This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 print edition of The Diplomatic Courier.
Fifty years ago, Kabul University was vibrant. Women and men walked together on their way to commingled lectures. In Kabul, women made up 50 percent of the civil service, 40 percent of doctors, and 70 percent of schoolteachers. Islamic veils and mini-skirts were both popular fashion statements.
Thirty-two years ago, in 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, plunging the country into war and continuous violence. Those with the means to fled. By 1999, 10 percent of Afghanistan’s population was dead; another 30 percent were in other countries as refugees. In the civil war that followed, power-crazed factions, competing for dominance, made widespread use of war’s oldest weapon: rape.
As the Taliban took control across Afghanistan, they responded to the rapes by brutally executing both the women and men for adultery, and barring all women in their homes.
Ten years ago, barely before the dust in New York City settled, the United States invaded Afghanistan, quickly pushing the Taliban underground. Optimists claimed – in tones from cautious whispers to full-throated proclamations – that a new day had come for Afghanistan. A mere four months after the invasion, President George W. Bush declared in his State of the Union address, “The last time we met in this chamber, the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today, women are free.”
Despite the challenges Afghan women still face, optimists with rose-colored glasses hold aloft the advances made for women. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, tells how Afghan women turned to entrepreneurial enterprises to survive the Taliban’s reign. Today, women build Afghanistan’s economy, and bring peace, by creating jobs. When a woman starts a business, her husband does not have to join the Taliban to feed their family.
The statistics about women’s involvement in Afghan society are exalted: in 2009, women constituted 26 percent of civil servants; 27 percent of seats in the National Assembly; and 25 percent of seats in Provincial Councils. Article 48 of the Afghan constitution guarantees women the right to work; other constitutional provisions guarantee non-discrimination and equality.
However, often-forgotten statistics reveal that 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate; 1 in 11 will die in childbirth; 80 percent face forced marriages; and the amount of women who daily face domestic violence reaches 90 percent.
Brutish, Nasty, and Short
One-third of Afghan women will experience physical, psychological, and sexual violence. The UN described the widespread rape of women and girls alike as a “human rights problem of profound proportions.”
Sara’s son was taken away by armed soldiers of a local warlord, Mawlawi Islam, and was never seen again. She and her husband publicly harangued the warlord twice about their son. After the second time, one of Islam’s sub-commanders and three soldiers dragged Sara from her home to a public square, gang-raped her and stabbed her genitals with a bayonet.
Sara survived, and was left to stumble home naked. By 2006, Mawlawi Islam was an MP in Afghanistan’s National Assembly. The soldiers were sentenced to jail for the rape, but in Afghanistan, money is more powerful than justice. President Karzai pardoned the men a year later.
The National Stability and Reconciliation Law was enacted in 2008, pardoning all armed factions of any war crimes committed before 2001 – war crimes such as the public murder and rape of untold numbers of women.
Three years later, the Afghan government continues to sacrifice women in the name of peace. In the supposedly stable north, a pregnant widow named Bibi Sanubar was imprisoned for days by Taliban forces for adultery, given 200 lashes before a crowd, then finally shot, execution style, three times in the head. Maulavi Isfandar, who oversaw the execution, has now been granted amnesty as part of a $140 million joint British-American-Afghan reintegration and reconciliation program.
Rape within marriage is legal; a woman cannot refuse her husband sex. Abortion is illegal, and contraception is nearly impossible to find outside of Kabul. Only men can have legal custody of children, so if a woman successfully petitions for divorce, she would likely never see her children again.
The legal age for marriage is 16, but the government has no way to enforce it. Half of all Afghan marriages involve children under 16. Some are sold by families too poor to survive any other way. A UN report from December 2010 says that high bride prices were fuelling the "commodification of women and girls," turning marriage into “a transaction where girls are effectively sold to the highest bidder".
Local jirgas, tribal assemblies of elders that function as the only legitimate government in some areas, sentence many girls to being given away as baad – compensation for a crime a brother or father committed. One jirga member justified this custom to Human Rights Watch by saying it was a more restorative form of justice. "If they didn't give her away [as baad], the man [from the other family] would take away the house. And the 13 people who lived in that house would come on the streets. In every family one has to make a sacrifice."
Many girls try to escape. Those who are caught are abused until death. Shelters have been established to protect and provide for these victims of domestic abuse, but these already under-funded institutions face increasing stigma. Nasto Naderi, a conservative television personality, stated on his show that such shelters were just fronts for whorehouses. It is an ironic accusation, because without the shelters, a woman with no family to support her and no skills for employment would be forced to turn to begging or prostitution to survive.
