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.)
