Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson wrote a great column this week about how reconciliation with the Taliban -- an idea many foreign-policy realists have been supporting -- would amount to "casually condemning millions of poor and powerless women to fear and
slavery."
Secretary Clinton, with her distinctly American realism, would wholeheartedly agree. Last week in Kabul, she told the media:
"I have consistently raised with all levels of the Afghan government,
with everyone else from the EU to ISAF and the U.N., the absolute
necessity of our standing firmly together in our demands that women not
be marginalized in the process of reintegration and reconciliation."
When asked whether she would accept a political solution that would "come at the expense of women," Clinton had a smart response:
I don't think there is such a political solution that would be a
lasting, sustainable one that would turn the clock back on women. That
is a recipe for a return to the kind of Afghanistan -- if not in the
entire country, in significant parts of the country -- that would once
again be a breeding ground for terrorism. So we've got our red lines, and
they are very clear: Any reconciliation process that the United States
supports, recognizing that this is an Afghan-led 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.
At the Kabul conference last week, she also reiterated the same message, saying:
I also want to emphasize the importance of President Karzai's recent
statement that the rights of women, Afghan ethnic groups, and civil
society will not be sacrificed in pursuit of reintegration and
reconciliation. Over many years, I have observed and participated in
post-conflict reconciliation efforts -- in the Balkans, Northern Ireland,
Africa, Latin America -- and I speak from my own experience when I say
that the work of Afghan women and civil society groups will be essential
to this country's success. If these groups are fully empowered to help
build a just and lasting peace, they will help do so. But if they are
silenced and pushed to the margins of Afghan society, the prospects for
peace and justice will be subverted.
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