Here is some good news about the achievements women in Afghanistan had made in their elecitons.

Before September’s parliamentary vote, the first for 30 years, there had been widespread predictions that, due to the conservatism of Afghan society, women would only gain seats through a quota system which automatically reserved 25 per cent of seats for them under the country’s new constitution. But women won seats in their own right and will take up 68 of the 249 in the lower house when it convenes later this month.

Of course, the terrorists responded to this news by blowing up some innocent peacekeepers who had nothing to do with these women being elected.

The news is not all good. There are several newly elected representatives who are suspected of ties to Afghanistan’s criminal warlords and with ties to the opium trade. The women who won seats see themselves as moral leaders trying to clean out the Afghan government.

Other female candidates benefited from disillusionment with the apparent impunity of alleged criminals and their supporters participating in the political process.

Shukria Barakzai, a women’s magazine editor who took the 24th of Kabul’s 33 seats, said: “People saw election posters for people who destroyed this city plastered on the walls of Kabul’s broken buildings.”

Mrs Barakzai said she hoped to stand for the role of speaker in the new parliament: “I want to create a cultural revolution in Afghanistan.

“If a woman becomes the chairperson of the parliament that will show the good aspect of change in Afghanistan.”

Malalai Joya, an outspoken critic of the warlords who has faced a number of attempts on her life, won a resounding and symbolic second place overall in the south-western province of Farah. Several women candidates have indicated that they will attempt to form a women’s party in the new chamber, the Wolesi Jirga.

Think of the amazing courage of these women. They are risking their lives and the lives of their families in order to try to build a stronger, more moral country. I don’t think that I would have that brand of courage. I think of the feminists who fought for women’s suffrage in our past. They often made a similar sort of argument that women would clean up politics because they would bring a new morality to the election booth. Well, that certainly hasn’t happened here. Maybe, this new women’s caucus in the Afghan parliament will be able to band together against the warlords and remnants of the Taliban.

I would think that women rights advocates throughout the world would be trumpeting the courage and achievements of these women. But, instead, there is a very speaking silence from leading feminists. I guess they’re afraid that any praise for what women have achieved in Afghanistan would remind people of the President who made those achievements possible. Is that what being committed to women’s rights around the globe really comes down to?

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