[MAPC-discuss] What next for Afghan women?

[MAPC-discuss] What next for Afghan women?

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2001-11-14

Washington Post
November 11, 2001

A Future Veiled in False Hopes

By Nafisa Hoodbhoy


Twelve years ago, I was astonished by what I found on a trip from my
native
Pakistan to Afghanistan. I couldn't have imagined a neighboring Muslim
country
with so many women in public places. Each morning, the Afghan capital
was
abuzz
with young professionals on their way to work, most dressed in Western
clothes
and some even in miniskirts and high heels as they vied with their
fashion-conscious counterparts in Paris. Kabul University, where I saw
more
female than male students, was another surprise. But even then, the
occasional
gunfire and bomb blasts in the city -- ruled by Soviet-supported
President
Najibullah -- were a reminder that these freedoms could prove elusive.
Young
women on campus, clutching their notepads in the streaming February
sunlight,
told me apprehensively, "If the mujaheddin take over, they will force us
to
veil."

The encumbering full-lengthburqasthat women now have to wear have become
a
symbol for Westerners of the ruling Taliban government's oppressive
policies.
Even President Bush acknowledged as much last week when he condemned the

current regime under which "women are imprisoned in their homes, and are

denied access to basic health care and education." But it would be an
oversimplification to imagine that simply ousting the Taliban will
restore
basic human rights to women there. Indeed, in its determination to use
whatever means necessary to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda
network, the administration is in danger of exacerbating the rivalries
among Afghanistan's tribes, whose practices are shrouded in traditions
few
Americans comprehend.

Even though there has been much talk in the West about how to establish
a
broad-based post-Taliban government that would guarantee the rights of
women and ethnic minorities, the United Nations has not seriously begun
addressing the role of women in any future form of government. If
history
is any guide, neither a government led by the exiled former king,
Mohammed
Zahir Shah, nor one dominated by the Northern Alliance would readily
grant
women freedom. Instead, the dramatic changes in women's fortunes over
the
past century are testimony to their fragile position in Afghanistan's
oft-rent social fabric.

I got a clear sense of that during my 1989 visit. Although many Afghan
women I
spoke with expressed trepidation about a takeover by Islamic
fundamentalists,
they could not have predicted how oppressive their lot would soon
become.
After
all, they grew up in a relatively liberal Muslim society; many in Kabul
and
Kandahar had working mothers -- nurses and doctors, engineers,
journalists,
factory workers and, of course, teachers. Soviet forces had withdrawn
from
the
country just two weeks before my arrival, and the question foremost on
everyone's mind was whether the Soviet-backed Najibullah government
would
survive the onslaught by the Islamist radicals.

As if anticipating his eventual death at the hands of Taliban
fundamentalists,
the embattled Najibullah was clearly taking no chances -- and he was
even
recruiting women to help him. At a training school in Kabul, I came
across a
female trainee reserve force engaged in combat exercises. They told me
that
their job was to arrest and hand over mujaheddin suspects to
authorities.
They
knew full well what a formidable force the mujaheddin had become. With
their
most radical factions in Northern Pakistan, they were receiving millions
of
dollars' worth of arms from the United States, funneled through
Pakistan's
military ruler, all directed at the goal they would accomplish a few
years
later  -- removing Najibullah from power.

I asked Afghan officials then whether such threats of future instability

might
put women's freedom on the line. The president of the Afghan Women's
Council at
the time, Massuma Esmaty Wardak, argued that, on the contrary, women's
emancipation was deeply rooted in Afghan history. She pointed out that
the
country's most famous reformer, King Amanullah, who was inspired by
Turkey's
secular nation builder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, encouraged sweeping
changes for
women in the early 20th century. He introduced Western dress, she
pointed
out,
sent girls to study abroad, banned the sale of women, raised the
marriage age
and abolished the tribal custom known as levirate (where a widow is
obliged
to
marry her brother-in-law).

