceptions were allowed. One woman who became violently carsick was not permitted to take off the garment. When paying for food in the market, a woman's hand could not show when handing over money or receiving the purchase. Even girls as young as eight or nine years old were expected to wear the burqa.
The fate of women in Afghanistan is infamous and intolerable. The burqa that imprisons them is a cloth prison, but it is above all a moral prison. The torture imposed on little girls who dare to show their ankles or their polished nails is appalling. It is unacceptable and insupportable.
    -- King Mohammed VI of Morocco
The burqa is not only a physical and psychological burden on some Afghan women, it is a significant economic burden as well. Many women cannot afford the cost of one. In some cases, whole neighborhoods share a single garment, and women must wait days for their turn to go out. For disabled women who need a prosthesis or other aid to walk, the required wearing of the burqa makes them virtually homebound if they cannot get the burqa over the prosthesis or other aid, or use the device effectively when wearing the burqa.
Restrictions on clothing are matched with other limitations on personal adornment. Makeup and nail polish were prohibited. White socks were also prohibited, as were shoes that make noise as it had been deemed that women should walk silently.
...
The Taliban claimed it was trying to ensure a society in which women had a safe and dignified role. But the facts show the opposite. Women were stripped of their dignity under the Taliban. They were made unable to support their families. Girls were deprived of basic health care and of any semblance of schooling. They were even deprived of their childhood under a regime that took away their songs, their dolls, and their stuffed animals -- all banned by the Taliban. RTWT

Ariana Delawari is an Afghani-American who has a new song & video, "Be Gone Taliban", which Blazing Cat Fur describes as, a "celebration of Afghan girls, and in-your-face-Taliban, dance party." Here it is, via BCF:




The song is from Ariana's new album, "Lion of Panshjir", which was recorded partially in Kabul, where her parents live. Here's a little background information excerpted from Ariana Delwari's website bio:
Delawari's choice to record "Lion of Panjshir" in Afghanistan came with a phone call in February 2007: "It was my mother from Kabul telling me that the Taliban was starting to gain power again," she says. As part of a reconstruction effort, Delawari's parents had returned to Afghanistan in 2002; she herself had been going back and forth since then, diligently documenting her travels in photographs and film. The call though, signaled what might be a last opportunity for her: "At this particular moment I had a feeling that things were shifting- that I may never have the chance to record there again." Three months later she and her bandmates Max Guirand and Paloma Udovic found themselves at her parents house in Kabul. Under the protection of two guards (AK 47s), they recorded the album right in the Delawari household. They collaborated with three Afghan Ustads: a tabla player, a rabab, player, and an 88-year-old dilruba player, the last living master of his instrument. Under previous Taliban rule these talented musicians had once dismantled and hid their instruments due to a ban on music. Delawari and her band spent several days rehearsing and recording with them.
Music was forbidden by the Taliban, as were most things that humans found beauty and simple pleasures in. The Obama administration is currently working with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which may well ensure that brutal oppression and cruelty will once again become the master of the Afghan people as the Taliban grows in power, with Obama's help.


Update: Here are a video depicting an Afghanistan which is far different from what we see there now:






This post is linked at Blazing Cat Fur. Thank you, Arnie!

This post is linked at Kaffir Kanuck. Thanks, Kaffir!  

This post is linked at Boudica Weblog BPI. Thank you, Bob! 

This post is included in the Recommended Reads list at Pundit & Pundette. Thanks, Jill!

This post is linked at iOwnTheWorld. Thank you, BigFurHat! 

This post is linked at Maggie's Notebook. Thanks, Maggie!








Shop at my store here

Buy Ad Space  



Buy.com

30 comments:

WebSpinner said...

This is important information and it needs to be continually presented, as a reminder of all that islam takes from the world and from women especially.

Zilla of the Resistance said...

Have you ever seen how gorgeous many women from that region are when they are not forced to hide under a cloth coffin?  Such beauty should not be kept in darkness.

