(2.32) Secret Police (Afghanistan) Poem by Karl Stuart Kline

9/16/2007 - 12: 05 AM I just finished watching CNN's special program, 'Lifting the Veil, ' with Sharmeen Oboid-Chinoy as she travelled through Afghanistan, reporting on the changes (or not!) in the lives of Afghan women since the American invasion. Women still wear bourkhas and beg in the street where they are ridiculed by the men who pass by. Many of them are war widows who have lost their husbands and sons to the guns, bombs and missiles of the various combatants who have fought over Afghan soil in recent decades. It was said that there are over a Million widows in Afghanistan! There is little or no respect for them, though and conditions are bad enough for them that even many married women and girls consider suicide as a very real option... Many of them are desperate enough to douse themselves with kerosene and attempt to burn themselves to death! Health care for women is still such that they quoted a UNICEF report as saying that FIFTY pregnant women die each day in Afghanistan! If you have an opportunity to see either of these programs, know that parts of them are graphic, but they are well woth seeing! >^.Karl