Afghan Women Should Be Free (But Not Rumsfeld)

I'm still bowled over by how much better a job the foreign press does at covering U.S. actions and policies. Scotland's Sunday Herald has a great report on that other ongoing occupation, in Afghanistan:

It was three years ago that George Bush triumphantly announced: "The mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school - today women are free."

However, most women still wear the all-encompassing burqa, through fear of attack and social pressure, a third of women in Kabul do not leave the house, forbidden from doing so by the male members of the family, and it is still almost impossible for women to get a divorce. ...

"When the Americans came I thought it would be better, but nothing has changed," says Sharifa, with a shy smile.

Sharifa's story is heartbreaking. She was forced to marry a 30 year-old man three years ago, when she was 12. He prostituted her, so she ran away from him -- twice. The first time she was captured and forced to return by the Taliban. But the second time, "her captors had been installed by the American-led coalition. In President Hamid Karzai's Afghanistan, women are still imprisoned for running away from home." And it doesn't matter what they're running away from.

On a lighter note, uber-hawk Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld isn't enjoying complete freedom of movement these days, either:

Last month, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights filed a complaint with the Federal German Prosecutor's Office against Rumsfeld, accusing him of war crimes and torture in connection with the Iraqi abuse scandal that first surfaced last April.

Right after the complaint was filed against him, Rumsfeld announced that he won’t attend the Munich conference [on global security issues] unless Germany cancels the legal action.

The Center for Constitutional Rights accuses the Secretary of Defense of violations of German legislation which outlaws war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide independent of the place of crime or origin of the accused. ...

The organization said it turned to German prosecutors "as a court of last resort" because the U.S. government "is unwilling to open an independent investigation" and had "refused to join the International Criminal Court."

Way to go, CCR! (And thanks to esp for the link.)

The story reminds me of a scene towards the beginning of the excellent documentary "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," where the interviewee (I forget who) says that Kissinger was afraid that his buddy Augusto Pinochet's arrest in Britain might mean the end of his frequent flyer accounts. Damn, that's the least that should happen to people guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity.