The Women of Afghanistan Speak Out

Dear Orikinla,

THE WOMEN OF AFGHANISTAN SPEAK OUT

"Afghan women and girls want education. Many risk their lives to go to school... Human rights are not a western concept, but universal and necessary for all human beings "

Dr Sima Samar, chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and Special Human Rights Rapportuer for Sudan.

Kabul, Afghanistan, April 15, 2009: Hundreds of Afghan women stood up to an angry crowd and marched to the Parliament, calling for repeal of a new law restricting women's lives.

For the women of Afghanistan and neighboring areas of Pakistan dominated by the Taliban, recent news has been dire: The new law passed by Parliament and signed by President Karzai, forbidding women to leave the house without their husbands' permission and legalizing marital rape; a 17 year-old woman in the Swat region of Pakistan, flogged for what the local Taliban commander described as a "transgression"; continuing attacks on girls' schools. According to the Feminist Majority Foundation, hundreds of girls' schools have been destroyed and teachers murdered; young girls on their way to school had acid thrown at them.

Reaction to the new law -- and to the attacks on women which preceded it -- has been strong: President Obama said "I think this law is abhorrent. Certainly the views of this administration have been, and will be communicated to the Karzai government... The first reason we are there is to root out al Qaeda...those two things aren't contradictory, I think they're complementary..."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "My message is very clear: Women's rights are a central part of American foreign policy in the Obama administration; they are not marginal; they re not an add-on or afterthought...So we will continue to work very hard on behalf of women and girls in Afghanistan and around the world."
Women Senators have spoken up: a bipartisan group, led by U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and including Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) sent a letter to President Karzai.

"This law should be reversed immediately," Boxer said. "Not only is this law an attack on individual freedom, but it condones despicable acts against women in their homes. By approving this law, Afghan leaders are holding back the entire country's progress and turning the nation back toward some of the most oppressive practices of the Taliban."

Responding to the public outcry, President Karzai has now promised to review the law. According to his aide, the legislation is not yet law, and will be reviewed so that it will be "consistent with the rights provided in the Constitution -- equality and the protection of women"

The State Departments is monitoring what happens next: "We're glad that President Karzai has agreed to review this law critics say permits spousal rape and severely limits women's rights," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood. "And we'll be watching this closely to see how the process develops."


Watch the video.
Video courtesy of the Associated Press.

The women of Afghanistan are risking their lives to speak up for their rights; we must continue to speak up for them.

SCIENCE COMES (BACK) TO WASHINGTON

An important policy announcement this week, and a demonstration that respect for scientific evidence and evidence-based decision making has come back to Washington:
The Environmental Protection Agency said formally that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases "endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act." Among the problems they cause: increased drought, flooding, more frequent heat waves and wildfires, and harm to water resources, agriculture and eco-systems.
The proposed finding is open for comment review for 60 days, but I think I have my favorite already:
"'Duh' may not be a scientific term, but it applies here" said Emily Figdor, federal global warming director of Environment America. " EPA has embraced the basic facts on global warming that scientists around the world have acknowledged for years."
A very happy Earth Day to all of us concerned about the health of our families -- and our planet.

EQUAL RIGHTS AT HOME

Next Tuesday, April 28th is Equal Pay Day -- and if you wonder why that day was chosen, April 28 marks how long into the current year American women have to work to catch up with what was earned by men just in the previous year. Think what a difference that equal paycheck would make to your family!

This year, we can celebrate passage of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first legislation signed into law by President Obama, which ensures that women have a reasonable chance to sue for pay discrimination. But we could do so much more by acting, to prevent discrimination the first place. The Paycheck Fairness Act, originally sponsored by then-Senator Hillary Clinton, and now led by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) would strengthen the Equal Pay laws, and help take equal pay from the law books to our checkbooks.

We have a lot more information coming about and actions you can take on Equal Pay and the Paycheck Fairness Act -- stay tuned.

NO LIMITS IS GROWING

We're so proud to announce the next steps for No Limits: our new website will be ready soon, with resources and information about the issues you care about, and a special social networking feature that will make it easier for us all to stay connected.

You can help us grow! When you get the announcement of our new website, will you forward it to your friends?

