Afghan Women
Below is the opening paragraph of "Suffragette City" a review of a new PBS documentary that "looks behind the veil at the women of Afghanistan," By Dana Stevens, Posted to Slate.com Nov. 16, 2004. She notes:
"President Bush loves to talk about the 19-year-old Afghan woman who was the first to cast a vote in October's presidential election. In the last few weeks before the election, he could hardly mount the podium without getting dewy-eyed over the thought of this spunky, once-veiled young lady casting her vote, not just for the candidate of her choice, but for Western-style democracy. What the president neglects to mention (besides the fact that the election was widely regarded as troubled and fraudulent) is that the girl in question, Moqadasa Sidiqi, voted absentee. A refugee from Afghanistan's two decades of war, she has been living in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital city, since her family emigrated there twelve years ago. In an interview after voting, she said she had voted for peace in the hope that her country would one day be safe enough for her family to return."
Though I suppose Bush didn't *technically* lie about this, I certainly bought into an image of an Afghan woman voting IN AFGHANISTAN! She got to be the first voter because polls in Pakistan (for refugees!) opened before polls in Afghanistan, photos of her voting are here and here. But she and her family obviously feel Afghanistan it is not a safe place to live! In any event the documentary looks interesting.
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