2. Student submitted their "
Where I Stand?" introductory assignment. (75 points)
3. We
reviewed some "Writing No-No's." If you were absent, please cut and paste the following aspects into WORD and then place them in the "Vocab./Mechanics" section of your notebook.
NO-NO #1: The following words are called "Dead Words" and they should not be used in your formal writing work:
got, get, very, a lot, cool, stuff, sort of, kind of, like, really, good, thing,and pretty.
NO-NO #2: Please avoid the use of SECOND PERSON when writing. Second person includes the following words: you, your, yourself, and yours.
NO=NO #3: Avoid
passive voice in formal writing. Active voice adds clarity, where as
passive voice makes writing flat and dull. Passive voice uses the "be
verbs" (is, are, was, were, be, been, being). For example, the following sentence uses passive voice: The check was cashed at the bank. It is not difficult to use the active voice in re-writing the sentence. Molly cashed her check at the bank.
NO-NO#4: Avoid redundant phrases such as
In my opinion...., I believe that....., I think that....., I am going to write about.....
NO-NO #5: Avoid absolute terms such as never, always, everyone, all, always, none.
NO-NO #6: Make sure that your structure in writing is parallel. For example the following sentence is NOT parallel. Sarah loves playing volleyball, reading poetry, and to study history. This sentence is easy to correct by doing the following: Sarah loves playing volleyball, reading poetry, and studying history.
HOMEWORK:
WHAT DOES ANNOTATE MEAN, Crampton? "ANNOTATE" means to
underline text in order to strengthen understanding. "NOTATE" means to
record information next to text in order to strengthen understanding.
So.........Your first annotated article is due on Wednesday, August 29th!
- If you find a section of text confusing then you would underline it using BROWN.
- If you are able to make a connection ot your own life then you would underline that section of text using your PURPLE.
- Another way to annotate is by asking QUESTIONS about the text. RED is the color you will use for this annotation.
- If you come across a VOCABULARY word that you don't know use YELLOW!
- If a piece of text touches you emotionally, then BLUE is the color for that annotation.
- If a piece of writing is poetic to you, then use BLACK!
- If text gives you a different perspective then GREEN is your annotation color.
- ORANGE is the color you will use if you come across text that you find interesting.
HOMEWORK CONTINUED........
1. Your
Article of the Week #1 is due on Friday, August 30th. You need to use ALL your
colors and include 7-10 notations/page. I have included the color coding
key for you above. Your first article is located for you below. It is entitled, "Taliban Women and the Return of the Taliban." Cut and paste it as a word document. In most cases I will include a link, but unfortunately the link did not work for the article.
Taliban Women and the Return of the Taliban
AW #1
The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding
that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's
house. They dragged her to a mountain clearing near her village in
the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, ignoring her protests that
her in-laws had been abusive, that she had no choice but to escape.
Shivering in the cold air and blinded by the flashlights trained on
her by her husband's family, she faced her spouse and accuser. Her
in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If
she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban
commander, was unmoved. Later, he would tell Aisha's uncle that she
had to be made an example of lest other girls in the village try to
do the same thing. The commander gave his verdict, and men moved in
to deliver the punishment. Aisha's brother-in-law held her down while
her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he
started on her nose. Aisha passed out from the pain but awoke soon
after, choking on her own blood. The men had left her on the
mountainside to die.
This didn't happen 10 years ago, when the Taliban ruled
Afghanistan. It happened last year. Now hidden in a secret women's
shelter in the relative safety of Kabul, where she was taken after
receiving care from U.S. forces, Aisha recounts her tale in a
monotone, her eyes flat and distant. She listens obsessively to the
news on a small radio that she keeps by her side. Talk that the
Afghan government is considering some kind of political accommodation
with the Taliban is the only thing that elicits an emotional
response. "They are the people that did this to me," she
says, touching the jagged bridge of scarred flesh and bone that
frames the gaping hole in an otherwise beautiful face. "How can
we reconcile with them?"
