The Taliban's Human Rights Violations Against Women Help Secure Their Power

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 05, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 080501np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Human Rights in Afghanistan
Sect: News; International
Time: 12:06

MARTY MOSS-COANE, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Marty Moss-Coane in for Terry Gross.

Physicians for Human Rights has issued a scathing report today condemning the treatment of women in Afghanistan by the Taliban government -- policies which are undermining their mental and physical health. Women cannot leave their homes unless accompanied by men and unless they are completely covered by a "borka" (ph) -- a shroud-like garment. They cannot attend school after the age of eight, cannot work, and are denied access to medical treatment. Researchers for the report interviewed women and humanitarian workers in Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan.

The fundamentalist Taliban government came to power in 1996. They control two-thirds of the country in a continuation of the civil war which began in the early '90s. Before that, the country had fought a 10-year war with the former Soviet Union.

My guest Holly Burkhalter is advocacy director for Physicians for Human Rights. She says the Taliban's extensive discrimination against women is jeopardizing women's health.

HOLLY BURKHALTER, ADVOCACY DIRECTOR, PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: If you can't get your girl child seen at a hospital; if you can't walk to a clinic without male escort; if you don't have a "borka" -- the shroud-like covering that the Taliban makes women wear; if you can't work and you don't have any money to buy food for your kids; if you're a woman head of household, your husband's dead, and you don't have male relatives, you cannot move.

And that kind of restriction is going to have a negative impact on your health. And it has had that. We're seeing that women's physical and mental health has plummeted during Taliban's two years of control in Kabul. And they're getting sicker and their kids are getting sicker.

MOSS-COANE: Why have the Taliban targeted women?

BURKHALTER: Well, the Taliban is a very primitive and extremist sect of uneducated young men, many of them recruited from the refugee camps in Pakistan who were schooled in extremist Islamic schools in Pakistan. And their view and their vision of Islam is that women must be wholly subordinate and they're basically using this control of women to establish political control over the whole country.

It's not just about women. It's their means of subduing everybody in Afghanistan. It -- they're saying that it has roots in Afghan culture, history and religion, but in fact it does not. I mean, 98 percent of the women we interviewed, and we interviewed 160 of them, disagreed with the Taliban's interpretation of the Koran. They say there's no -- there is absolutely no scriptural justification for this and Muslim scholars would agree with us as well.

But the Taliban's completely bizarre and unique interpretation is saying that Islam requires this. Of course, that's false --absolutely false.

MOSS-COANE: What were the findings of the report by Physicians for Human Rights when it comes to the condition of the physical and mental health of women in Afghanistan?

BURKHALTER: Well, in brief, this extensive medical and human rights survey showed that 71 percent of the participants experienced a decline in their physical health. Eighty-seven percent showed a large increase in hardship. A huge majority, 81 percent, reported a decline in their mental health condition.

And to elaborate a little bit on that, because I think it's our most important finding, 97 percent of this very large sample of women who we randomly selected to interview and to take through this 101-question medical survey, 97 percent exhibited major depression and 42 percent, almost half, showed -- met the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder -- PTSD -- which is high, high anxiety and which in the United States we would treat clinically as a significant mental health problem.

MOSS-COANE: And I would assume if you're treating something like PTSD, you're talking about sleep problems ...

BURKHALTER: Oh, absolutely.

MOSS-COANE: ... you're talking about appetite ...

BURKHALTER: Terror ... yes.

MOSS-COANE: ... problems, nightmares.

BURKHALTER: Yes. Nightmares, terror, shaking, high anxiety, high startle reflex -- those kind of things that can really make you physically and psychologically very ill in deed.

And it's not just the -- the huge restrictions on women. I mean women are basically under house arrest. They cannot leave their homes except under very narrow circumstances. It's not just that. The Taliban's human rights violations more generally terrorize and traumatize everybody, including little kids.

I mean, for example, every Friday the entire population of the city is summoned to the sports stadium to witness punishments. That includes beheadings, hangings, knifings, amputations of hands and legs and feet, beatings, sometimes beatings to death.

And people are so horrified and terrified by these public spectacles that -- and children see such things. Our researcher interviewed a child who was just completely traumatized because the little fellow had seen a beheading the previous day. Our researcher had seen it as well, and it was a shocking and appalling experience. And this little boy was just -- was just crying continuously. And she asked him why, and he told her, "It's because they kill people all the time."

So when people are constantly -- particularly women -- are constantly terrified of being apprehended on the street by some young kid wielding a metal chain to beat anyone who might be showing a wrist or an ankle, much less their head; who might -- who might be, you know, walking about without a male, close male relative; who might be trying to get a kid to a clinic -- they'll beat those women up.

MOSS-COANE: We've been talking about the condition of women in Afghanistan, specifically in Kabul. What about men?

BURKHALTER: Men are, of course, also subjected to human rights violations. They are arrested and beaten and tortured in very large numbers. The most common source of the problem appears to be dress code violations for them, namely the length of their beards. They --the Taliban requires all men to have beards that protrude more than a fifth's length beneath their chin. And they'll be hauled in, beaten up, jailed, held for a couple of days, badly hurt if they don't have beards of that length.

Also, men -- just common criminals who are alleged to have stolen or committed other common crimes -- are run through these kangaroo courts and then have a very high likelihood of having a hand or a leg amputated, or even killed after having had no due process or anything like it. Something like 68 percent of our sample had themselves --women -- had themselves been arrested or beaten or had had a close relative who had been arrested or beaten. And that is a very, very large number of human rights violations.

And those are inflicted on men as well. The difference, of course, between the treatment of men and women is that men can still leave their homes. They can work. They can walk the streets of the city. They can go pick up relief assistance. They can go to the doctor. They can check themselves into the hospital. None of that is possible for women.

MOSS-COANE: Let me talk a little bit about the recommendations from this report. And Physicians for Human Rights really calls on the humanitarian organizations to address the problems of women in Afghanistan and at the same time to continue the important services that they're providing for a country, of course, that's extraordinarily poor and with great need.

BURKHALTER: Well, I should make it plain at the outset that the humanitarian groups have operated under extraordinary constraints. It is very, very difficult for them. The Taliban has thwarted efforts to try to bring aid to women at almost every turn. So we appeal to them to do their utmost and redouble their efforts to try to get the aid to those most in need -- that is to say, women. But it's very hard forthem to do so. And I might also add that the Taliban has virtually kicked all of them out of Kabul in late July by ordering the relief community to live in barracks on the edge of town with no electricity and no water. They couldn't do it. They had to leave.

