UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, October 30,1996
9A
Women of Kabul must be covered up
Females forced to hide bodies from head to toe
The Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — The women float through the noisy streets and markets like brightly colored phantoms, hidden from head to toe by the billowing folds of the burqa, the all-enveloping garment that Kabul's new government requires them to wear.
Their vision of the world is confined to what they can see through the garment's small mesh openings around the eyes. Peripheral vision is hindered, making it even more dangerous to move through the reckless traffic of the capital.
The Taliban religious army has declared it mandatory, under Islamic law, for women to wear a burqa whenever they go outside. The garment hides a woman's identity and masks her expression — including the anger she might feel at having to wear it.
"When I put on the burqa and looked in the mirror, I understood what it was the Taliban wanted: For me to realize that I am a woman and that I really don't have a life," said 23-year-old Rana, who still works on the sly for an international agency, even though the Taliban has banned women from the work force and girls from attending school.
hidden. That means wearing a burqa.
The traditional Islamic head scarf is not enough for the religious army that seized Kabul last month. The Taliban say Islam demands that women stay home and that if they insist on going out, they must be
When Lailuma Mohammad takes off her burqa at home, she gladly sheds her anonymity.
She suddenly emerges as a 25 year old with dancing olive-green eyes and a broad, quick smile, wearing a loose, pink shirt and baggy pink pants.
Her smile fades when she talks about the burqa.
"I don't feel like a real person when I'm wearing one," said Mohammad, a Kabul University graduate in pharmacology.
Muslim proponents of such coverings claim it enhances the dignity of women, allowing them to be judged on their abilities rather than their appearance.
In many Muslim countries, burqas or even headscarves are not required.
Whatever its effect on her dignity, the burqa and its mesh eye-holes make it difficult — and dangerous — for Mohammad to move about Kabul with the freedom she used to enjoy.
"I kept trying to look over my shoulder for cars, but the burqa made that almost impossible," she said.
Before the Taliban came to Kabul, less than 20 percent of the women wore burgas.
Now, merchants are rushing to fill the demand created by the Taliban edict.
Mohammad Yaqub, 26, used to sell crutches to soldiers wounded in the war and civilians malmed by mines.
He abandoned that for the more lucrative business of dyeing burqas for merchants.
"It's steady work," Yaqub said. "I
have a lot of orders to fill."
At a stall in Kabul's main market,
Abdul Gafur said he sold about 50
of the cotton garments a week, double
the business he did before the
Taliban came to town.
The price of a burqa ranges from $5 — about a month's wage for many in Kabul — to $10 for a burqa with a fuller cut and finer texture. Ghafur buys the material from local merchants or picks it up in neighboring Pakistan. His wife and mother sow them.
But even while the burqa sellers profit from the rules of the new regime, some say the Taliban are stretching Islamic law too far.
"According to Islam, a woman's face and hands can be uncovered, so the Taliban's order is not Islamic," said Qand Hagha. "I can make more money from what the Taliban have done. But I don't agree with it."
Improving Yeltsin to have surgery
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — Boris Yeltsin's condition is improving and the Russian president could undergo heart surgery as early as next week, a U.S. surgeon consulting on the case said yesterday.
Surgeon Michael DeBakey told The Associated Press that he would travel to Russia this weekend to consult with Yeltsin's doctors. No date has been set, but DeBakey said they hoped to perform surgery next week.
He said that Yeltsin's condition had been improving and that doctors had made progress in treating Yeltsin's anemia and a thyroid dysfunction.
DeBakey said Yeltsin needed a triple or quadruple coronary artery bypass, although he would not know specifically what the Russian doctors planned to do until he arrived in Moscow.
The date of the operation has been a mystery, with Yeltsin at first saying he expected surgery in September. Kremlin officials later said the operation would occur sometime between mid-November and mid-December.
DeBakey has said that the prognosis for the 65-year-old Russian leader is good.
Kremlin doctors said earlier yesterday that the final stage of preparations for surgery had begun. Their statement, carried by Russian news agencies, said Yeltsin's condition was satisfactory. The Kremlin emphasized the fact that the president spoke on the phone with his chief of staff.
The president's staff has campaigned to burnish Yeltsin's image as a can-do kind of guy despite his illness.
The popular daily Komsomolskaya Pravda even ran an interview with Sergel Mironov, the chief Kremlin doctor, portraying Yeltsin as a headstrong patient.
"He has his own vision of the problem, his own understanding of his body," Mironov said. "So if we change his treatment in any way, or use a new medicine, we first have to convince him that it's necessary."
Woman planned own death, police say
The Associated Press
LENOIR, N.C. — When Sharon R. Lopatka left her Maryland home, she wrote a note telling her husband that she was going to visit friends in Georgia and that she would not be coming back. She also asked him not to seek vengeance.
Lopatka, though, had planned to go to North Carolina, where she expected to be sexually tortured and killed by a man she had met on the Internet, police said yesterday. Apparently, she got her wish.
Her body was found in a shallow grave last week behind a mobile home in Collettsville. The home's owner, Robert Glass, was charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond.
"If my body is never retrieved, don't worry, know that I'm at peace," she wrote her husband. She also asked him not to go after her attacker, police said.
An autopsy showed the cause of death was strangulation, but initial tests were inconclusive as to whether she was sexually tortured before being killed.
investigators said computer messages from Glass, recovered from Lopatka's home computer, indicate that she traveled to North Carolina knowing what awaited her. Why she went along with a plan that would result in her death was a mystery to police.
Lopatka, 35, of Hampstead, Md., had three Social Security numbers and operated three World Wide Web pages out of her home. One offered to write classified ads for $50 and promised such success that customers would literally watch orders pour in.
The other two pages, advertising psychic hot lines, were titled Psychics Know All, and Dionne Enterprises. She received a percentage of the revenue from all of the 1-900 calls generated by the pages, said the company's owner, Wendell Craig of Phoenix, Ariz.
Glass, 45, a father of three who separated from his wife earlier this year, has worked as a computer programmer for the county for nearly 16 years. Neighbors said he seemed to change, taking less interest in his home, after his wife left him.
Glass and Lopatka met over the Internet and, according to electronic mail messages found on her home computer, she agreed to meet him in North Carolina on Oct. 13. She left Baltimore by train that day and met Glass in Charlotte, investigators said. Autopsy results show she was killed three days later.
Her husband reported her missing. According to the search warrant application investigators used to search Glass' property, messages from "slowhand" — Glass' apparent Internet nickname — described how he was going to sexually torture and kill her.
Investigators spent yesterday downloading Glass' computer files. Other items seized from his home included drug paraphernalia and a .357-Magnum pistol.
A friend of Lopatka described her as happily married and sensible.
"Until someone proves it to me, I won't believe that this could be her," said Diane Safar. "She was conservative and careful. This is such a mystery."
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