KABUL/GHAZNI: Taliban fighters have kidnapped a female parliamentarian who was travelling by car through Afghanistan’s central Ghazni province with her children, a local police commander said yesterday, the latest in a string of high-profile, violent attacks on women.
Successive, often deadly assaults on women working in state institutions are fuelling concern that hard-won women’s rights promoted by the United States and its allies are eroding as international forces prepare to withdraw next year.
Fariba Ahmadi Kakar’s three daughters were later released, the police commander said, but her kidnappers were demanding four Taliban prisoners in exchange for the parliamentarian.
Kakar, a member of the lower house, was the second female parliamentarian to be attacked in Ghazni in less than a week. Her husband denied the attack had taken place, saying she was travelling abroad, but the Kakar tribe’s elder, Samad Khan, said attempts were under way to reach an agreement with the Taliban.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said he did not know who staged the attack. “We are still investigating,” he said.
Under the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule, women were obliged to wear the head-to-toe covering burqa, allowed only limited schooling and prevented from leaving home unaccompanied.
Restoring the right to work and education has been a cornerstone of the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, but patriarchal attitudes have remained entrenched.
Survivors of attacks often say their only hope is to leave Afghanistan.
REUTERS