So really I don't think the humanitarian groups are in a very good position to work around or circumvent the Taliban's restrictions, but we hope they do because it's very clear that despite billions of dollars worth of aid to Afghanistan, it's just not getting through. Only six percent of our sample had had any humanitarian assistance a tall from the international relief community.

I think the real recommendations have got to be directed at the governments of goodwill, including most especially our own, to try to find a way to help Afghanistan get a government that it deserves. And I can assure that government is not the Taliban.

MOSS-COANE: Are their economic reasons why you think the international community hasn't condemned the treatment of women in Afghanistan?

BURKHALTER: I don't think economic reasons are the reasons, because Afghanistan is not particularly interesting economically. There is interest in this pipeline, but I don't think that's the reason why our government and others have been so flabby and so lackluster in dealing with Afghanistan. No, you know, I think it's more that ever since the Soviet invasion and the terrible, terrible abuses then, and the long civil war and the huge exodus of refugees, Afghanistan has just been a human rights disaster and the world has gotten weary of it. They throw up their hands and they say: "Well, you know, those Afghans. They can't get their act together. This is the best government they can come up with. At least there's peace. Whatever -- if women suffer, well, you know, women have always suffered in Afghanistan."

And I think it's -- that impression is based on the false notion that it's always been this way for women in Afghanistan. That is absolutely untrue. Women are not used to wearing the "borka" throughout Afghanistan. Women are not -- there's never been a time where women have been prohibited from receiving health care. But there is this false impression that it's this very primitive, very conservative, fundamentalist society anyway.

MOSS-COANE: What about the issue of war crimes, and again this report calls on the UN to investigate war crimes against women?

BURKHALTER: The -- "war crimes" is not quite the word, if you permit me. The Taliban certainly has been guilty of grave violations of the Geneva Conventions, particularly in their rocketing of Kabul prior to their takeover in 1996. I mean, they were indiscriminately shelling the city. Thousands died.

But "war crimes" isn't quite the term for what's happening to women. It's a different kind of violation than we're accustomed to. I don't -- I -- in my 20 years experience in the human rights field, I know of no other country in the world where this level of discrimination and oppression of women because they're women, occurs. Even Saudi Arabia, which is well-known to be very repressive of women does not deny women access to life-saving humanitarian aid or health care.

And because this is so unique, we don't have structures to deal with it. We don't even have language to deal with this level of human rights abuse. And I think we're going to have to -- the United Nations, the UN Human Rights Commission, and governments of goodwill are going to have to go to the drawing board and come up with some kind of commission of experts and some kind of tribunal that's new -- that deals with this unprecedented form of abuse that's not mass rapes. It's not mass killings. But it is mass discrimination that is resulting in slow death and the imposition of -- the creation of illness, mental and physical -- that we've never seen before in the world.

MOSS-COANE: Holly Burkhalter is advocacy director for Physicians for Human Rights. We'll hear from the report's researcher after a short break.

This is FRESH AIR.

MOSS-COANE: We're back talking about the report issued today by Physicians for Human Rights criticizing Afghanistan's Taliban government's treatment of women.

Zohra Rasekh is senior health researcher for PHR and co-author of the report. She was in Afghanistan from February to May interviewing women. Afghani women are not allowed out of their houses unless they're fully covered in a shroud-like garment called a "borka." Rasekh interviewed an Afghani pediatrician who described the health risks associated with wearing a borka.

Here, Rasekh is quoting from the doctor's testimony.

ZOHRA RASEKH, SENIOR HEALTH RESEARCHER, PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS; CO-AUTHOR, "THE TALIBAN'S WAR ON WOMEN: A HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS IN AFGHANISTAN": Walking in a borka is hard. It has so many health hazards. It causes poor vision, impaired hearing, skin rashes, headaches, itching of the scalp, and loss of hair. Wearing a borka also causes depression in women. You cannot see well and there is a risk of falling or getting hit by a car. Shopping is problematic for women since we cannot see the items very well from under the borka.

Also for women with asthma and hypertension, wearing borka is very unhealthy. And of course, so this is -- this is what the concern of the health professionals about wearing borka.

MOSS-COANE: Well, Afghanistan is a poor country, and I wonder if a women doesn't have the money to afford a borka, does that mean she can't leave her house?

RASEKH: Absolutely. Let me refer you to another quote from a group of women. These were displaced women that I interviewed in an abandoned school. They were living in an abandoned school and they could not leave the place, even to go and see a doctor. And one of the women -- very, very upset. She came to me and she said her 20- year-old daughter just passed away a week ago, and the reason for that was that she did not have a borka to -- go out and take her to the doctor. So she had stomach problem and didn't know what it was. The 20-year-old daughter died at home.

And a crowd of women around me asked me, "Could you please send us borka from the United States so we can go out if we need to? We have to take our child to the doctor."

MOSS-COANE: I also know that in Kabul that thousands of women are widows, and the way the restrictions have been written is that a woman can't be on the street unless there's a man escorting her. If a woman doesn't have a man to take her from, I don't know -- the market to the hospital, how does a woman get out of her house?

RASEKH: Well, that is another problem for women, for widows especially. Even though in the city of Kabul I saw women walking with other women -- usually, if there's not a male chaperon, two women, three women -- they walk together. And there are some women walking alone. I saw that.

So they take the risk. A lot of women in this survey told me that they were refused treatment or admission to a hospital because they didn't have a chaperon. And their female chaperon does not count. This is a major problem. Women have been stopped on the street and beaten because they were out without a chaperon. And it happens randomly. Of course, it is not something that happens every day and every second, but at the same time that you do see women walking on the street with other women without a male chaperon, if they are at the wrong time, at the wrong place, and the religious police caught them, they are in trouble.

MOSS-COANE: How do the religious police then operate on the streets? And are they then the -- the arm of the Taliban government?

RASEKH: Yes. The religious police from the Department of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is the sole security force of Taliban for controlling vice and promoting virtue. They have all the authority for punishment and detaining people -- men, women, children. It doesn't matter.

