The Taliban's War against Women: Women's Rights Inhumanly Denied

Summary In the report, The Taliban’s War Against Women, from the United States Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, posted November 17, 2001, the role of Afghanistan’s women in society fell dramatically after the Taliban takeover. Women held various rolls in society before the Taliban, and even though they denied basic rights to all, women’s rights were inhumanly denied. Tremendous assets were lost due to the Afghan women being forced out of the workplace. The Taliban takeover led to a disastrous civil war, lasting over twenty years. Many men were killed, leaving the women with no income and forcing them to “sell all of their possessions and beg in the streets” (Department of State 1). Education was forbidden for women, adding to the poverty devastation. Mortality rates began to rise in women and children as they were denied proper healthcare. According to the Department of State, suicide became a cheap answer to their problems (4). Not only were the women denied healthcare and jobs, they were required to follow a dress code as well. They were to wear burkas, which were tent-like full body garment that covered women from head to toe (Department of State 4). Under no circumstances were women to be seen without a burka, and even then they were required to be accompanied by a male relative. Failure to do so resulted in severe punishment and sometimes death (Department of State 5). Even though the Taliban claimed it was just trying to help women and keep them safe, all they did was crush Afghani women’s worthiness (Department of State 5). They took away basic rights, including work, education, and healthcare, along with others. Many women have left and went to surrounding countries, which still honor women as an important part of the society. “Islam is a religion that respects women and humanity. The Taliban respects neither” (Department of State 5). The United States has stepped up to help Afghanistan tremendously. The

Cited: United States. Dept. of State. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. The Taliban’s War against Women. 17 Nov.2001. Web. 21 Nov.2010. Nakyia Carr Prof. Gunderson Elementary Comp. W131, Section # 10361 07 December 2010 Writer’s Statement Before this paper, I had not written many summaries. Summarizing is a weak point for me, because I tend to want to write everything down. Every detail seems like a major point to me and I have a hard time deciding what to leave out. Writing this paper and getting help in class really helped me with my summarizing skills. Another issue I had when writing was deciding when to cite the information and knowing if I had paraphrased or actually put it into my own words. The peer review was a great help to me with this, and I understand paraphrasing much better. I believe the greatest strength of my paper is how I put the information into my own words when I could and did not use too much detail. This was a big deal to me, because like I said before, I am not very good at picking out main points. Putting sentences into my own words has also been a struggle for me but I think I did a good job in this paper. My greatest weakness of the paper was citing the information at the appropriate time. After the peer review, I tried to fix this as much as possible, but I still do not feel completely comfortable that I got everything. I also feel like I left some details out, but that may just be because I think every detail is important. After I have fixed everything, I do not consider this to be a strong paper of mine. I do not think I will choose this for my portfolio but if I decided to, I would write a reflection summary. As a woman, I have many strong feelings about the way women are still being treated around the world. A reflection allows you to talk about how the writing has affected you and this would be a good way to get my feelings out about the Taliban.