There is a saying in Afghanistan that a woman belongs either to her husband’s house, or to her grave. Christina Prejean, a U.S. Air Force first lieutenant stationed in Afghanistan, described the toxic view men have of women for the San Diego Tribune: “A sailor who works for me told me that a few weeks ago, after being asked by an Afghan police officer if he were married, and replying that he was divorced, he was questioned as to why. He said it was because his wife no longer wanted to be married. The Afghan [officer] then asked him why he had not killed her yet.”
“I feel proud to be a woman.”
When even highly educated Afghani men and security forces express such toxic views, there seems to be no hope for change. That does not keep Afghan women from trying.
Noor Jahan Akbar has seen how the attitudes men hold affect the ability of women to be involved in Afghan society – how street harassment and rape of women who dare to leave the home are seen as a woman’s fault, not the man’s. She saw institutions, from the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to civil society, fail to take a stand against the violence.
In response, she created Young Women for Change – a grassroots effort to increase political, social, and economical participation of young women who have not been involved in any kind of activism before. On July 14th, they organized the first protest for women’s rights in Afghanistan, marching down the streets of Kabul with signs and fliers calling for an end to the harassment of women.
“During the march, seeing the number of women and men who had come and their bravery as they took each step, knowing that there are dangers, was motivational,” Ms. Akbar wrote to The Diplomatic Courier. “We all looked with each other with disbelief and pride... we know how difficult it is to arrange a march like this in Afghanistan, and how many risks we have taken in doing so.”
The marchers were protected by fifteen police officers, who in some cases even helped distribute fliers. Some men who witnessed their march grew red-faced with anger, screaming and spitting. To Ms. Akbar, it is evidence of growing conservatism, unchecked by international forces looking for an easy and politically correct compromise.
“To be honest, I am scared for Afghan women. I am afraid the international community will forget about Afghan women,” she said. “Given that the national police and army are not ready to take control of the city and the government is passing laws to restrict women's activism and the civil society – such as the Regulations on Shelters and the Afghan Weddings Law, which is currently being discussed by the Ministers' Council and restricts women's clothing in weddings – it is difficult to imagine that the government will support women's freedoms in the country if the civil society is weak.”
Wazhma Frogh has been an advocate for equal participation of women in all aspects of Afghan society for 15 years. Today, she works in Afghanistan to bring literacy to women in rural areas, fighting for legal reforms that protect women, and educating men on what Islamic law truly says about the rights of women.
"My goal is to really represent Islam. It's not a religion that oppresses women," Ms. Frogh said in a 2008 interview with Christian Science Monitor. "Of course it's very risky. I may lose my life during this process, but if I am able to open a door for rights for one woman, then it is worth it."
She has reason to fear for her life. Even though she is pursuing a graduate degree in Islamic law, many men will refuse to listen to her lessons. Fundamentalists and the uneducated see Ms. Frogh, Ms. Akbar, and women like them, as a threat, rather than an opportunity for improvement in their communities. Reports of professional women being targeted by militias are common. “I’m not safe even in my bedroom,” said Fauzia Kofi, a member of Afghanistan’s parliament, to the Washington Post. She is on a list of Taliban targets.
Ms. Frogh recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with Obama administration officials as part of a delegation of eleven Afghan women leaders that included politicians, civil society workers, and journalists. They warned that if women were not involved in the peace process, all hopes of a peaceful, democratic Afghanistan would fail.
Among a list of recommendations, they called for a woman representative from civil society to address the Bonn Conference with oral remarks. Women are struggling for a voice in the peace process, and although they have a higher stake in the outcome, they are being treated as little more than token voices.
Ms. Frogh has been an outspoken critic of the West’s policies toward women, decrying the meaningless political promises of humanitarian aid and improving women’s lives. “What does empowerment mean for a widow with five dependants? Are we really serious when we empower women by giving them tailoring machines… [when] even garments from USA are available locally at reasonable prices? Is [International Women’s Day] another day of betraying women with ‘never fulfilled promises’?”
A senior American official recently anonymously told the Washington Post, "Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities.… There's no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in our rucksack were taking us down." As official American policy moves out of Afghanistan, women fear so will international aid groups.
If there is hope for the women of Afghanistan, it lies within themselves and the solidarity they and their male allies summon to fight for their place in society. Ms. Akbar exemplified the spirit of Afghan women when she said, “We need to change these attitudes and build a support system for women so that we can protect their right to participate in society. Our purpose is to fight the belief that women do not belong to the outside world.
“I feel proud to be a woman and I want to improve life for women in this country.”