MOSS-COANE: You mention the fact that in conducting the study, that you were detained. What happened?

RASEKH: During -- conducting this study, there were a number of times that I was stopped and a few occasions I was harassed. But the only time that I came very close to a physical abuse by a Taliban police was when I was walking on a -- in a diplomatic area of the city by myself, and the weather was getting warm. It was in mid-April and I had a long jacket on and I had my sleeve a few inches rolled up, and that my wrist was showing.

And all of a sudden, I heard somebody yelling at me and I looked up and there's about 10 feet away from me a Taliban police with a whip or a cable on his hands; was yelling in his language, in Pashtu, saying: "You shameless foreigner" or "shameless infidel." I realized, and he was pointing at my sleeves. I automatically pulled down my sleeves and I thought that would do it, and I'm OK. But I looked up and he was coming towards me with his whip in his hand, waving on the air, and he was extremely angry, like a angry tiger running towards me.

I realized that it was not a good idea to wait and to try to reason with him. He would have hit me regardless of whether I pulled my sleeves down or not. So I -- there was a ditch in front of me and I just jumped on the other side of the street and start running and found an alley and sort of got myself lost in there. And I lost him. That was -- I came -- that's how much I came close to a beating.

MOSS-COANE: I know you visited some hospitals to get a sense of the -- the conditions there. And again, we're talking about a country that had some 10, 20 years of war, first with the former Soviet Union, then a civil war. In looking at the conditions in hospitals where women are being treated, are you concerned about the level of sanitary conditions and the risk of disease and communicable disease?

RASEKH: Absolutely. And in these hospitals that I visited, their sanitary condition is definitely below standard. There is no sterilization of the equipment. I was told first-hand by a nurse working in one of those hospitals that needles were repeatedly used from patient to patient without being sterilized. And there's no gloves. There's no -- any means of keeping an infection going from one patient to another.

In one of the hospitals -- in fact, this was the maternity hospital -- as I was visiting, I saw two women sharing one bed. And first I thought that was just a relative lying down next to a sister or a friend. It turned out that no, that bed was shared by two patients, both of whom were bleeding from -- they had abnormal bleeding and one of them had a miscarriage.

And in one room, there's seven -- six or seven beds and yet still there's not enough room for the patients. And basically all the patients that I talked to, they were -- they are resting and no treatment planned for any of them. Some of them had -- given a prescription, but were not able to buy the prescription. They were just lying down. And one person, one woman who was sharing the bed had lost a baby for the RH incompatibility and there was no antigen for her. So she was just lying down waiting for her baby to be lost and after that she was discharged.

MOSS-COANE: Zohra Rasekh is senior health researcher for Physicians for Human Rights.

For Terry Gross, I'm Marty Moss-Coane.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Marty Moss-Coane, Washington, DC
Guest: Holly Burkhalter; Zohra Rasekh
High: Advocacy director for Physicians for Human Rights, Holly
Burkhalter. The group released today a new report on the health and
human rights of women in Afghanistan where the militant Muslim Taliban
group controls most of the country. Women there are being denied
health care, education, and the right to work. The report is "The
Taliban's War on Women: A Health and Human Rights Crisis in
Afghanistan." The results of the findings will appear in the August 6
edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Health
Researcher Zohra Rasekh conducted the research for the report,
spending three months in Afghanistan last spring.
Spec: Women; Human Rights; Discrimination
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights
reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc.
Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes
from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without
attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in
whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Human Rights in Afghanistan

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 06, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 080502NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Rebuilding the Indian
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:30

MOSS-COANE: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Marty Moss-Coane sitting in for Terry Gross.

Last weekend, I went to the Guggenheim Museum in New York to see their very popular exhibit, The Art of the Motorcycle. And out of the more than 100 bikes on display, the Indian was the one that got the most oohs and aahs.
It was an American-made bike that went out of business some 50 years ago. But during its heyday, the company built beautiful bikes, which are rare and growing in popularity. Most motorcyclists today dream of owning an Indian, if only they could find one.

Fred Haefele had such a fantasy. He paid $5,000 for a jumble of Indian parts called, in motorcycle lingo, a "basket case." He then spent many more dollars and a lot of time looking for parts, hanging out with bikers and, finally, rebuilding an Indian.

In fact, "Rebuilding the Indian" is the name of his memoir, which is about his adventures putting his bike together, and about putting his life back together after a failed marriage.

We spoke as Haefele was preparing to leave for Sturgis, the big motorcycle rally held each year in South Dakota. I asked him where he got the idea of buying an Indian.

HAEFELE: It was an assignment essentially. I was unable to sell my novel and my agent had lunch with an editor and this is the, I guess, the unromantic side of this particular saga. And the editor said: "Boy, you know, it would be really neat -- you know it would be really neat -- it would be really neat if somebody went to one of these old parts guys and put together an Indian."

And I had had motorcycles in my youth, and -- but not for 25 years or so. And I always felt I had unfinished business with motorcycles. And said yes, I'll sign on. But then after that, things changed very rapidly and this editor was suddenly gone and, in the meantime, I had signed contracts for this book. And days after I signed the contract -- maybe the next day -- I discovered my wife was pregnant. And I knew this was going to dramatically affect the contour of this book which was -- originally, it would have been a lot more about the mechanics and more about the kind of renegade types that I ended up bumping into and so on.

MOSS-COANE: And ended up being much more about family. Well, I notice in the way that you write about this quest, first of all, to find the parts to build the bike and then the rebuilding process itself is that it -- it all seems to coincide with your being in your fifties. And not to sort of belabor this midlife crisis thing, it was your self-described midlife crisis that seemed to be going on.

HAEFELE: I did, but of course we all know that midlife crisis is kind of a nice shorthand for any crossroads...

MOSS-COANE: Right.

HAEFELE: ... that a person encounters in their life. And gosh, I mean as far that goes, I probably had my first midlife crisis in my early twenties, as I recall. But I didn't know that's what it was.

MOSS-COANE: You just perfected it over the years.

HAEFELE: Exactly. But, you know, in actuality I suppose it was. It was a crossroads in my life in a number of ways. I was contemplating starting a new family. I was trying to figure out what was wrong with -- what had gone wrong with my writing career and so on. And so it was definitely a crossroads, and -- but...

MOSS-COANE: But did you want to do something foolish?

