Afghanistan: Culture or Conflict?

Afghanistanica examines whether the lack of protection of women's rights in Afghanistan is the result of culture or conflict.

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  • While the conflict-like nature of the positions and relations of different groups in Afghanistan have definitely worsened the situation, the inherited culture of persecution of the weak has played the most important part in its recent history.
    Except for a brief period under Amanullah and later under the communists, at no other time do we find attempts of liberalisation of the system for the ease of the common women of Afghanistan. A shepherd sitting on the presidential ‘throne’ can only deliver as far as his ethics would allow him to. The shepherd dillemma glitters all along the Afghanistan timeline.
    Women in the cities are more liberal than those in the rural areas and among them, women of central Afghanistan are more liberal than the rest. Culture (in the form any of those shepherd’s decreed) has played the defining role and today’s shepherd consider women as men’s property. Those bearded fellas in the parliament are going to decide most of what is good and what is not good for em, before they ever learn to listen to women.
    An issue that is over a thousand years old, can’t be settled unless the central ideology behind it is addressed.

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