Afghan women attacked at protest

KABUL - The women shouted: "Equal rights and human rights!" A few feet away, men hollered back: "Death to you dogs!" and "Death to the slaves of the Christians!" Then some men picked up small stones and pelted the women.

More than 100 people - mostly young women - demonstrated yesterday against an Afghan law that they say legalizes marital rape.

But about 800 men and women staged a counterprotest and shouted down the group's megaphone-led chants with insults and accusations that they were puppets of the Christian West. Female police held hands to create a protective barrier between the groups.

The law, quietly signed last month, says a husband can demand sex with his wife every four days unless she is ill or would be harmed by intercourse. It also regulates when and for what reasons a wife may leave her home alone.

Though it would apply only to the country's Shiites - 10 percent to 20 percent of Afghanistan's 30 million people - many fear it marks a return to Taliban-style oppression of women. The Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, required women to wear all-covering burqas and banned them from leaving home without a male relative.

Governments and rights groups around the world have condemned the law, and President Obama has labeled it "abhorrent." Afghan President Hamid Karzai has remanded the law to the Justice Department for review and put enforcement on hold.

A host of Afghan intellectuals, politicians, and even a number of cabinet ministers have come out against the law. But they faced quick criticism from conservative Muslim clerics and their followers, as the protests showed.

"You are a dog! You are not a Shiite woman!" one man shouted to a young woman in a head scarf holding a banner that said, "We don't want Taliban law." The woman did not shout back, but replied, "This is my land and my people."

Others were not so quiet.

"The holy book doesn't say to keep women in the house like a jail!" shouted Faroq Yosouf, 18.

But having chosen a risky spot to hold their protest - in front of the mosque of the law's main backer - the demonstrators were outnumbered by those supporting the law.

The counterprotest even appeared to include more women. A few hundred Shiite women marched behind banners to the mosque to meet the men.

"We don't want foreigners interfering in our lives. They are the enemy of Afghanistan," said Mariam Sajadi, 25, one of many counterprotesters who blamed meddling by foreigners for the anger over the law.

Both sides said they were defending their rights. Afghanistan's constitution defers to Islamic law as the highest authority, and conservatives are unwilling to budge on rules they say are straight from the Koran. Women's activists cite a constitutional article guaranteeing equal rights for men and women.