We Afghan women demand our place at the table for peace talksguardian.co.uk, Monday 3 October 2011 21.00 BST
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As an Afghan woman and the co-author of Oxfam's recent report on women's rights in Afghanistan, I take issue with Madeleine Bunting's view (Can the spread of women's rights ever be accompanied by war?, 3 October) that "many Afghan women may regard" a peace that costs them their rights as "tragic but necessary". This is certainly not how I – or many of the Afghan women I speak to across Afghanistan – see it. We have made major gains in the past decade. There are now 2.7 million girls in school compared with a few thousand under the Taliban. Women are working as policewomen, lawyers and MPs. Our campaigning has meant that there are now laws that protect women against forced marriage and other forms of violence.
We are proud of our hard-won gains, but know how fragile they are. This is why we are calling for a place at the table if and when peace negotiations with the Taliban and other armed opposition groups get under way. Strong Afghan women arguing for their rights within negotiations are the best chance that we have of keeping those rights. Women are not the cause of conflict, so why should we have to sacrifice our rights for peace? A peace that condemns and confines half the population to their homes again is not a just or sustainable peace.
Orzala Ashaf Nemat
Afghan activist and co-author of Oxfam's report A Place at the Table: Safeguarding Women's Rights in Afghanistan
• The use of women's rights as a justification for western intervention has a longer history than that described by Madeleine Bunting. Nineteenth-century missionaries throughout the empire believed they were protecting native women from native men. Their belief was sincere and their work not without value, but their understanding of a woman's role in society was hardly itself progressive. Further, the missionaries' understanding of their task provided valuable justification for the colonialism that accompanied it.
I'm sure that Madeleine Bunting is correct in thinking that women's rights cannot be advanced through a war such as that in Afghanistan. It's almost certainly the case that nothing can be done in that country without making matters worse. Better surely to set our own house in order by seriously addressing the many inequalities experienced by women in western societies. That would not require armed intervention.
Rod Edmond
Deal, Kent
• Madeleine Bunting says "Afghanistan was the popular war in comparison to Iraq. Protest was muted or nonexistent". But in late September 2001 a Gallup poll in 37 countries found that, apart from the US, Israel and India, a majority of people in every country surveyed preferred extradition and trial of the suspects of 9/11 to a US attack on Afghanistan. Clear majorities were recorded in the UK (75%), France (67%) and Switzerland (87%).
Ian Sinclair
London
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As an Afghan woman and the co-author of Oxfam's recent report on women's rights in Afghanistan, I take issue with Madeleine Bunting's view (Can the spread of women's rights ever be accompanied by war?, 3 October) that "many Afghan women may regard" a peace that costs them their rights as "tragic but necessary". This is certainly not how I – or many of the Afghan women I speak to across Afghanistan – see it. We have made major gains in the past decade. There are now 2.7 million girls in school compared with a few thousand under the Taliban. Women are working as policewomen, lawyers and MPs. Our campaigning has meant that there are now laws that protect women against forced marriage and other forms of violence.
We are proud of our hard-won gains, but know how fragile they are. This is why we are calling for a place at the table if and when peace negotiations with the Taliban and other armed opposition groups get under way. Strong Afghan women arguing for their rights within negotiations are the best chance that we have of keeping those rights. Women are not the cause of conflict, so why should we have to sacrifice our rights for peace? A peace that condemns and confines half the population to their homes again is not a just or sustainable peace.
Orzala Ashaf Nemat
Afghan activist and co-author of Oxfam's report A Place at the Table: Safeguarding Women's Rights in Afghanistan
• The use of women's rights as a justification for western intervention has a longer history than that described by Madeleine Bunting. Nineteenth-century missionaries throughout the empire believed they were protecting native women from native men. Their belief was sincere and their work not without value, but their understanding of a woman's role in society was hardly itself progressive. Further, the missionaries' understanding of their task provided valuable justification for the colonialism that accompanied it.
I'm sure that Madeleine Bunting is correct in thinking that women's rights cannot be advanced through a war such as that in Afghanistan. It's almost certainly the case that nothing can be done in that country without making matters worse. Better surely to set our own house in order by seriously addressing the many inequalities experienced by women in western societies. That would not require armed intervention.
Rod Edmond
Deal, Kent
• Madeleine Bunting says "Afghanistan was the popular war in comparison to Iraq. Protest was muted or nonexistent". But in late September 2001 a Gallup poll in 37 countries found that, apart from the US, Israel and India, a majority of people in every country surveyed preferred extradition and trial of the suspects of 9/11 to a US attack on Afghanistan. Clear majorities were recorded in the UK (75%), France (67%) and Switzerland (87%).
Ian Sinclair
London
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guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/03/afghanistan-women-peace-talks?newsfeed=true
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