By ALISSA J. RUBIN in The NY Times, July 31

MAHMUD-E RAQI, Afghanistan — Women’s precarious rights in Afghanistan have begun seeping away. Girls’ schools are closing; working women are threatened; advocates are attacked; and terrified families are increasingly confining their daughters to home.

For women, instability, as much as the Taliban themselves, is the enemy. Women are casualties of the fighting, not only in the already conservative and embattled Pashtun south and east, but also in districts in the north and center of the country where other armed groups have sprung up.

As Afghan and Western governments explore reconciliation with the Taliban, women fear that the peace they long for may come at the price of rights that have improved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001.

 “Women do not want war, but none of them want the Taliban of 1996 again; no one wants to be imprisoned in the yards of their houses,” said Rahima Zarifi, the Women’s Ministry representative from the northern Baghlan Province.

Interviews around the country with at least two dozen female members of Parliament, government officials, activists, teachers and young girls suggest a nuanced reality — fighting constricts women’s freedoms nearly as much as a Taliban government, and conservative traditions already limit women’s rights in many places.

Women, however, express a range of fears about a Taliban return, from political to domestic — that they will be shut out of negotiations about any deals with the insurgents and that the Taliban’s return would drive up bride prices, making it more profitable for a family to force girls into marriage earlier.

For many women, the prospect of a resurgence of the Taliban or other conservative groups is stark. “It will ruin our life,” said Shougoufa, 40, as she sorted through sequins and gold sparkles at the bazaar in the city of Pul-i-Khumri in Afghanistan’s north.

 “I am a tailor and I need to come to the bazaar to buy these things,” she said. “But if the Taliban come, I will not be able to come. Already we are hearing some girls cannot go to their work anymore.”

In teachers’ tea-break rooms, beauty shop training sessions, bazaars and the privacy of their homes, young women worry that their parents will marry them off early, so they will not be forced to marry Taliban.

In the Pashtun-dominated district of Taghob, east of Kabul, girls’ schools have been closed and any teaching is done at home, the provincial education director said.

That does not trouble some local officials.

“Look, our main priority is to feed our people, to provide rest and to protect their lives,” said Haji Farid, a local member of Parliament

In Kandahar, Helmand and Zabul, all unstable southern provinces, there are girls’ schools open in the provincial capitals, but in outlying districts there are few, if any.

In Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan, the situation for women has steadily worsened over the past year. Ms. Zarifi, the Women’s Ministry representative, has endured assassination attempts and demonstrations against her work. Three months ago, a female member of the provincial council was paralyzed in an attack, and a woman was stabbed to death in the daytime in the middle of the provincial capital earlier in July.

By contrast, most of Kapisa Province, which lies northeast of Kabul, is peaceful. There is a mediation program in the capital to help women and girls when they face domestic violence. In the predominantly ethnically Tajik north there are large, lively schools for girls, where families even allow those who are married to complete high school. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/31/world/asia/31women.html?hp=&pagewanted=print