Just days before the elections, however, we learn that the ideological battle for women is already compromised, sacrificed in the murky horse trading that President Karzai hopes will keep him in power within a deeply misogynist society.
Mr Karzai, the West’s indecisive placeman in Afghanistan, eager to please everyone, has quietly signed an amended version of what has become known as the “marital rape law”, to retain popularity with clerics and his male followers. While the clause insisting that a man has the right to sex with his wife a certain number of times a week may have been removed, the Shia Personal Status Law, described as “abhorrent” in its original form by President Obama, remains abhorrent. It allows a man to deny his wife food if she denies him conjugal sex, grants guardianship of children to fathers and grandfathers, lets rapists pay to avoid being prosecuted, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.
The result would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. The British Army, decent and professional and upstanding as ever, now finds itself fighting to within an inch of the polling stations in order to allow Afghan men to continue mildly unpleasant habits such as withholding food from their wives, insisting on sex and imprisoning them in their own home. (Which makes you wonder exactly what the problem with the Taleban was.) Cyncially, Mr Karzai knows that in his deeply conservative country voting remains a man’s game. Women have the right to vote — at strictly segregated women-only polling stations — but the turnout is likely to be poor. Only 38 per cent have registered for Thursday’s election and far fewer are expected to appear.
Poor security, illiteracy (85 per cent of women have no formal education), a reluctance to have their photographs taken for their voting cards and a shortage of female staff to run the female polling stations will keep many voters away from the ballot box. In more traditional Islamic areas, suspiciously high levels of female registration have been reported, as men use women’s cards for their own choices.
