New York State of Mind

[Doug Millison]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11640

"[...]  Late Tuesday night Tamina spoke to a group called New Yorkers Say
No To War. About 75 people crowded into a room in Greenwich Village's Gay
and Lesbian Community Center to hear her, because Americans have begun to
see a lot in the media lately about the oppression of women under the
Taliban. We've begun, finally, to hear about the women whom the Taliban ban
from working, keep from school, flog for wearing makeup, even execute. Now
that U.S. leaders are selling the nation on war against the Taliban, there
are a lot of pictures of silent, shrouded Afghan women on the news. But the
U.S. media veil Afghan women, too. You sure don't get to hear what any of
them have to say. [...] Asked Tuesday if people in Afghanistan support U.S.
collaboration with the Northern Alliance to oust the Taliban, Tamina said
RAWA opposes pouring more weapons into an already starving and desperate
land. "The first step must be to stop financial and military support going
to the Taliban and all the militias," she said.
Recalling the period 1992-1996, when the groups that now comprise the
Northern Alliance vied for power after the fall of the Soviet-installed
Najibullah regime, Tamina noted that "Afghans know the Northern Alliance."
They remember, she said, a time when women were raped en masse, and young
girls were forced into marriages with military commanders. Thousands were
killed and tortured. "We don't want that period back," she said. RAWA
supports a UN peacekeeping mission to disarm all warring factions, all
fundamentalists, all terrorists, said Tamina. "The people of Aghanistan
want peace, security and the opportunity to rebuild under a government
established by legitimate elections where the people can read, and
understand their options, and vote without a gun to their heads," she said.
[...]"