After Regime Change - Microcredit

I just finished reading The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad - a heartbreaking description of the lives of women in post-Taliban Afghanistan. It was depressing to read how even a relatively liberal and affluent Afghani treated his wives and daughters like chattel. Yet there were also occasional glimpses into the slow spread of freedom after the overthrow of the Taliban. We are often instructed that cultural norms make democracy and a western conception of human rights infeasible and unwelcome in the Islamic world. Yet, only a year after the US invasion, Seierstad chronicles Afghanis beginning to take advantage of their newly acquired liberties.

Microcredit programs, such as that run by Women for Women have proven to be an effective way to both empower women in historically oppressive societies and support developing economies. This story from Asia News is a wonderful illustration of the fruits of just such a project. The Bush Administration should be applauded for its efforts to plant the seeds of liberty in oppressed nations. We wealthy citizens of the west should get behind the next stage of the project and support programs that will encourage those seeds to grow.