HAEFELE: I did want to do something foolish. I needed to do something foolish. I don't know any other way to describe it. That was perfectly from the heart -- a shot in the dark.

MOSS-COANE: And what you did was you -- you -- it's hard to buy an Indian motorcycle because they're so rare, but what people do is buy an Indian basket case ...

HAEFELE: Correct.

MOSS-COANE: And that is exactly the way it describes, which is literally parts of an Indian.

HAEFELE: Yes, and you know a quantity of parts and, typically, a basket case will be -- certainly, you need the frame. You need most of an engine. It's nice to have the tanks. It's nice to have the brakes and wheels, but you don't always get that stuff. So yes, you get a qestionable pile there, and also the restorers use that term "pile" interchangeably with "basket case," which kind of has a -- nice overtones to it.

But in any event, yes, that's what I got, and you know, I could see the frame was probably OK and that I probably had most of the motor parts and some of the wheels and a lot of stuff I was going to have to get. And some of the stuff that was there was fixable, and I'd have to work with, and some of it was not. So first thing to do was to sort through all the stuff and figure out what stays and goes and then what you need.

MOSS-COANE: Well, I want to have you read from the opening of your book.

HAEFELE: Sure.

MOSS-COANE: And this, I think, connects very directly to this whole quest for parts.

HAEFELE: OK. The first chapter is called "Parts Fathers." And maybe in the way of explanation, there was actually a biker who lived here for years. I never met him. He died just before I embarked on my quest for parts. But he's a guy who just -- he helped a lot of people with their motorcycles. And his name kept popping up again and again. All over the country, people knew this guy: "Oh, you're from Missoula. You must know Parts Father.'"

It was something I kind of had to run with. And so I start out with this -- it's a popular biker myth, let's say, or something like an urban legend. You hear the story in a million configurations, but it's always the same story. And its about the lost parts trove out there somewhere.

And the book begins like this.

"Once upon a time in the Pacific Northwest, there lived a handsome young biker named Benny. One afternoon in early fall, Benny was out burning the highway on his '53 Harley Panhead (ph), and somewhere north of Corvallis, he stopped at a roadhouse for refreshment.

"The only customer in the place was an old farmer drinking by himself at the bar. The two men struck up a conversation and before long they were talking motorcycles. When Benny mentioned he was restoring a '46 Indian Chief, the old man's eyes lit up. He cocked his head, fixed Benny with a peculiar stare that made the young biker uneasy. The farmer made a veiled reference to some old junk he had squirreled away in his barn and then summoned the bartender and bought another round.

"The hour grew late. It began to rain. The farmer suggested Benny sleep at his place a few miles up the road. Benny followed the old man's pickup on his bike, but soon lost the headlights in a heavy fog. Benny throttled back, pulled over at a crossroads and swore. With zero visibility and the rain pounding down, he rolled his Panhead into a dilapidated barn by the roadside, spread his sleeping bag out on the hard dirt floor and fell quickly into a dreamless sleep.

"The next morning, sunlight streamed through the cracks of the barn and Benny rose, bleary-eyed, hung-over, to find himself in a fabulous place. Every rafter, loft, stall and stanchion in that barn was crammed with Indian motorcycle parts -- chief frames and scout fenders, connecting rods, fly wheels, gas tanks, engine cases, pistons, seats, kicker forks, and sprockets.

"Benny looked around in wonder. He knew very well what had happened. He'd had the sheer dumb luck to stumble onto every biker's motherlode, the Lost City of Parts."

MOSS-COANE: And that's our guest, Fred Haefele, reading from his new book. It's a memoir called "Rebuilding the Indian."

So is that every bikers dream? To stumble across and old barn and find it just crammed full of all the parts and bikes you'd ever dreamed about?

HAEFELE: Oh, yes. I certainly can't speak for every biker, but I went through a phase were that was my dream. And I actually bumped into people, usually -- more often than not, they were men in their '60s and '70s who happened to have all the parts that I so longed for, but who also were well aware of their worth.

And so, in reality, the parts are very expensive.

MOSS-COANE: Yes.

HAEFELE: The rarer they are, the more necessary they are, the more expensive they are.

MOSS-COANE: Well, I wonder what that experience was like, having spent so many months working on the bike, getting the parts together, rebuilding it to some degree yourself, when you actually got it started and out on the road. What was that like?

HAEFELE: It was terrifying, just because I'd invested so much time and effort in the project by that point. And I -- but more than anything -- well, I remember one time I rode the bike over. My agent was in town and we were having this little party, and it was only few blocks away. And I rode the bike over and I rolled up on it, and killed the engine. And I thought: Well, that was, you know, pretty smooth and everything.

And both my agent and my wife were laughing, and they said: "God, you know, you just look absolutely terrified on that thing." And I thought, oh, my God, don't say that, because I was trying to look cool.

But they said, no, you look -- and I -- you look terrified. And I thought, well, of course I do. I'm afraid I'm going to put this thing right up a telephone pole and I'm going to break it or it's going to fall apart or any of the thousand things that can happen with a motorcycle. And that would be bad.

MOSS-COANE: And that cliche about the road -- about the freedom of the road and the wind in your hair and, you know, all the cliches about riding a motorcycle. Are they true?

HAEFELE: Absolutely. That's...

LAUGHTER

... one always comes back to that. And it is like flying. You know, it's as close as you'll come to flying without a plane, I believe. And of course, that's the attraction that people come back to again and again with motorcycles. And you know, of course, they're rediscovering them now with this big exhibit at the Guggenheim and so on. And it's -- you know, motorcycles are -- they're a -- how can I? -- I was going to say they're a cheap high, but you know, mine was anything but cheap.

But they are a high. They're exhilarating. They're exposure, danger, speed. They're wonderful.

MOSS-COANE: I tell you what. I want to take a short break and then we'll talk some more.

HAEFELE: Fine.

MOSS-COANE: And our guest today on FRESH AIR is Fred Haefele, and we've been talking about his new book. It's called Rebuilding The Indian, and it's a memoir of rebuilding an Indian motorcycle, and in a sense, rebuilding his life. We will talk about that after a short break.

This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

My guest is writer and tree surgeon Fred Haefele, and his book is called Rebuilding the Indian.

