Gulnaz will still marry the man who raped her. Public pressure and embarrassment for Afghanistan at least got her out of jail, but the fact remains that half of Afghan women who are in jail are there for alleged "moral crimes."
There are many more like Gulnaz who are still behind bars, and unfortunately, there will be many more like her in Afghanistan in the future.
An update on this story. "Afghan rape victim freed from jail, to marry attacker," by Usman Sharifi for Agence France-Presse, December 1:
The Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered the release of a woman who was jailed for adultery after being raped -- but she now faces having to marry her attacker, officials said.
The move came after some 5,000 people signed a petition for the release of the woman, named Gulnaz, who has served two years in prison after a relative raped her at her home. She has been raising the child she had by her attacker in a prison cell in Kabul.
The case again highlights the poor state of women's rights in Afghanistan, 10 years after a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban who were notorious for their harsh laws against women. [...]
Following the outcry over Gulnaz's case, Karzai called a meeting where judicial officials decided to pardon her, said presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi.
But the officials also said that Gulnaz should marry the man who attacked her, due to fears she could be in danger if released because of the stigma surrounding her attack in Afghanistan.
She consented to the union, Faizi said.
"She agreed to the marriage but only if his (the attacker's) sister marries Gulnaz's brother," the spokesman added, explaining that this was a way to try and ensure Gulnaz was not attacked by the man in future.
Faizi insisted that her release from prison was not dependent on her agreeing to marry her attacker.
Violence against women in Afghanistan appears to be increasing rather than decreasing, despite billions of dollars of international aid which has poured into the country during the decade-long war.
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission logged 1,026 cases of violence against women in the second quarter of 2011 compared with 2,700 cases for the whole of 2010.
Some 87 percent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage, according to figures quoted in an October report by the charity Oxfam....
Disgusting. I know so many Americans who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I have not heard one who had much to say about these cultures that was positive.
"She agreed to the marriage but only if his (the attacker's) sister marries Gulnaz's brother," the spokesman added, explaining that this was a way to try and ensure Gulnaz was not attacked by the man in future."
It's always astounding to me the realization of the mean-spirited cruelty of muslim women and their complete disregard for other women in the same predicament, whether they be muslim women or otherwise. Indeed, the brainwashing of muslim women as to how the worth of women is less than that of donkeys is insidious. What a completely medieval mindset!!
Whether this is a form of revenge or even protection in Gulnaz's mind, it won't work. Women are less than dogs in her world. Her attacker won't care about his sister and her brother might not even want a new wife.
Good men are dying to defend the Bad Islam from the attacks of an even worse Islam. I fell terribly sorry for the women of Afghanistan, but having our troops there does not help them...... TROOPS HOME TO DEFEND THE WEST AGAINST EVIL ISLAM AT HOME.
*This* is the state of Afghan women, *ten years* after we drove out the savage Taliban and attempted to liberate them.
What a terrible, terrible waste—ten years; almost 3,000 American, British, Canadian, French, and German casualties; over 22,000 injuries, many of them very severe; untold amounts of treasure expended and hard work rendered—and the Afghan jails are still full of cowed rape victims.
All we can say is that they are no longer stoning women to death in public executions right in Kabul stadium. Apart from that, conditions are just about as bad as they ever were.
And after we leave? I doubt we will even be able to make this claim—since our presence there is the only (imperfect) brake on the return of unvarnished Islam and all its horrors.