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Karzai Push for Talks With Taliban Renews Risk to Afghan Women, Group Says By James Rupert – Jul 13, 2010 U.S.-backed efforts by President Hamid Karzai to reconcile with the Taliban and other Islamic militants threaten to reverse improvements in the lives and rights of Afghanistan’s women, Human Rights Watch said. The revival of Taliban control in southern and eastern Afghanistan has forced women to abandon jobs and social work, the New York-based advocacy organization said in a report today. Guerrillas have destroyed at least 456 girls schools, the Afghan human rights commission said in March. Interviews with Afghan women in Taliban-controlled regions show that “as the prospect of negotiations with the Taliban draws closer, many women fear that they may also pay a heavy price for peace,” Human Rights Watch said in its report. The Taliban’s renewed campaign against any public role for Afghan women has focused on Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second- largest city, which served as the Taliban’s headquarters during their rule in the 1990s. The Taliban last year claimed responsibility for shooting dead Sitara Achakzai, a women’s activist who served on the provincial legislative council. On April 13, a gunman in Kandahar ambushed and shot dead a 22-year-old woman named Hossai who worked as an aid worker with Development Alternatives Inc., a consulting firm based in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Maryland. The following night, another woman aid worker in the south received an anonymous letter warning that she, too, would be killed if she did not stop working for her employer, an international organization, Human Rights Watch said. Sanctions Since January, Karzai has pushed for the lifting of UN sanctions on some Taliban leaders, curbs which freeze their assets abroad and prevent them from traveling, in a bid to pull them into peace negotiations. The U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, has supported a revision of the list of 137 Taliban leaders subjected to the sanctions. In March, Karzai’s administration held several days of direct talks with another militant insurgent group, the Hezb-i- Islami (Islamic Party) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which Human Rights Watch said “is also known for its repressive attitudes towards women.” Any insurgents who rejoin Afghanistan’s society and politics “must respect women’s rights,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said May 13 at a conference with Karzai in Washington. Afghan groups have criticized Karzai for surrendering women’s rights to win political support. In March 2009, he signed into law a bill that required women of the Muslim Shiite sect to submit to their husbands’ demands for sex and to restrictions on their movement outside the home. ‘Active Role’ Karzai’s efforts to reconcile with Taliban leaders “should not be seen as a zero sum process and women are fundamental to the future development of Afghanistan,” State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said in response to a reporter’s question yesterday. While Karzai included women as 20 percent of delegates at a national conference last month to plan a peace process, women have had little presence in the government bodies preparing peace feelers, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said in March. Women “must not only be consulted” in preparing peace talks, “but must play an active role at the negotiating table,” the commission said. http://www.thedailygetup.com/wp-content/uploads/ai_images/44785AfghanWomen01.jpg added by: EthicalVegan