Obama & Women: Afghan women fade from White House focus as exit nears

It is an accepted principal, and a fact, that Republicans don't care much about women's rights.

It is also an indisputable fact that President Obama is extremely concerned about women's rights. Mr. Obama's empathy stems from the fact that he is a progressive, and one of the greatest President's in American history.

Obama's Afghan policy is proof of all of the above:

Shortly after sending U.S. troops to Afghanistan in October 2001, President George W. Bush focused so intently on freeing Afghan women from the shackles of Taliban rule that empowering them became central to the United States' mission there...

Afghan girls are back in school, infant and maternal survival rates are up and a quarter of the parliament's seats are reserved for women who at least on paper have the same voting, mobility and other rights as men. But Obama rarely speaks about that...

Obama's lack of overt attention to Afghan women has led many to fear their hard-fought gains will slip away as the United States hands off security responsibility to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, with ever-present Taliban leaders still holding sway in much of the countryside.

Women's issues are not on the formal agenda at the NATO summit the United States will be hosting in Chicago later this month. Afghanistan is poised to send an all-male delegation.

Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said it was "really worrying" that Obama only made a passing reference to women on his trip to Afghanistan last week...

Gulalai Safi, a female member of parliament from northern Balkh province, said it was "somewhat of a shame" that he did not use the visit to underline women's rights.

Amnesty is calling on Obama to spell out a plan to preserve the gains for women since the fall of the Taliban, which from 1996 to 2001 barred Afghan girls from schools and kept women from working and from leaving their homes unless they were accompanied by a male relative or spouse and were covered in a head-to-toe burqa.

For more than a year, the White House has been pursuing, with little success, reconciliation talks involving the Islamist group that could give it a share of power in Kabul.

"When you are negotiating with the Taliban, ensuring the rights of women is not a simple matter," Nossel said. "In that sense you can understand why they are not talking about it but that is why it is doubly worrying."

Bush did not mention Afghan women when he launched the war a month after the September 11, 2001, attacks that were orchestrated by al Qaeda militants based in Afghanistan.

But he soon broadened his rhetoric, saying that empowering women was essential to strengthen Afghan society and prevent al Qaeda from keeping a foothold there.

His wife, Laura Bush, also made Afghan women one of her signature issues. In November 2001 she delivered the weekly presidential radio address "to kick off a worldwide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al Qaeda terrorist network and the regime it supports in Afghanistan, the Taliban."

The former schoolteacher visited Afghanistan three times to support educational projects and efforts to tackle infant and child mortality rates, then the highest in the world next to Sierra Leone, and to inform women about their legal rights. [Michelle Obama is extremely concerned about the dietary situation of obese children here in the U.S., hence she has little time on her schedule to worry about infant and child mortality rates in Afghanistan, nor does she have time to focus on the security, safety and legal rights of Afghan women]...

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, an Afghanistan expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, said [that] "how the war ends really does matter."

"The question is, will a Somalia be left behind in Afghanistan? And if it is, women will be the first to suffer," she said...

In the talks with the Taliban, which are currently suspended, the White House has said it would only accept a reconciliation deal that requires respect for the Afghan constitution, which codifies equal rights for men and women... [However], in March, [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai backed recommendations from powerful clerics [that, among other things],... allow husbands to beat their wives under certain circumstances...

"This is a green light paving the way for extreme figures, including the Taliban, to come forward," said Fawzia Koofi, a female member of parliament...

Another Afghan lawmaker, Shukria Barakzai, said the shift in attention from the White House had decreased the pressure on Afghan leaders to take the status of women seriously.

"We are now getting the sense that in order to achieve women's rights, we have to act alone ... We feel like we have no support," said Barakzai, who met Laura Bush during one of her trips to Afghanistan...

There has been a dramatic spike in reports of violence against women, and very few perpetrators are getting punished for crimes including beatings, torture and brutal killings....

Bottom line: Obama is genuinely concerned about women's rights. However, when American women, right here in the U.S., are sending off their children to school with peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, can anyone blame the President, and his wife, for ignoring the plight of Afghan women [and children]? The Obama's have a lot on their plate here on the domestic front, [like peanut butter sandwiches]; clearly there is no time to worry about the trivial stuff.....