Afghan Shi’ite Women get Sex Law

He makes fine speeches about Afghanistan and waxes so eloquently about our brave lads fighting to protect Afghan women from Taliban bondage.

Sounds great. But does he know what’s going on? What about the new marital rape law that applies to Shi’ites who make up an important 10 to 15 per cent of the population?

The law is tough. The wife has to put out for the husband at least once every four days or he takes what he wants. That must be why they call it a “family law.” Some family, some law.

If a couple splits, the husband gets custody. If he dies, his grandparents gets custody, not the widow.

If the wife dies, the husband inherits her money. But if he dies, the money goes to his parents, not to her.

Harper says he didn’t know anything about this. That natty little dressed-up puppet Hamid Karzai supposedly never told him. And Harper and his ministers insist they never found out on their own.

Strange because the Canadian Embassy people in Kabul were told five months ago by the Canadian International Development agency people. It’s al in a report. Doesn’t Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon read embassy reports? Cannon says he was caught “off-guard.” Some guard he is.

CIDA minister Bev Oda says she didn’t know about the Rights and Democracy report either, the report that went to her agency in Kabul.

When the news broke last week, Harper and the boys tried to douse the fire over here by saying Karzai’s Family law will be “reviewed.”

Who are they kidding? The law was passed through both houses of the Afghan parliament and was signed into law by Karzai. Some Afghan justice department officials will review the language of the law and various translations. That’s about all. And don’t wait for it.

Karzai needed the law for his re-election in September. Shi’ites are an important minority and they wanted the law. This law applies only to them. . . for now.

Would Karzai change the new law, reverse himself and lose the election^ He may be a puppet but he’s not a stupid puppet.

None of the 89 women in the 308-seat Parliament had a say in writing the law. It was all done by clerics and old men on committees.

The fear now is that the Taliban-style law will be shopped over to other Afghan minorities. Will it soon be open-season on Sunni women too?

One of the clerics explained to Canadian journalists last week that there is no question of changing the law. “You have democracy, we have democracy,” he said. “ We pass our laws, you pass your laws. That is called democracy.”

The law has opened Canadian eyes. Because our Canadian soldiers are fighting over there, we like to imagine the locals are all wonderful people beset by a few bad-guy Talibans, but if we just bring them democracy and give them the right to make their own laws everything will be alright, so let’s just keep on fighting.

We learned in Gaza what it means when you give people democracy. They vote as they choose, and not always as we want them to vote.

It is time to ask ourselves a few questions.

Were Harper, Cannon and Oda really asleep at the switch as they claim, or did they deliberately hold back about telling us the bad news and that gave Karzai time to sign the legislation into law?

Or did Karzai really fool Harper and should Harper have a word with him?

The words “Bye, bye” might focus Karzai’s attention.