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Afghan Women Oppressed under
Taliban Rule

By Louis Clotman
Campus News Editor

KABUL, Afghanistan - Since their September 27th takeover of the Afghanistan capital of Kabul, the Taliban Islamic militia has imposed a strict Islamic rule -- closing girls schools, banning women from the workplace and requiring them to dress in full hijab (clothing themselves from head to toe). Men have been given 45 days to grow a beard and have been ordered to pray five tim es a day.

The Taliban has ordered women to wear the all-enveloping burqa, a shroud-like veil that leaves only a small slit to see out of. Chiqueba, a 30-year-old employee at a weaving facility, said she was beaten by the Taliban shortly after their arrival for being improperly dressed.

"I was traveling on a bus when some Taliban pulled me off and beat me for not wearing a burqa," she said: "It cost me 500,000 Afghanis ($33) to buy one. I had to sell a pair of earrings to raise the money."

Razia, a 19-year old who was a former student and part-time me dical receptionist until the Taliban closed her high school, said her job provides the only income for her family.

"My father disappeared in the war and my mother was wounded in a rocket attack and my brother and sister are too young to work," she said.

Since its birth two years ago, the Taliban has been a fierce reformist force devoted to Islamic issues. Their fundamentalist regime is guided by a strict adherence to Islamic law. Amputations and executions are standard punishment for criminals. Tele vision has been banned because the Taliban see it as a symbol of Western decadence.

Although the Taliban has promised to reopen girls' schools and allow women to return to work, their track record says otherwise. In Kandahar, 200 miles south of Kabul, school is only open to girls four through eight. They receive just enough education to enable them to read the Koran, Islam's holy book.

Very little is known about the Talibans founder and elusive leader, Maulana Muhammad Umar who runs the capital from his base in Kandahar. But Kabu l's 35,000 widows who are now trapped in their homes because they can't be seen in public without their husbands, know his goal. He is determined to create his own version of Islamic Afghanistan, at any cost.

 

 

 

                                   

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