The news about Hamid Karzai "legalising sexual inequality," as Doug Saunders put it so aptly, has pitched Canadians back into a debate about our involvement in Afghanistan. "According to United Nations organizations that have seen it," the Globe and Mail reported yesterday, "a law backed by the Karzai government would legalize rape within marriage and would forbid women from going to the doctor or leaving their home without their husband's protection. It also reportedly grants custody of children only to fathers or grandfathers."(Of course, this is the whole "we rob women of their freedom in order to protect them" rationale).
Trade minister Stockwell Day seemed to struggle to find words to say other than, "Holy shit, what are we going to do now?" What he actually said was:
“If these prove to be true, this will create serious problems for the government of Canada, for the people of Canada,” Mr. Day said. “The onus is upon the government of Afghanistan to live up to its human-rights responsibilities, absolutely including the rights of women. If there is any wavering on this point … this will create serious difficulties, serious problems for the government of Canada.”Well, that's definitive! It will create serious difficulties, all right--starting with the Canadian population wanting the government to pull our troops out or risk getting booted from office. The public was partly swayed on going into this war because it would supposedly help the girls and women being brutalized by the Taliban (also interesting: it was only 26 years ago that Canada's own laws changed to make marital rape a criminal offence). So what should happen next? Canada currently has 2,800 troops in Afghanistan, and 116 others have died there. I have no idea how to proceed, being entirely unschooled in both the history of the region and military history. But I am totally repulsed at the idea of Canada backing a regime that, in 2009, is actively moving to suppress women's rights. A UNIFEM report from March 5 indicates that what women in Afghanistan need is security. Has Canada's presence in the country brought Afghan women any closer to it? Margaret Wente's op-ed in today's Globe and mail was, I thought, troublingly accurate (yes, Margaret Wente and I agreed on something!). But her article raises several thorny issues: when is a foreign military presence in another country morally right? And what is Canada doing in Afghanistan, supporting a government which is robbing women of their human rights? But as a democratically elected leader, Western countries don't have a right to dictate policy to Karzai. At what point does a country intervene, then, when human rights abuses occur? And why are we so damn selective about which human rights abuses to pounce on which ones to turn a blind eye to? According to its own website, UNIFEM is currently carrying out its largest women's rights program in Afghanistan. And though this may be news to us in the West, the concept of women's rights is not something that is foreign to Afghan culture (as some commenters have claimed). The report notes that, "expanding the opportunities of women in the country was not some strange foreign notion; on the contrary, surveys had shown that the majority of the nation supported the principle of equal rights and opportunities for men and women." This suggests that the hand-wringing over the legitimacy of importing "Western" values to other regions might be a bit of a red herring. What do you think? What should Canada and the international community do to advance women's interests in Afghanistan?
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Confabulous badges!
