The Western media has been furiously discussing a new Afghan family law which it says takes a big step back toward the oppressiveness of the Taliban era. But in Afghanistan there seems to be far more concern over the foreign criticism than debate about the legislation itself.

"A return to servitude," is how Britain's Times newspaper brands the law, which it calls an "abomination".

The law, which Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai signed last month but has since put under review, sparked controversy abroad because of a provision that "a wife is obliged to fulfil the sexual desires of her husband".

Backers say the legislation would give the long-oppressed Shi'ites their own family law code for the first time, and that critics have misread parts.

But others have denounced the legislation - which applies only to the Shi'ite minority that makes up about 10 percent of Afghanistan's population - as reminiscent of harsh Taliban-era rules.

They say it could be interpreted as legalising marital rape and object to other clauses restricting women's freedom of movement. One provision says women need their husband's permission to go out unless it is for work, education or medical care.

The Times applauds the courage of several hundred Afghan women who took to the streets this week to demand greater freedoms and were stoned and jeered at by a furious mob as a result.

"What is particularly repellent is the denunciation of these freedoms as a plot against Islam by Christians and the attempt to portray institutional misogyny as the heritage of patriotic Afghans," the paper writes.

For the New York Times, the law represents "an officially sanctioned brutality that violates American values and international human rights norms".

"Mr. Karzai, whose popular support plummeted because of government ineptitude and corruption, is running for re-election in August. The new law, which affects family matters for the Shi'ite minority, seems a bald, particularly creepy, pander," the paper adds.

Meanwhile, Gideon Rachman writes in the Financial Times that the West should use the leverage it has in funding and protecting Karzai's administration to "lean on the Afghan government not to accept outrageously misogynistic laws".

Yet, as the debate runs on in Britain, the U.S. and Canada, the voices of those who stand to be affected by the law - Afghan women themselves - are notably absent from much of the Western coverage.

Canadian news service Canwest News, however, takes the step of interviewing Afghan women at Kabul University about the law and finds many surprised and bewildered at the debate raging in Canada and Europe.

"The nearly unanimous view on the campus - arguably the most progressive institution in Afghanistan - was that the West should not involve itself in the country's cultural and religious affairs," Matthew Fisher writes for Canwest News.

"This is not a good law. Women should be allowed to do what they want," Hamida Hasani, 18, a Hazara architecture student told the news service. "But we do not want total freedom. We wanted it to be limited and to be within Islam.

"They don't know anything about us and our problems," she said of the furore in the West over the law and the recent murder of women's activist and Kandahar provincial council member Sitara Achakzai. "If they faced what we have faced with hunger and war, they'd realise what is most important to fight for here."

The article also highlights how low awareness of the law is - no other student the service spoke to was aware of the legislation.

"It is still not a big domestic story. Shia women do not understand the implications of this law because they regard this as a cultural issue that is linked to religion," Fauzia Kofi, a women's rights campaigner, told the service.

Canwest concludes that the consensus among the students it spoke to was that, as bad as the proposed law might be, it's none of NATO's business.

This view is echoed in an editorial in Afghan newspaper Rah-e Nejat translated by BBC Media Monitoring South Asia.

"The Western media has launched a new propaganda campaign," the editorial says. "It has launched a propaganda campaign against a law ratified by the Afghan parliament and president.

"It is our right to make laws based on our beliefs and culture. Anyone, who criticises our laws, is blatantly interfering in our internal affairs.

"We want Afghan democracy and not the western secular democracy. Westerners should solve their problems rather than fuelling such issues. We know better than them what is useful and what is harmful for us. We can never impose the western laws on our women," the Rah-e Nejat editorial concludes.

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