Feminists have succeeded in drawing the world's attention to the fact that women have

been the first victims of the Taliban. We now must make it clear to the world that Afghan

women are an essential part of the solution for a peaceful, democratic Afghanistan.

The defeat of the Taliban means the liberation of women from the regime's draconian

decrees. As I write, we are hearing reports of women in Mazar-E-Sharif, Kabul, and

other cities going into the streets without male relatives and discarding their burqas -

actions for which they would have been brutally punished under the Taliban.

But the international community must now act to make sure that women's rights are

restored fully and permanently and to re-establish a constitutional democracy in

Afghanistan, representative of women and of ethnic minorities. We cannot allow women

to be marginalized at the same time that they are close to gaining freedom.

Women must play a key role in reconstituting civil society in Afghanistan at every stage, in

the planning of the post-Taliban Afghanistan, in the reconstruction of the country, and in

its future government.

Afghanistan first adopted a constitution in 1964 that included universal suffrage, equal

rights for women, and separation of powers with an independent judiciary. Afghan

women were members of the judiciary, parliament, and cabinet, and were 30% of

Afghanistan's civil service workers. Today, they must now be allowed to assume political

leadership.

Women are essential to reshaping Afghanistan's infrastructure, which the Taliban

collapsed when they banned women's education, work, and mobility. If the education

system is to rebuilt it needs women, who were 70% of the country's teachers. If the

health system is to be rebuilt, it needs women who were 40% of doctors and the majority

of health care workers.

A massive infusion of both immediate and long-term humanitarian aid is also necessary to

save the lives and futures of Afghan women and girls. We realized after World War II that

necessary in breaking the back of fascism was re-establishing constitutional

democracies in Germany and Italy, establishing one in Japan, providing rights for women,

and providing reconstruction and economic development assistance.

The United States would be repeating a tragic mistake if we again turned to another set of

extremists as we did to repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or choose a dictatorship

as the most expedient strategy to replace the Taliban.

The first act of terrorism of the Taliban was its horrific treatment of Afghan women, and

was a warning sign. In fact, long before September 11, the Feminist Majority requested

that the United States designate the Taliban a terrorist organization. To this day, this

designation has not been made despite the indisputable connections between the Taliban

and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

To break the back of terrorism, women's rights and democracy must be restored in

Afghanistan. And, from the beginning, Afghan women must be at the decision-making

tables. We cannot put women or the world at risk again.

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan(RAWA) is calling for the international community to urge the United Nations to send in a peace-keeping force and help establish a coalition government in Afghanistan. This would be the best first step to establishing Democracy there. The Northern Alliance is nothing but a collection of war-lords that the U.S. is installing to ensure Unocal and other oil corporations can put their pipelines through. The U.S. does not care about Democracy or human rights in Afghanistan, only in accessing Central Asian oil and gas reserves. Allowing the Northern "Alliance" to rule Afghanistan will only insure a future of more civil war and turmoil as the war-lords start fighting amongst themselves for control of the country.

This is why we must urge the U.N.( which is the ONLY LEGITIMATE agency that should have been persuing Osama bin Ladin and his terrorist network) to send in a multi-national peace-keeping force and assist RAWA and others in forming a coalition transitional government in Afghanistan. Then the stage will be set for Democratic elections.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights can be reached at : webadmin@hchr.unog.ch.

Read RAWA's statement posted on this site.

I couldn't agree more with the marvelous statement RAWA released November 13. The women of RAWA seem to be the only rational people in anything resembling a political organization in Afghanistan. The Taliban came to power in the first place largely on their promise to "protect" women against the Northern Alliance, whose attitude towards women when they were in power in the mid-1990's was essentially to regard them as fair game for rape. Given that the choice of male leaders in Afghanistan seems to be between a bunch of men who think women are fair game for rape and a bunch of other men who think the way to "protect" women from the men who want to rape them is to drape them in blankets and deny them education, jobs and health care, the women of RAWA are looking better all the time. Maybe we ought to ask the U.N. to insist that the next Afghan government be composed entirely of women.