Women's lives 'worse now than under Taliban regime'
IN A filthy corner of a clinic in Lashkar Gah, a heavily-pregnant 12-year-old lies wailing at a curt, dismissive doctor. Down the road, some of the thousands of widows in the area beg in the mud.
In the local hospital, women lie recovering from the horrific burns of failed suicide attempts.
The brave new world promised by British PM Tony Blair, President George Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai appears not to have reached the women of Helmand.
When asked whether life was better now than under the Taliban, Fowzea Olomi (40), director of the women's centre, simply laughs: "The Taliban have gone?" Life now, she says, is worse. Pointing to her burkha flung to one side, she added: "I never used to wear that before, just a scarf. But now we are all scared of the Taliban because of kidnappings and suicide bombers and shooters."
Ms Olomi, who defied the extremist regime to keep teaching in secret, believes that fewer young girls are now receiving an education. Although most females are at school in Lashkar Gah, capital of the southern province, in the remoter towns and villages, too many parents are afraid to send their children to classes. Teachers, like doctors, are being kidnapped and beheaded with impunity. And just yesterday, gunmen sped past a school on a motorbike firing into a crowd of female pupils, killing two girls and wounding six.
Wounded girls run the risk of being abandoned in Afghanistan where women are seen as a commodity to pay debts or settle disputes.
Take eight-year-old Malay. An Afghan army vehicle ran over her arm and she was flown to the British field hospital at Camp Bastion where doctors explained to her uncle that she might have to have it amputated.
He turned to leave. He no longer wanted his niece because without an arm she could never be married off.
Today Malay is still at the base and her arm has been saved. "She is adorable. The staff love her and she has learned to say 'cheeky monkey'," said Lieutenant Gill Pritchard (25).
Across Afghanistan, the statistics make desperate reading for women. There are around two million widows with no rights or state support. Despite a new law passed recently that girls should not be married off until they are 16, it has made little difference. They are still forced into wedlock as young as nine, pregnant with the first of a dozen children within a few years, of which 20pc will die before their fifth birthday.
While the women of Afghanistan are most certainly victimised, they are not victims. In Lashkar Gah, Ms Olomi and her friends battle on despite endless death threats, either by phone or the now infamous night letters.
Norzia Mahboobsami, head of the women's council, receives daily threatening telephone calls.
"I simply tell them they have a wrong number," she explained matter-of-factly.
Last year, Ms Olomi's driver dropped her off at the women's centre and then set off on another errand. He was shot through the car window as Afghani policemen stood by. Ms Olomi, who still carries his picture in her purse, was not deterred and the centre reopened in the governor's compound.
Today it is an oasis in a desert of oppression. Beautiful, big-eyed young girls learn their ABCs, while their mothers are taught everything from English to computer training.
But the past five years has proved an endless journey of broken promises for the women. Near the British camp, an ice cream factory lies empty. Last year an NGO promised to fund a project to open it up and provide jobs for the widows, a vital lifeline for an estimated 4,000 women around Lashkar Gah whose other alternative is to beg.
But self-immolation is on the increase. At Lashkar Gah's Bost Hospital, where suicide bombers have been thwarted twice in the past year, Dr Abdul Aziz Sediqi said at least a fifth of the 150 patients admitted each month were women who have set themselves on fire.
Afghan women may have a ministry dedicated to their affairs, but as far as they are concerned it is making little difference outside Kabul. Women fall far below security and counter-narcotics when it comes to funding priorities. Yet with the few dollars that have reached them, small projects have sprung up. Among the British-funded schemes is a sewing school in a camp at Mukhtar.
SQUASHED cheek by jowl in a couple of mud huts, widows work away at old fashioned, hand-wound sewing machines, creating beautifully embroidered clothes to sell at market. For an investment of €6,500 over three months, the British/Danish funded project has trained the women to earn a living to feed their families. "It is just a drop in the ocean," said Captain Rebecca Moran, a midwife and British officer who has spent nine months working with the women of Helmand. "But when you think each of the 60 women has 10 to 15 mouths to feed, you see the difference it makes." (© Independent News Service)
- Terri Judd
