"Imagine you could no longer distinguish between life and death, so you stop trying to kill yourself because it would be redundant."

To Americans this quote immediately conjures up images of the burqa, but to Afghani women it sums up the lack of human rights and equality in Afghanistan. The Feminist Majority Campaign's Norma Gattsek said the burqa is a "symbol of the total oppression of women."

Feminist campaigns nationwide raised public awareness by making the burqa, and American repulsion to it, the emotional center of their projects. Even Oprah Winfrey joined these ranks with her critically acclaimed reading of Eve Ensler's Under the Burqa during the VDay campaign of 2001.

During her reading, an Afghan woman wearing the burqa appeared as vocal sounds of pain and agony filled Madison Square Garden. Audience members, who afterward signed petitions against the Taliban in the thousands, pinned bits of fabric from burqas on their collars in remembrance.

With such strong campaigns focusing on this one issue, it is often difficult to see beyond the burqa. Since 2001, Americans have felt an eminent threat to their democracy and to freedom around the world. America went on a crusade to spread democracy to those areas where oppressive regimes ruled. However, using the burqa and the flags of regimes like the Taliban as symbols of oppression is not only wrong but grossly misinformed.

The burqa was not a creation of the Taliban; it has been around since the Byzantine Empire. It is not "the Islamic attire" for Muslim women because it is not even mentioned in the Quran or other religious texts. In reality, the burqa is intended as a cultural garment. It is not oppressive until it is regulated, either through the enforcement of the Taliban or through the cries of feminist crusaders. In the end the solution is simple: choice. Isn't that the essence of democracy anyway?

A survey done by Physicians for Human Rights of Afghan women in 2001 concluded, strikingly in the face of U.S. feminist campaigns against the veil, that more than 80 percent of women in non-Taliban controlled areas said they wear the burqa all the time. Also, more than 90 percent said that their dress rarely affects their daily lives. About 80 percent of all respondents both male and female consider persecution from dress code infractions an insignificant issue.

Why then are countries like the United States making dress code an issue when it is a trivial matter to Afghanistan? In the eyes of the government, Afghanis are less concerned with human rights than things as basic as the right to food, water, shelter, education and equal opportunities. By focusing on issues like dress code, America is failing in its mission to "liberate Afghanistan."

The battle does not end with the burqa and will not end until human rights are established.