Optional burqas and mandatory malnutrition

After spending 18 months studying Afghanistan, Dr. Lynn Amowitz reports that life under the Taliban is more brutal -- and more complicated -- than we suspected.

By Janelle Brown

Oct. 19, 2001 | When President Bush asked kids across America to each donate a dollar for the impoverished children of Afghanistan last week, it was a sweet -- if mildly propagandistic -- gesture. It also was a reiteration of a message that has accompanied his most aggressive promises to bomb the Taliban into submission: Our war is not with the Afghan people; in fact, we want to help alleviate their suffering. And to prove the U.S. government's commitment to civilians caught in the violence, Bush has earmarked $320 million in aid for the people of Afghanistan, and dropped in nearly 275,000 meals to the country.

"The evildoers have struck our nation, but out of evil comes good," Bush told military personnel in a speech at Travis Air Force Base on Wednesday. "We are a good, kindhearted, decent people, and we're showing the world just that in our compassion and our resolve."

But the simultaneous campaigns of war and relief create a simplistic, and erroneous, impression of the impact the U.S. can hope to have in Afghanistan, particularly when it comes to living conditions and human rights, contends Dr. Lynn Amowitz, the Fireman Health and Human Rights Fellow for the organization Physicians for Human Rights. Amowitz, who studied Afghanistan during the last 18 months, says that country's gravest ills may be due in part to the Taliban, but the roots of the problems extend far deeper than a change of government or airdropped rations could quickly remedy. Meanwhile, she says, every day that the U.S. drops bombs on Afghanistan, a dire situation becomes much worse -- despite any consolation offered by pamphlets and peanut butter.

When Amowitz first left for Afghanistan last spring, she set out to determine the full extent of the health and human rights crisis there, particularly as regards the nation's women. In May, after more than a year of study and several trips to the country, Amowitz released a comprehensive report detailing the extent to which the Taliban was responsible for the suffering of Afghan women. With Afghan issues still largely below American radar, the document received very little attention at the time.

Then, after Sept. 11, "all of the sudden, Afghanistan was interesting," says Amowitz, who in the weeks since the attacks has been fielding phone calls from news organizations across the country.

Amowitz's report, "Women's Health and Human Rights in Afghanistan," pinpoints the full extent of the Afghanistan crisis in almost 100 pages filled with grim statistics. The report details the country's general health disaster, but Amowitz's particular concern is the unique situation of women under the Taliban, who are forbidden to work, get an education or appear in public without wearing a burqa and being accompanied by a male escort. Amowitz looked at the physical and mental effects of these restrictions. As a result, she unearthed some unexpected trends, such as a nationwide concern over women's rights, and the extent to which Afghan women actually support seemingly oppressive dress codes.

To obtain her data, Amowitz and a staff of local Afghan surveyors interviewed 746 men and women over the course of three months. Although researchers involved in a previous Physicians for Human Rights study had interviewed women who lived in Kabul, the new study targeted a more diverse group: Afghans who lived in Taliban and non-Taliban regions, refugees in Pakistan who had fled the Taliban and refugees returning to Afghanistan who had never lived under Taliban rule.

"This is the problem with Afghanistan -- you can't go to one place and generalize to the entire country; it is so diverse, the people are diverse, the traditions are diverse, the ethnicities are diverse," contends Amowitz. "Each group has their own tradition and culture. To say that one group represents the rest is absolutely impossible."

Whether rural or urban, male or female, Taliban-controlled or not, the Afghans that Amowitz surveyed all agreed on the bleakness of their situation. Only 17 percent of all Afghans in rural areas, and 38 percent in urban areas, have access to safe water; no wonder, then, that 42 percent of all deaths in Afghanistan are due to diarrhea. Fifty-two percent of all children under age 5 suffer from malnutrition.

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