Michelle Obama Called Out for Failure to Support Afghanistan Women's Rights

Michelle Obama has been very silent on the plight of Afghanistan's women. The situation had improved some during the Bush administration, but the situation is now deteriorating for women again. They have been forced back into the burks and are being treated like cattle. An article in the Afghanistan Press has called Michelle Obama out for ignoring the plight of Afghanistan's women.

The woman of Afghanistan are facing a crisis which threatens to roll back many of the advances in equality and human rights that the West promised after the fall of the Taliban. Brothels in Kabul continue to service NATO officials and contractors, burkas are once again becoming the norm, and Afghan women continued to be legally viewed as mere property of their families and husbands, with criminal penalties for failing to act as property.

As one of her supporters, this author expected more from First Lady Michelle Obama. While she has won praise for her excellent fashion sense and her support for healthy foods, both issues are safe and uncontroversial. The American people bestowed upon her a unique and priceless soap box on which she can stand and command attention. As perhaps the most popular and respected person in America, her powerful voice has been silent on far too many important issues. One of those issues is the Obama Administration’s failure to support women’s rights in Afghanistan....

What is Michele Obama ignoring?  Here is a sample.

...It turns out that 50% of the women in Afghan jails committed no crimes that are recognized in the West or in most countries in the East and South. They are jailed for moral crimes. This includes women fleeing abusive marriages (which is a crime); women who refuse to marry those to whom they have been promised (which is a crime) and those who have been raped by relatives. The latter crime is called “zina,” which is a Farsi/Dari term for adultery. The difference in Afghanistan is that a wife who is raped by a male relative is almost automatically guilty of zina as she can almost never prove her innocence....

In contrast, former First Lady Laura Bush was an outspoken supporter of human rights of Afghanistan's women. Here is a video from December 2008. Barbara Bush was speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, on the 60th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

First Lady Champions Rights of Afghan Women


Laura Bush joined the fight for Afghanistan's women's human rights early in President Bush's 1st term. She continued it to the end and hasn't stopped yet.

I guess Michelle Obama is too busy trying to make us eat our peas.