Women protest in Afghanistan

I've read a few books touching on Afghanistan in the past few months. One especially, Kabul in Winter: Life without Peace in Afghanistan, deals with the condition of women as the country emerged from under the Taliban. Outside of Kabul, illiteracy among women is almost universal, girls are married off at 12 or 14.

The NY Times article does not mention whether the 300 women marching were Shiite or a broader coalition. By the fact that some of them were wearing jeans, I'll assume they at least some of them were educated Kabulis, but nonetheless, it is pretty extraordinary that they had the power to protest in the face of opposition.

The women who protested Wednesday began their demonstration with what appeared to be a deliberately provocative act. They gathered in front of the School of the Last Prophet, a madrassa run by Ayatollah Asif Mohsini, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric. He and the scholars around him played an important role in the drafting the new law.

“We are here to campaign for our rights,” one woman said into a loudspeaker. Then the women held their banners aloft and began to chant.

The reaction was immediate. Hundreds of students from the madrassa, most but not all of them men, poured into the streets to confront the demonstrators.

“Death to the enemies of Islam!” the counterdemonstrators cried, encircling the women. “We want Islamic law!”

The women stared ahead and kept walking.

A phalanx of police, some of them women, held the crowds apart.