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Sunday, November 8, 2009

The Women of Herat
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In my column today I write about the Voice of Women Organization in Herat, Afghanistan, which runs shelters for abused women, helps women in prison, and runs workshops to help sensitize men to respect women more in accordance with Islamic values.

The staff of VWO are all remarkable. On the left is founder Suraya Pakzad., whom I profile today. To her right is Safia, who - under the Taliban - managed to keep working with her husband for an NGO that gave small loans to couples; she road on a motorcyle to distribute that aid.  Malika, to her right, fled with her family to Iran to escape the Taliban. Wahida, to her right, could no longer study under Taliban rules, until she learned that nurses' training was permitted and enrolled in a a course. Now all work as professionls for VWO, and are hoping the Taliban won't make a comeback.

The woman on the far right doesn't have to worry about such things, since she lives in Philadelpha. 
Posted by Trudy Rubin @ 9:15 AM  Permalink | 2 comments
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  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 9:41 AM, 11/08/2009
    God bless these brave women.
    — Magistra
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:54 AM, 11/08/2009
    Trudy, your story on the Afghan women is very touching and I hope they can keep their free status. However, women in most Muslim countries are faced with degradation by their men. The USA can't rescue them all and if we try, it creates more anti-US sentiment in those countries. I think we're best off spending our limited resources and manpower to protect our country, otherwise we could lose our own freedom to the Islamists
    — erniejay


2 comments
About Trudy Rubin
Trudy Rubin’s Worldview column runs on Thursdays and Sundays. In 2009-2011 she has made four lengthy trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Over the past seven years, she visited Iraq eleven times, and also wrote from Iran, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, China, and South Korea. She is the author of Willful Blindness: the Bush Administration and Iraq, a book of her columns from 2002-2004. In 2001 she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary and in 2008 she was awarded the Edward Weintal prize for international reporting. In 2010 she won the Arthur Ross award for international commentary from the Academy of American Diplomacy.
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