That is exactly what the Afghan government plans to do. In June,
President Hamid Karzai established a peace council tasked with
exploring negotiations with Afghanistan's "upset brothers,"
as he calls the Taliban. A month later, Tom Malinowski, the
Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, a New York —
based NGO, flew to Kabul seeking assurances that human rights would
be protected in the course of negotiations. During their
conversation, Karzai mused on the cost of the conflict in human lives
and wondered aloud if he had any right to talk about human rights
when so many were dying. "He essentially asked me," says
Malinowski, "What is more important, protecting the right of a
girl to go to school or saving her life?" How Karzai and his
international allies answer that question will have far-reaching
consequences. Aisha has no doubt. "The Taliban are not good
people," she says. "If they come back, the situation will
be worse for everyone." But for others, the rights of Afghan
women are only one aspect of a complex situation. How that situation
will eventually be ordered remains unclear.
As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an
exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. The
publication of some 90,000 documents on the war by the
freedom-of-information activists at WikiLeaks — working with the
New York
Times, the
Guardian in London and the German
newsmagazine
Der Spiegel — has intensified international
debate. Though the documents mainly consist of low-level intelligence
reports, taken together they reveal a war in which a shadowy
insurgency shows determined resilience; where fighting that enemy
often claims the lives of innocent civilians; and where supposed
allies, like Pakistan's security services, are suspected of playing a
deadly double game. Allegations of fraud and corruption in the Afghan
government have exasperated Congress, as has evidence that the
billions of dollars spent training and equipping the Afghan security
forces have so far achieved little. In May, the U.S. death toll
passed 1,000. As frustrations mount over a war that even top U.S.
commanders think is not susceptible to a purely military solution,
demands intensify for a political way out of the quagmire.
Such
an outcome, it is assumed, would involve a reconciliation with the
Taliban or, at the very least, some elements within its fold. But
without safeguards, that would pose significant risks to the very
women U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised in May not to
abandon. "We will stand with you always," she said to
female members of Karzai's delegation in Washington. Afghan women are
not convinced. They fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their
progress may be sidelined. "Women's rights must not be the
sacrifice by which peace is achieved," says Fawzia Koofi, the
former Deputy Speaker of Afghanistan's parliament.
Yet that may be where negotiations are heading. In December,
President Obama set a July 2011 deadline for the beginning of a
drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. That has made Taliban
leaders feel they have the upper hand. In negotiations, the Taliban
will be advocating a version of an Afghan state in line with their
own conservative views, particularly on the issue of women's rights,
which they deem a Western concept that contravenes Islamic teaching.
Already there is a growing acceptance that some concessions to the
Taliban are inevitable if there is to be genuine reconciliation. "You
have to be realistic," says a senior Western diplomat in Kabul,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We are not going to be
sending troops and spending money forever. There will have to be a
compromise, and sacrifices will have to be made." Which sounds
understandable. But who, precisely, will be asked to make the
sacrifice?
Stepping Out
When the U.S. and its allies went to war
in Afghanistan in 2001 with the aim of removing the safe haven that
the Taliban had provided for al-Qaeda, it was widely hoped that the
women of the country would be liberated from a regime that denied
them education and jobs, forced them indoors and violently punished
them for infractions of a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Under
the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, women accused
of adultery were stoned to death; those who flashed a bare ankle from
under the shroud of a burqa were whipped. Koofi remembers being
beaten on the street for forgetting to remove the polish from her
nails after her wedding. "We were not even allowed to laugh out
loud," she says.
It wasn't always so. Kabul 40 years ago was considered the
playground of Central Asia, a city where girls wore jeans to the
university and fashionable women went to parties sporting Chanel
miniskirts. These days the streets of Kabul once again echo with the
laughter of girls on their way to school, dressed in uniforms of
black coats and white headscarves. Women have rejoined the workforce
and can sign up for the police and the army. Article 83 of the
constitution mandates that at least 25% of parliamentary seats go to
female representatives.
