Lily's Room (Part2)

My Australian friend, Dr. Ida Lichter spoke and wrote about Afghanistan Today for the Sydney Institute.　(Lily)

Dr. Ida Lichter, The Sydney Papers Online Issue 54 （https://thesydneyinstitute.com.au/blog/tag/the-sydney-papers-online-issue-54/）

AFGHANISTAN TODAY – STRATEGIC AND SOCIAL ISSUES

《Dr Ida Lichter is an internationally known writer and commentator on women’s rights in Islamic societies. Her book, Muslim Women Reformers: Inspiring Voices Against Oppression, is a standard reference in many American universities.》

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and heartrending airport scenes of people trying to flee have brought back distressing images of women under previous Taliban rule. Will history repeat itself? I’ll talk briefly about women during the Taliban years, how they progressed in the past two decades, and where they stand now. But first, a very brief background about the country and its women.

The strategic location of Afghanistan on the trade and migration crossroads to Central Asia, led to historical political instability due to struggles for control by outside powers. The culture was patriarchal and in the modern era, veered between oppression and reform. In 1919, King Amanullah, promoted women’s education, and discouraged the veil, polygamy, and child marriage. At the same time, religious Afghans opposed the reforms. The King was overthrown in 1929, and the ruling mullah closed girls’ schools and enforced veiling. In 1964, a new constitution under King Zahir Shah introduced women’s rights, universal suffrage, a parliament, and civil rights. Again, mullahs obstructed the reforms.

With the Soviet invasion, further liberal laws were introduced but religious factions objected, and after the Russians withdrew in 1989, the mujahideen restricted women by dint of sharia law.
The Taliban came to power in 1996 promising to stop warring mujahideen militias and restore peace and security. In three months, they easily took control of a third of Afghanistan’s provinces, as the warlords surrendered without a fight.

Before the Taliban, many schools were coeducational. Seventy percent of teachers, forty percent of doctors, and over half the university students were women. They became engineers, lawyers, and judges.

During the Taliban rule between 1996 to 2001, strict sharia laws were imposed in keeping with their concept of a “pure Islamic state”. According to the Taliban, the restrictions were for women’s own protection, and meant to safeguard their “honour”. Windows in homes were painted over so women couldn’t be seen from the street. If the Taliban’s vigilante police (the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice) caught a woman not totally covered, or wearing shoes with clicking heels, she risked a beating, and her family could be punished as well.

The penalty for uncovered ankles was public whipping, and for adultery or sex outside marriage, stoning to death. Women who couldn’t afford a burka or had a disability which distorted the garment, were prisoners in their own homes and some died because they didn’t receive medical help. In any case, hospitals for women were inadequate, with dirty maternity wards, little equipment, and insufficient clean water. Men were usually forbidden to treat women, and only a few select female doctors and nurses were allowed to work in hospitals. Girls were generally barred from school after the age of eight. Any education or training for women took place in underground schools, like the Golden Needle Sewing School, ostensibly a sewing circle, still acceptable to the Taliban, or “reciting houses” where bereaved women came to mourn their dead. Teachers at these schools risked assassination if caught.

Why is the Taliban opposed to female education?

According to their ideology of radical Islam, it spreads vulgarity and is against their teachings, which are God-given, not man made. Women’s reform was potentially dangerous, too. Affecting half the population, it could shake the patriarchal and theological ideology of their misogynist Islamic Emirate and medieval utopia. I should add that the Taliban’s view of women’s education contrasts with many traditional Islamic teachings that do value female education. Women were allowed to work in the poppy fields but usually banned from employment outside the home. This restriction forced thousands of widows who had lost husbands in the many armed civil conflicts to become beggars and sell their possessions to avoid family starvation. Punishments for anyone included execution for converting to another religion. As an authoritarian state, the people had no freedom of speech, assembly, or association. There were also bans on music, the internet, movies, and television.

What did Afghan women gain in the past 20 years during the occupation of US and allied forces?