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Afghan Women: 10 Years Later
October 7, 2011
This article was originally published in the Fall 2011 print edition of The Diplomatic Courier.
Fifty years ago, Kabul University was vibrant. Women and men walked together on their way to commingled lectures. In Kabul, women made up 50 percent of the civil service, 40 percent of doctors, and 70 percent of schoolteachers. Islamic veils and mini-skirts were both popular fashion statements.
Thirty-two years ago, in 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, plunging the country into war and continuous violence. Those with the means to fled. By 1999, 10 percent of Afghanistan’s population was dead; another 30 percent were in other countries as refugees. In the civil war that followed, power-crazed factions, competing for dominance, made widespread use of war’s oldest weapon: rape.
As the Taliban took control across Afghanistan, they responded to the rapes by brutally executing both the women and men for adultery, and barring all women in their homes.
Ten years ago, barely before the dust in New York City settled, the United States invaded Afghanistan, quickly pushing the Taliban underground. Optimists claimed – in tones from cautious whispers to full-throated proclamations – that a new day had come for Afghanistan. A mere four months after the invasion, President George W. Bush declared in his State of the Union address, “The last time we met in this chamber, the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today, women are free.”
Despite the challenges Afghan women still face, optimists with rose-colored glasses hold aloft the advances made for women. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, tells how Afghan women turned to entrepreneurial enterprises to survive the Taliban’s reign. Today, women build Afghanistan’s economy, and bring peace, by creating jobs. When a woman starts a business, her husband does not have to join the Taliban to feed their family.
The statistics about women’s involvement in Afghan society are exalted: in 2009, women constituted 26 percent of civil servants; 27 percent of seats in the National Assembly; and 25 percent of seats in Provincial Councils. Article 48 of the Afghan constitution guarantees women the right to work; other constitutional provisions guarantee non-discrimination and equality.
However, often-forgotten statistics reveal that 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate; 1 in 11 will die in childbirth; 80 percent face forced marriages; and the amount of women who daily face domestic violence reaches 90 percent.
Brutish, Nasty, and Short
One-third of Afghan women will experience physical, psychological, and sexual violence. The UN described the widespread rape of women and girls alike as a “human rights problem of profound proportions.”
Sara’s son was taken away by armed soldiers of a local warlord, Mawlawi Islam, and was never seen again. She and her husband publicly harangued the warlord twice about their son. After the second time, one of Islam’s sub-commanders and three soldiers dragged Sara from her home to a public square, gang-raped her and stabbed her genitals with a bayonet.
Sara survived, and was left to stumble home naked. By 2006, Mawlawi Islam was an MP in Afghanistan’s National Assembly. The soldiers were sentenced to jail for the rape, but in Afghanistan, money is more powerful than justice. President Karzai pardoned the men a year later.
The National Stability and Reconciliation Law was enacted in 2008, pardoning all armed factions of any war crimes committed before 2001 – war crimes such as the public murder and rape of untold numbers of women.
Three years later, the Afghan government continues to sacrifice women in the name of peace. In the supposedly stable north, a pregnant widow named Bibi Sanubar was imprisoned for days by Taliban forces for adultery, given 200 lashes before a crowd, then finally shot, execution style, three times in the head. Maulavi Isfandar, who oversaw the execution, has now been granted amnesty as part of a $140 million joint British-American-Afghan reintegration and reconciliation program.
Rape within marriage is legal; a woman cannot refuse her husband sex. Abortion is illegal, and contraception is nearly impossible to find outside of Kabul. Only men can have legal custody of children, so if a woman successfully petitions for divorce, she would likely never see her children again.
The legal age for marriage is 16, but the government has no way to enforce it. Half of all Afghan marriages involve children under 16. Some are sold by families too poor to survive any other way. A UN report from December 2010 says that high bride prices were fuelling the "commodification of women and girls," turning marriage into “a transaction where girls are effectively sold to the highest bidder".
Local jirgas, tribal assemblies of elders that function as the only legitimate government in some areas, sentence many girls to being given away as baad – compensation for a crime a brother or father committed. One jirga member justified this custom to Human Rights Watch by saying it was a more restorative form of justice. "If they didn't give her away [as baad], the man [from the other family] would take away the house. And the 13 people who lived in that house would come on the streets. In every family one has to make a sacrifice."
Many girls try to escape. Those who are caught are abused until death. Shelters have been established to protect and provide for these victims of domestic abuse, but these already under-funded institutions face increasing stigma. Nasto Naderi, a conservative television personality, stated on his show that such shelters were just fronts for whorehouses. It is an ironic accusation, because without the shelters, a woman with no family to support her and no skills for employment would be forced to turn to begging or prostitution to survive.
