Afghanistan: USA's Freeom-loving Allies Ban Women's March

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Afghanistan:

USA's Freedom-Loving Alliance Friends Ban Women's March


AFP Via Times of India - Nov 28, 2001
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=979404185

Alliance bans women's march in Afghanistan 

KABUL: A planned women's freedom march through the streets of Kabul
on Tuesday was banned on the orders of Northern Alliance interior
minister Younis Qanooni, organiser Soraya Parlika said.

"They said it was for security but that is just a pretext... they
don't want women to improve," she said.

Parlika said Qanooni personally rang her two days ago, before leaving
for the Afghan talks outside Bonn, Germany, and said the march was
not to go ahead. "He said we should wait for an unspecified time."

As women began gathering at her home early Tuesday, hopeful the
decision would be reversed, Parlika received a follow-up call from an
interior ministry official again refusing the march.

It was the second time in a week the women had been refused
permission to walk from Parlika's suburban home to the main United
Nations compound, with security given as the reason both times.

"I don't believe that. There would not be a problem, we have no need
for security," Parlika said.

About 50 members of the newly formed Union of Women in Afghanistan
were packed into her apartment, many of them wearing light
head-scarves instead of the much-hated burqa, which women were forced
to wear after the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996.

They were among the first to show their faces outdoors in the capital
after the Northern Alliance retook the city on November 13.

Although the Northern Alliance, not as hardline as the Taliban, has
told women they were free, it was received with scepticism.

"They announced that women are free, but it is not freedom to throw
off our veils. That is not the liberty we want," said a disappointed
Nafeesa, 17. "Right now the situation in Kabul is not good. It is not
what we wanted."

Perlika says women still have a long way to go before they can be
classed equal citizens. "Our victory, and only that, is that I am
able to welcome you into my home," she says. ( AFP )
 
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