Afghan Women

Your picture (Part I, April 27) of armed Afghan women, faces grim with determination, ready to fight for their rights, has caused me to wonder: What is going to happen to these women if the American-backed Muslim moujahedeen get back in power? Will the women have to step back behind their veils according to fundamentalist Muslim custom without a chance for higher education and without the right to make choices? Will they again live shadow lives behind their fathers, husbands and brothers?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The number of women and girls jailed by Afghan authorities for "moral crimes" has risen by 50% in the last year and a half, an alarming statistic that reflects the Afghan government's need to step up efforts to protect women's rights, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. The New York-based rights group cited Afghan Interior Ministry statistics showing a sharp increase in the number of women and girls imprisoned for "moral crimes," from 400 in October 2011 to 600 in May 2013.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The number of women and girls jailed by Afghan authorities for "moral crimes" has risen by 50% in the last year and a half, an alarming statistic that reflects the Afghan government's need to step up efforts to protect women's rights, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. The New York-based rights group cited Afghan Interior Ministry statistics showing a sharp increase in the number of women and girls imprisoned for "moral crimes," from 400 in October 2011 to 600 in May 2013.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE PASAB, Afghanistan - They fly troops into combat, drive convoys down mine-riddled roads and take part in foot patrols in the heartland of the Taliban-led insurgency. For American women serving at military bases across Afghanistan, there was nothing extraordinary about the recent Pentagon decision to lift the official ban on women in direct combat roles. "We're already here," said Army Capt. Kelly Hasselman, 28, of Broken Arrow, Okla., who commands a company of female soldiers that deployed with infantry in the southern province of Kandahar to build relations with rural Afghan women.

At the convention of the loya jirga, or grand assembly, to debate Afghanistan's new constitution, an extraordinary thing happened. Malalai Joya, a 25-year-old female social worker from the rural province of Farah, stood up and said what no one up to now had dared say: that many of the jirga's committee chairmen were criminals. Instead of being given influential positions, they should be tried for their crimes.

WASHINGTON - In the final months of her tenure as secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton is fighting a long retreat on a cause close to her heart, and to her legacy - the status of Afghan women. Clinton embraced the cause long before the first U.S. troops landed in the country, and as secretary of State she has brought Afghan women worldwide attention, political power and unbending promises of American support. "We will not abandon you," she pledged. But now, with U.S. officials laying plans to remove most troops in two years, the Afghan government and other institutions appear to be adjusting their positions on women's rights to accommodate conservative factions.

More than 300 Afghan women have complained to a state agency about a "Women Helping Women" pyramid scheme that scammed them of thousands of dollars, officials said. Department of Corporations officials have been told participants contributed $625 to $5,000 to the women-only scheme that targeted the Afghan community.

One by one, each smartly uniformed member of the class stood at full attention, brandished a graduation certificate and uttered the ritual call-out: "I will serve Afghanistan!" But for the first time, the proud group of newly commissioned army officers was made up entirely of women. The 29 second lieutenants were the first female recruits to complete a 20-week officer-candidate program mentored by U.S. troops. Their graduation ceremony this week at a sprawling training facility on Kabul's eastern outskirts marked a milestone for Afghan security forces and spoke volumes about the complex interplay here of gender roles and security demands.

For nine years, Tajwar Kakar has been fighting Afghanistan's "holy war" in her own way. Kakar, a 40-year-old schoolteacher, was imprisoned and tortured for more than a year in Kabul, the Afghan capital, for opposing the Soviet invasion in 1979. Five years ago, she fled with her husband and seven children and started schools for Afghan refugee girls in this Pakistani border town.

Re "Female pilots on standby," Column One, Dec. 28 The article implies that because these women are serving in the male-dominated Afghan armed forces, they are being deliberately left behind. The fact is that both the pilots profiled by The Times are scheduled to go back on active duty this month and will soon begin training on Afghan helicopters. It should be noted that reservists occasionally wait extended periods before going back on active duty to resume training. This happens in Western armies too. I believe The Times could have shown better editorial judgment by not printing a picture of the pilots' faces and their names.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Gunmen killed another female Afghan official in the latest in a series of violent attacks on women who promote women's rights or are involved in activities outside their traditional roles here as homemakers. The acting director for women's affairs in the northeastern province of Laghman was shot and killed by two gunmen Monday morning as she was on her way to her office. The director, Najia Sediqqi, had been filling in for her predecessor, Hanifa Safi, who was assassinated in Laghman in July by a bomb attached to her car. No group immediately took responsibility for Sediqqi's murder.

KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday ordered a top-level investigation into the killing of an Afghan student who had volunteered to assist with polio vaccinations in villages in the northern province of Kapisa. Karzai appointed a commission of five high-ranking government officials in Kabul to probe the death of the woman identified as Hanisa, 22, a 12th-grader who was shot by gunmen riding two motorcycles as she reported to work on her first day as a vaccination volunteer Saturday morning.

KABUL, Afghanistan - In her small village of Kalota, north of Kabul, the young woman named Hanisa was known to be headstrong and independent. At 22, she had persevered in school long enough to reach 12th grade, and she was determined to flout tradition and work outside her home. Hanisa had just left her house Saturday and was on her way to her first day of work as a village vaccination worker when three men on two motorcycles roared up behind her. She was shot at least six times and collapsed, bleeding profusely from abdominal wounds, according to Qais Qadiri, a spokesman for the governor's office in Kapisa province.

SAN FRANCISCO - Capt. Zoe Bedell graduated at the top of her Marine Corps officer candidates class. In deployments to Afghanistan, she oversaw "female engagement teams" that accompanied male infantry units into the field - living and working in identical conditions. Yet since 1994, the Defense Department has formally excluded women from most direct ground combat positions, creating a growing disconnect with the realities of warfare. Bedell said she left active duty last year because the policy limited her potential for promotion by failing to officially recognize her combat leadership experience.

BRISTOW, Va. - Last year, Army Col. Ellen Haring thought she was finally getting her dream job. She was selected to supervise female soldiers who search and interview Afghan women in combat zones for special operations units. Haring spent three months training at Ft. Bragg, N.C. Then, just before she was to deploy to Afghanistan, she got a phone call from a staff officer. "Ma'am, we don't think you're qualified," she recalled him saying. The job went to a lower-ranking male officer.

KABUL, Afghanistan - In a disastrous day for the NATO force in Afghanistan, four American troops were gunned down Sunday by Afghan police, a U.S. airstrike killed eight Afghan women foraging for fuel on a rural hillside, and military officials disclosed that a Taliban strike on a southern base had destroyed more than $150 million worth of planes and equipment - in money terms, by far the costliest single insurgent attack in 11 years of warfare....

The show: "One Person Crying: Women and War" at the Museum of Tolerance The concept : War is often seen as the domain of men, but L.A.-based photographer Marissa Roth wants to draw attention to its devastating, often long-lasting effect on women. "Whether you are in Bosnia or Belfast or Phnom Penh," she says, "women are dealing with the aftermath: how to grieve, how to keep the family together, how to keep food on the table. " What you'll see: Roth's portraits of mothers, widows, survivors and activists that were taken over 28 years and represent the social, emotional and physical effects of a dozen conflicts from World War II to the war in Iraq.