Leslie Eastman said...

This is a fabulous article.  There was a piece noting the similar deterriation over decades of women's roles in Egypt.  I wish I remembered the link!

Zilla of the Resistance said...

Thank you, Leslie, I remember that article! I had posted it to the A-C page, but I don't remember how long ago or the source. If I come across it again maybe I'll post it here. There was one recently about how nice Pakistan used to be,  and Iran too! Even Iraq wasn't a such bad place not so long ago.  But none regressed as horribly as Afghanistan did under the Taliban, although some come close and others are on their way to similar fates.

SignPainterGuy said...

Yes, I have noticed. The women of the entire region have beautiful eyes.

I`m reminded of the man who`s wife had been killed in a car accident (I think). He didn`t recognize her until the burqa was put on her, even after baring him 5 children.

And from one of your previous posts, an imam said, "There is no happiness in islam !" You`re tellin` me !!

Zilla of the Resistance said...

Look at the beautiful Iranian women before the "Islamic Revolution" of 1979, most didn't wear the hijab, and certainly not the black cloth coffin niqab, but after islamonazis took over, they were forced to:
http://fleetingperusal.blogspot.com/2007/04/iran-before-1979-after-1979.html

MattRoss said...

That is incredibly dramatic.  And where have the feminists been on this, or are they too busy suing Hooters, or something like that?  

Winston said...

That happens to civilizations invaded by Arabs/Islam

Zilla of the Resistance said...

Feminism has never been about the well being of women, it has always been about furthering the leftist agenda, it would be taboo for a feminist to criticize anything relating to islam - as I explained in my post, "Femininican!"  here:
http://zillablog.marezilla.com/2010/12/femininican.html

SignPainterGuy said...

Ignorance is bliss ! I had no idea until recently that "Allah" did not want his people to revel in His beauty. It never crossed my mind being a Christian and believing in the understanding that the GOD of the Christians and Jews, Jehova, Yaweh, loves HIS people and wants HIS people to enjoy life and appreciate the beauty of ALL HIS creation......just not be possessed by it, or putting the creation before GOD. It`s a matter of keeping things in order.

It`s a real shame and I feel for the innocent people who suffer under these mentally defective imams who pass down religious edicts that are so outrageously stupid, destructive and oppressive !

You`ve provided a much needed education, Zilla, I really do appreciate it, but I don`t have to like it !

Bob A. said...

Hi Zilla,
Am going to do a brief excerpt and link here to read the post.
Bob A.

Zilla of the Resistance said...

Thanks, Bob!

I'll look for it & update my post with your link.



________________________________

Zilla of the Resistance said...

I do not believe that allah is the same deity who we call God, Hashem, Yahweh, Jehovah. From all that I can surmise, allah's mandates appear to be more in line with those of the devil.

SignPainterGuy said...

Thanks for the correct spelling (corrected) and I`d forgotten Hashem. I totally agree that allah resembles satan far more than our GOD, but some, incl. my BinL who is wise on most things, say they are one and the same.......but the differences in commands and personality are starteling ! I`ve asked GOD about it, but seem to get, "Well, what do YOU think ?" When did the name "allah" first come into use ?

flyoverpilgrim said...

This is tragic. My heart is breaking.

I have noticed, too, that the Muslims destroy and deface beauty where ever it is found. As the prophet (!) Dostoevsky through the mouth of Fr Zosima: "Beauty will save the earth."

Yes, indeed, the very handsome Afghan and Persian people have been shackled by the Father of Lies, and that way leads to death.

I am ashamed to say that I have not prayed for these people as I ought...in the spiritual sense. This is a spiritual battle, and must be fought as one. Lord forgive me.

Of course, that is not to say that other means to fight should be ignored.

Zilla of the Resistance said...

The closest I can get to praying for the purveyors of evil is to pray that God will either turn their hearts or provide good people with the means to successfully fight against them.

