Nadeem Yaqub

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, 18 July (IPS) - A woman riding a bicycle in this north-western Pakistani city close to the country's border with Afghanistan is a rare sight.

It is even more surprising to learn that 71-year-old aid worker Mary MacMakin, who was expelled last week from Afghanistan by the Taliban on charges of spying, pedalled to work in the Afghan capital.

'Yes, sometimes the Taliban saw me pedalling my way to the office, but they never said anything to me,' she said.

MacMakin, a U.S. national, who arrived here last week after living three decades in Afghanistan, said she was hopeful of returning to resume her work of helping women widowed by the strife in that country.

She was pinning her hopes on the outcome of recent negotiations with Taliban authorities by the U.N. coordinator for Afghanistan, Eric de Mul .

On returning from his mission to Afghanis-tan, De Mul told reporters he was hopeful that things would return to normal. It is not known, however, if he took up MacMakin's case up with the Taliban.

She was ordered out of the country for defying the latest Taliban edict barring women from working for international aid agencies in Afghanistan. 'I am undermining their cause because women have been working for me,' she said.

On 9 July, Taliban officials, led by the deputy minister for vice and virtue, arrested her along with 15 members of her Kabul-based group, Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Support for Afghanistan (PARSA). She was subsequently asked to leave Afghanistan. She arrived in Peshawar on board a Red Cross plane.

Dismissing as 'ridiculous' the Taliban charge that she was spying and carrying out anti-Afghan propaganda, she, said, however, that a newsletter which she was producing did say some 'truthful' things.

'I do say truthful things in that newsletter about what's going on in Afghanistan,' she pointed out.

'The Taliban do not know how to run the country. They do not know what inter-national norms are. They simply don't know how to govern,' she said. 'The smart ones are not in the right places, and the ignorant are in power,' she told IPS.

Since taking control of Kabul nearly four years ago, the so-called student Islamic militia has enforced a rigid code of social conduct that has driven women indoors, banned entertainment and frowned on education for girls.

'The Taliban want their women to stay inside and bear children. They are afraid of educated females because they simply can't cope with educated women,' she said.

However, she said that U.N. sanctions against Afghanistan were hurting the people more than the rulers. The sanctions were ordered last October following the Taliban's refusal to hand over Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, suspected by the United States of ordering the bomb attacks on its embassies in Africa in 1998.

MacMakin, who planned to visit India later this month and then go to the United States to meet her family and donors, was hopeful that U.N. intervention would persuade the Taliban to withdraw the order banning international aid groups from hiring women.

'If it's not removed, there will be deep trouble for the Afghan women,' she said. Indeed, if the order were not rescinded, the entire aid community in Afghanistan would be in trouble, she added.

Meanwhile, Pakistan, one of three nations to have recognised the Taliban, has been silent on the issue. 'We have got nothing to do with the whole affair. It is a matter between the Taliban government and the United Nations,' senior provincial govern-ment official Manzoor Ahmed told IPS.

Ahmed belongs to the Home Department of the government of the North West Frontier Provice (NWFP) of which Peshawar is the capital. His office is responsible for organising travel for inter-national aid workers through the NWFP tribal areas on their way to Afghanistan.

According to rough estimates, two decades of internal war has widowed 30,000 women in Kabul. Their lot is said to have worsened because of the Taliban-imposed bar on women working outside the home.

MacMakin's group was helping these women earn an income by training them how to spin wool yarn which is in great demand by Kabul's still flourishing carpet industry. The women were also taught embroidery work. In addition, a popular income-generation activity was making traditional handicraft for export, mostly to the United States. It was also running U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)Ðfunded programmes to educate the children of the widows. One of these was taking education to girls, though she did not want to disclose how this was done for fear that the Taliban would close down the programme.

Source: Inter-Press Service