The Guardian has a truly shocking video of a young woman being thrashed violently for not conforming with what the Taliban considers the social norms. According to the Guardian article, one of the men holding her down, whilst she screams and whimpers "Please stop it - Either kill me or stop it now" is her brother, particicpating to restore the family's 'honour'. Warning - it is very difficult to watch and made me retch when I saw it.
(thru The Spectator - Coffee House here)
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, legislation has been signed-off by President Karzai (but has apparently not yet come into effect), under conditions of extreme secrecy (no doubt because of the international outrage it was undoubtedly realised it would cause), which explicitly allows marital rape and imposes upon married women an absolute obligation to provide sexual services for their husbands. I have been completing YouGov online surveys for a couple of years now and there was a recent survey gleaning attitudes towards our involvement in Iraq and our continuing involvement in Afghanistan. I supported the former and broadly-speaking also support the latter - but now I'm not so sure we should be supporting Karzai if this is the kind of appalling nonsense he is prepared to append his signature to in order to obtain the support of extreme elements there in the forthcoming elections; we should certainly not allow our continuing presence there to be used to support this kind of barbarism.
