Afghan student free, but what about the country's women?
In the midst of , some good news from Afghanistan that student following a presidential pardon. His crime? Downloading an article about women's rights for which he , a sentence commuted to 22 years on appeal.
When met him just last month, it was President Karzai's pardon he was seeking, but he was aware how politically sensitive his case was.
"He was careful about what he said to me although his anger and distress were clear after nearly two years behind bars", she said:
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So why now? I put the question to Jane fresh from her return from Afghanistan.
"The Presidential election was only a couple of weeks away at that time and it was widely believed that Hamid Karzai was relying on the political backing of conservative religious leaders to win a second term.
"Pardoning Parvez who had been sentenced to death by a court of mullahs in the conservative city of Mazar-i-Sharif was not something Mr Karzai was prepared to do despite the please of the students family. The UN and European governments also lobbied Mr Karzai - in vain.
"Then came the election and now the President is under pressure from the west - accused of widespread fraud and ballot box stuffing. A small concession like authorising the release of Mr Kambash is one way of easing that pressure as the disquiet over the election mounts both in western capitals and inside Afghanistan," she explained.
Despite making the in the UK, Jane checked with her sources in Afghanistan to confirm his release, a check we wanted to make as the news was kept low key over there and Parvez has reportedly left the country for fear of reprisals.
The news of his release was welcomed by who have been campaigning on his behalf. But in some corners Parvez's freedom is seen as a signal of something more troubling.
raises concerns about President Karzai's tardiness in acting, seen as evidence that the lot of women has not improved since the fall of the Taliban.
This view on women's rights was shared by , "the fact that the student must flee in fear of his life because he circulated an article questioning attitudes to women in Islam suggests that the supposed introduction of democracy and eight years of war have delivered scant progress."
The question of life in post-Taliban Afghanistan was the premise for What Are We Fighting For?, which saw Jane Corbin return to Afghanistan to investigate eight years after western intervention removed the Taliban from power.
Broadcast as Afghanistan was going to the polls in an election that could help define the future for women in the country, the unclear election result has left the question of the future for women euqally unclear. The fact that Parvez has left his home country to seek asylum in Europe is disheartening.
"It is a sad reflection of the state of his country today that his life would have been in danger if he had stayed," Jane says. "I remember the bright eyed and passionate young man who shook my hand in the police cell - a mark of his determination not to be bound by strictures against Muslim men never touching a woman outside the family.
"He was determined to bring Afghanistan into the twentieth century and get a debate going on women's rights in a country where eight of ten women suffer domestic violence and 60% are forced into marriage, often as children."
These statistics paint a bleak vision of human rights today in Afghanistan, but for there is not much hope for the future, whether Western forces stay or go.
"Getting one decision reversed isn't going to alter the mindset that produced that decision in the first place. And if altering that mindset is not seen as a vital part of our mission in the country, then our mission is doomed to failure."
Here, the case of one student takes on far greater significance and becomes the embodiment of what the future holds for Afghanistan and the West's involvement in it. It is certainly a now even more so in light of the election fallout.
"Parvez will have to be a voice from outside Afghanistan now but this is the moment to do it as the death toll of British and NATO soldiers rises and the public questions their leaders' support for President Karzai, a man whose government has been accused of weakness and corruption and now fraud," says Jane.
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