Sincerely,

Ann Lewis

Dogpile.com Helps Soldiers Bring Rescued Puppies Home from Afghanistan

Dogpile.com Helps Soldiers Bring Rescued Puppies Home from Afghanistan

Search & Rescue Program Helps Provide Warm Welcome Home for Soldiers

BELLEVUE, Wash. (February 02, 2009) /PRNewswire/ — Dogpile.com assisted two American soldiers, Dan Barker and Adam Krause, with the expense and dangerous task of bringing home puppies they'd rescued in Afghanistan while stationed there. In anticipation of Dan and Adam's return to the United States, the puppies, Jack and Emma, were transported home to Dan's wife just in time for the holidays.

• "We feel so fortunate to have played a hand in such an emotional and memorable time for the soldiers, their families and the two puppies," said Stacy Ybarra, director of corporate giving for Dogpile.com. "Helping provide Jack and Emma safe and loving homes is what the Search & Rescue program is all about and we look forward to continuing to help many more animals in need by donating money through Dogpile searches."

In November 2008, Dogpile launched Search & Rescue, which allows anyone to help needy animals just by searching the Web on Dogpile.com. The company had no idea the message would reach American soldiers serving overseas. But Dan Barker heard it from Afghanistan. Dan, whose tour of duty was nearing its end, couldn't bear the thought of returning home without Jack, a malnourished, young stray he'd rescued and raised in his quarters. Adam Krause, a U.S. soldier serving with Dan, felt the same way about Emma, a struggling puppy he'd raised alongside Jack. The soldiers had bonded with the puppies and knew that, if left in Afghanistan, Jack and Emma wouldn't survive the war-torn streets. But bringing a puppy back from Afghanistan is expensive and dangerous. So when Dan read about Dogpile's Search & Rescue program, he reached out for help.

Once the Search & Rescue team heard Jack and Emma's story, they offered to sponsor and arrange the dogs' trips home.
• "Jack has been such an important part of my husband's life these past few months. He has helped my husband, along with the men on his team, escape from the harsh reality they have been living in," said Dan's wife, Lisa Barker. "The things these men have to see and deal with truly force them to build a wall around their emotions. I believe Jack has been so therapeutic to my husband, and helped him through some of the toughest times. Jack and Daniel have formed a true companionship that I know will continue to grow over the years. I promise you Jack will have the most loving home and family a dog could ever ask for."
Visit http://rescue.dogpile.com/jack to meet the puppies who won the soldiers' hearts and follow each step of their journey home. Plus, check back for video footage of Jack and Dan's reunion and updates on how the dogs are doing in their new homes.

About Search & Rescue:
The Search & Rescue program was launched in November 2008 and allows anyone to help animals in need for free by doing what they already do — search the Web. That's because a portion of revenue generated by searches conducted on Dogpile.com is donated to help animals in need. The downloadable Search & Rescue Toolbar makes it even easier to search right from your browser. With the help of its users, Dogpile hopes to raise at least one million dollars for pet rescue by the end of 2009. For more information about Search & Rescue, please visit http://rescue.dogpile.com/pets. To view a live counter tracking Search & Rescue revenue raised to date, please visit www.dogpile.com/rescue.

About Dogpile.com
Dogpile goes beyond search as usual by providing a fun and engaging place to discover all the Web has to offer. Because Dogpile compiles the top search results from all the leading search engines, searches on Dogpile return all the best results with just one search. Dogpile is a business of InfoSpace, Inc. (NASDAQ:INSP). For information about InfoSpace, please visit: www.infospaceinc.com.
About InfoSpace, Inc.

InfoSpace, Inc. is a leading developer of metasearch products to help people easily search and discover the Web. InfoSpace uses its proprietary metasearch technology that combines the top results from the leading search engines to power a portfolio of branded Web sites, including Dogpile (www.dogpile.com) and WebFetch (www.webfetch.com). In 2008, for the second consecutive year, Dogpile ranked highest in customer satisfaction among search engines, according to JD Power and Associates. More information can be found at www.infospaceinc.com.

NEWSWEEK: Opium Brides on the Rise in Afghanistan as Government Moves to Eradicate Opium Production

Roshan Qasem was only 11 when she married Said Mohammed who was 55.
Photo Credit: The New York Times Magazine, 2006.

This is a must read report on the violation of the human rights of the girl child in Afghanistan as peasant farmers are being forced to give away their teenage daughters to pay their debts.

Islamic countries are known for child brides and even in the Islamic regions of Northern Nigeria, child brides are not a secret. Prophet Muhammad the founder of the Islamic religion started the practice when he married his beloved Aisha when she was only 6 years old and slept with her when she was 9 and when he died, she was only 19. You can read their love story in my forbidden Unveil Me My Love. She never conceived and was never allowed to marry after his death.

