Word: afghanis
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Three summers ago, as an intern at the Feminist Majority Foundation, I cut out little squares of blue mesh fabric, the same fabric that formed the peepholes through which Afghani women wearing a burqa saw the world. I distributed these cloth emblems to Americans, to wear as tokens of remembrance for and solidarity with the women oppressed by the Taliban...
...halfway through lunch at roadside restaurant in central Jalalabad when we heard the first gunfire. The place was empty except for an elderly bearded man at a table nearby, and my driver and I were sharing Kabuli pulao (rice), Afghani tikka (barbeque meat) and Kandhari nan (bread) with a television repairman we'd picked up at Torkham. TV repair was a bad business to be in, Sardar Mohammed told me, because the Taliban had banned television. But he'd helped me negotiate two-way cab fare with Mohibullah, the driver. It was 12:30pm, a pleasant afternoon with soothing breeze...
...speaks of America as a compassionate country who cares for the oppressed and impoverished people of Afghanistan. Part of our military action against the Taliban has been food drops to its people. But these food drops are mere hypocrisy if they are unaccompanied by meaningful action to help Afghani people and poor people battling repressive, terror-ridden regimes worldwide. In an editorial from the New York Times this week, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) wrote, “Today, confronted with a challenge no less daunting than the Cold War, Americans again are eager...
Again, we have to look at our actions and compare it to our rhetoric. If we claim to be on the side of the poor Afghani civilians, and indeed the poverty-stricken victims of repressive, terrorist-harboring regimes world-wide, then we must be making a concerted effort to help the people most consistently brutalized by those regimes. Once we have helped them throw off the bonds of terror, we must be committed to helping them improve their quality of life. Otherwise our assistance will seem merely self-serving, hollow words from a hollow, self-interested nation...
...world. To do this, a powerful, international court of law with authority to arrest, extradite and punish offenders must be created. Such a court would require international support from a vast array of countries—the possibility of which decreases with each bomb that is dropped and Afghani civilian who dies. Already the loose alliance of countries “supporting” the U.S. bombing is weakening, and if the war becomes at all protracted then it may dissolve completely. Of course any such court would, on occasion, have to use military force to arrest criminals...