Moreover, U.S. women's groups are urging American oil and gas companies not to proceed with plans to build a multi-million dollar pipeline from the oil fields of Turmenkistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan until this outrageous gender apartheid is ended in Afghanistan. The price of a pipeline cannot be the enslavement women. But women's groups, which have been credited with stalling the pipeline, must remain vigilant because rumors persist that the pipeline is going forward. Women can now no longer work outside of the home. Afghan women have been prohibited from working and attending school.
Women can only leave their homes if they are accompanied by a close male relative.
And windows in homes have been painted over so that women cannot be seen from the outside. Women are effectively under house arrest. Additionally, women are often denied medical care, since they cannot be treated by male doctors. Tens of thousands of families have been thrown into destitution because thousands of Afghan women, widowed during decades of civil war, are prevented from earning a living. We have heard reports from journalist Jan Goodwin, that girls at the state orphanage in Kabul, already living without a sewage system or adequate food, have not been allowed to go outside of the building since September, 1996.