History forgotten: for Afghan women, a milestone achieved ... and lost.

Michael Schnorr, a professor of art at Southwestern College in California, was in Afghanistan at the time of an historic but little-known gathering of that country's women to declare their rights to plan their families and participate in modern society as equals with men. It was a heady moment, but the hopes it raised would soon be crushed by events that brought grief to the Islamic world. In an interview with World Watch, Schnorr recounts how he became a witness to that now-forgotten moment.

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It was 1995. I'm walking around Kabul working on a project to find the sources of what later became known as the war rugs. They had appeared in London and New York, being sold with the idea that you could buy a war rug and the money would go to help the Mujahadeen resistance against the Soviet invasion. The traditional Afghan prayer rug would normally have some decorative elements on it, but in these rugs these elements were being replaced by hand grenades, Kalashnikovs, and helicopters. I had gotten a grant from the California Arts Council to go to film some of the people who had actually woven the rugs.

There weren't a whole lot of tourists walking about Kabul at that time, because everyone was fearing the Taliban coming up. They were already in Kandahar, shooting people. And virtually the same week as their first big battle launch, the women of Afghanistan were holding the first all-Afghan women's conference in the history of their country. Its purpose was to select delegates to the historic Beijing world conference for women that fall.

I had been in Afghanistan with my video camera before. I had worked with the Afghan Media Association, which had been in exile in Peshawar, Pakistan, and had been sending men across the border with tiny VHS cameras to film the Soviet atrocities. I have a lot of that film. This time, one of the guards happened to be out on the street in front of the hotel where the conference was going to be, and invited me to come film the women's conference the next day.

I didn't fully realize the importance of it until they sent a taxi for us. We arrive and I'm walking up the stairs with a camera and a camera bag, and that's when I first hear what I can only describe as something like the first time you ever heard Janis Joplin. It's a woman's voice singing the opening prayer for the conference. I get to the top of the stairs and ... that woman is the picture you have.

I was the only man there, as far as I could see. I'm...