Afghan feminists speak out.

• Author: Flanders, Laura
• Position: War on terrorism, United States

"Now that the U.S. and the Taliban are on two opposite sides in a war, you've probably heard a lot about how the Taliban treat women," said Tahmeena. A member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, Tahmeena was talking to a packed room in Greenwich Village, at a meeting of the group New Yorkers Say No to War. "You probably know a lot about the restrictions on women in Afghanistan, but maybe you've heard less about what Afghan women want instead," she said.

There's no maybe about it. Americans have begun to see a lot in the media lately about the oppression of women under the Taliban. We've been hearing about women banned from working, excluded from school, flogged for wearing makeup, even executed for invented sins. As U.S. leaders were selling the nation on war against the Taliban, there were a lot of pictures of shrouded Afghan women in the news. The trouble is, Afghan women have mostly been silenced by the U.S. media, too. You sure haven't heard a lot from Afghan feminists.

On October 1, CNN's Larry King squeezed in a five-minute chat with Tahmeena between a twenty-minute interview with Bob Dole and a promo segment for a John Lennon memorial concert with Yoko Ono. Throughout the to-and-fro with Tahmeena, King played clips from a documentary that CNN has been airing. Made by Anglo-Afghan reporter Saira Shah with help from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan's underground video-tapers, Beneath the Veil gives a glimpse of what life's been like for women under the Taliban inside Afghanistan. One shaky video sequence captures a crowd of people in a Kabul soccer stadium. They rise to their feet and cheer after men in turbans force a woman in a burqa to her knees, then shoot her in the head. The faceless woman in blue keels over dead on the penalty line.

On Larry King, Tahmeena sat with her back to the camera for her own safety. King gazed at her and the audience and concluded the conversation by saying to his viewers, "I wish you could see her face. She's really very pretty."

Cast as the Taliban's silent victims in media coverage, Afghan women are struggling to be heard here in the United States. Like any group of politicized people, organized Afghan women's groups differ in their views. Some believe that good could come of the armed U.S. intervention if it ousted the hated Taliban. Others see nothing coming of it but more political extremism and more war.

The Revolutionary Association of the Women...