Afghanistan and Veiled Threats

How has Afghanistan changed since the Taliban were in power? Outsiders with shorter memories may look at today's Afghanistan and wonder whether we've made a difference, but Sally Armstrong has been following this story since 1996, when she first published a story of Afghan women living under the Taliban regime.

We may not have come as far as our ideals, but there is no question that Afghan women are largely better off since those dark days. In no insignificant terms, it is due to Canadian support. Sally Armstrong gives a new interview:

Take me back to 1996. What was life like for women when you first visited Afghanistan?

It was horrendous. It was shocking. It was the kind of thing you observed and thought, “Where the heck is the world? Who knows about this? How could this possibly be happening in 1996?” But indeed it was happening and it carried on for five more years before anyone paid attention, and the only reason they paid attention when they did was because 9/11 happened....

What has changed for women since the international troops arrived in Afghanistan?

A great deal has changed and the problem is the public don’t know very much about it because we focus on the insurgency. We write about the insurgency because our men and women are in harm’s way and we need to report on that. We don’t seem to have the resources to report very much about what is happening in the rest of the country.

Women are better off. Are they as better off as we hoped? No, but they are definitely better off. And it is the women who are leading the reform of Afghanistan. It is the women who’ve demanded reform on family law. It’s the women who are doing the first-ever research on issues in Afghanistan that have a great deal to do with how the judiciary runs, for example polygamy. The women did a study on polygamy, the first ever, and found 86.5 per cent of Afghans are against polygamy. They’ve also discovered that there are ten reasons for polygamy and eight of them are against the Koran. God forbid, you do something against the Koran that is very bad.

They are not all back in school, the little girls, but a lot of them are. Almost 3 million, compared to zero are back in school. The women are definitely back at work. The women who are wearing burqas are much scarcer. And it is not quite as religiously strict as it was before, not to say there is not enormous room for improvement. There are miles to go, but things are better then they were...

At times it seems that Canada is fairly war-weary. What would you say to Canadians who are tired of our involvement to keep them engaged and interested?

I don’t think you can do that. I can address why they claim they are tired. Canadians don’t know the story because the government is silent. And it’s not just the Conservative government, the Liberals before them were silent. For some reason, I dare say it is because politicians are afraid they will lose a single vote, they have decided not to speak to the people.

This country is at war. We have soldiers at war and when you are at war you are supposed to tell the people what is going on. The government has chosen silence. When that happens the protestors own the conversation. It’s the protestors who are spreading the information.

The media has done a terrific job, but it focuses on the insurgency as they must. There are very few like me writing about the women, so the protestors own the conversation and the protestors are saying the most outrageous things to Canadians. They are saying things like the Afghan people wish you would leave. They are saying things like Canada invaded Afghanistan. This outrageous collection of revisionist of history is being visited upon the Canadian people and nobody is counteracting it. What the Canadians think about Afghanistan is not the true story.