Well, just to milk these cliches even more, we've talked about the cliches of the road -- the cliches of rebuilding a motorcycle as a kind of metaphor for rebuilding your own life. Did that turn out to be true? And as you wrote about it, it seemed like there were some real parallels going on.

HAEFELE: Yes, it's amazing. How did it work out that way? It's almost as if I set out to write a kind of a feel-good book, which was -- I did anything but. I guess I should say at the outset, I was astonished to find I was writing a memoir. I usually imagine that you have to have a fairly interesting life to write a memoir, but yet there I was writing a memoir because all this stuff was suddenly happening and there was a -- there were a number of parallels there that just naturally introduced themselves.

The second family -- I -- earlier in the -- in our interview I talked about having unfinished business with motorcycles. I never quite got the right bike or went where I really wanted to go on bikes. Then suddenly here was this motorcycle in my life, and it was the same with my family. I was divorced and never really got to know my children as I would like to have. And suddenly I had a second -- pardon me, I had unfinished business with children and suddenly I had a second chance at that, too.

And in some ways, that did drive things there, and it certainly drove the book. I could not keep going with either project -- the new family or the bike -- and not kind of try to figure out what the connection could be, I guess.

MOSS-COANE: While you write poignantly, I must say, about your -- your first son, or your son from your first marriage. And you really were ...

HAEFELE: Right.

MOSS-COANE: ... and you really were estranged from him, and found out that he was having pretty serious problems. He was even incarcerated.

HAEFELE: He did. He's about as far away from that phase of his life now as I can imagine, but yes he did have some problems with the law. And my -- I don't know, in a lot -- I had my own problems with the law as a young man and I guess I took that as an opportunity to reflect on young men in general and restless young men, and what they do when they are unfocused and haven't figured out what they want to do yet.

But yes, the -- Kyle (ph) -- the change with Kyle has been phenomenal. And he's a wonderful young man.

MOSS-COANE: But did you feel responsible as an absent father for what his life was, at least at that point?

HAEFELE: Oh, I'm -- I'm sure I very likely did, but all this was just in the realm of speculation. I, of course, had problems -- unresolved difficulties with my own father who was not an absent father. He was a present father. But we had plenty of difficulties, and it got me to wondering, you know, which is worse, being an absent father without that particular baggage or a present father who, in my own father's case, perhaps did not really want to be there. I'd venture that.

MOSS-COANE: But you also write about having a relationship with your first two children, and connecting with your son.

HAEFELE: I did. And that was one of the most -- one of the happiest moments of my recent -- my recent years, of the last 10 years was to see Kyle again, and I reconnected with him in New York over the, I guess, in the course of a summer.

MOSS-COANE: Does he feel like a son to you?

HAEFELE: In some ways. In some ways he does. In the book, I describe him as kind of a dream figure. He was this -- he was this lost child who -- would show up in my dreams periodically. And so there was another kind of quest going on there with Kyle. Where is he? Over the past, oh I don't know, 10 years or so, as he -- when he'd become an adult, I began to try to seek him out, just to find out who he was, I think in the end.

I didn't feel like I needed to get sloppy and bond with him. I just -- I needed to know who he was and for all I know, he felt the same about me because he did come to see me. So we'll see where all this takes us.

MOSS-COANE: You're heading on out to Sturgis (ph), which is a infamous, famous motorcycle gathering that's held in South Dakota.

HAEFELE: Well, it's the heartbeat of the biker nation.

MOSS-COANE: Absolutely.
LAUGHTER

So when you head on out there, do you take a great big tool kit with you, knowing that something will probably happen to your Indian?

HAEFELE: I am not riding the Indian down this year. I'm packing it down in the back of my truck, which is kind of ignominious, but...

MOSS-COANE: Isn't that cheating?

HAEFELE: ... now, that's a harsh -- that's a harsh word, "cheating." You know, I'm giving myself an advantage, and if we were playing golf, what would you call that? A mulligan or something like that. But it is and it isn't. I've got -- I've got a new baby at home and a two-year-old, and it's -- I think it's very important for me to do this in as little time as possible. And so that's why I'm packing it down. I am signing down there, and that would be on Thursday. And we're going to do it in three days, which is really a burnout.

And so I have no recourse but to pack the bike down this time. Otherwise, this would be a five or six day expedition. And if I was gone that long again this summer, it's -- I don't know what would be waiting for me when I came home, frankly. My wife's been very patient about all this, and so far so good.

MOSS-COANE: Yes. Do you have a tattoo?

HAEFELE: No, strange you should bring that up. I'm waiting for a -- for the right time and the right moment and the right incentive and so on. But how I wrestled with the idea of a tattoo, you know, and if yes, what? You know, what should it be?

MOSS-COANE: And where to put it, of course.

HAEFELE: I'll know it when I see it. And I -- I have a -- this is all instinctive and I'll know where to put it, too. I'm sure I will. But no, I do not at this time have a tattoo. But my son does and -- my oldest son -- and so does my oldest daughter, curiously. And so I'm the only guy left not to have one.

MOSS-COANE: Well, I want to thank you very much, Fred Haefele, for joining us today on FRESH AIR.

HAEFELE: Thank you. It was great fun.

MOSS-COANE: Fred Haefele's memoir is Rebuilding the Indian.

Coming up, we remember composer Alfred Schnittke.

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Marty Moss-Coane, Washington, DC
Guest: Fred Haefele
High: Writer Fred Haefele took on the task of restoring a classic 1941 Indian Chief motorcycle. The result was a beautiful midnight blue bike, thousands of dollars in debt, and a new memoir, "Rebuilding the Indian." (Riverhead Books). Haefele is also a tree surgeon in Missoula, Montana where he lives, and author of the upcoming novel, "City of Trees."
Spec: Entertainment; Recreation; Motorcycles

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Rebuilding the Indian

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 05, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 080503NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Schnittke Remembered
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:52

MARTY MOSS-COANE, HOST: Alfred Schnittke was perhaps the most
celebrated Russian composer of our time. He died in Hamburg on Monday
at the age of 63 after years of poor health. Classical music critic
Lloyd Schwartz has these thoughts on a man Lloyd considers a genius.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- VIOLIN PLAYING COMPOSITION BY ALFRED
SCHNITTKE)

LLOYD SCHWARTZ, MUSIC CRITIC: I first heard about Alfred
Schnittke -- his friends called him "Alf" -- as the composer of a
notorious a-tonal cadenza for the Beethoven violin concerto that he
wrote for the Russian virtuoso Gidan Kramer (ph). Then Peter Sellers,
the director, who is often the first kid on the musical block,
incorporated Schnittke's powerful first string quartet into the action
of his brilliant production of "The Count of Monte Cristo" at the
Kennedy Center in 1985, with the musicians on stage with the actors.