30 Mar 2008 16:51 Africa/Lagos


NEWSWEEK: Opium Brides on the Rise in Afghanistan as Government Moves to Eradicate Opium Production

Poor Farmers in Afghanistan's Poppy-Growing Provinces are Forced to Sell Their Daughters to Pay Loans

NEW YORK, March 30 /PRNewswire/ --

As Afghanistan steps up its efforts to eradicate poppy crops, many poor farmers who rely on profits from the plants have had to sell their daughters to settle their debts from local traffickers who provide loans in exchange for opium. Many farmers have spent much of their lives raising opium in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains since it is the only reliable cash crop.


(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080330/NYSU002 )


In the April 7 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 31), Afghanistan Correspondent Sami Yousafzai and South Asia Bureau Chief Ron Moreau report that the practice began with the dowry a bridegroom's family traditionally pays to the bride's father in tribal Pashtun society. These days the amount ranges from $3,000 or so in poorer places like Laghman and Nangarhar to $8,000 or more in Helmand, Afghanistan's No. 1 opium-growing province. For a desperate farmer, that bride price can be salvation -- but at a cruel cost. Among the Pashtun, debt marriage puts a lasting stain on the honor of the bride and her family. It brings shame on the country, too. President Hamid Karzai recently told the nation: "I call on the people [not to] give their daughters for money; they shouldn't give them to old men, and they shouldn't give them in forced marriages."


No one knows how many debt weddings take place in Afghanistan, where 93 percent of the world's heroin and other opiates originate. But Afghans say the number of loan brides keeps rising as poppy-eradication efforts push more farmers into default. "This will be our darkest year since 2000," says Baz Mohammad, 65, a former opium farmer in Nangarhar. "Even more daughters will be sold this year." The old man lives with the anguish of selling his own 13- year-old daughter in 2000, after Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar banned poppy growing. "Lenders never show any mercy," the old man says. Local farmers say more than one debtor has been bound hand and foot, then locked into a small windowless room with a smoldering fire, slowly choking to death.


While law enforcers predict yet another record opium harvest in Afghanistan this spring, most farmers are struggling to survive. An estimated 500,000 Afghan families support themselves by raising poppies, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Last year those growers received an estimated $1 billion for their crops -- about $2,000 per household. With at least six members in the average family, opium growers' per capita income is roughly $300. The real profits go to the traffickers, their Taliban allies and the crooked officials who help them operate. The country's well-oiled narcotics machine generates in excess of $4 billion a year from exports of processed opium and heroin -- more than half of Afghanistan's $7.5 billion GDP, according to the UNODC.


Efforts to promote other crops in these regions have failed. Wheat or corn brings $250 an acre at best, while poppy growers can expect 10 times that much. Besides, poppies are more dependable: hardier than either wheat or corn and more tolerant of drought and extreme heat and cold. And in a country with practically no government-funded credit for small farmers, opium growers can easily get advances on their crops. The borrower merely agrees to repay the cash with so many kilos of opium, at a price stipulated by the lender -- often 40 percent or more below market value. Islam forbids charging interest on a loan, but moneylenders in poppy country elude the ban by packaging the deal as a crop-futures transaction -- and never mind that the rate of return is tantamount to usury.


Mohammad Zahir Khan, a Nangarhar sharecropper in his late 40s, borrowed $850 against last spring's harvest, promising 10 kilos of opium to the lender -- about $1,250 on the local market. The cash bought food and other necessities for his family and allowed him to get seed, fertilizer and help tending his three sharecropped acres. In the spring he collected 45 kilos of raw opium paste, half of which went immediately to the landowner. But before Khan could repay the loan, his wife fell seriously ill with a kidney ailment. She needed better medical care than Nangarhar could offer, so he rushed her across the Pakistani border to a private hospital in Peshawar. It cost almost every cent they had, and Khan knew his opium debt would only grow. Worse, the provincial governor, a former warlord named Gul Agha Sherzai, chose that moment to declare his own war on drugs, jailing hundreds of local farmers who were caught planting opium. Nangarhar had 45,000 acres in poppies a year ago; today drug experts say the province is totally clean.


Late last year Khan reluctantly gave his 16-year-old daughter, Gul Ghoti, in marriage to the lender's 15-year-old son. Besides forgiving Khan's debt, the creditor gave him a $1,500 cash dowry. Khan calls him an honorable man. "Until the end of my life I will feel shame because of what I did to my daughter," Khan says. "I still can't look her in the eye." But at least she was old enough to marry, he adds. He claims one local farmer recently had to promise the hand of his 2-month-old daughter to free his family from an opium debt.


