Women's rights in Afghanistan are under constant assault right now, often from within the U.S.-backed Kabul government. As journalist and filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy says in the segment above, Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, cosmetically, things have improved for the women in Afghanistan...But really, if you look beneath the surface, has life improved for women in Afghanistan? Absolutely not.
But Couric never once challenged Time's editor as he made his claims, even as Human Rights Watch's Zama Coursen-Neff detailed some of the major abuses perpetrated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan:
We're very concerned that Hamid Karzai doesn't have a strong track record on women's rights. He has a history of trading off women's rights when it was politically expedient. Whether it's signing off on a Shia Personal [Status] Law that denied women custody of their children, denied them freedom of movement and said that they had to seek permission from male relatives when they want to leave their house, or pardoning gang rapists when it was politically expedient.
Contrary to Couric's and Stengel's slant on the issue, when Human Rights Watch talked to 90 women in insurgent-controlled areas, all favored a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
A journalist who was shot by Minneapolis police while covering 2020 protests over the death of...
