Afghan widows form community on Kabul hill

[Lunabelle]

I didn't know where to put this so I just put it in the general forum. It isn't really justice or women's rights. It is just a human interest article about these beautiful resilient women. We need to remember them and their children when we think of the wars.

By Joshua Partlow, Published: August 14

In KABUL — The hills of this capital stand as monuments to men in battle, topped by crumbling forts and rusted tanks, ancient ramparts and gleaming tombs of kings. One is different but no less a testament to war. It is known as Tapaye Zanabad — the hill that women built.

For the past decade, war widows have converged here and built by hand their mud hovels on a slope above a cemetery in an eastern neighborhood of the Afghan capital. They came at first because the land was free and they were poor. Police would fine or beat men for raising a settlement on government land, but the widows found that they could build if they

Hundreds of widows came, aid workers said, and they now number perhaps more than 1,000 on the hill and its surroundings. The first squatter homes have since morphed into a crowded community that has a private drinking water supply and spotty electricity. Most of the women have not been able to escape from wretched poverty, but they have preserved something far more unusual in a country dominated by men.

“Most of the widows didn’t have anything when they came here,” said Aneesa, an elderly widow who has lived on the hill for eight years. “Once we got to know each other, we felt like we were sisters.”




http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/afghan-widows-form-community-on-kabul-hill/2011/08/02/gIQA35KtFJ_story.html

[BeFree]

1. Well, we'll see

We'll see if our troops can protect them and give them support. I doubt it.