I just pulled this week’s TIME Magazine out of my parents’ mailbox – my dad has a subscription – and the cover photograph literally stopped me in my tracks.
“The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband’s house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn’t run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Aisha’s brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose.”
Her husband.
I have not written a blog post for months, but I want people to see this image and I hope you’ll at least read the abridged version of the story online. There is also a short video on TIME’s website in which the photographer, Jodi Bieber, talks about the process of photographing Aisha.
I agree with TIME’s decision to run this story now and to put this picture on its cover, from my perspective both as a journalist and a woman. TIME’s Managing Editor Richard Stengel explains online that he feels “the image is a window into the reality of what is happening — and what can happen — in a war that affects and involves all of us. I would rather confront readers with the Taliban’s treatment of women than ignore it. I would rather people know that reality as they make up their minds about what the U.S. and its allies should do in Afghanistan.”
Ultimately our military and elected leaders will decide our country’s course in Afghanistan, but in the process Americans should have access to information about what is happening here and there, which this story provides:
“As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. Such an outcome, it is assumed, would involve reconciliation with the Taliban. But Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined. “Women’s rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved,” says parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi.
Yet that may be where negotiations are heading. The Taliban will be advocating a version of an Afghan state in line with their own conservative views, particularly on the issue of women’s rights. Already there is a growing acceptance that some concessions to the Taliban are inevitable if there is to be genuine reconciliation. “You have to be realistic,” says a diplomat in Kabul. “We are not going to be sending troops and spending money forever. There will have to be a compromise, and sacrifices will have to be made.”
As for the ongoing debate over the definition and value of journalism, I feel that this story is in many ways a case in point for the argument that our free society can not exist without it.
