Good morning. My name is Eva Sánchez Díaz-Pinto. I'm a student at IES Castellbisbal, a small town near Barcelona.
I have been asked to talk about a current issue that's also relevant to me, so I've decided this dissertation will be about "Women in Afghanistan and terrorism".
Everyone knows what happened on September 11 in New York; the Twin Towers, where the World Trade Center was located, were blown up by two planes which crashed against them as a part of a terrorist attack.
This turned out to be the visible part of an iceberg which no one wanted to see. The situation in Afghanistan had been impossible ever since the Talibans took the power, and so had the terrorist actions all over the world.
Let's talk a bit about each one: women's situation and terrorism.

Women's situation in Afghanistan
Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women had had to wear burqua and had been beaten and stoned in public for not wearing it. One woman, for instance, was beaten to DEATH by an angry mob of fundamentalists for accidentally exposing her arm while she was driving. Another was stoned to death for trying to leave the country with a man that was not a relative.
Women were not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male relative;
Professional women such as professors, translators, doctors, lawyers, artists and writers have been forced from their jobs and stuffed into their homes, so depression was widespread, with a high suicide rate.
Homes where a woman was present had to have their windows painted so that she could never be seen by outsiders, and had to wear silent shoes so that they were never heard.
Because they could not work, those without male relatives or husbands were either starving to death or begging in the street, even if they held PhDs.
Most professionals left the country. At one of the rare hospitals for women, a reported found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat or do anything, but slowly wasting away.
David Cornwell said that we in the Western World should not judge Afghan people for such treatment because it is "a cultural thing", but his is not even true, it is alien to them, and it is extreme even for those cultures where fundamentalism is the rule.
Everyone has a right to a tolerable human existence, even if they are women in a Muslim country in a part of the world that we do not understand. If we can threaten military force in Kosovo in the name of human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians, Americans can certainly express peaceful outrage at the oppression, murder and injustice committed against women by the Taliban.

Terrorism
Now, about terrorism I have to say that for six years no one did anything; for many years, many countries have been suffering terrorist attacks, but it was not until September 11 when there was a reaction on behalf of the democratic world.
Nevertheless, there's a high controversy at the moment due to the attacks to Afghanistan seeking Bin Laden. George Weigel, an expert on the just war tradition, says that in today's international context, "justice" includes the defence of freedom and a minimum of order, but it has to be proportionate. Saint Augustine also agr4ees that it si a moral duty.
Terrorists usually consider themselves at war against a particular state, so the "response" is a self-defence one.

Conclusion
As a conclusion, I must say, and I hope you agree with me, that it's highly positive that all democratic states have got together to fight terrorism and preserve human rights. Perhaps it's the beginning of a new era.