About Us

We are a group of four girls. We are interested about what’s happening in the world around us. One month ago, we started to talk about Afghanistan’s situation in our English class. We wanted to share what we’ve learned in a blog. Most of us are living in their two houses with their three cars, are going to school each day and have a good job and a salary. We wanted you to know and realise we are lucky. To our eyes, since the Taliban regime was in stored, this country has been through a lot of injustices. Our first goal is to inform you. Since 2002, Canadians soldiers are in Afghanistan. We, personally, are for Canada’s involvement. In this blog, you’ll learn the reasons of their engagement, who are the Taliban, children’s situation, women and men injustices and reconstruction of the country. We hope that your mind will change, because you’ll discover that the Afghan people really need our help.

What is the nature of the Canadian involvement in Afghanistan?

Image: http://www.cefcom-comfec.forces.gc.ca/pa-ap/potd/photos-eng.asp?id=19

The principal peaceful objective of the Canadian involvement is to help the Afghan government to assure security and stability to the population. To complete their mission, Canadian soldiers rebuild schools and important buildings. Also, they furnish an important quantity of essential products like water and they help them to create jobs for Afghans people. Moreover, the Canadian troops offer humanitarian aid for the poor population even the refugees. Also, they try to keep peace between Pakistan and Afghanistan at their common border. Canadian army tries to democratize that communist country. Canada invests a lot of million dollars during their involvement for education, professional formation, roads, Afghan jobs, agricultural production and new water infrastructures. The 2011 objective is to promote political development and to help them to be more able to do their own elections. To realize those objectives, they offer financial and technical support to the electoral process.

The Islamic Religion in Afghanistan

The religion in Afghanistan is very important for them. It’s called Islam. As we have the bible, they have the Koran. In their sacred book, it says that they can’t eat dogs, cats and even monkeys! The only way that the Muslim can eat these animals, is when the animal had been shot in a good way. That means that it should not be killed in a bad way. It must be killed by a Muslim and when it’s the time to shoot, the killer has to pronounce the Allah words.  Allah is their God, they believed in him really strongly. The Muslim prays five times a day (only the most religious ones).  This kind of pray is called “salat”. They pray in the morning, at lunch time, in the afternoon, when the sun goes down and when the night starts. They must do all these pray by looking towards Mecca. After that, they have to wash their hands, mouth, nostrils, neck and ankles. When they pray, they have to take off their shoes. The women should be all covered by the burqua, but we should just see their faces and their hands. The men must be only dressed at least with a pant.

Robinson. « islam », on the web site Religious tolerance, [online].[http://www.religioustolerance.org/islam.htm] (21.02.2011)

 « islam », on the web site religion BBC, [online]. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/] (21.03.11)

 « islam muslim », on the web site islamic religion, [online]. [http://www.spaceandmotion.com/religion-islam-muslim-islamic-quran.htm] (21.03.11)

Injustices Men vs. Women



Inequality between men and women has always been a problem in the world. Through the years, the situation has been worse or better depending of the country. In Afghanistan, since the Taliban Regime rules were in stored, the situation has deteriorated. These laws, based on the Sharia, are discriminatory against women. Marriages are arranged by parents. Some men have three wives. It’s something common. Girls of sixteen or fifteen years old can be married to an old man of forty years old. According to Human Rights Watch, in 2004, 57% of Afghan girls were married before the age of sixteen. Women are banned to work, go to school, put some make-up, laugh in public, play a sport and ride a bicycle, to name a few. When they want to go outside of the house, they have to be accompanied by a close male relative, like a brother, a father or a husband. These women have to wear a burqa. A burqa is a veil that covers the entire body leaving only a thinner part to be able to see from the inside. There are also laws for everyone. Population of Afghanistan can’t listen to music, watch television and go on the internet. Kite flying which was the national sport has been prohibited. According to women in this country, "Jehadis were killing us with guns and swords but Taliban are killing us with cotton.”. Why these women don’t have the same chance as us here? It’s a violation of human rights. That’s why we need to change things by sending our soldiers.



Image: «La Afghanistan: In the Mazar-e Sharif marketplace or any public area, women wear burkas» (May 9^th, 2008) [image], on the website Digital Journal. http://www.digitaljournal.com/image/39914


References

• Osama (2003, June 27th) [movie]. Afghanistan. (83 minutes)
• ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT. «Gender inequality in Afghanistan», Wiki Gender,
  [online]. [http://www.wikigender.org/index.php/Gender_Equality_in_Afghanistan] (August 2^nd 2010)
• REVOLUTIONNARY ASSOCIATION OF THE WOMEN OF AFGHANISTAN. «Some of the restrictions imposed by Taliban on women in Afghanistan», Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan; [online]. [http://www.rawa.org/rules.htm] (No date)

Children education

Image: http://www.interet-general.info/

The Afghan children aren’t very secure and appropriate in their own schools. Schools are coldest inside then outside and don’t have any electricity. When children have chairs at home, they need to bring them to school, but if they don’t have any chair, they need to sit on the floor. Mathematics teachers need to use balls to teach lessons because manuals, during the war, were writing with violence. Those manuals were government-sponsored and were showing chidren how to calculate the weight of bombs needed to explode buildings and the speed of bullets. For a lot of reasons like poverty, only 50% of Afghan children between 7 and 13 years old are going to school and 72% of the population over 15 years old is illiterate. Today, 5000 Afghan girls are going to school, but 20% of them don’t go because of insecurity. Since the war, a lot of girls’ schools had poisoned gas attacks, so girls got troubles and some of them died.  Moreover, Afghans girls need to be taught by female teacher, but because of the shortage of them, nobody has hope for girls to go to school. Finally, girls need to walk a very long distance each morning to go to school because they cannot go at public schools district like boys.

http://www.savethechildren.org/site/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.6150517/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/24/us-afghanistan-girls-idUSTRE71N1OW20110224

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/afghanistan/schools.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/04/201042663711279658.html

Taliban

Image: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/12/a_chronology_of_the_1.php

From 1996 to 2011, a Muslim fundamentalist group, the Taliban, occupied the two-thirds of the Afghanistan, including the capital, Kabul. The Taliban, a word that means "one who is seeking" in Arabic, are formed by young poor Afghan refugees and disadvantaged Pakistanis who were indoctrinate into a network of Koranic schools. Their leader was Mohammed Omar who was a military leader who inspired respect by his compatriots. He carried the title "Commander of the Faithful". This way, every word of Mohammed Omar was law. The Taliban made sure that the Afghan population folds willy-nilly to all the prohibitions and religious duties that were decreed by Mohammed Omar. At the beginning, the Taliban’s mission was to restore order and morality. They conformed to the "charia", the Islamic law. For the Taliban, which was near or far the lifestyle or occidental thinking was seen as chaos. That was why, because they didn’t want to know anything about reform or changes, they turned towards the "charia" to guide themselves in justice, religious, social and political aspects. For the women and the children, it was a disaster. For example, since 1997, Taliban created rules to minimalize the women’s freedom and their influence. For all the rules broken, there were terrible punishments like mutilations, hangings, beatings and floggings. A doctor has been arrested and beaten all night by the Taliban because he treated an Afghan woman. In short, Taliban didn’t establish peace like they wanted to make believe.

 

http://www.cfr.org/afghanistan/taliban-afghanistan/p10551#p4
http://articles.cnn.com/1996-10-05/world/9610_05_taleban_1_taliban-islamic-militia-kabul-islamic-afghanistan?_s=PM:WORLD
http://www.institute-for-afghan-studies.org/AFGHAN%20CONFLICT/TALIBAN/intro_kakar.htm