A decade ago, Schnittke visited Boston as a key figure in Sarah
Caldwell's ambitious Russian festival, and I got my first real taste
of the variety and inventiveness of his work. No composer could be
more serious, but no serious composer to write zanier music either.
The difficulty with Schnittke is not that some of his pieces are long,
serious, and spiritually probing, while others are full of parodies
and jokes. It's that many pieces are both.

Who else would include an electric guitar in a multi-
denominational Soviet requiem Mass? Maybe that's what happens when
your father's a Russian-Jewish atheist and your mother German-Russian
and Catholic.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- VIOLINS PLAYING MUSIC COMPOSED BY ALFRED
SCHNITTKE)

Schnittke has found a number of passionate advocates in this
country. Two recent recordings of his chamber music show him at his
best.

Back in 1987, the Kronos Quartet recorded his third string
quartet with its echoes of Orlando Delasso (ph), Beethoven's
Pathetique (ph) Sonata and Gross A Fugue (ph), and Shostakovich. It
was first released, appropriately, on their "Winter Was Hard" album.
That performance is now part of a new two-disc set, along with more
recent performances of the somber, but beautiful 12-tone first
quartet, the elegiac and agitated Second, and the melancholy Fourth.

There's also the brief, but moving "Canon in Memory of Igor
Stravinsky" from 1971, and the Kronos' arrangement of the second
movement of Schnittke's "Concerto for Mixed Choir" -- a section called
"Collected Songs" where every verse is filled with grief. The Kronos
are famous for their string arrangements. Remember their first big
splash with Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze."

I'm glad the Kronos players have come back to Schnittke. Too
much of what they've recorded I'd call "contemporary lite" -- L-I-T-E
-- the new music version of easy listening.

I want music to be appealing, but I don't want it to be thin.
Schnittke's has backbone and a face. Look at his huge, cadaverous
eyes on the cover of the liner notes. Having suffered multiple
strokes, he lived in the shadow of the valley of death. Though I
suspect his sense of grief and cheeky laughter in the face of it is
temperamental, not merely medical. His challenging music makes heavy
demands, but the heavier the demands it seems, the better the Kronos
Quartet plays, so this is one of their very best recordings.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- THE KRONOS QUARTET PLAYING COMPOSITION BY
ALFRED SCHNITTKE)

There's also a wonderful new recording of the Second and Third
Quartets by the four women of the Lark Quartet. These tend to be more
spacious in tempo that the Kronos -- less electric, but perhaps
warmer. The Larks also play one of Schnittke's greatest chamber
works, the ghostly Piano Quintet, composed in memory of his mother.

At the keyboard is no less than pianist Gary Graffman, playing
once again with both hands. The Quintet's remarkable Andante (ph) is
a weird waltz, with the strings wailing in semitones while the piano
bounces away. It's terrifying and hilarious -- the most moving and
extreme example of the way Schnittke chose to confront life and death
in all his music.

MOSS-COANE: Lloyd Schwartz is classical music editor of the
Boston Phoenix. He remember composer Alfred Schnittke, who died in
Hamburg on Monday. Recent recordings of Schnittke's music include an
album of chamber works performed by The Lark Quartet on Arabesque, and
the Kronos Quartet playing Schnittke's complete string quartets on
Nonesuch.

For Terry Gross, I'm Marty Moss-Coane.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Marty Moss-Coane, Washington, DC
Guest: Lloyd Schwartz
High: Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz remembers Russian
composer Alfred Schnittke who died Monday. Two recent recordings of
his music are: "The Lark Quartet" and pianist Gary Graffman (on the
Arabesque label) and the Kronos Quarter playing Schnittke's "Complete
String Quartets" (Nonesuch).
Spec: Music Industry; Death; Art
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights
reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc.
Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes
from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without
attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in
whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Schnittke Remembered

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 05, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 080501np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Human Rights in Afghanistan
Sect: News; International
Time: 12:06

MARTY MOSS-COANE, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Marty Moss-Coane in for Terry Gross.

Physicians for Human Rights has issued a scathing report today condemning the treatment of women in Afghanistan by the Taliban government -- policies which are undermining their mental and physical health. Women cannot leave their homes unless accompanied by men and unless they are completely covered by a "borka" (ph) -- a shroud-like garment. They cannot attend school after the age of eight, cannot work, and are denied access to medical treatment. Researchers for the report interviewed women and humanitarian workers in Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan.

The fundamentalist Taliban government came to power in 1996. They control two-thirds of the country in a continuation of the civil war which began in the early '90s. Before that, the country had fought a 10-year war with the former Soviet Union.

My guest Holly Burkhalter is advocacy director for Physicians for Human Rights. She says the Taliban's extensive discrimination against women is jeopardizing women's health.

HOLLY BURKHALTER, ADVOCACY DIRECTOR, PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: If you can't get your girl child seen at a hospital; if you can't walk to a clinic without male escort; if you don't have a "borka" -- the shroud-like covering that the Taliban makes women wear; if you can't work and you don't have any money to buy food for your kids; if you're a woman head of household, your husband's dead, and you don't have male relatives, you cannot move.

And that kind of restriction is going to have a negative impact on your health. And it has had that. We're seeing that women's physical and mental health has plummeted during Taliban's two years of control in Kabul. And they're getting sicker and their kids are getting sicker.

MOSS-COANE: Why have the Taliban targeted women?

BURKHALTER: Well, the Taliban is a very primitive and extremist sect of uneducated young men, many of them recruited from the refugee camps in Pakistan who were schooled in extremist Islamic schools in Pakistan. And their view and their vision of Islam is that women must be wholly subordinate and they're basically using this control of women to establish political control over the whole country.

It's not just about women. It's their means of subduing everybody in Afghanistan. It -- they're saying that it has roots in Afghan culture, history and religion, but in fact it does not. I mean, 98 percent of the women we interviewed, and we interviewed 160 of them, disagreed with the Taliban's interpretation of the Koran. They say there's no -- there is absolutely no scriptural justification for this and Muslim scholars would agree with us as well.

