How Can I Bear It?

How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!
Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Safia Amajan was murdered yesteray in Afghanistan. The other American war. The one we were successful at, driving the Taliban out, and restoring peace and democracy to. That war. Remember?

At the official end of the Afghan war, America's first lady, Laura Bush, was among those who declared that one of the most important achievements of overthrowing the Taliban was emancipation of women. However, since then female social workers and teachers have been maimed and killed, girls' schools shut down and female workers forced to give up their jobs. The few women out in the streets in Kandahar and other places in the south are covered in burqas. A report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission spoke of the "systematic and violent campaign" directed against women.

Safia Amajan, who opened schools and upheld the rights of girls and women to go to school and work, was shot dead yesterday.

A teacher for more than three decades, Ama Jan was known for being a proponent of women's rights in this former Taliban stronghold. She always wore a burqa, and was shot dead while wearing the traditional Islamic garment, her son said.

And what is the U.S. response to this? Silence, as far as I can tell. No official statement. To make a statement would be to admit one of those fact thingies that the president has got no time for.

Life for Afghani women grows worse by the day. Consider this from The Independent:

Human rights groups point out, however, that the battle for women's rights is in serious danger of being lost. There are now entire provinces where there is no girls' education; of the 300 schools shut or burnt down, the majority were for girls. The death rate at childbirth is the second highest in the world, and the number of women who have committed suicide, mainly through self-immolation, has risen by 30 per cent in two years.

Life gets worse for Afghan women

Violence

* 50 per cent of Afghan women say they have been beaten, while 200 women in Kandahar ran away from domestic violence this year.

* In the past year, 150 cases of women resorting to self-immolation have been reported in western Afghanistan, 34 cases in the south-east.

* 197 women in Herat were reported to have attempted suicide last year, 69 successfully.

* 57 per cent of girls are married before the legal age of 16.

Education

* 85 per cent of women in Afghanistan are illiterate.

* The number of girls going to school in Afghanistan is half that of boys.

* 300 schools were set on fire across the country this year.

Health

* 70 per cent of tuberculosis deaths are among women.

* Death rate of mothers in labour is 60 in 1000 - (60 per cent higher than developed world).

* Only 5-7 per cent of women in Zabul and Helmand province have access to health care.

Voting

* 41 per cent of the 10.5 million registered voters are women. Women's registration rates in southern provinces were much lower than the national average: Zabul (9 per cent), Uruzgan (10 per cent) Helmand (16 per cent), and Kandahar (27 per cent)

Source: AIHRC, UNICEF, HRW

Leonard Doyle, commentator for the Independent reports that Amajan had been threatened before.

Safia Amajan, who was murdered yesterday, had already asked for protection, and been denied it, after receiving threats last autumn. An easy target, she leaves a 17-year-old son and a paralysed husband.

And then, the chilling quotation from those who worked with Amajan:

Her colleagues in her Kandahar office for women's issues were transfixed with fear yesterday when they were visited by human rights monitors. But they too were not surprised by the outcome. Two years ago, the governor of Kandahar province told Amnesty International: "At the moment, there are more pressing issues... a civil servant has too much on his mind to deal with women's rights. It's a matter of priorities."

Dear God. Where have I heard this refrain before? Priorities? Women's lives are not a priority?

Women are under attack in the United States. Our rights to reproductive freedom, to freedom from domestic violence, to our rights to privacy, our rights to claim our own voices and bodies, all of that is under attack, not only from our own Christian Fundamentalists, and from an administration that allows organizations like Concerned Women for America to represent it at international symposia, but also from the party that is supposed to be fighting for our rights. Democrats. Democrats who have told women repeatedly this year to hold our noses and vote for anti-choice Democrats, because, as the general wisdom holds, putting anti-choice Democrats into Congress will at least put more Democrats in Congress, where with a new majority, they can assume the leadership positions that will finally make a difference in the lives of women.

I weep with frustration and rage that I live in a world where women's rights are not a priority. Where our humanity, our very right to live, is a political abstraction rather than a reality.

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