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• Thursday, August 30, 2007 09:12 AM

  Broadsheet editors are a wee bit short on world knowledge too by the way

  Being able to find Afghanistan on a map is a minor skill. It's going to take a lot more than that to bring a feminist revolution to Afghanistan.

  I was a bit shocked by the ignorance displayed in that little Broadsheet item about the supposed taboo against rape victims calling the police in Afghanistan.

  If you had a working knowledge of Afghan tribal history and culture, then you'd understand that the idea of calling the police to report any crime at all is a very new concept in Afghanistan.

  In Afghan tribal culture, the tribes have traditionally employed restitutive justice, where the family of the aggrieved party is offered some form of compensation for the crime by the family of the perpetrator, and this arrangement is settled by the leaders of the tribes of the two parties.

  Restitutive justice offers an advantage over retributive justice for rural people who can't afford to fund expensive fixed institutions like courts and judges and prisons. This is a more efficient system of justice for poor people who live in harsh rural environments.

  Offers of marriage are often part of the compensation package, because the financial and social standing of a family can be improved dramatically by marriage into the right tribe.

  Feminist reformers already made attempts to change this system back in the 1970s and those attempts failed pretty badly. The failures of the socialist government ultimately led to the Soviet invasion in 1979.

  Feminists who are interested in Afghanistan now need to understand how and why those feminists in the 1970s failed.

  The only book in the world that gives the details of the failed reforms back in the 1970s is "The Tragedy of Afghanistan" by Raja Anwar.

  I think everyone who writes for Broadsheet should read this book before they parse any more news about Afghanistan for Broadsheet readers.

  (And now you can see why I used to get beaten up for being too smart back in school! I talked like this even as a child.)

  —Silenced Read Silenced's other letters
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