AMY GOODMAN: Well, one thing that the international women’s movement has demonstrated over the past few years is that the first victims of war are always women and children. Already women have been the harshest victims of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Wherever the Taliban came to power, they banned women from working, prohibited women and girls from attending school, forbid women from leaving their homes without being accompanied by a close male relative and wearing a head-to-toe burqa shroud. Women who violate Taliban decrees are beaten, imprisoned or even killed. And women’s groups on the ground in Afghanistan, like RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, have long worked to transform gender relations in Afghanistan.

Well, three years ago, the Feminist Majority demanded the U.S. government not recognize the Taliban government because of its treatment of women. Partly thanks to this pressure, a high-profile campaign organized with a coalition of feminists, the U.S. government never recognized the Taliban. Certainly, the Feminist Majority’s campaign for Afghan women put the Taliban on the U.S. radar screen for the first time. Although the U.S. government had refused to recognize the Taliban for years, it is now the U.S. that may wage war on the ravaged country. So the question becomes: What will happen to Afghan women now?

We’re joined by Eleanor Smeal, who’s president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, and Sonali Kolhatkar, who returns to us after joining us yesterday, vice president of Afghan Women’s Mission from California.

Eleanor Smeal, talk about your reaction to the U.S. government now targeting the Taliban.

ELEANOR SMEAL: Well, the Taliban is, in my opinion, a rogue militia that has been essentially abusing and killing its own people. So, it is — I hope, essentially, that it does fall and that these people are freed. I’m very, very worried about the humanitarian crisis and that that — which existed before September 11th, and now it’s just been made so much worse in that there is simply not enough food, either in Afghanistan or in the refugee camps. And I believe must — must — get more humanitarian relief into the refugee camps, into the cities where the refugees are in Pakistan and Iran, but also into Afghanistan. We cannot wage war on the Afghan people. The problem is the Taliban, this vicious regime, his vicious militia. But the people have suffered so much. And I think we also, in giving that aid, must lift up Afghan women leaders. Some of it must go to Afghan, what are called, women’s NGOs, so they become stronger. So many brave, courageous Afghan women have been resisting what has happened and have been running underground schools, have been running clinics and healthcare facilities, and they need our help, and they need it desperately, and we’ve got to be there.

AMY GOODMAN: So, to be clear, you’re against the bombing of Afghanistan, Eleanor Smeal?

ELEANOR SMEAL: Well, when you say bombing, I don’t know there’s going to be bombing. The one thing I am encouraged by is nothing like that has happened yet. And I feel that, of course, bombing of civilians would be horrible, ridiculous and counterproductive, and so I hope that won’t happen.

I do, however, feel that I want the Taliban to collapse. I’m encouraged right now. We’re being told that soldiers are leaving the Taliban. And if they would collapse by pressure — you see, for some time, we have felt that the government, our government, should have been putting more pressure on the Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, so that their sources of money and equipment and weapons do not continue to go into the Taliban. And I’m hoping that now the increased pressure, maybe they can collapse themselves. But I’m not fooling myself in thinking that somehow this regime should be saved. This regime has been torturing these people and, frankly, hasn’t really — you know, they’ve been driving women out of the bread lines. These people have been — Afghan women and children have no food. They haven’t been taking care of their people in any way.

And I see that we have to think in terms of how do we liberate these people, get them food and healthcare and help rebuild this country. And I hope we can keep in our brain that women themselves there have got to be lifted by giving them money and resources to in fact be a counterforce. And I hope to be at, at any time, the peace tables, where I hope a constitutional democracy is restored and women’s rights are restored, as well as ethnic minorities and every kind of person that has been so persecuted by this vicious regime.

AMY GOODMAN: Sonali Kolhatkar, the symbol of the burqa, the full veil, has become synonymous with the oppression of Afghan women. But there are many millions of women in the world who do wear the shroud, the veil, that Muslim women wear. Why do you feel it is different in Afghanistan?

SONALI KOLHATKAR: Do you mean why do I feel that the symbol of the shroud is different?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

SONALI KOLHATKAR: Well, certainly, this burqa has been around in Afghanistan for centuries. Women wore it, you know, due to tradition. It’s a patriarchal, very, very conservative Islamic society. And things were changing of their own accord in the '60s and ’70s. Women were learning more about their rights. Afghan women, you know, they won the right to vote in 1965. In the cities in Afghanistan, women were walking away from this kind of all-encompassing covering on their own and, you know, lifting themselves out of it. But, of course, it's important to note that in the villages in Afghanistan, not much had changed. In fact, between the ’70s and ’80s and through to when the Taliban came into power, things in the villages for women remained pretty much the same.

