Afghan President Speaks To Dallas Conference
DALLAS (AP) - The advances women have made in Afghan society since the fall of the Taliban will not be lost, regardless of any reconciliation talks with the al-Qaida-linked group that brutally repressed women for years, the Afghan president told a Dallas conference Thursday.
"Definitely, affirmatively, I can assure you that the gains will be maintained," President Hamid Karzai said via video at the event hosted by the George W. Bush Institute.
"They (Afghan women) want peace definitely, but they also want peace that keeps the gains they've made. They also want peace that respects the gains they have made," Karzai said.
Before Karzai's appearance, former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, stressed the importance of women retaining their freedoms in Afghanistan.
"I'm impressed by the courage of the women of Afghanistan," the former president said Thursday. The topic ranked high among the former first lady's priorities when she was in Washington.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently said the United States would step up efforts to build international support for Afghan reconciliation. The Afghan government has had contacts with high-ranking Taliban officials, but no formal negotiations are under way.
Some Afghan women fear their government's efforts to reconcile with the Taliban. Under the Taliban regime, girls were not allowed to go to school, women spent most of their time indoors and were forced to wear burqas -- long flowing garments that cover their heads, faces and bodies.
Today, Afghan women serve in the country's legislature, own businesses and work as teachers, lawyers, community health workers and prosecutors.
However, some women continue to wear burqas, and a U.N. report late last year said Afghanistan needed to eliminate widespread traditional customs that harm women and girls, such as child marriage, "honor killings" and giving away girls to settle disputes. The report by the U.N. mission was based on 150 individual and group interviews.
Clinton has said finding a political solution to end the war in Afghanistan would require the Taliban to renounce violence, sever ties with al-Qaida and respect the Afghan constitution and the country's laws, particularly as they apply to women's rights.
Karzai agreed in his comments Thursday.
"There should be no doubt in our minds that there will not be any changes, and I can say this with 100 percent confidence," he said Thursday. "There will not be any changes allowed by the Afghan people that will diminish or reduce the gains women have made."
Laura Bush also has spoken out on the issue of reconciling with the Taliban. In an op-ed in October 2010, she wrote that "peace attained by compromising the rights of half of the population will not last. Offenses against women erode security for all Afghans -- men and women."
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul and students from the American University of Afghanistan also appeared via video to discuss the subject with some 250 people attending the conference.
The conference is being held on the campus of Southern Methodist University, where the George W. Bush Presidential Center is being built. The center, which will house the Bush library and the institute, is expected to be completed in 2013.
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