Afghan woman killed, apparently for bearing girl
Afghan women walk down a road during a snowy day in Kabul on Jan. 15, 2012. / SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images
KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan woman has been strangled death, apparently by her husband, who was upset that she gave birth to a second daughter rather than the son he had hoped for, police said Monday.
It was the latest in a series of grisly examples of subjugation of women that have made headlines in Afghanistan in the past few months, including a 15-year-old tortured and forced into prostitution by in-laws and a female rape victim who was imprisoned for adultery.
The episodes have raised the question of what will happen to the push for women's rights in Afghanistan as the international presence here shrinks along with the military drawdown. NATO forces are scheduled to pull out by the end of 2014.
In the 10 years since the ouster of the Taliban, great strides have been made for women in Afghanistan, with many attending school, working in offices and even sometimes marching in protests. But abuse and repression of women are still common, particularly in rural areas where women are still unlikely to set foot outside of the house without a burqa robe that covers them from head to toe.
The man in the latest case, Sher Mohammad, fled the Khanabad district in Kunduz province last week, about the time a neighbor found his 22-year-old wife dead in their house, said District Police Chief Sufi Habibullah. Medical examiners whom police brought to check the body said she had been strangled, Habibullah said.
The woman, named Estorai, had warned family members that her husband had repeatedly reproached her for giving birth to a daughter rather than a son and had threatened to kill her if it happened again, said Provincial women's affairs chief Nadira Ghya, who traveled to Khanabad to deal with the case. Estorai gave birth to her second daughter between two and three months ago, Ghya said. Officials did not have a family name for either Sher Mohammad or Estorai.
Police took the man's mother into custody because she appears to have collaborated in a plot to kill her daughter-in-law, Habibullah said. Ghya, who visited the man's mother in jail, said that she swears that Estorai committed suicide by hanging. Police said they found no rope and no evidence of hanging from the woman's wounds.
Boy babies are traditionally prized much more highly than girls in Afghanistan, where a son means a breadwinner and a daughter is seen as a drain on the family until she is married off. Even so, a murder over the gender of a baby would be rare and shocking if proved true.
The U.S. Embassy issued a statement Monday praising the Afghan government for recent declarations supporting women's rights in the wake of the latest abuse cases that have garnered media attention.
"The rights of women cannot be relegated to the margins of international affairs, as this issue is at the core of our national security and the security of people everywhere," the statement said. It did not address the killing of the young woman in Kunduz.
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That backward society has been around for thousands of years doing these things, and is nothing new. So why is it still happening in a modern world? RELIGION, that is why. Religion is the scourge of humanity, and none will be free until the last king is strangled by the entrails of the last priest, to paraphrase a quote I read from whom I'm not sure.
Atrocities such as the murder of this young woman have been going on for centuries.
Ten years of American troops with boots on the ground have basically changed nothing.
Just as in Iraq; a large portion of the population are still uncivilized savages.
Suicide bombers, IED's, are a clear indication of just how zealots and barbarians care little for human life.
If these weapons kill any foreigner; they're happy.
If they kill innocents also; their attitudes is "oh well".
When our troops pull out of Afghanistan; these homegrown terrorists will start all over again just as they did in Iraq.
I understand Karzai would like to see all troops removed by the end of 2013 instead of 2014.
It should really be happening in 2012.
Enough American lives have been sacrificed trying to somewhat civilize another country that really doesn't want to be civilized.
In Afghanistan now; Afghan soldiers embedded with American troops are starting to attack and kill them.
It boggles my mind that after what amounts to 19+ years of trying to "civilize or nation build"; that the US government has learned absolutely nothing.
Treachery on the part of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have cost thousands of deaths of American troops; and multiple BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars have "disappeared" supporting these countries.
How many widows/ers, single parent children and heartbroken families and friends are out there.?
Suicide rates among military personnel are increasing all the time.
PTSD is rampant from multiple deployments.
How many troops have been maimed, wounded or scarred.?
Get out NOW, and spare any more troops, families and friends from the horrors of these wars.!!!
The fact is that only one country has the blame for this: the US of A. NO ONE ELSE!