Female Afghan and Pakistani Politicians Forced From Office

Pakistan's and Afghanistan's leading female politicians have been pushed from office by conservative men accusing them of indecency and being too outspoken.

Pakistan's minister of tourism, Nilofar Bakhtiar, has been forced to resign after hardline Islamist clerics tarred her as "obscene" for hugging a man after a charity parachute jump.

In Kabul, firebrand MP Malalai Joya was banished from parliament after she compared her fellow, overwhelmingly male, colleagues to farmyard animals.

Islamist extremists railed against Ms Bakhtiar last month after local papers published photos showing the smiling minister embracing her parachute instructor in western France. A radical mosque in Islamabad that models itself on the Taliban published a fatwa against her for posing in an "obscene manner".

Ms Bakhtiar, one of just three women cabinet ministers in Pakistan, made the jump last March to raise funds for the victims of the 2005 earthquake that killed over 73,000 Pakistanis. Initially she tried to shrug off the critics. "I have no regrets," she said in April. "I would do it again happily if it helps the people of Pakistan."

But although the president, General Pervez Musharraf, vaunts himself as a defender of women's rights, he failed to provide political cover against conservatives in his own party, who dismissed Ms Bakhtiar as head of their women's wing earlier this month.

This week Ms Bakhtiar submitted an angry resignation letter to the prime minister, which was also faxed to national newspapers, speaking of "deep regret" and "exceptional circumstances".

Her departure is the second blow for women politicians in Pakistan this year. In February a religious zealot shot dead a female provincial minister in Punjab province because he disagreed with women participating in politics. He was later sentenced to death.

In Afghanistan Ms Joya sparked the storm of controversy in an interview with local television. "The parliament is worse than a stable," she told Tolo TV. "A stable is better, for there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk."

On Monday angry MPs passed a motion in the lower house of parliament suspending her until the end of the current parliamentary session. Parliamentary spokesman Haseb Noor said the law forbade politicians from insulting one another. Joya termed the vote a "political conspiracy".

"Since I've started my struggle for human rights in Afghanistan, for women's rights, these criminals, these drug smugglers, they've stood against me," she said.

Since being elected to parliament in 2005 29-year-old Joya has built a reputation as a fearless critic of some of Afghanistan's most powerful — and dangerous — figures. Born in the south-western Farah province, she grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran but slipped back into Afghanistan to organize girls' schools under the Taliban. Now she reserves her sharpest words for the country's warlords, whom she accuses of war crimes and fostering corruption.

Her work has won plaudits from human rights groups but threats from her enemies. At a rally last February to support a proposed amnesty for suspected war criminals, thousands of former mujahideen shouted "death to Malalai Joya!" A year ago fellow MPs flung water bottles across the floor of the parliament and some threatened to rape her after she described some lawmakers as "warlords".

Now she travels with several bodyguards and says she sleeps in a number of different houses.