What’s different today is that the Taliban have forced all women to wear this veil, including women in Kabul and other major cities who were used to a life of much more freedom and who are used to not wearing this kind of complete covering. So, it’s the fact that it is completely mandatory which is a real affront to women’s rights. But I have to say that it is really a symbol of what women are going through.

And unfortunately, it’s not the worst thing that they’re going through. I wish it were. Today, if you, I think, offered an Afghan woman a choice between food on her table and whether she could have — you know, could walk outside uncovered, I think she would choose food, because they’re so desperate. As Eleanor said, you know, food is running out. They could die tomorrow or in two weeks, when the food does run out.

ELEANOR SMEAL: Amy, we’ve been begging for more food for a long time. This is the worst drought in history there. And we’re talking about 5 million people within Kabul — not Kabul, but Afghanistan, facing imminent ruin, and about another 3 million outside in various stages of being refugees, plus all this now displacement of people. This is a horrific crisis.

But I want to say one other thing about this veil thing, is that, remember, it wasn’t also in the rural areas, either. This is forcing people to control them. And I think we should see it as a symbol of totalitarian control to try to, essentially, in my opinion, give an excuse to terrorize. I mean, this is a — because, in essence, as she just said, this is not the worst thing. The worst thing has been the executions, the police running around picking up people, the beatings, the killing of minority groups. I mean, there’s so many things you can point to. But the reason I think it’s different now and should not in any way be viewed as religious is this is totalitarian control and power and force. This is not an expression of your own beliefs.

AMY GOODMAN: Eleanor Smeal, you said that, at this point, we — the United States government hasn’t bombed Afghanistan yet.

ELEANOR SMEAL: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: But just the fear of an imminent bombing campaign is leading to the displacement of, well, more than a million people. They’re so terrorized, they’re racing to the borders with Iran and Pakistan, which is —we were talking to the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees and UNICEF on yesterday’s program, in Islamabad and in that overall area.

ELEANOR SMEAL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And they cannot cope with this, what they’re calling one of the biggest humanitarian crises of the last years.

ELEANOR SMEAL: But one of the things that I want you to know, Amy, is that people have been flocking out of there for this entire year. Something like 600,000 people have gone to the borders. The borders were closed over the summer, too, with no threat of bombing, because, in fact, there is such horrific conditions, and not only hunger, but the absolute persecution of minority groups. And when I say minority groups, I’m talking in areas like where the Hazaras lived, 20% of the population, but they dominated those areas. They had been fleeing because of massacres. And no one has been saying anything about that. We were almost alone, with the State Department, begging help. But I want people to understand, this influx of refugees has been going on prior to September 11th, in ghastly numbers.

And we have been giving them token — I mean, the United States has been giving more than any other country, but, believe me, nowhere near what is necessary. That’s why they’ve been reduced in the refugees camps and in the cities on the border areas, because some of the minority groups are afraid to even go to the refugee camps because the Taliban has been holding sway in some of them. They have been reduced — they have no sanitation, no shelter, no healthcare to speak of, virtually no. And the food we’re talking about that we’re sending in is wheat and vegetable oil. And they don’t even have clean water. This has been a humanitarian crisis. And I think that we have got to get a grip and get help in there and get it in now. I mean, the United States just is going to approve something like $25 million. They need about a billion. And I think that our — I don’t think the public understands that this humanitary crisis is being aggravated, yes, by what’s happened, but maybe now we’ll get something in there, because a million were facing starvation before this September 11th.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much, Eleanor Smeal, for being on with us. One last question to Sonali Kolhatkar, and that is the issue of RAWA and what they’re doing, the Revolutionary Afghan Women’s Association. I understand many members have been trained by the program WITNESS to use hidden cameras to document human rights abuses. Is this the case inside Afghanistan today?

SONALI KOLHATKAR: Yes. They received training earlier this year to carry cameras on themselves. You may be aware that last year a member of RAWA did manage to smuggle a camera under her burqa and went to a public execution in Kabul Stadium, which — and basically filmed the execution of a woman who was shot to the head by Taliban.

ELEANOR SMEAL: Yeah.

SONALI KOLHATKAR: She was accused of — I can’t recall exactly what, probably adultery or something. And so, RAWA has been doing this kind of thing continuously. And they have footage — or they have used these hidden cameras that WITNESS provided, and returned tapes with footage of public executions, and, you know, really revealing and exposing the human rights crimes that have been going on there for the past six, seven years — well, I should say, really, a decade.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. When we come back from our break, we’ll be joined by two Afghan women, with Afghan Solidarity and the Afghan Women’s Association, to talk about the Afghan women becoming a battleground for religion, history, culture and global politics. And then we’ll be joined by a community of South Asians representing youth association, taxi drivers’ association here in New York, and what they’re facing in these very difficult days since the attacks on the World Trade Center. You’re listening to Resistance Radio. This is The War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.