A Presidential Pardon

Canada and its NATO partners, while withdrawing gently and gradually from military action in Afghanistan still have a huge investment in helping to train civil authorities and various government departments in the art of good governance. Afghanistan is a country wracked by incessant wars, its people tormented by their recent memory of rule by the unyieldingly-stern fundamentalism of Islamist Taliban.

As an Islamic country whose tribes honour an Islamic code of life under sharia law, it is also a hugely societally primitive society. Lest any Westerners choose to overlook or forget this fact of Afghan life, there are occasional reminders. Like the death sentence handed out to anyone foolish enough to attempt to shed their Muslim religion and take up another faith instead, like Christianity. This is forbidden; the sentence is death.

Like women guilty of confessing to having been raped. Women who are then charged with responsibility for the rape. Guilty as charged, for men cannot be held responsible for a woman's wiles, enticing a man beyond self-control, culminating in non-consensual conjugal relations. Such a woman may be innocent and a victim as far as the West is concerned; she is a loose woman who caused a man to sin, in the eyes of Afghan society.

Twenty-one-year-old Guinaz was imprisoned as a result of having been raped by a relative. In prison she gave birth to a child. Authorities offered her the opportunity to leave jail, if she agreed to marry the man who raped her. On behalf of her innocent infant daughter she agreed to the condition imposed upon her, reasoning that her child would then have a family.

And under Muslim Sharia law her honour would be restored to her. "I had no choice. I did it for my daughter", she explained. Despite which, the prosecutors appear to have added another condition. She was to be punished for the crime of not reporting the rape in a timely manner. She would therefore have her sentence reduced from 12 to three years.

But since she has served only two years, she must remain in prison for yet another year. And good news: she may also receive a presidential pardon.