But the Taliban's completely bizarre and unique interpretation is saying that Islam requires this. Of course, that's false -- absolutely false.

MOSS-COANE: What were the findings of the report by Physicians for Human Rights when it comes to the condition of the physical and mental health of women in Afghanistan?

BURKHALTER: Well, in brief, this extensive medical and human rights survey showed that 71 percent of the participants experienced a decline in their physical health. Eighty-seven percent showed a large increase in hardship. A huge majority, 81 percent, reported a decline in their mental health condition.

And to elaborate a little bit on that, because I think it's our most important finding, 97 percent of this very large sample of women who we randomly selected to interview and to take through this 101-question medical survey, 97 percent exhibited major depression and 42 percent, almost half, showed -- met the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder -- PTSD -- which is high, high anxiety and which in the United States we would treat clinically as a significant mental health problem.

MOSS-COANE: And I would assume if you're treating something like PTSD, you're talking about sleep problems ...

BURKHALTER: Oh, absolutely.

MOSS-COANE: ... you're talking about appetite ...

BURKHALTER: Terror ... yes.

MOSS-COANE: ... problems, nightmares.

BURKHALTER: Yes. Nightmares, terror, shaking, high anxiety, high startle reflex -- those kind of things that can really make you physically and psychologically very ill in deed.

And it's not just the -- the huge restrictions on women. I mean women are basically under house arrest. They cannot leave their homes except under very narrow circumstances. It's not just that. The Taliban's human rights violations more generally terrorize and traumatize everybody, including little kids.

I mean, for example, every Friday the entire population of the city is summoned to the sports stadium to witness punishments. That includes beheadings, hangings, knifings, amputations of hands and legs and feet, beatings, sometimes beatings to death.

And people are so horrified and terrified by these public spectacles that -- and children see such things. Our researcher interviewed a child who was just completely traumatized because the little fellow had seen a beheading the previous day. Our researcher had seen it as well, and it was a shocking and appalling experience. And this little boy was just -- was just crying continuously. And she asked him why, and he told her, "It's because they kill people all the time."

So when people are constantly -- particularly women -- are constantly terrified of being apprehended on the street by some young kid wielding a metal chain to beat anyone who might be showing a wrist or an ankle, much less their head; who might -- who might be, you know, walking about without a male, close male relative; who might be trying to get a kid to a clinic -- they'll beat those women up.

MOSS-COANE: We've been talking about the condition of women in Afghanistan, specifically in Kabul. What about men?

BURKHALTER: Men are, of course, also subjected to human rights violations. They are arrested and beaten and tortured in very large numbers. The most common source of the problem appears to be dress code violations for them, namely the length of their beards. They -- the Taliban requires all men to have beards that protrude more than a fifth's length beneath their chin. And they'll be hauled in, beaten up, jailed, held for a couple of days, badly hurt if they don't have beards of that length.

Also, men -- just common criminals who are alleged to have stolen or committed other common crimes -- are run through these kangaroo courts and then have a very high likelihood of having a hand or a leg amputated, or even killed after having had no due process or anything like it. Something like 68 percent of our sample had themselves -- women -- had themselves been arrested or beaten or had had a close relative who had been arrested or beaten. And that is a very, very large number of human rights violations.

And those are inflicted on men as well. The difference, of course, between the treatment of men and women is that men can still leave their homes. They can work. They can walk the streets of the city. They can go pick up relief assistance. They can go to the doctor. They can check themselves into the hospital. None of that is possible for women.

MOSS-COANE: Let me talk a little bit about the recommendations from this report. And Physicians for Human Rights really calls on the humanitarian organizations to address the problems of women in Afghanistan and at the same time to continue the important services that they're providing for a country, of course, that's extraordinarily poor and with great need.

BURKHALTER: Well, I should make it plain at the outset that the humanitarian groups have operated under extraordinary constraints. It is very, very difficult for them. The Taliban has thwarted efforts to try to bring aid to women at almost every turn. So we appeal to them to do their utmost and redouble their efforts to try to get the aid to those most in need -- that is to say, women. But it's very hard for them to do so.

And I might also add that the Taliban has virtually kicked all of them out of Kabul in late July by ordering the relief community to live in barracks on the edge of town with no electricity and no water. They couldn't do it. They had to leave.

So really I don't think the humanitarian groups are in a very good position to work around or circumvent the Taliban's restrictions, but we hope they do because it's very clear that despite billions of dollars worth of aid to Afghanistan, it's just not getting through. Only six percent of our sample had had any humanitarian assistance at all from the international relief community.

I think the real recommendations have got to be directed at the governments of goodwill, including most especially our own, to try to find a way to help Afghanistan get a government that it deserves. And I can assure that government is not the Taliban.

MOSS-COANE: Are their economic reasons why you think the international community hasn't condemned the treatment of women in Afghanistan?

BURKHALTER: I don't think economic reasons are the reasons, because Afghanistan is not particularly interesting economically. There is interest in this pipeline, but I don't think that's the reason why our government and others have been so flabby and so lackluster in dealing with Afghanistan. No, you know, I think it's more that ever since the Soviet invasion and the terrible, terrible abuses then, and the long civil war and the huge exodus of refugees, Afghanistan has just been a human rights disaster and the world has gotten weary of it. They throw up their hands and they say: "Well, you know, those Afghans. They can't get their act together. This is the best government they can come up with. At least there's peace. Whatever -- if women suffer, well, you know, women have always suffered in Afghanistan."

And I think it's -- that impression is based on the false notion that it's always been this way for women in Afghanistan. That is absolutely untrue. Women are not used to wearing the "borka" throughout Afghanistan. Women are not -- there's never been a time where women have been prohibited from receiving health care. But there is this false impression that it's this very primitive, very conservative, fundamentalist society anyway.

MOSS-COANE: What about the issue of war crimes, and again this report calls on the UN to investigate war crimes against women?

BURKHALTER: The -- "war crimes" is not quite the word, if you permit me. The Taliban certainly has been guilty of grave violations of the Geneva Conventions, particularly in their rocketing of Kabul prior to their takeover in 1996. I mean, they were indiscriminately shelling the city. Thousands died.