During Taliban times, women's voices were banned from the radio,
and TV was forbidden, but last month a female anchor interviewed a
former Taliban leader on a national broadcast. Under the Taliban,
Robina Muqimyar Jalalai, one of Afghanistan's first two female
Olympic athletes, spent her girlhood locked behind the walls of her
family compound. Now she is running for parliament and wants a sports
ministry created, which she hopes to lead. "We have women boxers
and women footballers," she says. "I go running in the
stadium where the Taliban used to play football with women's heads."
But Muqimyar says she will never take these changes for granted. "If
the Taliban come back, I will lose everything that I have gained over
the past nine years."
It would be easy to dismiss such fears as premature. The Taliban
leadership has not yet shown any inclination to reconcile with
Karzai's government. But a program to reintegrate into society
so-called 10-dollar Talibs — low-level insurgents who fight for
cash or over local grievances — is already in place. Koofi worries
that such accommodations may be the first step down a slippery slope.
Reintegrating low-level Taliban could mean that men like those who
ordered and carried out Aisha's punishment would be eligible for the
training and employment opportunities paid for by international
donors — without having to account for their actions. "The
government of Afghanistan needs to make it clear, not just by
speaking but by action and policy, that women's rights will be
guaranteed," says Koofi. "If they don't, if they continue
giving political bribes to Taliban, we will lose everything."
Clinging
to the Constitution
Both the U.S. administration and Karzai's
government say such worries are overblown. Afghanistan's
constitution, they insist — which promotes gender equality and
provides for girls' education — is not up for negotiation. In Kabul
on July 20, Clinton said that the red lines are clear. "Any
reconciliation process ... must require that anyone who wishes to
rejoin society and the political system must lay down their weapons
and end violence, renounce al-Qaeda and be committed to the
constitution and laws of Afghanistan, which guarantee the rights of
women."
Afghan women cling to such promises like a talisman. But
ambiguities abound. Article 3 of the constitution, for example, holds
that no law may contravene the principles of Shari'a, or Islamic law.
What constitutes Shari'a, however, has never been defined, so a
change in the political climate of the country could mean a radical
reinterpretation of women's rights. Karzai has already invited
Taliban to run for parliament. None have done so, but if they ever
do, they may find some like-minded colleagues already there. Abdul
Hadi Arghandiwal, the Minister of Economy and leader of the
ideologically conservative Hizb-i-Islami faction, for example, holds
that women and men shouldn't go to university together. Like the
Taliban, he believes that women should not be allowed to leave the
home unaccompanied by a male relative. "That is in accordance
with Islam. And what we want for Afghanistan is Islamic rights, not
Western rights," Arghandiwal says.
Traditional ways, however, do little for women. Aisha's family
did nothing to protect her from the Taliban. That might have been out
of fear, but more likely it was out of shame. A girl who runs away is
automatically considered a prostitute in deeply traditional
societies, and families that allow them back home would be subject to
widespread ridicule. A few months after Aisha arrived at the shelter,
her father tried to bring her home with promises that he would find
her a new husband. Aisha refused to leave. In rural areas, a family
that finds itself shamed by a daughter sometimes sells her into
slavery, or worse, subjects her to a so-called honor killing —
murder under the guise of saving the family's name.
Parliamentarian Sabrina Saqib fears that if the Taliban were
welcomed back into the fold, those who oppress women would get a free
ride. "I am worried that the day that the so-called moderate
Taliban can sit in parliament, we will lose our rights," she
says. "Because it is not just Taliban that are against women's
rights; there are many men who are against them as well." Last
summer, Saqib voted against a bill that authorized husbands in
Shi'ite families to withhold money and food from wives who refuse to
provide sex, limited inheritance and custody of children in the case
of divorce and denied women freedom of movement without permission
from their families. The law passed, and that 25% quota of women in
parliament couldn't stop it. Saqib estimates that less than a dozen
of the 68 female parliamentarians support women's rights. The rest —
proxies for conservative men who boosted them into power — aren't
interested.
