Woman Delegate Positive About Afghan Talks
Northern Alliance looking for broad-based government
Sunday November 25 10:44 AM
ET
By Parisa Hafezi
TEHRAN (Reuters) - The sole Northern Alliance woman delegate
to U.N.-sponsored talks on Afghanistan (news - web sites)
said Sunday she hoped women would be able to play a more
prominent role in Afghan society in the post-Taliban era.
``My hope is that Afghan women will become active in all
social areas and can show their ability as managers,'' said
Amina Safi Afzali, one of the alliance's 11 delegates to the
talks near Bonn that start Tuesday.
Afzali, speaking to Reuters by telephone from Iran's
northeast city of Mashhad near the Afghan border, said the
meeting was a historic occasion for her war-torn country
even though women's issues would not be at the top of the
agenda.
``The Bonn conference will discuss the future of the Afghan
nation, be they men or women. Although women's issues may
not be covered, this meeting will decide the political
future of Afghanistan, of which women are a part,'' said
Afzali.
``I have fought for 20 years for Afghan women's rights, and
tried to show the world how oppressed they are. Maybe that
is one of the reasons that I was chosen as the only woman to
attend the Bonn conference,'' Afzali said.
``We respect the Islamic dress code but what the Taliban
imposed on Afghan women, such as wearing the burqa
(head-to-toe veil), is based only on the Taliban's Islam.
That is a kind of hijab (Islamic dress) that prevents women
from being active in society.
``We believe that women should have a proper Islamic dress
that does not prevent them from taking part in social and
political activities,'' said Afzali, 43, a leading figure in
the Afghanistan Women's Islamic Movement over two decades.
After taking control of Kabul in 1996, the Taliban issued
edicts in line with their austere vision of Islam which
forbade women from working outside the home, attending
school and leaving their homes unless accompanied by a male
relative. Women were also forced to wear burqas.
Afzali spoke approvingly of a demonstration Tuesday in which
hundreds of women, shedding their burqas, gathered in the
Afghan capital Kabul to demand their rights.
``About the demonstration in Kabul, I can say that women are
right not to accept a stone-age dress code which the Taliban
forced them to follow,'' she said, speaking hours before
leaving for the talks outside Bonn.
Afzali's husband, mujahideen commander Safiollah Afzali, was
killed fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan 14 years ago.
November 24, 2001 Posted: 6:51 PM EST (2351
GMT)
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN)
A top Northern Alliance official Saturday said he hopes
an impending meeting between Afghan leaders and United
Nations representatives will lead to "a fully represented,
broad-based government."
"It is a unique moment for Afghanistan," said Dr.
Abdullah Abdullah, the Northern Alliance's equivalent of a
foreign minister. "The whole situation has changed inside
Afghanistan, in the region and in the international
community."
The Northern Alliance is among four Afghan groups that
have been invited to talks with U.N. officials in Bonn,
Germany, that are scheduled to begin Tuesday. The talks,
aimed at laying the ground work for a post-Taliban Afghan
government, were to begin Monday but were postponed by a day
to allow delegates more travel time.
Abdullah said there would be women representatives in the
talks -- a departure from the Taliban regime, which kept
women out of positions of power. "Women will be part of our
delegation," he said.
The current moment in history is unlike any Afghanistan
has ever seen, Abdullah said.
"In the international community, there is a new focus on
the situation in Afghanistan," he said. "All these factors
create a unique opportunity, which all of us ... should
seize."
Abdullah said the Northern Alliance is "fully aware of
the urgency" of the situation -- what he termed a need for a
"peaceful process or a political settlement which will bring
about a fully broad-based, multi-ethnic government."
"In the interim transitional government, what is needed
is a leader to lead the country. And the country is in a
state of transition from war to peace -- when I'm saying
war, 23 years of war and the whole country is destroyed," he
said on CNN's "Live in Afghanistan with Christiane Amanpour."
Would the Northern Alliance accept Afghanistan's exiled
king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, in the interim?
"If there was a consensus among all the groups that that
type of leader is the former king, so be it," Abdullah said.
The former king has been living in Italy since a 1973
coup. Shah, now 87, has said he does not intend to return to
power as monarch, but instead wants to serve as a unifying
force for groups opposed to the Taliban.
Abdullah also was asked whether women could now remove
their burkas, the mandated garment under Taliban rule that
covered women from head to toe.
"They have the choice to put on a burka," he said, adding
that women have begun returning to work, schools and
hospitals in areas once controlled by the Taliban. "They
have the choice to take it off."