Taliban treatment of women/Talk

Well known for abuses of women? true. But their actual abuses were against men mostly. Even the sources like the PHR who try to present a women-as-victims view point actually record far (six to seven times) more arrests of men than women for breach of the religious laws -- despite questioning ONLY women in their survey. Think about it for a second. Afghanistan is in a 23 year long war. Who dies in war? Men. Conscripts. Hundreds of thousands of men. Same men that the US bombed on *purpose* (as opposed to *accidentally*)

The real abuses by Taliban were against the Hazarans and consisted of eg taking a village and killing all the 'battle age' men. I think that is worse than being made to wear a burqa. This is typical of third world wars involving genocide/massacres. Indeed many of the "oppressive" ideas of the Taliban are a result of trying to prevent women getting raped and beaten up by gangs which was a popular occurance (occording to Amnesty International and several UN agencies) *before* the Taliban took power. Why do you think RAWA is so paranoid about the Northern Alliance? They hate the Taliban with a vengeance (because RAWA are communists) but they know the Northern Alliance are rapists and bandits.

If you look at the reaction of women in Afghanistan to recent events they are choosing to keep many of the things forced on them by the Taliban voluntarily. Why? Because they act as a defence against the ravages of the war. Until there is security they will act that way. Don't confuse Taliban edicts to deal with the war situation with what they would have done if there had ever been peace. Taliban is a patriarchal society in the Japanese sense and these societies always over-protect women. Well there are very few countries where such over-protection is actually warranted but I'd say if any then Afghanistan is one.

Rumours about the Taliban say more about Western sexual prejudices than the Taliban's sexual prejudices. Incidentally RAWA does NOT have that slant. If you go to their site you'll find plenty on abuse of MEN by the Taliban. (They'll report anything to make the Taliban look bad!), but Western media only cares about women. Incidentally I am not an expert on Taliban. I simply researched them as part of studying feminism. Therefore I'm NOT willing to get into a fight over all this as I would over the feminism page.