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Proof positive

It can't be long before George Bush and his merry-men and Tony Blair and John Howard have no alternative but to admit that things in Afghanistan are going from bad to worse.

With today's news of the slaying of Safia Amajan in Kabul it is clear that the Taliban is in its ascendency. As The Independent reports:

"Safia Amajan promoted women's education and work - a fairly ordinary job in most places - but in the Afghanistan of a resurgent Taliban it was a dangerous path to follow. She was a target, and yesterday she was gunned down outside her home.

Five years after the "liberation" of Afghanistan by the US and Britain, with promises of a new dawn for its downtrodden women, her murder was a bloody reminder of just how far the country is slipping back into a land of darkness."


And this:

"* 50 per cent of Afghan women say they have been beaten, while 200 women in Kandahar ran away from domestic violence this year.

* In the past year, 150 cases of women resorting to self-immolation have been reported in western Afghanistan, 34 cases in the south-east.

* 197 women in Herat were reported to have attempted suicide last year, 69 successfully.

* 57 per cent of girls are married before the legal age of 16."


Read the full piece here - and conclude, as one surely must, that things in Afghanistan are nothing less than a disaster.

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