Who Are Those Taliban Guys?
You've probably heard the Taliban regime mentioned in the news a lot since the attack in New York (and on the Pentagon). Click here for Tips On Coping With The Attack. BUST Magazine reports that the Taliban have done the following:
- barred women and girls from working or going to school; punishments for working or attending school are beating, whipping, stoning or arrest
- forced women and girls to wear full body cloaks in public, where they can not venture without a male relative
- drastically limited women's health care by barring male doctors from seeing female patients
- arrested international aid workers for having Bibles; may sentence internal aid workers to death
- interrupted and obstructed humanitarian aid by barring women from distributing bread
- asked all Hindus in the country to wear a yellow badge in public
- caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee the country into Pakistan, where they are dying in droves
The United Nations has been pressuring the Taliban since January to extradite Osama bin Laden, the man believed to be behind the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The Taliban has not. The Taliban is now recognized only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Pakistan, (which borders Afghanistan), has promised their cooperation with apprehending bin Laden. They have not however specified if they will allow air and ground troops through their country.
For more information and to help ensure that Afghan women and girls who have been held hostage by the brutal Taliban militia are not forgotten check out the Feminist Majority website.
Religious extremism elsewhere this past year in the world has included:
- Sudan: Women were not permitted to work.
- Iran: A woman was stoned to death for producing material about sex.
- Pakistan, India: Women were sprayed with corrosive acid for not wearing the proper kind of clothes in public, and women and men requested to ride separate buses.
- Nigeria: A young girl was forced into having sex with her father's friends and then whipped publicly for doing so.
Tips for Getting Through This Difficult Time
1. BUST says "Don't freak out." Girl Zone agrees. Try to keep it together. Sure express your feelings, but don't go off the deep end. Negative feelings have a tendency to feed off each other. So do positive ones. Throw around as many positive ones as you can.
2. Limit your TV time. In other words don't keep yourself glued to the TV watching the same horrific scenes over and over again. Get physical. DO something. AND do it without the TV on in the background. Choose life. Be alive. Spread as much joy and normality as you can
3. Write to your elected official or ask your parents to do it. Tell them what you want to see happen next. Retaliation? Peaceful negotiations? Get heard. Email the President here.
4. Be as normal as you can. BUST says, "...help make sure the world becomes an everyday place again as soon as it can." This is SO important. The more "normal" your world is, the better you'll be able to cope. I'm not saying to forget what happened, just remember that life does and SHOULD go on.
5. Send money. The Red Cross needs all the help they can get. Click here to find out where to send donations or participate in a Red Cross drive near you.If you want to Do Something about recent events, check out this great website: Do Something; it provides a step-by-step guide to help teens get involved by expressing their thoughts and taking action to make a difference. Do Something is also offering teens $500 grants for community service projects.