Women’s Rights in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Genuine Concerns or Political Considerations

The international opposition to a recent law in Afghanistan undermining the women’s rights is a welcome move. The new sharia family law, signed by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on March 31, deals with issues of marriage, divorce, inheritance and sexual relations. Most of the provisions have put women in a disadvantage position, even allowing what the Western Human Rights observes refer to as marital rape. Though President Karzai has agreed to review the law, the international community continues to target the Afghan government with reintroducing laws reminiscent of the Taliban regime. The law was also criticized by the leaders attending the NATO Summit in early April. The specifics of the law apart, criticism is being focused on the possible use of the law as a vote gathering strategy by President Karzai. Many observers view President Karzai’s move as the appeasement of the fundamentalist and Shi’ite factions ahead of the Presidential elections in August.Â
But before this surge of international protest against President Karzai’s government is accepted a few revelations are important.
The law is being criticized as discriminatory including the provision whereby women will not be allowed to inherit the property of their husbands. The fact remains that this law will apply the above provision to 15% of the Afghan women only – the Shi’ite women. Under the Afghan law the vast majority of the Sunni women are already deprived of this right. The law, irrespective of its Shi’a or Sunni adherents is discriminatory and needs to be abolished. But the western critics of the law are merely focusing on the recent law which applies to the minority Shi’ite population.
The law has not emerged suddenly but had been debated in the Afghanistan Parliament in the past two years. Though such an exercise does not justify the curtailment of women’s freedoms it raises an important question: why was the law not opposed when it was introduced in the Parliament in the first place?
There has been widespread criticism regarding the deprival of basic human rights to women under the garb of implementing the Islamic law in Afghanistan. If the international concern is genuine and not political, why has there not been a strong condemnation of the recent flogging of a teenaged girl in Pakistan? Though the issue has was sporadically criticized it has failed to receive the kind of exposure and denunciation that it merits. The Afghan law is being criticized for its futuristic implications but the incident Pakistan is an example of how women are being deprived of rights in the present. In the Swat Valley, a 17 year old girl was beaten in public as she was seen with a man who was not her family member. The video below is a disturbing evidence of the incident.

My contention is not that Afghanistan government should not be pressurized for withdrawing the law, but I am concerned with the selective application of the women’s rights. There is no pressure for granting the Sunni women of Afghanistan or teenagers in Pakistan their rights as human beings. The current phase of condemnation to my mind is less about women’s rights and more about achieving the agenda of some Western nations to malign President Karzai’s government. I do not intend to defend President Karzai in any way but at the same time refuse to support this politicization of the Human Rights issue.