Further to the recent Time magazine article about the impact of a US withdrawal from Afghanistan on women's rights (see WVON story), the Feminist Peace Network points out that the article completely ignored the negative impact of the US presence in the country.
It says that much the same applies to this article in the New York Times which is predicated on the notion that the rights of women (such as they are) will be threatened by a US withdrawal and a return of the Taliban.
Clearly that is a realistic fear but as the New York Time piece points out, women's precarious rights are already seeping away. And that is before the US leaves. They have been increasingly shut out of political decisions by President Karzai and although US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has promised that women's rights would not be traded in a deal with the Taliban, women remain wary.
So a US withdrawal would clearly not be helpful to women, but perhaps a more realistic assessment of why things have barely improved for women since the US invasion of 2001 might shed some light on how to move forward now.
