FIVE years ago, the American president and his British sidekick persuaded their wives to step forward and endorse the morality of the war in Afghanistan. “We need to help Afghan women free their spirit and give them their voice back, so they can create the better Afghanistan we all want to see,” announced Cherie Blair.

Shortly afterwards, Laura Bush chimed in with the declaration that the emancipation of women was among the foremost advantages of sweeping aside the Taliban. “Women,” her husband announced, “now come out of their homes from house arrest.”

There can be no question, of course, that the relegation of women to subhuman status was one of the ugliest aspects of Taliban rule. The argument that the ascendancy of the Taliban reduced the incidence of rape and certain other crimes against women, which had pretty much become the norm under the anarchy bred by other gangs of “holy warriors”, may not be baseless. But it is at best incomplete without acknowledging that the price paid for this semblance of security was invisibility: no education, no jobs other than domestic slavery and, preferably, no public appearances.

The status of women, in other words, went considerably beyond ordinary inequality even by the standard of Islamic states. Therefore, even among those who saw little or no justification for the bombardment of Afghanistan in October 2001, there were many who nonetheless hoped that the departure of the Taliban from Kabul would at least allow women to emerge from the shadows.

Notwithstanding the rhetoric, that wasn’t, of course, a primary objective of the invaders. But it did seem like an almost inevitable side-effect. And, sure enough, there were hopeful signs to start with. Women returned more or less immediately to public life. Education once more became a realistic prospect. The Guardian’s Natasha Walters recalls visiting a literacy centre in “a dirt-poor village called Sar Asia, on the outskirts of Kabul”: she found it crowded with girls and women brimming with enthusiasm. When she revisited in last October, the centre was bare. “This place,” the solitary teacher told Walters, “is a place of Taliban. Neighbours may work for the government in the morning, but at night they are the same Taliban with the same thoughts.”

Threats, in other words, had put paid to the idea of education. “In the West you think that now conditions are good here,” the teacher continued, “that everyone can go to school or go to work for the government. But now we are just watching things get worse.” Walters cites an assessment by the charity Womankind Worldwide: “It cannot be said that the status of Afghan women has changed significantly in the last five years.”

The resurgence of the Taliban offers both a pretext and a context for such phenomena, albeit only to a certain extent. The continued subjugation, humiliation and victimisation of women also reflect a conservative mindset that extends well beyond the armed extremists who have lately been preoccupying Nato forces in the southern provinces bordering Pakistan. President Hamid Karzai appears to be convinced that cross-border infiltration is to blame, and Nato commanders appear to agree. Pakistani authorities don’t exactly deny that the border is porous, but General Pervez Musharraf is adamant that the Afghan government’s accusations are motivated primarily by a desire to ward off criticism of its ineffectiveness.

Efforts by George W. Bush to conciliate his two closest allies in the region have evidently borne no fruit, if Karzai’s emotional outburst last week is anything to go by. The Pakistan government, he claimed, is intent upon enslaving Afghans. “Those who cause us to suffer will burn in hell with us,” he threatened, and went on to imply that Nato forces were combating terrorism on the wrong side of the border.

Karzai’s angst and frustration are understandable, even though he appears far too reluctant to acknowledge the role his own status as a puppet plays in perpetuating Afghanistan’s agony. There is also a liberal helping of hypocrisy involved in making deals with local warlords, including Taliban allies, while castigating the Musharraf administration for following a similar path.

This is not to suggest that Pakistan has any cause for pride in the veritable Taliban mini-state that has reportedly emerged in the northwest. Nor is there any reason to be complacent about the instances when the fragile truce in those regions is rudely shattered, as it was by the missile attack on a madressah two months ago. The army claimed it had targeted the site in Bajaur after the Americans had passed on incontrovertible intelligence pointing to its status as a training camp for terrorists.

Suspicions that the devastating direct hit was actually an American initiative, a repeat performance after a similar attack in the same vicinity last January, are probably not unfounded. Quite conceivably, even the intended target was the same in both cases: Ayman Al Zawahiri. If there was a cover-up, it’s primary purpose is not hard to fathom: it was meant to spare Musharraf the embarrassment of having to once more make appropriate noises about the infringement of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Be that as it may, no evidence suggesting the madressah was anything other than what it purported to be has been made public. Almost everyone realises US intelligence can be notoriously unreliable. Besides, the point surely is that even if the site was indeed a training camp, would it have been all that difficult to surround it and to take the trainees and trainers into custody?

Apart from its reprehensible moral implications, the massacre route is also tactically problematic. Reports from the Afghan theatre frequently speak of large numbers of Taliban being killed by Nato troops. At the same time, western forces occasionally lament their inability to distinguish between Taliban and ordinary villagers. Then how can they be sure who they are killing, particularly when the carnage is caused by air strikes, which are reported by the Americans to have risen sharply in the past seven months?

Pointless deaths on both sides of the border fuel local resentment and act as a spur to militant recruitment. Perhaps that helps to explain, in part, why there appears to be an endless supply of Taliban, and why Pakistani forces have failed to establish their writ in tribal areas close to the Durand Line.

A poll conducted in Afghanistan last month by ABC News and the BBC World Service found that Muslim extremists enjoy no more than 10 per cent support, that Karzai remains overwhelmingly popular and that there continues to be widespread acceptance of the need for a foreign military presence. At the same time, the nation produced a record opium crop this year. Corruption is rife, not least because Karzai feels obliged to cut deals with local warlords. Schools for girls are the exception rather than the rule. And women who enter public life automatically become targets for obscurantist wrath, even in the elected assemblies.

There are some parallels between the haphazard quest for modernity under Karzai and the initiatives undertaken during Khalq/Parcham rule. There are also profound differences, not the least of which is the fact that back then the US was more than eager to equip, train and encourage those who felt threatened by land reforms and universal education. The latter-day concept of jihad as a brutally coercive means of enforcing regression may owe more to Zbigniew Brzezinski than it does to Osama bin Laden.

On our side of the border, meanwhile, the NWFP assembly’s ridiculous Hasba bill has been kept at bay through the dubious device of an appeal to the Supreme Court. More significantly, the Protection of Women Bill was signed into law at the end of last month in the face of clerical and obscurantist opposition.

It was sensible of the government to call the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal’s bluff: the failure of the mullahs to trigger en masse parliamentary resignations is a serious blow to their fractured credibility — which, hopefully, will prove consequential in next year’s elections. At the same time, it is gratifying to note that in parliamentary debates, government legislators have been reasonably critical of the utterly unrepresentative regime that introduced the profoundly offensive Hudood ordinances — which even now, unfortunately, have not been repealed.

It is a cause for abiding shame, of course, that for so long it was well-nigh impossible to prosecute cases of rape, one of the commonest crimes in Pakistan, and that victims of sexual violation were likelier to be punished than the depraved perpetrators. It is vital, of course, that those who have preached the virtues of the new law should strive to ensure that it is also practised.

The relegation of the death penalty for sex outside marriage is a small but necessary step towards decriminalising various aspects of relationships between consenting adults.

It’s the right to withhold consent that needs to be upheld, and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s bill against six uncivilised practices, including vani, forced marriage, and marriage to the Quran, is a long overdue step in the right direction.

In Pakistan as in Afghanistan, the Taliban mentality extends well beyond those who are identified by that nomenclature. Military overkill tends only to compound the problem. Nor will legislation suffice on its own. There is, on both sides of the border, a desperate need to broaden people’s minds. And progress on that score could remain elusive until the “war on terror” makes way for a less polarised environment.

Email: worldviewster@gmail.com