challenges by promoting a new and innovative approach called Legislative Theatre. Applied to the Afghan context, Legislative Theatre encourages women's participation in political decision-making and in the drafting of legislation from the bottom-up, using different participatory theatre techniques that create spaces for Afghan women to come together, discuss women's issues and initiate a search for women-led grassroots strategies for change. Acknowledging that the transformation of deeply entrenched attitudes and behaviors towards women in Afghanistan is by no means an easy task, AHRDO strongly believes that gender equality and women's rights remain a goal worth struggling for and that this struggle necessarily needs to involve a multiplicity of different, innovative approaches and corresponding stakeholders to authentically promote women as agents of change. Hence, during the Legislative Theatre initiative, approximately 4, 000 Afghan women from all walks of life were the main protagonists in the discussion of three fundamental women's rights issues: 1) Afghan women's political participation, 2) the strengthening of Afghan women's participation in law-making and 3) the identification and categorization of Afghan women's legal problems. These issues were discussed through a variety of means including twelve participatory theatre workshops, forty interactive forum theatre performances and six legislative referenda. Some of the discussions that emerged during the activities included the affirmation that the resistance of conservative and religious forces to women's rights is a bitter and undeniable fact in the history of Afghanistan. Historically, the suppression of women led by such ruthless figures as Mullah Abdullah, also known as Mullah, the lame and Mullah Omar are symbols of a broader social, cultural and religious environment in which the preservation of Afghan male honor (ghairat) has always taken precedence over the rights of at least half of the Afghan population. Today this historical reality is continued by a new generation of conservative groups who have managed to monopolize the drafting of the Shiite Family Law while deliberately sabotaging some of the more progressive articles of the Law on the Elimination of Violence against Women (EVAW). As a matter of fact, without the powerful military, political, financial and ultimately restraining presence of the international community in Afghanistan, these conservatives would not hesitate to identify further mechanisms of returning Afghan women to their traditionally assigned roles as secluded wives, mothers and daughters. What makes the post-Taliban era different from the reigns of Amanullah Khan, Zahir Shah, Daoud Khan and the various leftist governments is that the latter, to differing degrees, believed in more equal relationships of women and men and the need for a radical change in women's social situation. Today, however, the Afghan government and Afghan political leadership's espousal of women's rights is more subject to the logic of attracting financial support from the international AHRDO Afghan Women after the Taliban: Will History Repeat Itself? Page 5