In the post-Taliban 2004 constitution, an equal rights clause specified that twenty-five per cent of the seats in the Afghan version of the House of Representatives should be filled by women, and seventeen percent in the Senate. However, Article 3 stated, “No law shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam” – clearly open to interpretation – even perhaps, a Taliban version. Yet there were very brave women. When Malalai Joya, a young female parliamentarian protested some members were misogynists, drug traffickers, war criminals, and human rights abusers, there was an uproar and UN security forces were called to protect her. Following that incident and more of her critical comments, she was on the run to avoid death.

“No law shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam” – clearly open to interpretation – even perhaps, a Taliban version. Yet there were very brave women.

Despite the ruined economy, shattered institutions, and decades of insecurity due to civil conflict, women were able to reengage with society. They were hugely assisted by the new regime’s construction of more than 3,000 health facilities. Most people now had reasonable access to medical care. However, growing battles between the Taliban and government, as well as lawlessness on roads due to sexual harassment and robbery, made travel increasingly perilous around the 18,000 rural villages where more than seventy percent of Afghan women live.

By 2017, the number of girls in primary school and secondary education had grown by more than a third, and 100,000 were university students. Women’s life expectancy went up from 56 to 66 years and mortality during childbirth dropped by more than a third. In 2020, twenty-seven per cent of Afghan members of parliament were women, as were more than twenty per cent of civil servants. Women became established as judges (there were 270), and they were prominent in the media, music industry, and sports. But the price was high. Female police officers were gunned down. Taliban insurgents burned down schools and forced hundreds to close because girls attended. They killed teachers and students, and disfigured schoolgirls’ faces with acid. The continuing insurgency led to a brain drain of well-educated women essential to the country’s nation building.

Taliban aside, Afghan society itself is predominantly male-controlled. Forced and underage marriage was still widespread in the past 20 years. Most women have experienced domestic violence, and some are imprisoned for “moral crimes” such as “running away” from home to escape violence or forced marriage. Women who are raped can be pressured to marry their rapists. In rural provinces, the Taliban, tribal courts, or mobs mete out summary justice to women accused of sex outside marriage, as such transgressions dishonour the family. The list of moral offenses that merit such honour killings have come to include working in the media, social activism and baad, the tradition of handing over virgin daughters to settle disputes of debts or crime. If the girls refuse to comply, they could be murdered to redeem their family’s honour. The woman reformer, Wazhma Frogh lamented that girls are not only surrendered to settle family disputes, but even exchanged for a fighting dog. Such customs continued despite the 2009 Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women that banned abuses such as rape, underage and forced marriage, domestic violence, and forced prostitution.

Another reformer, Massouda Jalal, explained that Afghanistan’s society is predicated on “honor and shame”, rather than “right and wrong”, so “the shameful consequence is more important than the wrong act that caused it”. This mindset, in addition to lack of education, the influence of religious extremists, and absence of judicial will in remote areas, made the laws of 2009 unenforceable.

Where do women stand now?

Since taking power, Taliban leaders pledged amnesties for government employees, education for girls, and women in government pursuant to Islamic law. But for the past twenty years, they continued to attack and suppress women. Since January this year, fourteen women were killed, including three administering polio vaccinations, a police officer, and two judges. Recently, the Taliban reportedly killed a woman for travelling alone. They shot another because her head wasn’t covered, on the very day the leaders vowed to honour women’s rights. In other reports, women were told not to leave the house without male kin as escorts, and female students at Kabul University warned not to leave their dorms without male guardians. Taliban fighters were allegedly searching for employees of the government and NGOs, and were banning female journalists from working.

As they blitzed through the rural districts, the Taliban demanded lists of eligible girls and widows from local mullahs and ordered families to surrender women and girls for marriage to their fighters. When some men in the Bamiyan province resisted, they were beaten. Villagers were forced to open clothes cupboards so the Taliban could assess the ages of females who lived there. According to their interpretation of Islamic sharia, women are chattels to be claimed as spoils of war.

Internal security could deteriorate further if al-Qaeda and Islamic State increase their operations in Afghanistan, and the vacuum left by the allied withdrawal leads to further turmoil through strategic and economic exploitation by Pakistan, China, Iran, and Turkey. This scenario bodes ill for Afghan women and children, already the main victims of violence and displacement in long-term internecine conflicts.

