Katie Couric's Notebook: Women In Afghanistan

By: Katie Couric
Topics: Katie Couric's Notebook

(AP)

A month ago, four men on motorcycles opened fire on a female council member in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

She was murdered by the Taliban for fighting for women's rights in her country.

More than 80 percent of women in Afghanistan are illiterate, but the Taliban make an education nearly impossible. Last year, a group of girls was doused with acid in front of their school - some were burned severely.

As the Taliban regroups and gains strength, Afghan women risk an erosion of any gains made since the war began in 2001, and lawmakers are doing little to protect them.

A recent law passed by Parliament would allow marital rape. President Hamid Karzai has said it will be amended, but one wonders how it was passed in the first place.

As the United States formulates a new approach during these dark days in Afghanistan, it must not forget to lift a lamp, as Emma Lazarus wrote, to illuminate a path to basic human rights.

That's a page from my notebook.

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by dwilber971 May 16, 2009 3:57 PM EDT: They need to use an analogue of motivational interventions to increase the people's motivations to change. They need to increase the people's intrinsic motivation. Force is extrinsic motivation and won't work permanently.; Reply to this comment


by casey_abbott May 14, 2009 8:25 PM EDT: How'd they get you to stay?; Reply to this comment


by mergatroid_4 May 14, 2009 10:44 AM EDT: How do those laws get passed in the first place? The Qur'an supplies the needed rationales that are then reinterpreted to suit whatever social or political situation arises.

Islam will lay down and fall asleep, never to awaken similar to manner in which the Mayan and Incan religions did. The Qur'an is not a transmission of the will and the intentions of the Creator to US, it's human creation.; Reply to this comment


by petersemkiw May 14, 2009 12:35 AM EDT: "Women have a lot to say about how to advance women's rights, and governments need to learn from that, listen to the movement and respond."

Charlotte Bunch, American Founder of the Center for Women's Global Leadership; Reply to this comment


by reza2010 May 13, 2009 8:51 PM EDT: I Blame the comeback of Taliban on Pres. Hamid Karzai.
Remember a while back when Karzai was making comments on "brining the people of Afghanistan back to Afghanistan". I do. Well he is the one who wants them to be alive, so he (Pres. Karzai) could be ellected again.; Reply to this comment