Highlighting Women's Struggles In Afghanistan and Iraq
Nora Boustany
The Washington Post
02/18/2004
Democratic and Republican women joined last Thursday
evening at a screening of the award-winning movie "Osama,"
which champions the cause of Afghan women who have been subjected
to religious tyranny and oppression.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Labor Secretary
Elaine L. Chao and Paula J. Dobriansky, undersecretary of state
for global affairs, spoke at a special screening of the movie,
hosted by the Motion Picture Association of America.
At the event, Clinton and Chris McGurk, vice chairman
of MGM, launched the Vital Voices Afghan and Iraqi Women's Leadership
Program, backed by a $6 million grant to train and empower women.
The film is the story of a teenager who masquerades
as a boy so she can bring bread home during the period that
the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan. Though renamed Osama
by a friend who sought to protect her, she raises the suspicions
of an elderly sheik instructing young boys. Osama's identity
is revealed and she is led away for execution, only to be rescued
by the sheik, who forces her into his harem of other unwilling
wives kept under lock and key.
"I'm really hoping this movie will reignite
American interest in the state of Afghan women. It is no longer
on our front pages, but I don't want Afghanistan to be forgotten,"
Clinton said in an interview before the screening. "It
is also important for American girls and women not to take their
good fortune for granted. It is a moral and human imperative."
In remarks following the presentation, she said,
"This is a message that Republicans and Democrats care
about."
Clinton visited Iraq and Afghanistan last Thanksgiving
and recently wrote a letter to President Bush describing her
concerns about setbacks for Iraqi women. She called on U.S.
occupation authorities in Iraq to guarantee the full participation
of women in a planned handover to Iraqi control.
Chao, just back from visiting a women's rights
center in Hilla, Iraq, said the people she met were "hungry
for democracy. . . . We know we have got our work cut out for
us in Iraq."
Dobriansky said that although the film does not
have a happy ending, "The basic impulses of women and men
everywhere -- to live in a prosperous, free and peaceful society
-- can never be fully extinguished."
Afghan Ambassador Said Tayeb Jawad said Afghan
girls have returned to school in record numbers. About 42 percent
of the 4 million children attending classes are girls, he said.
"We have come a long way in two short years,"
Jawad said. "But in order to help Afghan women realize
their rights and visions, we need the continued support and
sustained engagement of the U.S. We must keep Afghanistan in
the spotlight."
Bigger Anti-Drug Role Urged
Antonio Maria Costa, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and
Crime, met with U.S. officials yesterday, seeking action to
counter increased opium poppy production and drug trafficking
in Afghanistan.
Costa told Pentagon and State Department officials
that the activity is linked to international smuggling organizations
and has increased since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in
2002. He proposed creating counternarcotics units within provincial
reconstruction teams in Afghanistan.
He said there was a need to improve intelligence
and track transshipments through tribal areas still ruled by
warlords on the eastern border with Pakistan and in the northeast
near Tajikistan. Part of the effort, he said, would be to avoid
confusing traffickers with local farmers, who should be supported
in developing alternative sources of income.
Opium poppy cultivation increased from about 20,000
acres in 2001 -- when the Taliban banned cultivation, but not
trafficking -- to about 200,000 acres, Costa said. He said income
from opium production has jumped from $56 million in 2001 to
more than $1 billion in 2003 because of the sharp increase in
prices and cultivated areas.
Confusion for Chadian
Ahmat Soubiane Hassaballah, Chad's ambassador to Washington,
said he is attempting to sort out reports from the Chadian capital
of N'Djamena, quoting radio and television broadcasts that he
was recalled from his post last Friday.
Soubiane said message traffic from the capital,
which usually summarizes decrees and news from Chad, did not
list such a report. He said neither he nor the State Department
was officially notified of the measure, although a Web site
run by an opposition party carried the news, quoting local media.
"I am a little flustered by all this. I have
not been able to reach the Foreign Ministry, but it is their
duty to inform me," the ambassador said.
The ambassador has criticized the country's president,
Lt. Gen. Idriss Deby, who has proposed a constitutional change
that would make him president for life.
"There has to be an orderly, smooth and democratic
transition," Soubiane said. His reported firing, he said,
"changes nothing about the principles and democratic aspirations
Chadians are committed to."
