Women’s Rights in Afghanistan: “Before” and “After” America’s Destructive Wars

Unknown to Americans, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Kabul was “a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture, engineering and business at the city’s university. Afghan women held government jobs. Prior to the rise of the Taliban [which was instrumented by the CIA], women in Afghanistan were protected under law and increasingly afforded rights in Afghan society. Women received the right to vote in the 1920s; and as early as the 1960s, the Afghan constitution provided for equality for women. There was a mood of tolerance and openness as the country began moving toward democracy. Women were making important contributions to national development. In 1977, women comprised over 15% of Afghanistan’s highest legislative body. It is estimated that by the early 1990s, 70% of schoolteachers, 50% of government workers and university students, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women. Osama bin Laden, America’s bogyman, was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US-sponsored jihad. He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA-sponsored guerrilla training camp. The architects of the covert operation in support of “Islamic fundamentalism” initiated during the Reagan presidency played a key role in launching the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) in the wake of 9/11. Under the Reagan administration, US foreign policy evolved towards the unconditional support and endorsement of the Islamic “freedom fighters”. In today’s world, the “freedom fighters” are labelled “Islamic terrorists”. The Soviet-Afghan war was part of a CIA covert agenda initiated during the Carter administration, which consisted  in actively supporting and financing the Islamic brigades, later known as Al Qaeda. The number of CIA-sponsored religious schools (madrasahs) increased from 2,500 in 1980 to over 39,000. USAID generously financed the process of religious indoctrination, largely to secure the demise of secular institutions and the collapse of civil society.  The Soviet-Afghan war was part of a CIA covert agenda initiated during the Carter administration, which consisted  in actively supporting and financing the Islamic brigades, later known as Al Qaeda. The number of CIA-sponsored religious schools (madrasahs) increased from 2,500 in 1980 to over 39,000. USAID generously financed the process of religious indoctrination, largely to secure the demise of secular institutions and the collapse of civil society.  The media casually blames this on the Taliban, without acknowledging that Islamic Fundamentalism and the koranic schools had been imposed by the CIA. Public education was destroyed and the rights of women in a predominately secular society which took its roots in the 1920s were DESTROYED. This destruction is coupled with the massive impoverishment and demise of an entire country, cradle of civilization in Central Asia going back to 3000 BC.