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CNN Live At Daybreak
Al Qaeda Members Disgraced Afghan Women
Aired April 03, 2002 - 05:10 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Speaking of Osama bin Laden and America's war on terrorism, there is a legacy left by the al Qaeda that has some Afghan women hanging their heads in shame.
Our Walter Rodgers spoke with one woman who says she was forced to marry an al Qaeda member.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the only world this Afghan woman has. Hers is a kingdom of shame. An al Qaeda Arab, one of Osama bin Laden's men, decided he liked her, wanted to marry her. Homar (ph) refused. So did her father.
They beat him in the mosque first, then they crushed his hands, slamming him in doors, she said. Then they imprisoned him and tortured him until I agreed to marry the al Qaeda man.
Homar said her father never recovered from the Taliban's beatings in prison. He's buried here, near the village where she now lives. She does not know whether the Arab fighter who sired her children is dead or alive and does not care.
The two children are her only remaining joy. She is a pariah now. She rarely looks up and does not look people in the eye. There are many more Afghan women living with this same stigma.
"Every moment is painful for me. I suffer constant shame," she told me. "Why?" I asked. "You did nothing wrong. You tried to help your father." "I have no control over my life. It is my fate, my destiny," she told me. "I had no choice but to endure my fate."
Homar is educated. The al Qaeda fighter prized her because she can read. Bin Laden's men wanted pious women who could read the Koran.
With her husband, Homar lived in this Kabul neighborhood. He deserted her, going off to fight with bin Laden when the Americans came. Cruel neighbors then drove her out. She had been an Arab's wife, a disgraced Afghan who married out of her culture.
"It hurts me very deeply," she says. "When my children ask who is our father, what shall I tell them?"
Homar now lives anonymously behind the mud and straw walls of this courtyard. To protect her, we will not identify the village.
There is no running water, no welfare. She sold everything to feed her children bread and rice. Outside is an unforgiving world of earlier millennia. Like other Afghan women, Homar had little choice about pregnancy. Anger is a luxury only afforded to younger girls here. This once handsome woman is now dolorous and broken.
(on camera): In the secular West, so despised are the Taliban and al Qaeda Islamists, what happened to women like Homar went out with monarchy and the Middle Ages. But then there was much about those Islamist radicals which was nothing short of medieval.
Walter Rodgers, CNN, in the Afghan countryside.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: Just no end to the suffering there, is there? Just unbelievable.
CHAD MYERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hard to watch that story.
COSTELLO: Absolutely.
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