Despite her frustrations with her parliamentary colleagues, Saqib
is a firm supporter of the constitutional quota. "In a society
dominated by culture and traditions," she says, "we need
some time for women to prove that they can do things." If the
constitution were revised as part of a negotiation with the Taliban,
she says, the article mandating the parliamentary quota "would
be the first to go." Arghandiwal, the Economy Minister, would
love to see the back of it. "Throughout history, constitutions
have changed, so we have to be flexible on this," he says. The
quota for women, he claims, "makes them lazy."
Threats
in the Night
For
many women, debates over the constitution are an abstract
irrelevance. What matters is that mounting insecurity is eroding the
few gains they have made. Taliban night letters — chilling missives
delivered under the cover of darkness — threaten women in the south
of the country, a Taliban stronghold, who dare to work. "We warn
you to leave your job as a teacher as soon as possible otherwise we
will cut the heads off your children and shall set fire to your
daughter," reads one. "We will kill you in such a harsh way
that no woman has so far been killed in that manner," says
another. Both letters, which were obtained by Human Rights Watch, are
printed on paper bearing the crossed swords and Koran insignia of the
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the name of the former Taliban
government. Elsewhere, girls' schools have been burned down and
students have had acid thrown in their faces. In May, mounting
violence in the west of the country prompted the religious council of
Herat province to issue an edict forbidding women to leave their
homes without a male relative. The northern province of Badakhshan
quickly followed suit, and other councils are considering doing the
same.
The edicts are usually justified as a means of protecting women
from the insurgency, but Koofi, the member of parliament, says there
is a better way of doing that: improved governance and security. That
will not just protect women but also strengthen the Afghan
government's hand in the course of negotiations. "We need to
marginalize the Taliban by focusing on good governance," she
says, fearing that a quick deal would bring only a temporary lull in
the violence — enough to permit the international coalition a
face-saving withdrawal but not much more than that. Afghanistan's
women recognize that dialogue with the Taliban is essential to any
long-term solution, but they don't want those talks to be hurried.
They want a seat at the table, and they worry that Afghanistan's
friends overseas are tiring of its dysfunctional ways. "I think
it is possible to make things better if the international community
supports good governance," says Koofi, "but they are too
focused on an exit strategy. They want a quick solution."
For Afghanistan's women, an early withdrawal of international
forces could be disastrous. An Afghan refugee who grew up in Canada,
Mozhdah Jamalzadah recently returned home to launch an Oprah-style
talk show, which has become wildly popular. Jamalzadah has been able
to subtly introduce questions of women's rights into the program
without provoking the ire of religious conservatives. "If I go
into it directly," she says, "there will be a backlash. But
if I talk about abuse, which is against the Koran, and then talk
about divorce, which is permitted, I am educating both men and women,
and hopefully no one notices." Jamalzadah says her audience is
increasingly receptive to her message, but she knows that in a deeply
traditional society, it will take time to percolate. If the
government becomes any more conservative because of an accommodation
with the Taliban, she says, "my program will be the first to
go."
That would be Afghanistan's loss. Jamalzadah's TV show is an
education for the whole nation, albeit sometimes in unexpected ways.
On a recent episode, a male guest told a joke about a foreign human
rights team in Afghanistan. In the cities, the team noticed that
women walked six paces behind their husbands. But in rural Helmand,
where the Taliban is strongest, they saw a woman six steps ahead. The
foreigners rushed to congratulate the husband on his enlightenment —
only to be told that he stuck his wife in front because they were
walking through a minefield.
As the audience roared with laughter, Jamalzadah reflected that
it may take about 10 to 15 years before Afghan women can truly walk
alongside men. But once they do, she believes, all Afghans will
benefit. "When we talk about women's rights," Jamalzadah
says, "we are talking about things that are important to men as
well — men who want to see Afghanistan move forward. If you
sacrifice women to make peace, you are also sacrificing the men who
support them and abandoning the country to the fundamentalists that
caused all the problems in the first place."
Enjoy your weekend!
Cheers,
Crampton