Can the Taliban be trusted to keep their word?

It seems unlikely. They have continually attacked girls’ education during the past two decades and killed women since taking power. Nor have they renounced their radical, anti-women ideology.

What is the future for Afghan women?

From recent reports on the ground, Kabul is virtually a male city with few women on the streets. But there might be reason for hope. The people have tasted freedom. It is not the same country as it was in 1996. Young people are used to the internet, freedom of speech, and could form part of a pushback. But they need help from the international community to hold the Taliban accountable for their word regarding inclusive government, amnesties, and women’s rights, or else forfeit foreign aid and legitimacy. Otherwise, Afghan women may face a default theocracy and a dysfunctional, terror state.

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My Australian friend, Ida, wrote this topic. (Lily)

https://spectator.com.au/2021/03/cancelling-the-crown

Cancelling the Crown
Diana’s arrow strikes at the heart of the Firm
Dr. Ida Lichter

20 March 2021

At the core of the Meghan Markle and Prince Harry saga lies a debt of unfinished business and a dormant volcano that was bound to erupt at some point: the unresolved struggles and aspirations of Princess Diana. Suspended after her death, they lay buried for many years. But today’s zeitgeist of cancel culture has proved opportune for Harry and Meghan to revive and attempt to rectify Diana’s grievances while achieving their own objectives.

It was inevitable that a descendant of Diana’s would take on her battle with the Royal House, and in the recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, it became abundantly clear that Prince Harry was embracing her conflicts.

Only sixth in line to the British throne and free of the associated constraints, Harry could take an independent road. Whatever their self-proclaimed motivations for embarking on the Oprah interview, Harry and Meghan’s explosive conversation was a public airing of grievances concerning alleged racism in the House of Windsor, purported denial of mental health assistance for Meghan, and termination of Harry’s security payments, forcing the couple to seek finance through deals with Netflix and Spotify.

Harry is known for his dedication to continuing Princess Diana’s work with HIV and Aids patients, particularly through his charity Sentebale that supports young people affected by HIV in Lesotho and Botswana. In this work, he exhibits the same instinctive empathy and social skills that made Diana an icon for altruism, compassion and benevolence. At the same time, Princess Diana remained a thorn in the side of the royal family. Harry likely identifies with his late mother, not only in his commitment to similar charitable work and her reported wish to have had a home in the United States but also as a dissident royal and self-professed victim, who became estranged from ‘the Firm’.

In Meghan, Harry had a willing partner, who could well identify with Diana and avenge her grievances. Hostile publicity from the UK tabloids felt so unbearable that Meghan demanded protection from the Palace, and the Firm’s indifference infuriated her. Diana had also suffered from intrusive media and was killed during a chase by the paparazzi.

Harry acknowledged that Meghan offered him the revelation that he was trapped in the institution of the Royal House and he came to realise the same encumbrance stifled his father and brother as well. Like Diana, Meghan felt trapped by the system. She experienced symptoms of depression and was driven to thoughts of suicide. In time, her grievances would also lead her to reject the unwritten royal rule of ‘Don’t Complain. Don’t Explain’. Indeed, Harry compared Meghan’s predicament to that of Princess Diana’s when he bemoaned the isolation his mother must have suffered, and how he feared ‘history repeating itself’.

According to Harry, the royal rift started when the couple returned from their Australian tour in 2018, intimating that Meghan’s outstanding talent for interpersonal communication was, ironically, to blame. ‘I just wish that we would all learn from the past,’ he lamented, probably referencing his mother’s exceptional gift for connecting with ordinary people and overshadowing her husband, Prince Charles, who reportedly, could not accept his wife’s charisma and fame. Harry felt Meghan’s credentials as a woman of colour would have made her an ideal ambassador for the Commonwealth, home to 2.4 billion people, mostly black and brown.

By presenting himself as a spouse who eschewed jealousy and took pleasure in his wife’s popularity, Harry challenged his father for ill-treating Diana and was able to emerge the more honourable.

