U.N. cannot agree to support a nation where females are excluded from basic human rights Ellie Tesher COLUMNIST

JOURNALISTS COMMONLY have at least one story that gets under their skin. In Sally Armstrong's case, it's the fate of Afghanistan women - and she's scratching back hard.

No stranger to taking risks in war-ravaged areas, the former editor of Homemakers magazine has travelled twice to Afghanistan since the brutal anti-women Taliban regime took control in 1996, most recently last January. Now she's after our help, men and women alike.

While there are humanitarian groups gathering support against restrictions on women's lives - among soul-destroying edicts, girls cannot go to school and women cannot work - Armstrong has a more political vision: Include Afghan women as decision-makers in any future coalition government.

That's not far-fetched when you learn, as she has, about Afghanistan's interior workings - aside from the news headlines that have grabbed attention since the country's protracted struggle to oust the occupying Soviets, the power-seeking civil strife between mujahedeen factions that followed, and the eventual takeover by the Taliban with its cruel fanaticism.

Women were a force until the recent past. Prior to Taliban rule, women made up 50 per cent of government workers, 40 per cent of the doctors, 70 per cent of the teachers. They were scientists, lawyers, politicians. They led corporations and non-profit organizations.

Armstrong, now editor at large for Chatelaine magazine, met secretly with pharmacists, psychiatrists and other former professional women, all terrified to speak to her yet wanting the outside world to know their tragic plight.

Women are beaten in the streets at will and publicly stoned to death for improprieties. Severe depression is common. Forced to wear the burqua full-body covering and deprived of Vitamin D, many suffer from osteomalacia (softened bones) so that they can hardly stand upright. Women marched in protest, once: The Taliban set their leader on fire - she died before their eyes - and threw acid on the others.

Yet by a miracle of survival, there are still Afghan women with the education, skills and experience to be among political leaders who will have to guide this tortured population back to the modern era once the current conflict ends. Some furtively teach girls and younger women in refugee camps and in clandestine home schools.

Armstrong looks past today's bleak images of war to what must inevitably become the recovery of a broken people in a devastated land.

"The Afghan people can make it, they're so tough and resilient," she says.

Her formula makes such obvious sense: massive international aid, United Nations support and peacekeepers, and a coalition government propped up by the United States and the U.N., that represents the historically fractious tribes - and includes women.

Only women would insist on ending human rights atrocities: For example, there is no health care whatsoever for females.

Thus, an 18-year-old spent 40 days (days!) in labour due to a protracted uterus that a midwife could have treated. A female doctor risked her own life to perform a hysterectomy under primitive conditions, saving the young woman. The baby was long dead. Armstrong found polio, measles and tuberculosis rampant, yet all clinics are closed to girls.

Armstrong has just been named special representative for UNICEF in Afghanistan, a voluntary role that will take her back to the trouble spot this month on a donkey convoy - delivering winter clothes, medicine and food to children caught in the turmoil - and reporting on their situation.

These children growing up hungry and frightened in their ransacked villages and makeshift refugee camps cannot possibly develop the energy and ideas needed from a new generation without women in power to assure they're cared for, have food in their stomachs and are educated.

The only way for that to happen is through what Armstrong calls "the politics of embarrassment." The U.N. cannot agree to support a country where women are excluded from basic human rights. The leaders of America, Britain, Canada and other Western nations cannot allow women to continue to be marginalized to appease Pakistan or other interests. As Armstrong notes, hijacking basic rights can't be dismissed as cultural relativism.

Women and men all over the world can let those in power know that they cannot knowingly trade away women's health, safety and sanity, and children's future.

Let Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and others be warned they will lose their own popular support. Write to your Member of Parliament. We, who live in a free society, are able to do so without even needing a stamp.

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Ellie Tesher's column appears on Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at etesher@thestar.ca <mailto:etesher@thestar.ca>