Nobody Listens to Women

... especially those women who have something profound to say but aren't part of the Western grievance industry:

Despite it being a long distance call and a bad line, I can detect the frustration in her voice. ''Women? No one listens to women''.

Hamida Hussan* is a young Afghan woman from Kabul, who has just spent four whirlwind days in Washington DC speaking to congressmen and women, addressing conferences and lobbying whoever she can corner. She's exhausted and sounds like she's about to cry.

Just hours before our late night conversation, a suicide bomber has killed 17 people outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul. Most were civilians. Gruesome footage posted on the internet shows a passerby pulling a severed leg out from under a car. We both search news websites for more information and find nothing.

''A dog or cat dies in this country (the US) and they put it on TV'', she says in exasperation, ''And yet no one knows or cares about these people killed today''.

I want to tell her that the problem is one of ''compassion fatigue'' – that the world has seen it all before. Instead, I just tell her I'm sorry.

Hussan is one of a growing band of gusty, young Afghan women - mostly single, childless and in their 30s - who are doing everything in their power to try and ensure the international community doesn't turn its back on Afghanistan. They are terrified that history is about to repeat itself and that Afghanistan will once again be abandoned. Talk of ''targeted counter-insurgency'' and the US ''reducing its footprint'' in Afghanistan, and negotiations with so called ''moderate'' Taliban, has them lobbying hard against troop withdrawal.

... keep reading.