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12 - The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday November 19, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Living Oakville Beaver LIVING EDITOR: ANGELA BLACKBURN By Angela Blackburn OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Phone: 905-845-3824, ext. 248 Fax: 905-337-5567 e-mail: ablackburn@oakvillebeaver.com Women leading reform against the odds n eight-year-old girl is tethered to a plough, used like a farm animal to work in the field. Sally Armstrong, author, journalist and Oakville resident, asks the man to whom the girl "belongs" how he can do that to her. He shrugs and responds that's their way. If you put yourself in the girl's tether, you, like her, would know, in your gut, if not in your heart of hearts, that something here is wrong. At eight years old, with a family that gave her away under tribal law to atone for a male family member's crime, and unable to read or know any different lifestyle, the girl may not know she, as a person, is entitled to basic human rights. But she would welcome it. In a society where many have no heat in bitterly cold winters and still commonly practice sleeping with animals, the girl probably doesn't like being tethered. From afar, Afghanistan is a country where western and other military forces are engaged. People know women are not given equal rights, but may dismiss that as religious or cultural. According to Armstrong, it is neither. It is warfare on human rights, hijacked by political opportunists, disguised and sold as religious and cultural to achieve a twisted political agenda born of years of Soviet oppression and stagnation followed by years of tribal civil war. Armstrong first went to Afghanistan in 1997 because the Taliban, which had taken over in September 1996, had basically put women and girls under house arrest and curtailed their A PHOTOS SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER FOR THE GIRLS: Author Sally Armstrong, left, writes about women and children in Afghanistan in her new book, Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots: The Uncertain Future of Women in Afghanistan. At right, educator Nazaneen Majeed with young female students in a tent school outside of Jalalabad. rights to freedom of movement, education and health care almost overnight. In a land where 40 per cent of the doctors and 80 per cent of the teachers had been women, the mostly illiterate Taliban came to power from fighting in the hills, headquartered in caves, maintained rule through terrorism and warfare against the Afghan people, particularly women. Women were not allowed out unless escorted by a male relative. They were ordered to cover up from head to toe in a burka ­ with only a mesh opening through which to see. They could not go to school, work or receive medical care except from a woman -- unlikely as women weren't allowed to work or go outside. "I went to Afghanistan because I had heard what the Taliban had done, they had put women and girls basically under house arrest and did it on an extraordinarily misogynistic edict and I wanted to see how the women were coping and how the Taliban were getting away with it," said Armstrong who has spent most of her career writing about women and children. "I met the Taliban many times and had an unfortunate stay with the Taliban at one point and yes, it's frightening," said Armstrong. Describing the Taliban as mostly illiterate and mostly in their 20s, Armstrong said, "It's frightening to deal with people who don't have any sense of law and justice as the rest of the world knows it. In my opinion, the Taliban were making it up as they went along." Today, the Taliban have been driven back into the hills by a military presence of more than 40 countries and the United Nations. They continue to fight and carry out acts of terror while a new government in Afghanistan grapples with establishing order and an army, while the people of the country attempt to get life back on track. Poverty, years of civil war, a decimated countryside and economy and what now amounts to See Changing page 16