February 21, 2013

Afghan Taliban target women

By: Golnar Motevalli

THE number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has decreased for the first time in six years, said the UN, but targeted killings by insurgents — particularly of women, girls and government employees — increased dramatically.

In its annual report on the protection of civilians in armed conflict, the UN recorded 2,754 Afghan civilians being killed in 2012, a decrease of 12 per cent compared with 2011, and 4,805 being injured, a slight rise.

The overall decline was attributed in part to one of the worst winters on record impeding fighting. Fewer suicide bomb attacks and a fall in the number of air strikes also helped ease 2012’s death toll.

But the report showed a 20 per cent increase in the number of women and girls killed or injured. Deliberate targeting by the Taliban and other insurgents also tripled in 2012, said the UN. Most were hit while in their homes or working in fields.

Of the 854 female casualties, 504 were a result of insurgent attacks, while foreign and Afghan troops were responsible for 155 deaths and injuries. Tragically, however, more than 200 female casualties were unattributable and could only be explained by the UN as a result of “the explosive remnants of war”.

The UN warned about the sanctioned use of local militias and their recruitment to the Afghan Local Police, particularly in the north and northeast of the country. The ALP is a localised militia-based force whose training was suspended by US forces in September owing to a dramatic rise in the number of inside attacks carried out by recruits.

According to the UN, the use of the ALP “unintentionally contributed to expand and solidify the power of armed groups” in the north.

The north saw some of the worst targeted assassinations by insurgents of government employees, a tactic which also spiked, the report said, resulting in a dramatic 700 per cent increase in the number of civilian casualties attributed to this type of violence in 2012.

By contrast the number of Afghan civilians killed by Nato-led and Afghan security forces dropped by nearly 40 per cent.

A spokesman for the Taliban dismissed the report, calling it “a vehicle of propaganda against” the group. “…You cannot find a single operation by the Taliban in which civilians have been killed … We are raising a jihad … for the freedom of the Afghan people,” said Zabiullah Mujahed.

The UN also said it had identified a shift in the Taliban’s public relations efforts.

The group’s promotion of insider attacks on foreign troops and the pin-pointing of military targets, the report said, showed “a heightened awareness” by Taliban leadership of a need to publicly demonstrate that it wants to protect Afghan civilians, and win “hearts and minds”.

Dawn

February 21, 2013

Girl power: School key to ending oppression: Mukhtaran Mai

GENEVA: The gang rape victim who became an international icon for daring to stand up to her attackers insists education is the key to ending the oppression of women in Pakistan.

“Education is really most important,” Mukhtaran Mai, who has founded several schools in Pakistan since her ordeal over a decade ago, told AFP in an interview on the sidelines of a human rights summit in Geneva this week.

Mai, who is unsure of her exact age but thinks she is “around 40”, should know.

After she was brutally gang raped in June 2002, the police she turned to for help “wrote whatever they wanted” in their report and got her to sign with a thumb-print.

She had no way of verifying that they gave an accurate account of her grim story. She was illiterate.

A village council had ordered the gang rape as punishment after her 12-year-old brother was accused – wrongly, according to a later investigation – of having illicit relations with a woman from a rival tribe.

According to tradition, Mai should have killed herself or at least run away to protect her family’s honour, but she did neither. She took her attackers to court and used the compensation money she received to start her first school for girls.

Mai acknowledges that she too, at first, had planned to take her own life. But before that could happen though, she met some “highly educated” people who convinced her to do something, to help others in similar situations.

In the years since then, Mai has earned herself an education and opened two primary schools for girls in the southern Punjab region, as well as a shelter home for women.

However, there are still setbacks.

In April 2011, the Supreme Court upheld the acquittal of five men sentenced to death for her attack, and commuted the sentence for the main accused to life behind bars.

Mai also said she still often receives threats, and expressed horror at the Taliban attack on 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai, an education activist from Swat last year.

“But I won’t stop my work,” Mai said. “We should always be hopeful that the situation in Pakistan will change.”

While oppression of women and rape exist everywhere, she said they were especially rampant in her own country and neighbouring India, where the fatal gang-rape of a student in New Dehli in December sparked outraged protests.

“The problem is that the laws in Pakistan and India are weaker,” she said, adding that while laws do exist to protect women they are often not implemented.

Despite a dire lack of funding for her schools, Mai said she was intent on giving the nearly 1,000 girls there the basic tools they will need to stand up for themselves and push for change.

The Express Tribune

February 21, 2013

Man killed for ‘honour’

SUKKUR: A man was killed on the pretext of Karo-kari by armed men on Wednesday in Mohib Jatoi village within the remit of the Abad police station near Jacobabad.

Niaz Ahmed Jatoi was sitting in a restaurant when he was attacked.

Later, the armed attackers went to the house of another man, Ali Gohar aka Kheral Jatoi, and opened fire on his wife. They left her wounded.

The local police shifted the body and the wounded woman to the Civil Hospital Jacobabad. Her condition was said to be stable, as a bullet had hit her in the leg.

The victim’s body was handed over to the relatives after a post-mortem examination.

Dawn

February 21, 2013

Rape most heartbreaking

As if we already do not have enough to mourn in this country, the dark spectre of sexual violence still looms large. The most recent act of brutality perpetrated against a female is even more savage because the victim was a minor — just 11 years old. The incident took place in Islamabad where the child was gang-raped and burnt to death, her little body dumped in a ditch. That the crime was perpetrated against a little child is enough to make one see red. However, this is not the first such case. Just last month, a nine-year-old girl was kidnapped and also gang-raped, left in critical condition by the monsters that violated her. These cases symbolise truly the death of innocence in this country. The rape of the nine-year-old was reported and never followed up and now we have the rape and murder of an 11-year-old on our hands. No doubt feeling the moral pressure, the Supreme Court (SC) has taken suo motu notice of the incident. Whilst one is glad that someone, somewhere decided to take up this matter, one cannot help but wonder at the inadequacy of the current dispensation in preventing these crimes.

Whilst there is no doubt that the SC had its best intentions at heart, where acts of such a criminal nature are concerned it might not be such a wise idea to cut out all the tiers of our criminal justice and law enforcement system with one notice. The SC is doing what no one else has bothered to do — bring some sort of retribution to the perpetrators — but what in actuality needs to be done is the strengthening of the system that captures and brings to book rapists and the like for it is impossible for the SC to take notice of every rape that occurs here. It is vital that the police and law enforcement agencies take this crime seriously and act in a timely and effective manner when such heinous acts occur. The SC’s notices short circuit this process and this will result in further incompetence and laziness by those actually responsible for catching rapists. Arrests are never made and women are treated as though they are somehow responsible for these crimes. It is this attitude that needs to change. The fact that rapists are never caught and women are stigmatised must be overcome. The fact that rape is not looked at as a crime has fuelled the patriarchal mindset that sees women and little girls as no better than sexual fodder, and this too needs to change. We live in a society that is moving towards a draconian form of conservatism where men and women hardly ever interact, increasing the frustration in this society. Whether this is leading to more rapes is not certain, but it does engender unhealthy attitudes amongst men. Society needs to change the psychology with which it views women, men and women, and the relationship between them. Even innocent little children are not safe.

Daily Times