dress expression and movement goes on to say on page twenty that as a result women feel compelled to abide by the taliban edicts strictly restricting the role of women in public life and if they don't abide they risk abuse and even fits in in terms of the country contentions the motion to reopen that was filed was filed while the taliban still controlled kabul and at least three quarters of the afghan territory the board didn't decide the motion however until after southwestern afghanistan but frankly we didn't now no one really could say what the longer term outcome was going to be of the whole nation but in any event the board chose not to rights watch report makes plain that women who are refusing to comply with the taliban religious edicts were still being targeted certainly that's not random but in addition the report goes on to say that in the north of goes on to say that it has gathered credible evidence of continuing politically or ethnically motivated sexual violence against women and girls in other ethnicities and those are each reef which is her hometown i mean the evidence here is not well generally discrimination is insufficient to rise to the level of persecution but here and this is his second point because he's making the sentence that you know persecution is an extreme concept it doesn't prompt every know more than a decade here in the united states she lived with a man out of wedlock she had children out of wedlock she dresses in a western manner she listens to western music she is a product of the united states rampant sexual violence being perpetrated only against women there is no evidence in this record that men are being subject to sexual violence or rape the evidence of record here suggests that this form of persecution is being directed as well that's simply random violence well i beg to differ it's not random if it's being directed exclusively against members of one gender it is targeted against members of a particular social group and that social group is women and there are subsets of that social group that perhaps are in greater danger and she is in one of those subsets because she is a westernized woman who refuses to conform to the taliban's view of what a woman should be and how a woman should act but that doesn't that doesn't undermine the fact that she is also at risk simply by virtue of being a woman and i know that there are  very large it would be a lot of sense to group your honor but the act of cooperation yes but the fact that it's a social group doesn't mean that all those people qualify for asylum they still have to demonstrate that they have a risk of persecution i mean the  screwed in addition to showing that you are a member of a group you have to show that you have been targeted or that you have at least a reasonable possibility of suffering harm on account of your membership in that group when in a case like this for example i i would have to stablish that there's at least a ten percent chance that by virtue of her gender she is going to be raped well in most places in the world hopefully that's going to be impossible to prove but in afghanistan it's not in afghanistan because rape is so widespread and that the these warlords treat women as chattel the risk of waving to women is very high and so in the context of this case presented or discovered for that particular hearing and at the time the immigration judge decided this case afghanistan was in a state of absolute civil war the various warlords were battling with one another and it wasn't until a couple  the american led invasion obviously the taliban was forced to retreat to the southwestern part of the country are we returning anybody to afghanistan right now i really don't know the answer to that last the government i don't know the a that but my basic point that i want to make here is that this case must rise or fall on the reasons that forth by by board member has been a three reasons none of those reasons make any sense whatsoever the last reason that he gave us to simply say th i know yes ma'am they are still sending people back to afghanistan and and i submit that yes because of conditions have changed and at the time the board decided this case in september two thousand  know and the taliban came to power and basically institutionalized these fundamentalist policies throughout the country with the overthrow of the taliban pursuant to operation enduring freedom at this point now for the first time in thirty years afghanistan has a centralized government and that centralized government with the backing of the united states and the united nations in coalition forces is doing its utmost to happened before there's have these changes rippled out throughout the entire countryside absolutely not but it is the ongoing yes so has there been a change in country conditions such that they government and the coalition forces are now are only able to control the taliban and that it's really emerging in afghanistan and that perhaps it's been reading these reports that the government our government may be a little stretched and things aren't exactly where we hope they'd be in afghanistan at this point in time and their concerns with these cases and their condition seem to keep changing myth that the conditioning it's still in flux and by no means as stable as we'd like it but the commitment of the united states forces and the united nations like right now yes there been a rise of the taliban and that which are an outline and outlying areas the attacks kabul as become quite stable the market is returning there in fact i don't know if sensation in afghanistan but there wasn't the official condemnation so yes it still is in flux but you know i have friends that are right now starting with military over there and our commitment there is one term in fact in paper today nato refused to send more troops to iraq because the nato priority is afghanistan  there's five thousand five hundred troops there from nato in addition to u s forces and so far has the condition improved to the degree with like the afghanistan absolutely not is it better than it was subject to all these various atrocities that were being committed against women absolutely so in that context in the relative to this petitioner she can't show those changed conditions they have changed but they've improved  and once again our conditions aren't what we'd like to see here in the united are at all comparable to united states but notice to afghanistan which has been an isolated independent state throughout history i mean the what again that's a slippery slope because there's different grades of all religions there's different degrees of how you practice that religion so i mean as far as you know within turkey that's an islamic country however the