Deeply Concerning

"It is a deep concern of the Human Rights Council to save the life of this child because the situation in Helmand and in Khan Nishin district is not very safe for now."
Bilal Seddiqi, head, local human rights group, Afghanistan

Ah, not 'very safe for now'. When, one might enquire, might it be safe? The Taliban are poised to return in force, perhaps within a year, to take up where they left off before 2001's invitation to the United States of America to assemble their allies under NATO, with United Nations blessing, to invade the country. Which is when the Taliban hastily exited, along with their honoured guests, al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden.


Much has happened since then. The Northwest Frontier in the Pakistan mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush saw the tribal communities with their own fierce fighting forces welcome their Afghan brethren along with the foreigners who shared their Islamist ideology. Seasonal forays back into Afghanistan to challenge the presence of Western military troops kept all concerned busy for a decade, while Afghan society was tasked and aided by humanitarian groups to recalibrate its values and lifestyles.

NATO members and the United States simply could not conceive of such intransigence and determination for the Taliban kept recruiting and reforming itself and learning new explosive techniques and guerrilla tactics to confront and bemuse their enemies who had in mind transforming a stone-age society into a modern one with the resolve to care for its people in a humane and equality-focused manner. Eventually the foreign invaders could no longer ignore the reality that transformation had to come from within.

They had to face the larger problem that Afghans were disinterested, but for the minority of progressive hopefuls and the women of Afghanistan, in altering their society to reflect the values and priorities of a more enlightened society. Women made great strides during the ten-year occupation and protective auspices of the foreign troops and diplomats and the hordes of humanitarian organizations elevated with the prospect of rescuing Afghanistan from itself.

A ten-year-old girl named Spozhmai is the latest incarnation of female worthlessness in an humanity-estranged society whose religion and culture mandates that women be neither seen nor heard, but managed in a husbandry of child-bearing and housewifery. Spozhmai is now in police custody, or in the custody of Afghan authorities, anxious to protect her now that world attention has focused on her plight.

Her father has also been taken into custody in this entitled patriarchal society, to be questioned how it could be that the girl's brother might have planned to outfit her with a suicide belt and promise her a living martyrdom with luxurious gifts to be presented to her on completion of her divine commission. She thought about the most generous offer from her brother and in the final analysis of her fervid imagination felt she would prefer to live than to die a glorious death.

She was unwilling to lend her life on a short fuse to her brother's plan as a Taliban commander to sacrifice his sister for the greater glory of Islam. The scheme to blow up a police checkpoint in southern Khan Nishin district was a failure. Young Spozhmai simply was uncooperative; she preferred life over death.Her brother's argument that she would survive the explosion caused by the belt she wore that would take the lives of those around her, didn't quite click.

"If I go back, they will do the same to me, they will make me wear the suicide vest. I won't go back there. God didn't make me to be a suicide bomber", she declared. Her case, according to Omar Zawak, a spokesman for the Helmand provincial governor, is being investigated "very carefully and seriously."

"The governor has appointed a team to investigate the exact information and details. We have arrested the father, and after we speak with him we will give you more details." Spozhmai's brother Zahir fled with the suicide belt. He may not be prepared to use it himself, as a Taliban commander, since the Taliban elite tend to generously offer that wonderful opportunity to become a shaheed to the naive, the youth among them.

AP/Abdul Khalij

Spozhmai has written a letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, bringing her plight to his exalted attention. She has asked him to find for her another place to live. She would like him to put her "in a good place". One that will safeguard her life and her future. Perhaps he will decline, politely pointing out that he hasn't the authority to send her abro