Women In Afghanistan: The Chain Letter

Since late 1998, a chain letter has been circulating with detailed information about the human rights abuses against women in Afghanistan. Click here if you haven't read it yet. It took the form of a petition: after describing the situation, it invited readers to add their names and cities to the bottom, then forward it to "everyone on your distribution lists". If you were the 300th person to sign one, you were instructed to forward it to an e-mail address at Brandeis University.

If you receive a copy of this chain letter, please do not forward it! It may have originally started as a well-intended effort to publicize Taliban's war against women, but today it's just an annoying chain letter that trivializes a very real problem. I receive a copy at least once every couple of weeks, and I'm tired of it.

Before you click that "forward" button on your e-mail software, consider this: In 2001, the Taliban engaged in a concerted effort to destroy every statue of Buddha in Afghanistan. Countries all over the world tried to apply pressure to make them stop. Many offered to come in and take the offending statues away, to display elsewhere. The Taliban refused. Now, if the Taliban would shrug off all that worldwide outrage aimed at making them stop destroying Taliban statues, why on earth would you expect that placing your name at the bottom of a chain letter would make them stop?

The e-mail address to which you were supposed to forward the petition once belonged to an individual who did intend to collect the petitions returned to her and do something with them. But she wasn't expecting to receive hundreds of thousands of messages. Eventually, that e-mail address was turned off because she was overwhelmed. I've heard a recent rumor that now she isn't even at that university any more.

Just to see what would happen, I sent an e-mail to the address in that article. I received an automated response with the subject line "Do Not Respond To Chain Letters". Here is what the text of the message said:

"The "sarabande" chain letter is well over two years old now. Let it die. No one at Brandeis has sent mail from or concerning that chain letter for more than two years. Please direct any complaints to the person responsible for sending it to you this year.

Brandeis University has a brief page on the web regarding this chain letter dated January 10, 1999, which says:

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