KABUL: A planned womenís freedom march through the streets of Kabul on Tuesday was banned on the orders of Northern Alliance interior minister Younis Qanooni, organiser Soraya Parlika said.
ìThey said it was for security but that is just a pretext . . . they donít want women to improve,î she said.
Parlika said Qanooni personally rang her two days ago, before leaving for the Afghan talks outside Bonn, Germany, and said the march was not to go ahead. ìHe said we should wait for an unspecified time.î
As women began gathering at her home early Tuesday, hopeful the decision would be reversed, Parlika received a follow-up call from an interior ministry official again refusing the march.
It was the second time in a week the women had been refused permission to walk from Parlikaís suburban home to the main United Nations compound, with security given as the reason both times.
ìI donít believe that. There would not be a problem, we have no need for security,î Parlika said.
About 50 members of the newly formed Union of Women in Afghanistan were packed into her apartment, many of them wearing light head-scarves instead of the much-hated burqa, which women were forced to wear after the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996.
They were among the first to show their faces outdoors in the capital after the Northern Alliance retook the city on November 13.
Although the Northern Alliance, not as hardline as the Taliban, has told women they were free, it was received with scepticism.
ìThey announced that women are free, but it is not freedom to throw off our veils. That is not the liberty we want,î said a disappointed Nafeesa, 17. ìRight now the situation in Kabul is not good. It is not what we wanted.î
Perlika says women still have a long way to go before they can be classed equal citizens. ìOur victory, and only that, is that I am able to welcome you into my home,î she says.
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