In Afghanistan, concerns are glaringly growing about possible tradeoff of women's rights in the ongoing bid to bring Taliban and other insurgent groups back to the fold. Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO) - a Kabul-based local organization working to promote human rights in the country-in a report released on March 6, 2012-just two days before the International Women's Day- has voiced serious concerns about possible reversion of women's rights and achievements with the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan.

AHRDO's report entitled "Afghan Women after the Taliban: Will History Repeat Itself?" warns against a backdrop of failed attempts to reform cultural and cognitive structures as it says, "throughout Afghanistan's conflict-ridden history, the struggle for women's rights has been an issue of contention, false promises and failed attempts to reform the deeply patriarchal system of relationship between women and men."

This pronounced preoccupation with the fragility of women's gains because of possible compromise over women's rights in the ongoing reconciliation efforts with the Taliban and other hardline outfits and announced disengagement of international community comes at the time while Ulema Council issued a guideline that restricts women's presence in the society.

This so-called "code of conduct" developed by Ulema Council- an extremely conservative force viewed and described to be serving as a mouthpiece for the government- and endorsed by president Karzai is perceived as an attempt on the part of president Karzai to pave the ground for securing a political deal with Taliban and other fundamentalist groups.

The AHRDO's report is premised on an assumption that support for women's rights has been a cosmetic exercise to hoodwink international community to continue to provide financial support as it states that" the Afghan government and Afghan political leadership's espousal of women's rights is more subject to the logic of attracting financial support from the international community than a credible expression of a genuine and wholehearted commitment to support Afghan women."

The report further says," In fact, at the expense of women's rights the current Afghan elites play a cynical political game that can be characterized as an attempt to strike a balance between continuing to receive much-needed financial support from the international community on the one hand and keeping the conservative forces of Afghan society happy on the other.

In practice, the demands of extremist elements residing in the presidential palace, particularly those in the judicial bodies as well as the Afghan Ulema (Religious Scholars) Council, always outweigh those of the international community." What makes the AHRDO's report different from other women's rights related reports published inside and outside Afghanistan is the fact that it deals with cognitive and historical aspects of a struggle between breaking and not breaking with patriarchal and extremist religious narratives regarding women's role and rights in the society.

It points to a historical trend that "historically, the suppression of women led by such ruthless figures as Mullayi Lang ( Lame) and Mullah Omar are symbols of a broader social, cultural and religious environment in which the preservation of Afghan male honor (ghairat) has always taken precedence over the rights of at least half of the Afghan population.

Today this historical reality is continued by a new generation of conservative groups who have managed to monopolize the drafting of the Shiite Family Law while deliberately sabotaging some of the more progressive articles of the Law on the Elimination of Violence against Women (EVAW)."

The report claims that "the vast majority of Afghan women continue to live in unacceptable living conditions because of a lack of authentic engagement with and an understanding of ordinary women, the wide discrepancies between the lives of women in the city and those in rural areas as well as widespread insecurity." This could serve as a departure point to once again revitalize and promote women's rights discourse in Afghanistan as the specter of compromise on the rights of half of the country's population in the government's bid to reconcile with the Taliban has begun to haunt Afghan people, particularly women.