AFGHAN WOMEN - Old fears temper new options

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For Afghan women, old fears temper new options

Change in post-Taliban world may come slowly and meet resistance

By MICHAEL HEDGES, Hearst News Service First published: Monday, November 26, 2001

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Five years after the Taliban abruptly ended her dream of becoming a nurse, Ghuncha Ghul was back in class Sunday at the Intermediate Medical Institute.

The classroom was bare. Books were nowhere in evidence, and teachers were in short supply. But that didn't matter to Ghul, one of the first 29 female students to return to the school since the fall of the Taliban regime reopened education to women.

Ghul's future was back on track.

"I was very, very happy when I heard the announcement on the radio that the school would reopen,'' she said. "It was more than I could imagine. When I heard, I thanked God.''

Ghul, 25, who was two-thirds through her nursing curriculum when the Taliban ended all education for girls and women, described frightening, humiliating experiences under the fundamentalist Islamic regime.

"One day I was walking in the city with the shuttlecock over my head,'' she said, using the nickname for the head-to-toe covering formally called a burqa that women were required to wear. "I went into an ice cream store and raised the covering from my face to taste the ice cream, and Taliban officials came and beat me and the store clerk with sticks.''

The restart of the women's nursing program is yet another symbol here of post-Taliban change, along with relaxed standards for women's dress, the occasional appearance of a beardless man and the proliferation of television and radio programs.

Widespread change may come slowly, though, and be met with resistance. An entrenched percentage of the population -- possibly the majority -- is not quite sure that such reforms are good for Afghanistan.

"Bare-faced women are like honey, and they can attract some bad people,'' said Mullah Hamidullah, leader of a large congregation in one of Kabul's major mosques.

Just outside the city, in the working-class Pashtun suburb of Wodkhel, the values that the mullah expressed are common.

"I am not against women having any rights, but there are lines that must not be crossed,'' said Khoshrang, 55, a teacher. "A simple example of that is that women must be covered all the time in public except for hands and feet. We don't mind television -- we are accustomed to that -- but not used for the wrong purposes. An example of that would be to show dancing, or men and women together on television.''

The women who have returned to class at the medical institute in Kabul realize that not all things have changed. They sit in their classroom, in front of male teachers, relatively uncovered. But when they walk on the streets, their burqas come back on.

"We still cannot dare to uncover our faces in the city,'' said Chamiz Haqyar, 20. "We are still afraid the Taliban will come back.''

Ghul said she used to fantasize about burning down the store where burqas are sold.

The school that the women are attending was supported for several years by U.S. financial aid until civil war destabilized Afghanistan a decade ago. It struggled with both male and female staffers as well as several hundred students until the Taliban arrived in 1996.

After coming to power, the Taliban issued edicts forbidding women to hold jobs, to go to school or to appear without a male relative in public, where they were required to wear burqas. The Taliban also banned ownership of television sets and required men to wear long beards.

Haqyar said she was confident that liberalized values will eventually prevail.

"There will be people who think the ways of the Taliban were better,'' she said. "But we have struggled in the warfare for women in the past, and we have succeeded.

"We have won the war of ideas.''

-- Anonymous, November 26, 2001


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