A very interesting piece where resumption of ‘business’ by dancing girls is a sign of Pakistan military’s success in Swat. So the women go from one extreme of being flogged to the other of being used for pleasure of men. Any womens’ rights voices here?
DAWN.COM | Metropolitan | Dancing girls of Swat back in business
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…She looks apathetic, even bored. Perhaps she has already too often endured discomfiting advances of men far older, perhaps overweight and cloaked in the body odour that permeates the streets of Mingora, Swat’s biggest city.
Shabana is 24 and has already been working for nine years. A thick crust of dead skin lines her feet. Shabnam is now the one in the limelight.
The mere fact that they are back in their meticulously clean quarters on the first floor of a house tucked away in a back street, attests to the success of Pakistan’s military campaign…*
Re: Pak Military wins... the dancing girls are back!
Firenze, Its not about Taliban.
The military campaign's success will only be sustained by better opportunities, infrastructure, education (specially for women) and security (economic and social) for the people living there. Otherwise, deprivation can easily take you back to violent ways. Don't just leave them the way they are now, after all the death and destruction. We did disown Taliban (Mujahideen) after the Russian war, and see what happened.
The article in Dawn is interesting because it is celebrating one type of exploitation after they have just been liberated from another.
first of all this article is not "celebrating" the prostitutes coming back. read the article again. it is not celebrating anything. it's not saying that the women are ecstatic to come back. it is showing the plight of these poor, majboor women.
and if it is okay to imply that the Pak army's success resulted in the return of prostitution as being implied by the online mujahideen of Gushup, then it's okay for me to say that killing people by pumping rounds into them is shariat.
these women don't need Taliban's zulm to make them stop. they need economic opportunities. they need help. no one wants to do what they do. they do it because they think they don't have any options. our society has failed large chunks of our population. and these women are part of that segment.
if we were so disgusted by what they do, we should have given them opportunities when they moved to Peshawar. but we didn't. so they returned to Swat and started doing what had worked for them in the past.