Afghanistan

[mcgillianaire]

James Fergusson, author of A Million Bullets and Taliban, argues that British soldiers should not be dying for the rights of Afghan women:

"The west views gender equality as an absolute human right and so we should. But no country, certainly not Britain, has yet managed unequivocally to establish that right at home; and we tend to forget both how recent our progress towards it is, as well as how hard the struggle has been. Full women's suffrage was not granted in Britain until 1928. With such a track record, is it not presumptuous to insist that a proud, patriarchal society that has survived for 3,000 years should now instantly mirror us? That, in effect, is what well-meaning western experts did when they helped to draw up Afghanistan's 2003 constitution. The stipulation that at least 25% of MPs should be women is plain hypocritical. Even after the 2010 election in Britain – a parliamentary democracy that has had rather longer to mature than Afghanistan's – women MPs account for just 22% of the total." [READ MORE]

I agree with a lot of what he says and think attention should be paid to recognising the Taliban as part of the solution, whether we like it or not. Unfortunately our blinkered black-and-white view has largely prevented this from happening until now. And although some baby steps have been taken in this direction a lot remains to be done. Improving the rights of women is important but not essential to our intervention.

Comments

[elodie21.livejournal.com]

Though provoking article! Yes Taliban has to be involved in nation building and human rights will follow once the country is stable. Guess priorities need to be set.

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

If women's emancipation was the reason we were in Afghanistan, I can think of quite a few other countries which would require intervention. It seems incredible that we need to constantly remind ourselves that we're there to root out Al-Qaeda and not necessarily the Taliban.