Afghan Human Rights Activists Angry at U.S. Indifference

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 10, 2009 — -- Razia Arooj lives a life she could only have imagined when the Taliban was in power here.

Every morning she walks through the dark hallways of the Afghan Commerce Ministry to her desk on the second floor. For two years she has worked with the United Nations, advising the ministry on trade.

And twice a week she attends political science classes at Kateb University, just about a mile away from the ministry, past the massive mosque paid for by Iran.

She is a Shiite woman and she says she is offended by a new law quietly debated by parliament and passed by President Hamid Karzai that, for the first time, defines the relationships inside a Shiite family.

For her, family is based on mutual respect. And any law that dictates what she must do, as this law does, would be like returning to Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

"It's just making a woman a toy for a man," Arooj says of the new law. "There is no need to force the woman. Husbands should respect their women. Their women will do [what the husbands want]. And vice versa. They will also respect their husbands."

The Shiite Family Law, which applies to less than 20 percent of the population, has sparked international outrage because of the dictates it places on a wife. The law, according to a translation by a Western embassy in Kabul, describes a wife's duties as "obedience, readiness for intercourse, and not leaving the house without the permission of the husband." The law also, according to the same translation, dictates that the wife is "bound to preen for her husband, as and when he desires."

Karzai signed and defended the law, but following the criticism has said that it is being reviewed by the Justice Ministry.

NATO's secretary general went so far as to wonder how countries could defend sending troops to Afghanistan if the government passed a law that "fundamentally violates women's rights and general human rights?" But as part of a new shift toward focusing on al Qaeda and away from nation building, the U.S. has avoided publicly chastising the Afghan government.