But "war crimes" isn't quite the term for what's happening to women. It's a different kind of violation than we're accustomed to. I don't -- I -- in my 20 years experience in the human rights field, I know of no other country in the world where this level of discrimination and oppression of women because they're women, occurs. Even Saudi Arabia, which is well-known to be very repressive of women does not deny women access to life-saving humanitarian aid or health care.

And because this is so unique, we don't have structures to deal with it. We don't even have language to deal with this level of human rights abuse. And I think we're going to have to -- the United Nations, the UN Human Rights Commission, and governments of goodwill are going to have to go to the drawing board and come up with some kind of commission of experts and some kind of tribunal that's new -- that deals with this unprecedented form of abuse that's not mass rapes. It's not mass killings. But it is mass discrimination that is resulting in slow death and the imposition of -- the creation of illness, mental and physical -- that we've never seen before in the world.

MOSS-COANE: Holly Burkhalter is advocacy director for Physicians for Human Rights. We'll hear from the report's researcher after a short break.

This is FRESH AIR.

We're back talking about the report issued today by Physicians for Human Rights criticizing Afghanistan's Taliban government's treatment of women.

Zohra Rasekh is senior health researcher for PHR and co-author of the report. She was in Afghanistan from February to May interviewing women. Afghani women are not allowed out of their houses unless they're fully covered in a shroud-like garment called a "borka." Rasekh interviewed an Afghani pediatrician who described the health risks associated with wearing a borka.

Here, Rasekh is quoting from the doctor's testimony.

ZOHRA RASEKH, SENIOR HEALTH RESEARCHER, PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS; CO-AUTHOR, "THE TALIBAN'S WAR ON WOMEN: A HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS IN AFGHANISTAN": Walking in a borka is hard. It has so many health hazards. It causes poor vision, impaired hearing, skin rashes, headaches, itching of the scalp, and loss of hair. Wearing a borka also causes depression in women. You cannot see well and there is a risk of falling or getting hit by a car. Shopping is problematic for women since we cannot see the items very well from under the borka.

Also for women with asthma and hypertension, wearing borka is very unhealthy. And of course, so this is -- this is what the concern of the health professionals about wearing borka.

MOSS-COANE: Well, Afghanistan is a poor country, and I wonder if a women doesn't have the money to afford a borka, does that mean she can't leave her house?

RASEKH: Absolutely. Let me refer you to another quote from a group of women. These were displaced women that I interviewed in an abandoned school. They were living in an abandoned school and they could not leave the place, even to go and see a doctor. And one of the women -- very, very upset. She came to me and she said her 20-year-old daughter just passed away a week ago, and the reason for that was that she did not have a borka to -- go out and take her to the doctor. So she had stomach problem and didn't know what it was. The 20-year-old daughter died at home.

And a crowd of women around me asked me, "Could you please send us borka from the United States so we can go out if we need to? We have to take our child to the doctor."

MOSS-COANE: I also know that in Kabul that thousands of women are widows, and the way the restrictions have been written is that a woman can't be on the street unless there's a man escorting her. If a woman doesn't have a man to take her from, I don't know -- the market to the hospital, how does a woman get out of her house?

RASEKH: Well, that is another problem for women, for widows especially. Even though in the city of Kabul I saw women walking with other women -- usually, if there's not a male chaperon, two women, three women -- they walk together. And there are some women walking alone. I saw that.

So they take the risk. A lot of women in this survey told me that they were refused treatment or admission to a hospital because they didn't have a chaperon. And their female chaperon does not count. This is a major problem. Women have been stopped on the street and beaten because they were out without a chaperon. And it happens randomly. Of course, it is not something that happens every day and every second, but at the same time that you do see women walking on the street with other women without a male chaperon, if they are at the wrong time, at the wrong place, and the religious police caught them, they are in trouble.

MOSS-COANE: How do the religious police then operate on the streets? And are they then the -- the arm of the Taliban government?

RASEKH: Yes. The religious police from the Department of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is the sole security force of Taliban for controlling vice and promoting virtue. They have all the authority for punishment and detaining people -- men, women, children. It doesn't matter.

MOSS-COANE: You mention the fact that in conducting the study, that you were detained. What happened?

RASEKH: During -- conducting this study, there were a number of times that I was stopped and a few occasions I was harassed. But the only time that I came very close to a physical abuse by a Taliban police was when I was walking on a -- in a diplomatic area of the city by myself, and the weather was getting warm. It was in mid-April and I had a long jacket on and I had my sleeve a few inches rolled up, and that my wrist was showing.

And all of a sudden, I heard somebody yelling at me and I looked up and there's about 10 feet away from me a Taliban police with a whip or a cable on his hands; was yelling in his language, in Pashtu, saying: "You shameless foreigner" or "shameless infidel." I realized, and he was pointing at my sleeves. I automatically pulled down my sleeves and I thought that would do it, and I'm OK. But I looked up and he was coming towards me with his whip in his hand, waving on the air, and he was extremely angry, like a angry tiger running towards me.

I realized that it was not a good idea to wait and to try to reason with him. He would have hit me regardless of whether I pulled my sleeves down or not. So I -- there was a ditch in front of me and I just jumped on the other side of the street and start running and found an alley and sort of got myself lost in there. And I lost him. That was -- I came -- that's how much I came close to a beating.

MOSS-COANE: I know you visited some hospitals to get a sense of the -- the conditions there. And again, we're talking about a country that had some 10, 20 years of war, first with the former Soviet Union, then a civil war. In looking at the conditions in hospitals where women are being treated, are you concerned about the level of sanitary conditions and the risk of disease and communicable disease?

RASEKH: Absolutely. And in these hospitals that I visited, their sanitary condition is definitely below standard. There is no sterilization of the equipment. I was told first-hand by a nurse working in one of those hospitals that needles were repeatedly used from patient to patient without being sterilized. And there's no gloves. There's no -- any means of keeping an infection going from one patient to another.

In one of the hospitals -- in fact, this was the maternity hospital -- as I was visiting, I saw two women sharing one bed. And first I thought that was just a relative lying down next to a sister or a friend. It turned out that no, that bed was shared by two patients, both of whom were bleeding from -- they had abnormal bleeding and one of them had a miscarriage.

And in one room, there's seven -- six or seven beds and yet still there's not enough room for the patients. And basically all the patients that I ta