Harry’s grievance about the unexpected severance of his security costs might seem peevish considering his sizeable inheritance from the estates of Diana and the Queen Mother. Crying poor, however, doesn’t rate highly for censure in cancel culture, where allegations of racism top the list of worst accusations, with denial of mental health support not far behind.

Princess Diana could not have asked for a better disciple than Meghan to threaten the royal establishment. Together, Harry and Meghan aimed a straight and powerful arrow, and a sop to the cancel culturati, who would be pleased to dispense with the House of Windsor.

Like Diana, Harry would cast prudence aside for the desire to confront the Firm with his grievances, even if the impulse might undermine the foundations of the institution and jeopardise the future of his own family. In the United Kingdom, a royal crisis is not only a family matter but a blow to a precious national asset, with potential damage to trade, tourism, charities and relationships with the Commonwealth, notwithstanding international prestige. These cultural traditions and economic considerations were risked by Harry and Meghan in the interview with Oprah.

At the same time, the Sussex arrow aimed for maximum publicity and appeal in the US. The White House praised the pair’s courage for sharing their story, particularly Meghan’s serious mental health problems, and Hillary Clinton expressed her distress about the plight of ‘this incredibly accomplished woman’, who was so cruelly pursued by the British tabloid press. Most US commentators have taken Meghan’s side. Her disclosure of suicidal thoughts was praised and the alleged pretence and callousness of the Firm condemned, while Black Lives Matter co-founder, Opal Tometi, demanded blacklisting the royal family.

In the US, where historical antipathy to the monarchy still lingers, Princess Diana was favoured in her clash with Prince Charles and the Royal House and she still commands obsessive interest. With the appearance of Meghan as a Wallis Simpson lookalike and the story of Prince Harry abdicating his role in the royal family, the Oprah interview was bound to generate a perfect storm.

The relationship of King Edward Vlll and American divorcee, Wallis, led to a constitutional crisis and the King’s abdication in 1936. At the time, public opinion in Britain was against Wallis, who was touted as a manipulative exploiter, whereas the American public and media championed her marriage to Edward. That historic calamity for the royal family did not cancel the Crown but the current meltdown thanks to Harry and Meghan could be a nail in the royal coffin for today’s cancel culture warriors.

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Appeasement of Iran endangers us all
Europe’s intransigence threatens regional and global peace
by Dr. Ida Lichter

(https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/10/appeasement-of-iran-endangers-us-all/)

Iran’s torture and execution of champion wrestler Navid Afkari is consistent with a new Amnesty International report on the regime’s flagrant human rights violations. Inadequate international censure for such abuses and repeated breaches of the Iran nuclear deal serve to appease and embolden Iran. Appeasement also alarms regional states aligning in opposition to the belligerent theocracy.

The report, Trampling Humanity, documents a campaign of brutality that accompanied thousands of arrests and detentions in Iran’s November 2019 protests, triggered by rising petrol prices. Assisted by an internet shutdown and the absence of free speech, association and assembly, government forces killed more than 1,500 unarmed demonstrators and bystanders and injured at least 4,000. During the crackdown that followed, more than 7,000 adults and children as young as ten were arbitrarily arrested. The victims suffered a litany of torture, including flogging, sexual violence, electric shock, ripping out of nails and months of solitary confinement. Using coerced confessions, a complicit justice system handed out several death sentences and prison terms of up to 10 years.

Covid-19 has devastated prisons that lack hygiene, testing and adequate quarantine measures. Qarchak, the largest of Iran’s women’s prisons is notorious for unsanitary conditions, insufficient food, severe overcrowding, rape and murder. Violent offenders are left to roam and harass political prisoners. Controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Qarchak is considered a punishment for political prisoners, including British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, serving a decade for alleged espionage. Another dual national, British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was dealt a five-year jail sentence for allegedly plotting against the regime. Both women are probably pawns in Iran’s hostage diplomacy.

Other political prisoners include Nasrin Sotoudeh, an Iranian human rights lawyer serving 38 years in prison. She has defended dissidents and women who removed their mandatory hijabs in public.

