Voter to Karzai: Please end adultery!

An Afghan woman stuffs a handwritten personal plea in a ballot box

Published August 21, 2009 9:01AM (EDT)

Speaking of Afghanistan's election, an interesting discovery was made Thursday inside a ballot box in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif: a note addressed to President Hamid Karzai asking for an end to adultery in the country. Talk about a one-issue voter! It read:

With warm greetings to the president, I am a woman whose husband disappears during the day every day and wanders around the town and through parks with different types of women, while my children and I sit at home hungry, waiting for him. I want to ask you, Mr. President, to notice how much adultery there is among men. I don't know the right language to tell you, I'm asking you to please get rid of this, for all the hatred and damage it brings upon families.

It's unlikely the letter will ever land in Karzai's hands, but let's dream big. How might he respond? We already know the president supports starvation as a response to women who withhold sex from their husbands. So, just where do you think his sympathy lies: the dependent wife at home or the roaming husband?


By Tracy Clark-Flory

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