Fw: Boris Kagarlitsky, Moscow Times

[J. Paul Everett]

In a message dated 9/29/01 5:52:02 AM, fbbecker at earthlink.net writes:

<<

There is the way we would like it to be and the way it is.  Let's deal with

it as it is, and work towards making it the way we want it to be. >>

Right on!!  Clear-eyed realism and pragmatism.  Below is a little article
about how women fare right now over there.  And, a hopeful note that tyrants
will be deposed.

Paul

Aid Group: Women in Afghanistan Face Starvation or Suicide

Saturday, September 29, 2001
By Ed Barnes

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - While the world watches as thousands of Afghans make
their way in fear and hunger to Pakistan's sealed borders, one aid group says
an even worse plight awaits those left behind.

"Women who have children too young to flee or are too weak to go are faced
with two choices: starvation or suicide," says Sahar Saba, a representative
of one of the few aid groups to focus on the plight of Afghanistan's women.

She said that since the United Nation's pullout from Afghanistan two weeks
ago many women, particularly widows, lost their only access to food. "They
are now eating grass and even that is beginning to run out," Saba said.

Of particular concern is the fate of the 30,000 widows living in the Afghan
city of Kabul.

"They are not allowed to work and cannot go out without a male escort. Their
husbands are dead. In the past widows had two choices. They could turn to
prostitution or begging. Now even those are not options."  Saba estimated mos
t women in these circumstances have less than a week's worth of food.

Saba is a senior member of Revolutionary Afghan Women's Association,
which was established in Kabul in 1977 as an independent political/social
organziation of Afghan women fighting for human rights and social justice in
Afghanistan.  RAWA has tried, often clandestinely, to provide aid, schooling
and other help to women in the impoverished country.

Some of the group's members have taken small video cameras with them to
secretly document the Taliban's brutality toward women and operate safe house
for those who escape.

Saba said her group opposes all forms of fundamentalism. She said women
who have recently arrived in Pakistan have painted a picture of chaos inside
the country.

 "The Taliban have begun taking young men from their houses to fight," she
said. "But the Taliban are scared. Most have fled the cities in anticipation
of an attack.

"The mullahs do not go out on the streets anymore," she said. "We are now
seeing women who ask us for guns to fight the Taliban. It is only a matter of
time before people rise up. The Taliban are finished."

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