"The mullahs keep saying freedom is not good for us."

A fascinating, depressing and infuriating report by Natasha Walter (thanks to Anja for the tip) on the improvements - as well as their disappointing lack - for women in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.

It's not all bad news:

You can't say that things haven't improved at all in Afghanistan since the Taliban were "removed", and even Alya wouldn't quite go that far. You can now see women moving around Kabul in a way they could not five years ago; the majority do not wear the burka, sporting instead a variety of Islamic dress from shalwar kameez to a short coat with a bright headscarf, as they go to the markets, to the schools, to the university, and to work.

During my time in the city I seek out evidence of change, and I certainly find it. I meet women in the government, including in the ministry of public health, where they are trying to deliver a package of basic healthcare for women. I meet women in non-governmental organisations working on literacy and advocacy projects, women professors and students in the university, and women in the media, including newspaper reporters and television presenters. But each of them has a negative to set beside the positive.

These negatives include frequent threats, violence and assassination.

The balance between the positives and negatives is difficult to discern. Walter, for instance, quotes a female member of the Afghan parliament who asserts that nothing has changed since the Taliban. At the same time, Walter's interviewees include women in several roles that they wouldn't have had under the previous regime: a police officer, a student, a television presenter, a healthcare administrator and, yes, that member of parliament.

These successes, however, seem largely limited to Kabul and a few other reasonably secure enclaves. Furthermore, the problem of women's rights go well beyond the issue of 'the Taliban', since a lot of it arises out of deeply rooted traditions in family life: a change in regime - however welcome - doesn't make all things better.

What is infuriating is that - despite the great promises and real opportunity following the toppling of the Taliban - so little progress was made and so little reconstruction aid actually flowed in to the country.

What Walter's report doesn't make clear is what is to be done.

One thing, perhaps, would be to prevent things from geting even worse.

Like all the other women I meet on my trip, Kochai is very sure that despite all the insecurity and lack of progress, life would be far worse if western forces pulled out. "If the British and American soldiers left now, we wouldn't be able to leave our houses. We would lose all that we have."

Not unrelatedly, at Prospect, Kamran Nazeer points out an intriguing ambiguity about the notion that women's rights advance in step with democracy by taking a closer look at Pakistan:

The most striking chapter [of President Musharraf's memoir] is about women's rights in Pakistan. Musharraf cites the case of Mukhtaran Mai, a victim of "honour rape" who now runs schools and a crisis centre. It is unusual for a Pakistani politician to acknowledge, let alone condemn, this custom. Musharraf, quite rightly, didn't intervene in the legal proceedings at the time, but in the book explains that he sent her money to support her cause when he first heard about the case, and that his government has since spent around £150,000 improving facilities for women in her village.

There are certainly massive problems for women in Pakistan. Human rights activists suggest that a woman is raped in Pakistan every two hours. As Hoodbhoy points out, Musharraf's government recently failed to enact a revision of the rape laws, which would make the burden of proof placed on the prosecution more realistic (a successful rape prosecution currently requires four male witnesses to the act). However, that climbdown came in the face of intense political opposition—the uncomfortable reality is that it was democracy that prevented the reform, not the dictator. Yet Musharraf has persisted, and on 15th November—after Hoodbhoy's piece was written—the government succeeded in getting a revision through the lower house (the upper house is yet to consider the proposal). To offer just a flavour of the criticism of the new law, the leader of Pakistan's largest coalition of religious parties, a major force in the legislature, has suggested that the changes will turn Pakistan "into a free sex society."

Musharraf's take on things in his own memoir are, of course, likely to be self-serving. But there is a key point here which is important. It has to do with the notion that oppression comes merely from above, from the 'regime'.

It doesn't seem that that's true. Oppression can have its source much closer to home. As one of the women interviewed by Walter says:

When I asked the students, who ranged from 13-year-old girls to 50-year-old widows, if they thought all women in Afghanistan wanted more freedom and equality, my translator struggled to keep up with the clamour: "Of course we do," said one widow furiously. "Even women who are not allowed to come to this class want that. But our husbands and brothers and fathers don't want it. The mullahs keep saying freedom is not good for us."

That is obviously not something a ballot-box is going to fix.