Burqa 'liberation' is a con

The biggest con of Kabul's new masters is the claim that under "liberation" women are getting a better deal.

For the benefit of the foreign press there are now female announcers on Radio Afghanistan. And for photographers now swarming around the city, a few women will obligingly take off their burqas.

But what the photos don't show is these women putting the burqas back on immediately afterwards. Because the truth is that, Taliban or no Taliban, women here remain strictly second-class.

Almost every woman in Afghanistan continues to wear this burqa, a humiliating and ridiculous robe that forces her to walk with pigeon steps to avoid falling over, and to stare out at the world through a narrow 30-degree field of vision.

True, women are no longer beaten or stoned by the Taliban religious police for showing a flash of ankle. But the new regime has a different mechanism for ensuring compliance: shame.

Officially, no woman needs to wear the burqa. But each will bring disgrace on her family by not wearing one. For the secret of this society is a tightly observed conspiracy that goes way beyond any laws and needs no enforcement.

"Liberation" means that men are the only ones actually doing things: those cheering crowds who welcomed the foreign journalists were all men or boys.

The translators now working for us are all men. The drivers, shopkeepers, hotel receptionists and computer operators are exclusively men. Women, when seen at all, scurry from one doorway to another.

Only a few years ago women in Afghan cities wore flashy clothes and went to university. But those women have long since emigrated.

The best insight into the attitude to women here came today as I rattled through the streets in a our white and yellow taxi. A woman of indeterminate age - how can you tell, when they are all forced to wear tents for clothes? - stepped out to cross the road.

Our car was going fast, as fast as is usual in the traffic madhouse that has descended on Kabul since Liberation on Tuesday. I expected the driver to stop. However, he pumped not the brake but the horn as the car bore down on her. The woman, her light blue burqa now flapping in the wind, had to scurry out of the way, stumbling and nearly falling as she did so, her steps limited by the width of the dress.

We missed her by a couple of feet and the taxi sped past, the driver shaking his head.

The Northern Alliance officials now in the capital mutter privately about not wanting women to vote. Education for girls is fine, education for women is pointless. Their role is to serve men - no more, no less.

Tony Blair can talk all he likes about supporting a broad-based, rights-respecting government for Kabul but the truth is that the next regime - whomever it includes - will treat women in a way that, were it done to men, would be a breach of the world slavery convention.

For the women of Kabul, "liberation" is a relative concept.

The 'liberation' of Kabul: pictures