The US State Department recently called for accountability regarding the execution of about 30,000 members of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran, who assisted the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 but turned against the theocratic dictatorship. Investigations into the massacres were never undertaken by the UN or Western governments. Systematic arbitrary detention is used by the regime to obstruct journalists, forcing some to conform to government directives and pushing others onto social media. Freelance journalist Khosro Sadeghi Borojeni was recently sentenced to seven years in prison on vague security and ‘insult charges.

The EU is fully committed to defending universal human rights as foundational to long-term peace and stability and the UK has announced a raft of human rights sanctions that target organisations and individuals globally. Yet both tend to downplay Iran’s egregious human rights abuses, effectively granting its leaders exemption from accountability. In the UNHRC, Iran is rarely scrutinised and even praised by member states for protection and promotion of human rights. Execution of gays and minors, oppression of women and persecution of minorities are ignored, as are pretensions to a fair parliamentary system, with candidates for election vetted by hard-line clerics who also have the power to block legislation.

Prior to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran nuclear deal), the UN Security Council had passed a number of resolutions that imposed sanctions and an arms embargo on Iran to prevent nuclear weapons development. Automatic reintroduction of all pre-existing, non-rescinded sanctions, or ‘snapback’, was embedded in the event of Iran’s non-compliance with the deal.

The five permanent members of the UNSC plus Germany (P5+1) hoped Iran would comply and moderate after sanctions were lifted and before sunset clauses permitted uranium enrichment after 10 to 15 years. Instead, Iran breached the agreement by increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium and accelerating the development of ICBMs capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Iran’s financial windfall arising from the nuclear deal bolstered the extraterritorial Quds Force, commanded by Qassem Soleimani before he was killed by a US airstrike in January 2020. The Force has armed militia proxies such as Hezbollah, vastly expanding Iran’s messianic revolution and Shia empire. Hezbollah’s terror tentacles have reached Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and beyond, into Europe, the UK and South America. Capitulation to Hezbollah’s malevolence encourages Iran as well as other regional and global forces of Islamist extremism.

Nevertheless, the P5+1 are averse to penalising Iran or renegotiating a tighter agreement. They refused to support US motions to extend the arms embargo which expires on 18 October this year or endorse the snapback to restore UN sanctions that predate the JCPOA. Predictably, China and Russia voted against the motions, claiming the US had forfeited the right to trigger snapback when they abandoned the nuclear deal in 2018. The UK, France and Germany (E3) abstained, despite being targets of Hezbollah terrorism and depots for the militia’s weapons and ammonium nitrate explosives.

Rather than focus on Iran’s nuclear deal infringements and destabilising foreign adventurism, the E3 cling to the unsigned and arguably non-legally binding agreement like a life raft, hoping for rescue by a Biden election win. That outcome could see the US return to the JCPOA, with the lifting of sanctions and resumption of trade with Iran, including weapon sales. Recently, the US unilaterally reimposed pre-deal sanctions in order to curb Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile and conventional arms development. If these sanctions are opposed in the UNSC, the US can exercise a veto. Appeasement allows Iran to evade penalties for gross human rights violations, expansionism and nuclear deal non-compliance, and it exposes the international community’s hypocrisy and cowardly accommodation of the theocracy’s grievous behaviour.

A prudent alliance against Iran has formed between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain in the wake of a US drawdown in the Middle East. This partnership, with momentum for adding more member states, is also opposed to other Islamist extremist entities such as the Muslim Brotherhood, expansionist Turkey and Qatar. Appeasement of Iran could jeopardise the region’s bold new coalition and its welcome front against other malign Islamist forces.

* Dr.Ida Lichter is the author of Muslim Women Reformers: Inspiring Voices Against Oppression

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My Australian friend, Dr. Ida Lichter wrote it and sent it to me yesterday. (Lily)

Australian Spectator (https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/07/friends-in-creed/)
Friends in creed
China and Iran. Sinister alliance on the new Silk Road
Dr. Ida Lichter
4 July 2020