International Women's Day in Afghanistan

"In Afghanistan, young girls go to school and women serve in government because America helped liberate the Afghan people."
-Laura Bush, speaking at today's White House International Women's Day 'celebration'

Mrs. Bush, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, the group of women who have been fighting for women's rights in Afghanistan long before your husband 'liberated' them with bombs, see a different reality on the ground:

Another Eighth of March has arrived but still the Afghan women are hostage to the fundamentalists' claws. The continuation of traitor-loving policies of Mr. Karzai and his sympathetic friends by the indication of US government is still like spears entering deeper and deeper into the injured face of our unfortunate people. Whenever the criminal "Emirs" and their commanders commit another heinous crime, instead of being sued, they are rewarded and receive higher posts.

Murder, robbery, kidnapping and the rape of women and children has become the routine. There is a high rate of women committing suicide and an ever expanding cultivation and trafficking of narcotics, all while billions of dollars of foreign aid and public resources are squandered away. Unemployment and homelessness is on the rise. Opening of Kabul Serina Hotel and other hotels of this type in a country with the lowest rate of income per capita in the world doesn't mean development but it is indeed providing sensual environment for criminals and mocking about the miserable life condition of majority of our nation. The compromising government is unable even to solve smallest of these issues. The country is in chaos.

The last four years of experience in our Afghan nation has confirmed the point that for the government of Karzai, the will of our oppressed nation is not the priority but it is the interests of criminals. Mr. Karzai doesn't want to and can't destroy the band of criminals from Afghanistan because the interests of both parties are intertwined.

It is clear in these circumstances, that the grant of more than 10 billion dollars promised during the London Conference will not be used for the masses, but instead like the previous 12 billion dollars, will fill the pockets of the "Northern Alliance" to buy their loyalty to the US.

We are not alone in our difficult and tumultuous struggle against the "Northern Alliance" and their Gulbuddini, Talibi and Al-Qaeda brothers. Women of Iran, Kurdistan, Palestine, Turkey, Latin America and other countries are in combat for democracy and against the plague of fundamentalism and war. We sympathize with them and we must assist the movement of women in rest of the world by intensifying our decisive struggle against fundamentalism and their supporters in the region.

Afghan girls dressed in traditional clothes participate in a gathering to mark the International Women's Day, Wednesday, March 8, 2006 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Since after collapse of the extremist-regime of the Taliban, Afghanistan celebrates International Women's Day. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

Burqa-clad Afghan women walk in the outskirts of Kabul. Tackling Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate, among the highest in the world, is a priority in the country where women suffer abuses ranging from forced marriage to honor killings, says Women's Affairs Minister Masooda Jalal. (AFP/Shah Marai)

An Afghan girl dressed in traditional clothes is seen during a gathering to mark the International Women's Day, Wednesday, March 8, 2006 in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)