Radical Feminism in Afghanistan

Looks like we did a lot of good there ousting the Talliban. They've gone from one extreme to the next. The one constant is the extremity of the punishment.

Oh my! Talk about fighting fire with fire.

I suppose that a society will go about anything in a way shaped by the pre-existing shape of that society, if you see what I mean.

I wonder if it will work - and if something else would have? I suppose the leaders know their own people.....

Hmm - that is an interesting article...and website.

Yes. So now they're enforcing "democracy" using their old traditions... I wonder if it's progress.

Hmmm - what an interesting question!

You know, I think it will be if people embrace it - thing is, if it is forced on people too much, there is likely to be a radical reaction. I think it is gonna be a very fine line to walk. Seems like the democratisers are trying to be sensitive - and that it was the elders who decided this was the way to go!!!

I think they may be on to something.

We have a very low turnout for elections here. The threat of having ones house burned to the ground might be the answer.

Who says the US knows everything about democracy. It is possible we could learn a thing or two from others.

I'll bet Attilla the Hun could teach us something too.

Ye gads and li'l fishes! I don't know why I'm tempted to treat this with any degree of seriousness at all; seems to me it would be easier to act all superior and smug and that, to just make some sarcastic comment and let it go. But I succumb to temptation, as is frequently my wont.

Does it seem to anyone else (besides me, I mean) that that part of the world is simply not ready yet for democracy? They obviously have no understanding of it. At the risk of offending dlowan and any other Australians here, I will say this. It is my understanding that in Oz there is a penalty for not exercising one's franchise of suffrage. If that is so, it seems to me but one step removed from the Afghani situation. In a truly free and democratic society, it seems to me, I have a right to elect my government, not an obligation. If I choose not to exercise my option, then I richly deserve whatever I get and have no cause for complaint.

Furthermore, I doubt that this has anything to do with 'feminism', radical or otherwise. It is simply a total misunderstanding of the entire concept of personal freedom and democracy.

I think they do this Belgium too, no? I'd agree with you that it's neither helpful nor in the true spirit of democracy.


I disagree. If the men are working actively or passively to prevent women from registering to vote, something of a little chivvy along is needed, in my opinion. Just nothing like the way it's being gone about.

Left to their own devices men in America waited about two hundred years before they decided women could vote. Understandably, there are people in Afghanistan who consider that kind of timescale unacceptable. Of course, their women are already allowed to vote now, but if this was simply a matter of Afghani women choosing not to vote, I doubt it would've come to this.

Indeed.

PS: In Oz, once you have registered to vote, there is a piddling fine if you fail to turn up to the voting booth. They cannot tell whether you voted or not.

There is no obligation to register.

There is a long and complicated history to this - but this thread is neither the time nor the place to discuss it.

"Does it seem to anyone else (besides me, I mean) that that part of the world is simply not ready yet for democracy? They obviously have no understanding of it."

That is an interesting comment.

What is the US/UN to do?

Having invaded the country, it would be hard to explain NOT leaving a democracy, wouldn't it?

I don't know about "not ready for it" - but, it seems there are many cultural and historical forces in Afghanistan that will make it very difficult for ANY stable government to form.

My small understanding of the country suggests that, pre-Taliban, Kabul, at least, was a sophisticated city where women had many freedoms - but that the countryside was different - and that the warlords have been around for a long time.

Having "touched it" (in the sense of the old flow chart of disaster - you know - Is it broken? Yes/No If yes, You Poor Bastard. Did you touch it Yes/No If Yes, You poor bastard Does anyone know you touched it? and so on) it will be very hard for us to leave it alone - but equally hard, I would have thought, to make anything lasting happen. Sigh.

I wonder if there might not be some societies on this planet for whom democracy, as we who were weaned on Western Civ understand it, is not really a viable option? At its roots, is the notion of personal liberty really just a cultural bias which we in the so-called West have been developing since at least the days of Periclean Greece? It doesn't seem to have cropped up spontaneously anywhere else, not in Asia, not in pre-colonial Africa, not among the advanced civilizations of pre-Columbian America. The whole notion that the people should have certain 'inalienable rights' seems to be limited to those nations which trace their cultural roots back through European history.

That is interesting.

It reminds me of the old "Asian values" debate.

Oz, being an odd outpost of European-ness in the Asia-pacific region, is very subject (and not without good reason, given our history and blunder proneness!) to being accused of nasty neo-colonial attitudes.

Our foreign policy is to sort of encourage human rights and democracy in Asia - we have often been accused (as no doubt the US has too) of failing to understand Asian values. In the time of the mini-dragon boom, we were gleefully told by the leaders of the mini-dragon countries that it was these Asian values which were showing their superiority economically.

Interestingly, the many human rights advocates in these countries say that paying heed to the Asian values argument is extremely counter-productive and, in their view, racist.

I add that in terms of the enormous value placed on individual as opposed to collective rights, the US is a very extreme example of the former.

I believe that Oz and Canada and Great Britain, for example, have the marker placed farther towards the collective good than you guys do.

I am therefore arguing that a democracy is perfectly possible without the extreme emphasis placed on personal liberty that the US has.

I think you're right, Deb. 'Murricans tend to see the notion of 'the common good' as an abstraction, while personal freedoms and liberties (e.g. the right to bear arms, the right to curse our leaders at will etc.) have an immediate, subjective value. Immediate gratification without thought of consequence. We are emotional infants on the world stage.

LOL! Aren't we all - we have the right to curse our leaders, and do so with pathetic obsessiveness.

We have, however, happily (except for what is seen here as a lunatic fringe) accepted some restrictions on our right to have large automatic weapons - and pistols.

'Tis just a matter of balance - and every democracy worthy of the name doubtless considers its balance just right - and everyone else's wrong...

It seems to me that objecting to compulsory voting is in the same category as objecting to taxation. It is a selfish and irresponsible impulse to allow others to preserve the benefits that social organisation confers.

Exactly, and I think the right to curse ought remain the privilege of those who vote.

Wasn't ancient Greece's democracy actually very selective? In that there were representative bodies, but only a select elite had that freedom to elect them?

If so, one can wonder if it was really more than gradually different from pre-colonial 'Councils of Elders' and the likes in parts of Africa ...