There is a saying in Afghanistan that a woman belongs either to her husband’s house, or to her grave. Christina Prejean, a U.S. Air Force first lieutenant stationed in Afghanistan, described the toxic view men have of women for the San Diego Tribune: “A sailor who works for me told me that a few weeks ago, after being asked by an Afghan police officer if he were married, and replying that he was divorced, he was questioned as to why. He said it was because his wife no longer wanted to be married. The Afghan [officer] then asked him why he had not killed her yet.”
“I feel proud to be a woman.”
When even highly educated Afghani men and security forces express such toxic views, there seems to be no hope for change. That does not keep Afghan women from trying.
Noor Jahan Akbar has seen how the attitudes men hold affect the ability of women to be involved in Afghan society – how street harassment and rape of women who dare to leave the home are seen as a woman’s fault, not the man’s. She saw institutions, from the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to civil society, fail to take a stand against the violence.
In response, she created Young Women for Change – a grassroots effort to increase political, social, and economical participation of young women who have not been involved in any kind of activism before. On July 14th, they organized the first protest for women’s rights in Afghanistan, marching down the streets of Kabul with signs and fliers calling for an end to the harassment of women.
“During the march, seeing the number of women and men who had come and their bravery as they took each step, knowing that there are dangers, was motivational,” Ms. Akbar wrote to The Diplomatic Courier. “We all looked with each other with disbelief and pride... we know how difficult it is to arrange a march like this in Afghanistan, and how many risks we have taken in doing so.”
The marchers were protected by fifteen police officers, who in some cases even helped distribute fliers. Some men who witnessed their march grew red-faced with anger, screaming and spitting. To Ms. Akbar, it is evidence of growing conservatism, unchecked by international forces looking for an easy and politically correct compromise.
“To be honest, I am scared for Afghan women. I am afraid the international community will forget about Afghan women,” she said. “Given that the national police and army are not ready to take control of the city and the government is passing laws to restrict women's activism and the civil society – such as the Regulations on Shelters and the Afghan Weddings Law, which is currently being discussed by the Ministers' Council and restricts women's clothing in weddings – it is difficult to imagine that the government will support women's freedoms in the country if the civil society is weak.”
Wazhma Frogh has been an advocate for equal participation of women in all aspects of Afghan society for 15 years. Today, she works in Afghanistan to bring literacy to women in rural areas, fighting for legal reforms that protect women, and educating men on what Islamic law truly says about the rights of women.
"My goal is to really represent Islam. It's not a religion that oppresses women," Ms. Frogh said in a 2008 interview with Christian Science Monitor. "Of course it's very risky. I may lose my life during this process, but if I am able to open a door for rights for one woman, then it is worth it."
She has reason to fear for her life. Even though she is pursuing a graduate degree in Islamic law, many men will refuse to listen to her lessons. Fundamentalists and the uneducated see Ms. Frogh, Ms. Akbar, and women like them, as a threat, rather than an opportunity for improvement in their communities. Reports of professional women being targeted by militias are common. “I’m not safe even in my bedroom,” said Fauzia Kofi, a member of Afghanistan’s parliament, to the Washington Post. She is on a list of Taliban targets.
Ms. Frogh recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with Obama administration officials as part of a delegation of eleven Afghan women leaders that included politicians, civil society workers, and journalists. They warned that if women were not involved in the peace process, all hopes of a peaceful, democratic Afghanistan would fail.
Among a list of recommendations, they called for a woman representative from civil society to address the Bonn Conference with oral remarks. Women are struggling for a voice in the peace process, and although they have a higher stake in the outcome, they are being treated as little more than token voices.
Ms. Frogh has been an outspoken critic of the West’s policies toward women, decrying the meaningless political promises of humanitarian aid and improving women’s lives. “What does empowerment mean for a widow with five dependants? Are we really serious when we empower women by giving them tailoring machines… [when] even garments from USA are available locally at reasonable prices? Is [International Women’s Day] another day of betraying women with ‘never fulfilled promises’?”
A senior American official recently anonymously told the Washington Post, "Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities.… There's no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in our rucksack were taking us down." As official American policy moves out of Afghanistan, women fear so will international aid groups.
If there is hope for the women of Afghanistan, it lies within themselves and the solidarity they and their male allies summon to fight for their place in society. Ms. Akbar exemplified the spirit of Afghan women when she said, “We need to change these attitudes and build a support system for women so that we can protect their right to participate in society. Our purpose is to fight the belief that women do not belong to the outside world.
“I feel proud to be a woman and I want to improve life for women in this country.”
