KABUL, March 8 (AFP) - Under tight security, Afghanistan's Taliban marked International Women's Day on Wednesday for the first time since they took power nearly four years ago.
The Taliban, who now control most of the country, have barred women from working outside and attending schools, in line with their own strict interpretation of the Islamic Shari’a law.
Women must be fully covered from head to toe with an all-enveloping garment, the burqa.
In a rare ceremony, the Taliban militia, who seized Kabul in September 1996, brought around 700 women to the Rabia Balkhi women's hospital in the city, driven in buses with dark curtains drawn.
Most of the women were medical workers currently working in the capital, including Suhail (one name), a surgeon having the rank of general, who is now playing a lead role in Kabul's military hospital.
A few local female journalists were also among the participants.
The program included recitation of the Holy Quran, poetry and speeches on women's rights in Islam and scarves were distributed among the women.
Six women were released from a prison in Kabul to mark the day, officials said.
"Every country is celebrating such occasions according to their own circumstances," said Abdurrahman Hotak, the Taliban's deputy information minister. "Now the time is suitable and we are marking International Women's Day," he said.
In his special message read at the function, the Taliban's supreme leader Mulla Omar said it was thanks to the security provided by his troops that Kabul women were now able to mark their day. "I am sure that still we have too many problems and the country is engulfed in political, economic and other hardship," the message said.
Omar attacked the non-Muslim world for launching "propaganda" against the Taliban in the name of women's rights. "Their interpretation of women's rights is only those ugly and filthy western cultures and customs in which women are insulted and dishonored as a toy," it said.
He said the international community should spend its time helping the poor and hungry of Afghanistan.
Omar, who is referred to as the leader of the faithful by his followers, told women to educate a "new generation" according to the Islamic Shari’a law. "I will do more in addition to my previous orders and statements to save and protect all your Shari’a rights," he said.
The ruling militia's mobile religious police patrols in Kabul and other major cities make sure women do not show their faces or ankles. Violators are beaten by a rubber hose, often symbolically but sometimes painfully hard.
Not everyone was impressed with the gathering. "Celebrations are good, but we need work and food," said one woman who was looking through second-hand clothes at a nearby stall.
The Taliban are still fighting troops from the former government in Afghanistan's northeast.
Assem Suhail, a spokesman for the anti-Taliban alliance, speaking from the opposition's northeastern stronghold of Takhar, said around 100 local women gathered in a girls’ school to mark the occasion. He said speakers at the gathering, organized by the Central Association of Afghanistan Women, spoke about the role of women in society, "their rights and education."
Women in the opposition-held areas northeast of Kabul can go to schools and work outside, Suhail said. "There are around 3,000 female students and 80 female teachers alone in one school in Takhar," he said.
