ISLAMABAD, Nov 27: Afghan women, who represent as much as 56 per cent of country’s population and the worst sufferers of the two decades of warfare, are being represented by only two women at the Afghanistan peace conference in Bonn, observed peace- activist and member of Human Rights Commission, Nasreen Azhar.

She was speaking at a discussion on “Situation of Women in Afghanistan” organized on Tuesday at the Trust for Volunteers conference room.

Ms Azhar presided over the discussion programme, which was also attended by Rehana Hashmi, Aisha Ikram Ghaznavi, Farzana and Dr Inayatullah, a Lahore based freelance writer.

One of the discussants, Ms Farzana said that given the circumstances, it was vital for the world community to ensure that strategic interests of Afghan women were protected and not relegated to the background in the male arena of politics at the peace conference.

Ms Rehana Hashmi, working at the Pakistan Education Society, Peshawar, volunteered to speak on the behalf of representatives of Afghan women and said life for Afghan women under the Northern Alliance who abduct and rape young girls, or under Taliban who forced girls to marry them or in the Pakistan refugee camps was one big slice of hell.

Narrating her own experience, she said that she met four Afghan children who were begging for food and clothes because they had received nothing at the refugee camps at Nowshera, where she was asked to work as a volunteer.

She said, following October 7 strikes on Afghanistan, refugees entering Pakistan were lodged at zero block of Jalozai Camp. Here she came across a woman with a six days old baby who asked her to take the child away. She was herself starved and could not nurse the baby.

She said this would give the participants an idea of how bad things are in refugee camps and how food and material relief pouring in was not evenly distributed. Trucks carrying relief goods to the camps could be seen stranded on the wayside.

The camp authorities told her that they were instructed by the high-ups that relief goods were to be distributed only by government authorities and NGOs were discouraged from doing the same.

The Jalozai camps resembled a small town with 100,000 refugees. The number of new arrivals in the zero blocks would be between 10,000 to 12,000, she said.

The government has now decided to shift them to Bajaur and this will add to the difficulties of Afghan women refugees, because the UNHCR has not been able to reach an understanding with the government, Rehana said.

Another social worker and a member of Islamabad Citizens Peace Committee, maintained that the life of urban Afghan women was different to that of rural women.

The urban women were educated and liked to work and receive further education. The rural women sought right of life and safety and jobs for their male partners.

She reminded the audience that one of the main reasons recorded by fleeing Afghan women during the eighties was that the Soviets were forcing their girls to go to school.

Ms Aisha said constant infighting and bombing in Afghanistan had significantly reduced the male population. Women now formed 56 per cent of the country’s population and added that women were the providers and bread earners of their family.

Their status was now reduced to penury and one hears about prostitution especially girl child prostitution in Peshawar, she reflected.

The discussion was attended by a large number of women social workers though a sprinkling of men had also turned up. — Jonaid Iqbal