Afghan Women Quotes

Not long ago, women in Afghanistan were required by Taliban leadership to be covered nearly head-to-toe and were barely allowed to leave the home; that young Afghan women today are not only accessing an education but are able to meet young people from around the world and cheer on a robot of their own making is something beautiful.

In all the debate about Afghanistan, we don't hear much about our obligation to the wretched lives of Afghan women. They are being treated as collateral damage as the big boys discuss geopolitical goals.

Since 1996, the Feminist Majority Foundation has been immersed in a campaign to support Afghan women and girls in their fight against the brutal oppression of the Taliban.

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 after a searing, four-year civil war, they immediately instituted laws which fit their utopic vision of the time of Islam's founding more than 1,300 years earlier. Afghan women's lives offered the most visible sign of the imagined past to which Afghanistan's present was to be returned.

The women of Afghanistan have a voice, and it needs to be heard and not forgotten.

The draconian prohibitions of the Taliban years and the gains Afghan women have achieved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001 are now well known and often cited: Today, Afghans lucky enough to live in secure regions can go to school, women may work in offices, and the burqa is no longer mandatory.

Carolyn Maloney has been a consistent fighter for Afghan women but also for International Family Planning Bills.

I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time.

I mean, how many men would have gone on to the floor of the House as Carolyn Maloney did and wear a burkha to show the fight of Afghan women.

As we begin to leave Afghanistan, are we fooling ourselves about what we are leaving behind or what we have promised the people of Afghanistan? Especially the women and girls?

I mean, honestly, we have to be clear that the life for many Afghan women is not that much different than it was a hundred years ago, 200 years ago. The country has lived with so much violence and conflict that many people, men and women, just want it to be over.

In Afghanistan, we have had a history of very strong women, and we need to reclaim that history and talk about it.

The first time I visited Afghanistan in May 2000, I was 26 years old, and the country was under Taliban rule. I went there to document Afghan women and landmine victims.

Certainly Afghans in general and women in particular want a country in which security is a daily reality rather than a campaign slogan or the focus of drive-by speeches from diplomats dropping in for the day.

When I'm documenting, for example, a story on women in Afghanistan, I will do a huge amount of research and a lot of time on the ground just getting to know the women before I even start shooting.

The story of what has happened to women in Afghanistan, however, is a very important one, and fertile ground for fiction.

Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history.

But also, there are no films being made about Afghanistan.