Angiza Afridi has spent much of the past year interviewing more than 100 families about opium weddings in two of Nangarhar's 22 districts. The schoolteacher and local TV reporter already had firsthand knowledge of the tragedy. Five years ago one of her younger aunts, then 16, was forced to marry a 55-year-old man to pay off an older uncle's opium debt, and three years ago an 8-year-old cousin was also given in marriage to make good on a drug loan. "This practice of marrying daughters to cover debts is becoming a bad habit," says Afridi.


In the two districts she studied, approximately half the new brides had been given in marriage to repay opium debts. The new brides included children as young as 5 years old; until they're old enough to consummate their marriages, they mostly work as household servants for their in-laws. "These poor girls have no future," she says. The worst of it may be the suicides. Afridi learned of one 15-year-old opium bride who poisoned herself on her wedding day late last year and an 11-year-old who took a fatal dose of opium around the same time. Her new in-laws were refusing to let her visit her parents.


Read story on Newsweek


Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080330/NYSU002
AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/
AP PhotoExpress Network: PRN1
PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
Source: Newsweek

CONTACT: Brenda Velez of Newsweek, +1-212-445-4078,
Brenda.Velez@newsweek.com


Web site: Full Report
Newsweek

The World's Top 10 Dangerous Destinations

The world's top 10 dangerous destinations travelers must avoid.

1. Somalia

2. Iraq

3. Afghanistan

4. Haiti

5. Pakistan

6. Sudan

7. Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

8. Lebanon

9. Zimbabwe

10. Palestinian Territories

P.S:
You should also avoid Kenya, since violent clashes after the disputed presidential election have made the tourist haven a very dangerous destination until further notice.

Click here for the details

"The Kite Runner"

"The Kite Runner"

Khaled Hosseini's 2003 novel "The Kite Runner" introduced Western readers to an Afghanistan beyond the Soviet invasion, Osama bin Laden and U.S. military strikes. By focusing on the complicated relationship between an Afghan boy and his father, and the bond between two childhood friends in Kabul, it illuminated the humanity behind the politics and showed the world that Afghans laugh as well as cry. The book has since sold more than 8 million copies worldwide—not including millions of bootleg editions in such languages as Farsi.

This week the long-awaited screen adaptation of "The Kite Runner" opens in America; it will be released across much of the rest of the world over the next few months. The film, like the book, follows the unlikely friendship between the wealthy Pashtun boy Amir (Zekiria Ebrahimi) and his friend Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada), the Hazara son of the family servant. Pashtuns are Sunni and make up Afghanistan's ruling party, while the Hazara, Shia Muslims of Mongolian descent, are largely discriminated against. The two boys are inseparable until one day, following their victory in a kite-fighting tournament, Amir betrays the loyal Hassan with an act of cowardice that haunts them for the next three decades. Their story of love, remorse and atonement is set against the 1979 Soviet invasion, the Afghan diaspora and the rise of the Taliban in Kabul.

"The Kite Runner" is a moving, smart and sensitive film and a worthy tribute to the book. The kite-flying scenes are so beautifully shot they're near spiritual, while the story's emotional appeal renders cultural boundaries obsolete. Though one of the few major pictures to consider Islam and the Muslim-American experience from an insider's perspective, the film remains highly accessible, moving between the Muslim world and the West with an ease unparalleled in Hollywood.This cross-cultural fluency likely comes from the fact that "The Kite Runner" is, in every sense, a global film. The closing credits read like a U.N. roster of delegates.

Hosseini is Afghan and lives in America, director Marc Forster ("Finding Neverland") is Swiss and lives in America, and lead actor Khalid Abdalla ("United 93") is Egyptian and resides in the U.K. The film also stars noted Iranian actor Homayoun Ershadi, as well as first-timers like Ebrahimi who were plucked out of secondary schools.Originally slated for a fall release, "The Kite Runner" was delayed because of controversy surrounding a grueling rape scene involving the child actors. Due to the scene's potential to offend, Afghan authorities and the film's studio, Paramount Vantage, pushed the release back until the boys finished school and were safely out of the country. They and their families now reside in the United Arab Emirates.

© Newsweek, Inc.

Click Here To Win tickets to a VIP screening of The Kite Runner with director Marc Forster