Women in Afghanistan 1992-1996

Ever wondered what it has been like to be a woman in Afghanistan during the last ten years?

In 1992, Soviet control of Afghanistan crumbled and a whole bunch of armed thugs started to fight each other to take control of the country. The Afghani constitution that had guaranteed the basic human rights of women was suspended, and these rights have not been re-instated yet.

Much of the fighting between these warring factions was waged in the cities, and it is estimated that thousands of unarmed civilian women were killed by surprise rocket attacks - on residential areas, on schools, hospitals and even on a wedding celebration.

Armed soldiers walked into homes and demanded 'ownership' of the teenaged girls. Should these young women refuse to go with the soldiers, they were often shot dead right there in front of their families.

An Amnesty International report tells how the dead body of such an abducted lass was found in a back street, days later, by her family. It tells of a father who killed his own daughter rather than have her be taken away by men with guns; it tells of a young girl who jumped to her death rather than be abducted and raped by these armed militia. Guards shot one man because he had allowed his daughter to attend school, and then the 15-year-old was gang-raped by her father's killers.

Sometimes the guards sold the abducted young girls into prostitution in countries neighbouring Afghanistan. Women, who fled Afghanistan during these years of the early nineties, often had to pay bribes to be allowed into Pakistan. Some of these refugees were beaten and abused by the foreign soldiers. Even in the refugee camps, women would find themselves under attack from the guards, or that they were forced to trade sexual favors in exchange for food and other necessities.

Women in Afghanistan have had to watch their daughters being raped, and their children starve to death. One widow went out to find some food for her young children. She was abducted for three days by a group of soldiers who raped her repeatedly. When she eventually managed to return home, she found that her kids had died of the cold during her absence.

Several of the world's governments picked favorites from among these warlords and supplied them with guns and ammunition. Sometimes when these armed gangs couldn't kill each other, they would go raid enemy territory and round up a couple of dozen of the enemy's wives and daughters and abduct them and rape them. Then the enemy would exact its revenge by doing the same to the other lot's wives and daughters.

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