AFGHANISTAN, A SUCCESS STORY -- NOT. Once upon a time, electricity flowed through the buildings of Kabul, the Afghan capital, 24 hours a day. Today, it's more like every other day for a three-hour stint. So says Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who today convened a media briefing at the National Press Club on the status of Afghan women, five years after the U.S. pushed the Taliban from power. It was Smeal, you'll recall, who relentlessly pushed the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban -- which the U.S. was poised to recognize as the legitimate government of Afghanistan -- effectively ending the pipeline dreams of the U.S. oil company UNOCAL, who counted among its paid consultants one Hamid Karzai, now the beleaguered president of Afghanistan. (Another UNOCAL hired hand was Zalmay Khalizad, now the beleaguered U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and soon to be the beleaguered U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.)
