This was the TIME magazine cover for the week of 9th August, 2010
The girl on the cover is Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghan whose ears and nose were cut off at the behest of a Taliban commander, her only crime being fleeing from her abusive in-laws. Makes you think if women have really attained freedom, doesn't it?
This is just one example among many, of the persisting oppression of women in society. And this is me talking in the 21st century. Apparently, in the Pashtun society, nose cutting is the 'punishment' for a wife who 'disgraces' her 'husband'. And according to propagandists in Afghanistan, that was what happened with Aisha
Without sounding like a misandrist, I can infer from this that the men in such a society have no qualms about first beating and abusing a woman and then mutilating her further if she protests or tries to protect herself.
Now the more shocking part of the whole thing is that TIME chose such a disturbing image, a picture that will haunt children and adults alike for a long time, to go along with a cover story titled 'What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan'. In doing so, they reduced the significance of the main issue, of a girl being mutilated for protecting herself, for trying to exercise her right to live freely...to a poster for promoting U.S presence in Afghanistan.
Interestingly though, conditions of Afghan women did not necessarily improve after the invasion by the U.S army, as is pointed out in here - http://tasnimqutait.blogspot.com/2010/08/portrait-of-aisha-time-magazines-cover.html. So perhaps the U.S does not even have a strong case in propagating that Afghanistan will revert to barbarianism if they leave. The U.S government takes Rudyard Kipling 's 'The White Man's Burden' pretty seriously, it seems. ;)
Hence,the bigger question is not whether the U.S should continue to be at war with Afghanistan to free its people of the Taliban or not, rather it's if women in Afghanistan should go on war against such atrocities to claim their FREEDOM or not...
