The comely 50-year-old human rights activist and her pretty 21-year-old daughter, plus two attractive female colleagues, were clearly getting special treatment because of their sex.

While 74 other applicants--The Earth Times counted--had to go through the deliberately slow process the Pakistanis have set up to delay the journalists trying to get re-entry visas into their country, Benjamin and her bevy sailed through like a hot knife cutting butter.

They smiled. They smiled a lot at Salah Ud Din, the he-who-must-be-obeyed at step #2 of the three-step visa process in Islamabad.

Besides, they aren't really journalists anyway. And therein lies the rub, or the potential embarrassment. They are human rights workers who are on their way to Afghanistan to fight for the rights of Afghan women. They don't want special treatment for Afghan women, just equal treatment for those who have been forced to wear the veil and stay out of work since the Taliban took power.

Their cause is just, they pointed out to Mr. Din, and the need is urgent.

He evidently agreed. They can now go to Afghanistan, and re-enter Pakistan, legally, twice, which is good because the only other practical way out is through Tashkent and that takes several days and a lot more money.

Benjamin, whose Global Exchange nongovernmental organization is based in San Francisco, California, stopped briefly to chat with The Earth Times before dashing off to the Afghan border.

"We are going to fight to get women involved in the transition period. We don't want to wait until the new government takes over. We want them to go to (the all-party conference in) Berlin.

"They should be involved in the ground floor of setting up the new government.

"Afghan women,under the Taliban organized clandestine schools. Afghan women organized clandestine networks. Afghan women fought clandestinely against the Taliban. They have to be part of the new government.

"I am 50 years old now and I have been hearing this for years:'let's take care of the men with the guns. First the men with the gun, then we'll see about women' and that is not right, especially in this case.

"In this case the Afghan women were clearly the most oppressed of the Afghan society. And now they are organized. They have already had a demonstration (in Kabul Tuesday)."

Asked why then, couldn't the Afghan women handle their own rights demands, Benjamin said, "We have had Afghan women visit us and they say that we have more impact, more freedom than they do, more impact on the Americans.

"Let's face it: The Americans are running the show. They say that the Afghans are deciding who is going to the (Berlin) meeting. But they are not the Americans that are deciding everything. And with the Americans we have more impact."

Impact they might or might not have. They have influence, however, and were off to Peshawar at least one, but probably three days ahead of the other 74.

The visa process, necessary for getting back into Pakistan, begins for the affluent, at the plush Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, where most of the TV journalists are staying, or at the Information Ministry for the common reporter.

A form filed there gets approved, and the approval goes to the Interior Ministry for a second approval, a step which takes at least two days, and starts with a conversation with a man who writes names down in a cloth covered ledger designed when Rudyard Kipling was alive and the British ruled the subcontinent.

Salah Ud Din studies the names, and if one gets his approval then one can actually apply for the visa at the passport office.

The interior ministry's approval is supposed to be issued for all at once‹at 11 AM It never is. It never surfaces until after noon.

But the passport office, where one begins the final stage, the actual stage of applying for a visa, closes at 11:30 AM and it is across town.

And that process takes...well, longer, if one isn't as clever as Benjamin and her team.