Carol Mann

  For the last ten years, I have been going just about every year first to Pakistan, then Afghanistan, coming back with long reports published on the FemAid site. Now in under one year, I’ve been twice to DRC, to lecture in Kisangani university on gender issues, on the way to help setting up the [...]

As we have all seen, the press has been  solemnly covering Burhanuddin Rabbani’s assassination in Kabul on September 20th. To quote just the Guardian: “Afghanistan Peace Process in Tatters”. It won’t take much to view him as a martyr who could have saved Afghanistan, much on the lines of Ahmad Shah Massoud, canonized by the [...]

  There is an old Pashtun proverb- also to be heard in Pakistan- which claims that men fight over three things , Zan, Zamin, Zar, women, land and gold. Bringing these three factors together in this way implies proprietorial rights on behalf of those fighting, who place these elements on an equal footing within the [...]

Check out my latest article which appeared in Viewpoint With 15% of the military being female in Afghanistan and Iraq, one may wonder what effect this is really having, if any. What’s with the Hearts and Minds operations: is n’t it another patriarchal surge so typical of the military? Soldiers are no gentlemen and women [...]