Zilla of the Resistance said...

They are wrong. allah was the old Bedouin moon god, he is not The Creator, the One True God, the Lord - they are not the same. Islam lies, it's called taqiyya, like the sign up in Jerusalem where Jesus fell while carrying the cross claims that Jesus Christ said he was a slave for allah or when muslims say Christ was muslim (he was Jewish & islam didn't exist until centuries later).
Here's an article about the origin of allah, the blood thirsty moon god who inspired the pedophile prophet:
http://www.islam-watch.org/AbulKasem/BismiAllah/2a.htm

Always On Watch said...

Years ago, I read James Mitchener's novel Caravans.  The book gives a good picture of what Afghanistan used to be like.

loopyloo305 said...

I don't remember what blog I read it on last year, but it was from someone whose family lived in Afghanistan and emigrated  here at the start of the war. All it was mostly was pictures that family members had from pre-taliban times. It was truly an amazing dichotomy!

Zilla of the Resistance said...

I read that one too, wish I could remember where!



________________________________

SignPainterGuy said...

Thanks for the link, saved..... "A brief history of Allah" ......spare me please the "exhaustive" history ;-) gee whiz ! That was clear as dark tea ! I`ve got it now for certain that allah (not capitalized intentionally - may never again) was only a fabricated moon god, closely associated with idol worship, and with the recognizable cross-over biblical names for God(s) and relying as this history does on qu`ranic translations / interpretations as the authoritative references, I`m still a bit confused about some of those other God-names (Jehovah and Elohim for instance).

Nothing has changed my long-held opinion that islam is as full of "it" as the proverbial Christmas turkey ! It is absolutely and without a doubt, a FALSE RELIGION !

KingShamus said...

Amazing piece.

Seriously, how does a country go so far backwards in such a relatively short amount of time?

Oh right...the militant backasswards 7th century Islamists. 

Zilla of the Resistance said...

I'll have to add that to the books I'd like to get my hands on list!

Zilla of the Resistance said...

Thank you, KingShamus! While Afghanistan is the most dramatic example, it is not alone - Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and other countries had similar regressions withing just the past few decades. 

Persephone said...

That is a great video.
I hope it doesn't get erased from the internet.
People need to see this.

I have seen still shots of what used to be factories in Afghanistan, that are now in ruins.
This is a taste of what is in store for us...if we let our guard down.

Brutal oppression, cruelty and ruins...are what Islam leaves in its wake wherever it takes hold.

Zilla of the Resistance said...

Yes, it is very sad, and wise people would take it as a cautionary tale and heed the warning. Unfortunately, the people running this country fail to realize that when sharia that they are enabling comes full bore, they'll be among the first killed. 

Freedombytheway said...

Excellent information AND links about Obama's plans to basically hand Afghanistan back to the Taliban when our troops leave.

Zilla of the Resistance said...

Thank you! Obama has the reverse Midas touch, everywhere that he does anything, he makes things worse for anyone with a vested interest in freedom. 

Maggie@Maggiesnotebook said...

This is a powerful post Zilla, and I hadn't given a thought to Queen Soraya. Just goes to show that when evil, oppressive behavior raises it's ugly head (keyword "oppresive") it needs to be lopped off quickly before it becomes ingrained. After years now, apparently Afghan men like the thumb and the sword they have on the women.

Your video of Afghanistan of years ago is something. I guess I thought they had been medievally tribal forever.

Zilla of the Resistance said...

Thank you, Maggie. What is sad is that many other countries that we think of as oppressive islamohellholes were much different not so long ago as well, even Iran was a modern and relatively free place once! 

Post a Comment

Trolls: Tired of seeing your comments deleted? Pay Me and I'll let you stay!

Subscription prices to be whitelisted as an accepted troll
Username to be Whitelisted

The Famous A-C Page!

Zilla of the Resistance on Facebook