Women bear the brunt of war
"While bombs and missiles don't differentiate between men
and women, other aspects of war affect women and girls
disproportionately," wrote Mary-Wynne Ashford and Yolanda
Huet-Vaughn, authors of "The Impact of War on Women." (In "War
and Public Health," B. S. Levy and V. W. Sidel, eds., Oxford
University Press, 1997.)
Increased economic burdens. "War has always resulted in
women dealing with the death or maiming of loved ones, the loss
of a husband or father being particularly serious because of a
woman's economic dependence on men," say Ashford and
Huet-Vaughn.
Twenty-three years of fighting has killed so many Afghan men
that women now make up 54 percent of the population. With no
other recourse, many widows and their children survive by
begging in the streets.
More work for women. Ashford and Huet-Vaughn point out that
"In war zones, women continue to be responsible for procuring
and preparing food and for caring for children, the elderly and
the ill. Faced with food and fuel shortages, lack of
electricity, shortages of medicine and lack of safe water,
women suddenly face issues of survival every day. Women
interviewed in Iraq in 1991 describe the increased burden they
suffered, as men's roles within the household did not change,
but women's duties expanded to include securing water and
firewood for their families on a day-to-day basis."
In Kabul, a city of a million people, the civil war leveled
a third of the pubic buildings and 40 percent of housing; only
30 percent of the homes have drinkable water; due to
electricity shortages, homes are now heated with wood-burning
stoves, making wood procurement an additional chore. The cities
of Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Taliqan, Jalalabad and Kandahar
suffered extensive damage from the U.S. bombing (New York
Times, Jan. 21). This devastation places huge burdens on Afghan
women.
Food shortages. Some 7.5 million Afghans are dependent on
the UN for food. U.S. bombings have disrupted food supply
networks. "Hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians, as always
mostly women and children, could be dead from malnutrition by
spring. All depends on how much aid can be trucked into
Afghanistan in the next few weeks. (The Nation, Jan. 14)
Maternal and child health: "The destruction of healthcare
systems as well as the shortage of food and medical supplies
results in poor obstetrical care with increased numbers of
spontaneous abortions and miscarriages, and increased maternal
death and infant mortality," say Ashford and Huet-Vaughn.
Today, 17 Afghan women die for every 1,000 births, the
second-worst rate in the world; 247 infants die for every 1,000
live births.
Increase in rape: "Both the Taliban forces and forces now
grouped in the United Front [National Alliance] have sexually
assaulted, abducted and forcibly married women during the armed
conflict, targeting them on the basis of both gender and
ethnicity. Thousands of women have been physically assaulted.
..." (Human Rights Watch, 2001 report)
Most refugees are women and children, according to Ashford
and Huet-Vaughn. Refugee camps "are often sites of corruption
and violence, where rape and sexual exploitation are rarely
documented or punished. Women often must resort to prostitution
in order to gain food for themselves and their children." Some
70 percent of Afghan refugees are women.
Many are threatened by exposure. For example, at Akora
Khattak camp, 10,275 families are living in plastic sheets in
the cold and the wind. Many are women and children from Parwan,
Kapista, Takhar, Badakhshan, Baghlan, Balkh and Kundoz
provinces of Afghanistan. The majority have no utensils to
prepare food, no warm clothes, shoes or blankets, and are
sleeping on the ground. (The Nation, Dec. 31)
Land mines "pose a particular threat to women," according to
Ashford and Huet-Vaughn, as they do much of the farming.
"Frequently the mines are seeded in agricultural land, where
they remain long after hostilities are over, to explode when
farmers return to till the fields."
"Nearly 5,000 unexploded and highly volatile cluster
bomblets may be littered across areas of Afghanistan that were
targeted by U.S. warplanes." (Human Rights Watch, Nov. 16,
2001) Land mines from the civil war period "kill or maim three
Afghans a day." (New York Times, Jan. 20)
--Joyce Chediac
Reprinted from the Feb. 7, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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