Over at The Examiner, Rachel Blackmon Bryars writes about our recent event featuring prominent Afghan women. Bryars agrees with the notion that women’s rights in the Middle East is a national security concern:
The United States has devoted extensive effort to supporting women’s equality in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan through humanitarian assistance programs. What our policy-makers fail to recognize is that Muslim women’s rights is more than a human rights concern. It is a national security issue with far-reaching implications for our future.
Muslim women’s voices can help us win the war against terror by tempering their societies long-term. Many quasi-democracies of mostly male-participants are overly influenced by extremism and do not benefit from half the population’s input.
In other words, the hand that rocks the cradle could also moderate the nation…
More here.
More on women and security in Afghanistan here.