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Afghan Official Says Women's Shelters Are Corrupt By ROD NORDLANDPublished: February 16, 2011 KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's top female official launched a sustained verbal assault on women's shelters on Tuesday, accusing them of corruption and mismanagement, and insisting that the government was determined to take control of them, whether or not donors continue to give financial support.The shelters, nearly all of them supported by Western charities and governments, provide safe havens for women and girls fleeing sexual and physical abuse, and give the runaways an alternative to seeking help from authorities, who often forcibly return them to their families - and sometimes subject them to further abuse. The new rules would put government officials in charge of the shelters, provide close monitoring of their activities, and could even subject unmarried girls in them to virginity tests, critics complain."These shelters do not care about the women in them," said Hussan Ghazanfar, the acting minister of women's affairs, at a news conference she called to explain the government's proposed new rules. "There are thousands of women living around them and they are not concerned about those women," she said, adding "They are only concerned about their budgets." Asserting that the country's 11 registered shelters spent $11 million last year taking care of 210 women, she said that was far more than needed. "This is corruption, you can just count. The shelters do not need this much money," Ms. Ghazanfar said.However, 210 is the number of women in those shelters when officials checked on Monday, she conceded. Many of the women stay briefly until they can reconcile with their families or find an alternative living arrangement. They range from girls forced into child marriage to rape victims fleeing relatives who would kill them to assuage family honor.Referring to Ms. Ghazanfar's statistics, Manizha Naderi, who runs the Women for Afghan Women shelter in Kabul, said, "That's just false information." Her own shelter with a population of 40 on a given day takes care of 350 women in a year, at a total cost of $100,000, she said.Many women's rights advocates have been alarmed by the government's proposals. "What we've heard from our donors is they will not fund the government to run shelters," Ms. Naderi said. Her non-governmental organization is supported by donations and by foreign aid grants.Ms. Ghazanfar suggested she was unconcerned about the possibility that international funding for the shelters would end. "The international community gives $11 million and we can work with much less of a budget," she said. "If they are not ready to give us this money, only one million will take care of this. This budget we can find from anywhere."A statement issued by the United Nations recommended that the government consider revisions to the new regulations, as proposed by a legal review commission including human rights advocates as well as government officials."The U.N. recognizes that government monitoring and oversight of these centers is needed," the statement said. "At the same time, civil society organizations should continue to operate women protection centers/shelters independently."Ms. Ghazanfar said government control of the shelters reflected the growing maturity of the Afghan government and the increased professionalism of its police, and was part of the broader transition process from dependency on foreign agencies.Many women's advocates, however, complain that shelters are needed because women cannot trust police to act on their behalf. Many women, even very prominent ones, say no woman in Afghanistan would go into a police station without a man - even in Kabul and other major cities - for fear of being abused by the police.Critics of the shelters have accused them, without offering any evidence, of serving as fronts for prostitution, and of undermining the importance of the family in Afghan life.Others were critical of the embarrassment caused Afghanistan when 18-year-old Bibi Aisha, who had been rescued by a shelter after her Taliban husband cut her nose off, was pictured on Time magazine's cover last year. The photograph recently won the World Press Photo of the Year award."Taking the responsibility of the shelters will reduce rumors about them," Ms. Ghazanfar said. "This is not a threat to women's freedom, it is more support for women."She said the new regulations came about as the result of a presidential commission which spent a year studying the shelters, but has not yet published its findings. "There are a series of violations we can see and we have told them many times," she said. Asked for details, she said, "it would take up a lot of time to read all of them."She listed some. "Lack of order and discipline, and chaos in some of them. Lack of activities. Shifting women from one province to another. Not following their court cases responsibly. Lack of health facilities. Women kept two weeks when one week was enough. Failure to report problems. Lack of proper reports. Corruption in spending their budgets."She also said that many of the women in shelters were "deceived women who don't have the necessary information about Islam," and that shelter managers needed to remember that "the family is a sacred place." Echoing a favorite refrain of President Hamid Karzai, Ms. Ghazanfar said the international community was often more corrupt than Afghan institutions. "There was $10 million in U.N.D.P. funds for women, how was it spent? No one knows," she said, referring to the United Nations Development Program, which funds some gender equality programs in Afghanistan, including one inside the Ministry of Women's Affairs.United Nations officials did not have an immediate comment on the charge. Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul.