Taliban ban on working women hits hospitals

By Stephen Coates

KABUL (AFP): Sick children in Afghanistan's dilapidated hospitals are the latest victims of a clash between the ruling Taliban militia's "Islamic" values and UN principles of humanitarian assistance.

Some 250 children in the country's main children's hospital are living on a meager diet of bread, carrots, potatoes and water because of a row between the fundamentalist militia and the United Nations over the employment of women.

The Taliban in July enforced a ban on Afghan women working for foreign aid groups, accusing the UN and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) of undermining Islamic morality and gender roles.

As a result, the UN's World Food Program (WFP) had to stand down its seven Afghan female employees, the only people allowed to monitor assistance to women under the Taliban's strict version of Islamic law.

WFP deputy country director Peter Goossens said that without those seven employees all UN food aid to some 4,000 hospital in- patients -- men, women and children -- had to be suspended.

"Unless we can monitor our activities we cannot do them," Goossens said, stressing that "there is nothing else as divertable as food."

The UN had to justify its activities to international donors as well as adhere to its mandate concerning gender equality, he said, adding that food aid to orphanages had been reduced to "temporary" status.

But to the Taliban who run the hospitals, the WFP's withdrawal of assistance is just another example of what they see as Western hypocrisy and bias against Islam.

"The foreigners claim to be humanitarian but how can they say this when they are reducing food to the children?" said Haji Yar Mohammad, vice president of the Indira Gandhi Children's Hospital in Kabul.

"Why are they so concerned about Afghan women? They should worry about their own women. They are against Islam."

He said the Taliban -- who have closed girls' schools and outlawed women from working except in the health sector -- were "very concerned about women's rights."

"I have 140 women employees including doctors and nurses. We have implemented the burka system according to Islamic law but the women at the WFP were not wearing burkas," he said.

The burka is the head-to-toe covering women are required to wear in public here, with heavy mesh to hide the face. They are supposed to protect women's dignity.

Anisa, a female nurse at the hospital, said the WFP's withdrawal of food aid had had an immediate impact on the wellbeing of the children.

"The women's issue is not a good enough reason for the WFP to stop its assistance because most of our patients are here due to malnutrition," she said, cautiously removing the veil from her face to speak.

A senior Afghan doctor at another hospital regretted the loss of the WFP's flour, sugar and ghee butter and said his patients were under-nourished from the "poor quality" of the food provided by the Taliban.

But he described the situation as a "government problem."

"We do not support these policies (banning women from working with foreign aid groups). We want everyone to work for the rehabilitation of the country," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It is not the first time the Taliban's draconian laws governing women have run foul of the United Nations. UNICEF suspended its assistance to education programs in areas under Taliban control as early as 1995, a year before the militia swept into Kabul.

Senior UN officials said the world body was being pushed to the limit of its patience by the latest Taliban edict against working women, which also has serious ramifications for many of the NGOs operating here.

After a flurry of talks with UN Coordinator for Afghanistan Eric de Mul, the Taliban reinterpreted the edict on Aug. 17 to allow Afghan women to work for WFP bakeries providing subsidized bread to 43,000 women and children.

UN officials said the Taliban backtracked on the bakeries issue in the face of possible protests in Kabul, which would have sapped resources from the militia's main concern -- the ongoing war with opposition forces in the northeast.