In Afghan culture, you don't date - you marry. Even talking to boys before marriage brings great shame to your family.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst.
I mean, honestly, we have to be clear that the life for many Afghan women is not that much different than it was a hundred years ago, 200 years ago. The country has lived with so much violence and conflict that many people, men and women, just want it to be over.
Talking to the Taliban is a process the Afghans have to manage. It is their country.
If we can't understand the Afghan family, we can't understand Afghanistan.
Afghan society is very complex, and Afghanistan has a very complex culture. Part of the reason it has remained unknown is because of this complexity.
Islam tells us every girl and boy should be educated. I don't know why the Taliban have forgotten it.
Why don't we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.
In Afghanistan, you don't understand yourself solely as an individual. You understand yourself as a son, a brother, a cousin to somebody, an uncle to somebody. You are part of something bigger than yourself.
The family is the single most important institution in Afghan culture. It is described in the country's constitution as the 'fundamental pillar of society'.
In all the debate about Afghanistan, we don't hear much about our obligation to the wretched lives of Afghan women. They are being treated as collateral damage as the big boys discuss geopolitical goals.
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