How Scottish is Gordon Brown?

"Is it because he's a Scot?" asked a Scottish friend in Cornwall, wondering why Gordon Brown was getting such bad publicity.

The answer,probably, is yes. The Scots, as anyone who has worked and lived there can tell you, are intelligent, generally better educated than the English, hospitable and well organised.; Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have surrounded themselves with fellow-Scots in their governments.

So what is the problem? "It's difficult being a Scot," one well-known arts critic from Edinburgh told me. "There are a lot of rules and you have to keep them or you are in trouble. I like Cornwall (the critic was on holiday) because it's like Scotland without the rules."

Once New Labour came in, armed by Scots, I knew there would be more rules. I had lived and worked in Scotland for five years. You have to be much more careful there about the minutiae of every day life than in England.

So now we have a cascade of legislation making sure we are watched and counted and don't break any rules without being punished......proposals for ID cards (hated since they were abolished at the end of the last war) 42 days' detention for suspects before trial, cameras watching our movements from every angle. And Gordon Brown asking us to feel "British", put flags in our gardens and celebrate being British once a year. Oh, yes, and wars. The Scottish clans were always keen on those.

No, thanks, Gordon. It all feels like being back at school again. Soon they will be telling us where and when we can run and at what times we can eat. The Queen feels British, I'm sure. Gordon almost certainly secretly feels Scottish to his calvinistic backbone. And as for me, I'm Yorkshire. The Cornish don't mind that, so long as we remember than they are far superior to any of those "up country."

ends

The burqua, rape and forced marriage.

The West went to Afghanistan to beat the Taliban. The Revolutionary Association of Afghan Women, who had opposed both the Taliban and its predecessors, the Soviet Union, at first cautiously welcomed the troops. RAWA helped to run refugee camps and schools, but soon the bombing drove them to take refuge in Pakistan with thousands of others, but still crossing the border again to carry on the work in their own country.

But now that has changed. Both RAWA and the former American radio journalist Sarah Chayes, now living in Kandahar and author of the book The Punishment of Virtue, reveal the corruption and oppression of women now existing in the country.

"Contrary to the aspirations of our people and expectations of the world community, the Northern Alliance, these brethren-in-creed of the Taliban and Al Qaida are again in power and generously supported by the US government It has completely shattered the dream of our wounded people for liberation from the heavy chains of the Taliban tyranny....." says their latest statement.

It is known that warlords are in the American-supported Karzai government, and Karzai himself has warned the US that Afghanistan is becoming ungovernable.

But the women are protesting that far from being rescued from the Taliban, the leaders of the Northern Alliance have no ideological difference from the Taliban. "The incidence of rape and forced marriage is on the rise again, and most women continue to wear the burqa out of fear for their safety......by reinstalling the warlords in power the US is ultimately replacing one fundamentalist regime with another."

The level of violence is rising. RAWA tell of a 29-year old woman publicly stoned to death after a charge of adultery. "Old traditions also regard women as the second sex and they are suppressed, so RAWA's mission for women's rights is far from over."

The rising to power of the Northern Alliance and the brutal suppression of women - teachers being shot in the schools and prevented from working - is something that the British government should take into account before committing any more our troops to defend the cause of fundamentalism.

Sarah Chayes, who runs a co-operative and wears men's clothes so as to be safe outside, has written what is described by Christina Lamb as a devastating indictment of the contradictions of US policy in Afghanistan. A Harvard history graduate who serve in the Peace Corps in Morocco and then returned to Harvard to specialise in the medieval Islamic period, she knows and loves the country and its people. On a visit to London, she said that the war had delivered only "lies, corruption and murder."

It is time our government listened to her and to the suffering Afghan women.