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Women In The Soviet-Afghan War

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There was once an Afghan woman who was repeatedly raped for 5 days by a local police officer. The police officer got his justice by being locked up, but the Afghan woman is now in hiding in fear of being punished by the other local policemen. This is just one sad story of what an Afghan woman has to go through on a daily basis. Stories like this are happening because of the results of the Soviet-Afghan War. Before the war, Afghanistan was a fairly free place. Women could go out on their own, wear what they wanted, and go to university. Now they are restricted from almost anything that involves the outside world. The Soviet-Afghan War, which happened in 1979, was a war in which the Soviet Union, who did not like what was happening in Afghanistan, …show more content…

Right when the war started, women exceedingly dropped in their status in society. Because they were not allowed to participate in the war first hand, they were not seen as important. This unimportance essentially granted them few rights, although the constitution said otherwise. In the article “Women Under Imperialist Occupation” it said, “While the 1964 constitution had declared women equal to men, equality largely remained on paper except for a few women in the upper strata of urban society” (Workers Vanguard). The constitution was only a “piece of paper” to those in charge. It didn’t matter that everyone was “equal,” it only mattered what role you played in society. With problems like these, women were very much excluded from societal issues. Despite their success years before the war, the women’s opinions and actions did not matter. Because these actions did not matter, women slowly but surely were pushed out of the public eye and locked in their …show more content…

After the war, the Taliban, a fundamentalist group, known for providing safe haven for Osama bin Laden, came to power. They were known for twisting Islamic law and filtering it to their needs. The Taliban showed no respect to women and despised them, giving them unjust laws with harsh consequences if broken. In the article, “Women in Afghanistan-The Back Story,” it’s stated that, “There were many other ways their rights were denied to them. Women were essentially invisible in public life, imprisoned in their home. In Kabul, residents were ordered to cover their ground and first-floor windows so women inside could not be seen from the street. If a woman left the house, it was in a full body veil (burqa), accompanied by a male relative: she had no independence.” Under the Taliban, women were locked up in their homes like prisoners, and not permitted to leave unless accompanied by a man. Women were already denied the right being involved with the war physically, and now they are being denied the right to actually leave their house physically. This “imprisonment” made it even harder for the women to be involved with the war, because they didn’t have the chance to go out and make a change when they were stuck in their homes. They couldn’t get involved with the war, or act on feminist rights because they didn’t have a chance! Because they were

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