Alliance ‘as bad as Taliban’ on women’s rights

Her face hid from view, Tahmeena Faryal told the United Nations that in the eyes of Afghan women, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance ‘‘have outdone each other’’ in committing massacres and violating women’s rights.

She warned that if the alliance, whose forces have swept through most of Afghanistan in a rout of the Taliban, remained in power the country would plunge into another civil war that would provide fertile ground for ‘‘wealthy Arab and non-Arab terrorist bands’’.

‘‘Both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance have outdone each other in all kinds of hair-raising massacres and violations of human rights and women’s rights,’’ she said.

While the alliance ‘‘now poses as advocates of women’s rights’’, it imposed many restrictions on women when it first took power in 1992, including requiring all females to be veiled, Faryal said.

During alliance rule, she added, ‘‘hundreds of young girls preferred to commit suicide than be raped or forcibly married’’.

Faryal spoke at a UN panel discussion as the representative of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.

The country’s oldest women’s political and humanitarian organisation, founded in 1977, operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan and urges the creation of a secular, democratic government.

She fled Afghanistan after the December 1979 Soviet invasion and became a human rights activist as a refugee in Pakistan.

For security reasons, she spoke from behind a barrier that shielded her face and asked not to be photographed.

‘‘The message of Afghan women is clear and loud - that what women in Afghanistan need is emancipation, that women’s emancipation is not possible without a national emancipation, that national emancipation is not possible without democracy, that as long as there’s no democracy, human rights and women’s rights are nothing but a hoax,’’ Faryal said.

She urged the United Nations to help the Afghan people establish a broad-based government based on democratic values, disarm all ‘‘fundamentalist bands’’ and stop outside financial support to them.

Faryal said the women’s association would not consider any interim government ‘‘legitimate unless it includes and heeds women’s voices from beginning to end in substantial and meaningful ways’’.

The association supports exiled Afghan King Mohammad Zaher Shah, who is expected to take part in next week’s Berlin meeting, as a central figure in an interim government, she said.

But Faryal warned that ‘‘if he comes relying on Northern Alliance and moderate Taliban elements, he will not only betray his reputation among the Afghan people, but would also undermine the stability and viability of whatever structure he forms’’.