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Rasekh was one of the lucky ones. The researcher for Physicians for Human Rights, who now lives near Washington, DC, conducted interviews in Spring 1998 with about 200 women. The results were published in the August 1998 issue of "The Journal of American Medical Association" (JAMA). It was a remarkably difficult project. Rasekh had to be discreet about whom she visited, to avoid bringing the Taliban's retaliation on her research subjects.
But women told her about being beaten, or seeing loved ones beaten or killed in front of them. According to the JAMA report, "Ninety-seven percent of them met the clinical criteria for severe depression and twenty percent of them were suicidal. Sixty-nine percent reported human rights abuses," beyond their perpetual house arrest.
The Taliban have ordered all women out of the workforce. Any house where a woman lives must have all its windows painted to prevent her from looking out or anybody else from looking in and seeing her. Women are forbidden to leave home, even to shop, unless completely hidden beneath shapeless shrouds ("burkas") with small grids where their faces are.They must also be accompanied by a husband, father, son or brother.
As for Rasekh's research topic, public health, health care is almost impossible for women to obtain. The Taliban ordered that women may only be treated by women doctors, but women are forbidden to practice medicine. In 1997, soon after they seized power, the Taliban forbade women entry to all public hospitals except one ramshackle cottage with thirty beds, no electricity, and no running water. International outcry forced the Taliban to relent and allow a few women doctors to practice.
"But by then," said Rasekh, "all the women health care professionals had fled."
The women who remain face a dire lack of medical care. One of the women Rasekh interviewed told her that she had had to watch for three days while her daughter slowly died, writhing in agony with severe abdominal pain. The mother could not afford to buy a "burka," which she needed to wear in order to leave the house to find help for her daughter.
"The "burka" costs about US$10," said Rasekh, "so most women can't afford them. That's about two months' salary for a doctor."
Advocacy
More than a year after publication of her report, Rasekh is still traveling,
still presenting her findings to the many groups who want to
hear her first-hand story.
"Here is the sports stadium in 1996," she said, showing a picture full of happy young adults dressed Western style, women and men together. "Today, twice a week," she said, "the stadium is used for executions and amputations. The Taliban round up thousands of people and force them to watch, and the people have nightmares about it for weeks afterwards."
A 1998 photo shows a Taliban soldier holding a freshly amputated human and
foot. In another, a little girl pushes her blind father in a
wheelchair to a corner where his leg stumps might elicit enough pity for passers-by
to drop a few coins in his begging pot.
"There are millions of landmines still buried all over Afghanistan. This
man stepped on one," she said.
Medical crises untreated
Rasekh talked about two medical crises that she witnessed at the camps. One
woman had cirrhosis of the liver, due to an untreated viral infection. Rasekh
got her into hospital, but it was too late. She lingered for a week and then
died.
In the other case, a 23-year-old woman began to bleed during an unattended
childbirth. "The neighbours brought her in under her tent,
and let her lie on their rug," she said, "but she had lost too much
blood, and she died anyway."
Before the 1979 Soviet invasion, Afghanistan's population was about 20 million. More than one million Afghanis died during twenty years of conflict. At least another five million have fled the country. The actual 1999 population figure is a mystery, and there is no one left who has the expertise or authority to conduct a national census.
Contact author: Penney Kome (http://www.members.home.net/kome)
is an award-winning feminist author and journalist based in Calgary, Canada,
where she lives with her husband, two school-aged sons, and their dog. Her latest
(sixth) book is "Wounded Workers: The Politics of Musculoskeletal Injuries"
(University of Toronto Press, 1999).