...In 2001, NOW regularly issued "Action Alerts" on the plight of Afghan women. One of them reported that "when the Taliban took over the capital city of Kabul in September 1996, it issued an edict that stripped women and girls of their rights, holding the Afghan people hostage under a brutal system of gender apartheid. . . . Women were prohibited from being seen or heard. The windows of their homes were painted, and they could not appear in public unless wearing the full-body covering, the burqa. Women were beaten for showing a bit of ankle or wearing noisy shoes."

Fast forward to October 9, 2004, when about 4 million women voted for the first time ever in Afghanistan. A statement on the election from the United Nations' Division for the Advancement of Women begins by noting that "insufficient information is available on the actual participation of women on election day," but does wanly concede that "this first election has been an important process to increase women's participation in the political life of their country." Exhibiting the usual U.N. preference for progress on paper, the statement closes by noting with approval that Afghanistan ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women last year.

The folks over at NOW seem even less enthusiastic about the progress in Afghanistan. The NOW "Issues" page headed "Women in Afghanistan" hasn't been updated for two-and-a-half years. And there is no mention of the Afghan election on the main pages of the NOW website. Calls requesting a statement went unreturned...