What Wardak and others I talked to failed to mention was that King
Amanullah was ousted in 1929, after a brief reign, when conservative
tribesmen revolted
against his liberal policies. Thereafter, King Zahir Shah, Afghanistan's

longest-reigning monarch (1933-1973) -- whom the U.N. has now selected
to
head
the post-Taliban government -- slowed down the changes for women. Yes,
women
came to enjoy greater liberation than in some other Muslim countries,
but
encouraging freedom also risked provoking a backlash from the
conservatives.
Ever since, the role of women has continued to reflect the volatile
nature of
Afghan society -- and of the dangers of trying to alter traditions by
imposing
outside standards on the people.

The Soviet occupation that followed the
bloody
communist Saur Revolution in 1978 attempted to force top-down changes in

Afghanistan. Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) workers
fanned
out
into the villages to stop Afghans from selling their daughters and
coerced
the
girls instead to go to school. Conservative tribesmen retaliated by
murdering
PDPA workers. These changes also triggered a vast exodus of Afghan
tribes.
Some
3 million Afghans fled the country. Many of those who grew up as orphans
of
war
in Pakistan's refugee camps have become today's Taliban; others are that

regime's fiercest critics.

The most militant Islamist groups who resisted the Soviet influence
banded
together under mujaheddin leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Peshawar,
northern
Pakistan. They objected fiercely to Muslim women not wearing the veil
and to
their working outside the home. Some of his supporters threw acid on
women
wearing Western dress in Kabul. When I interviewed Hekmatyar in Karachi
in
1986, I was surprised to find a soft-spoken man who was fluent in
English.
But his supporters included Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami, the radical
Islamist party that enforced gender segregation at Karachi University
with
acid attacks on female students. (This group has now given an ultimatum
to
the Pakistani government to stop supporting the U.S.-led anti-terrorist
coalition or be overthrown.)

Hekmatyar has refused to join the Northern Alliance now backed by the
United
States in its battle with the Taliban. But many other mujaheddin leaders
are
members of that alliance, and even less radical ones than Hekmatyar
punish
women who refuse to wear a burqa. The tribal beliefs in the submission
of
women go far beyond the Taliban.

The stability that the Taliban offered when it snatched power from the
warring
mujaheddin in 1996 came at a further cost to women. Made up of ethnic
Pashtuns,
the Taliban enforced the strict Pashtunwali code of honor that requires
women to be treated as the property of their men. The militia
barredwomen
from working in the professions. Without female teachers, schools soon
closed. The Taliban issued a decree that forbade all girls from going to

school. Women who organized the early protests against the ragtag
militia
were beaten back. Only two ways of earning a living were left open to
them
-- beggary and prostitution.

Last week I spoke with two Afghan women who have been helping refugees
as
U.N.
staff. They told of women's isolation, cowering in their houses behind
darkened
windows so that they cannot be seen from the street. Few can read. Many
are
depressed. Nafisa Nezam, who was in Northern Afghanistan until last
month,
said
that the Taliban have "brought about a new interpretation of 'jihad' to
mean
fighting women who wear lipstick, nail polish and jewelry." Some have
reputedly
had their fingers cut off for painting their nails.

There have been some brave voices of dissent. Afghan women in Pakistan
have
banded together as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of
Afghanistan
(RAWA). The group's members told me in Islamabad in 1999 that they lived
in
mortal fear of being discovered. They know how the extremists treat
women who
dissent. RAWA's founding president, Meena, was murdered in 1987 --
allegedly by
the mujaheddin -- for speaking out against the fundamentalists.
About half of the 4 million or so people who fled Afghanistan over the
past
20
years are women, and many of them would love to return to their home
country
once the Taliban is overthrown. Among them, Tahira Shairzai, a former
schoolteacher in Kabul who now works in the United States, told me she
favors
the U.N. choice of an interim government headed by King Zahir Shah. The
86-year-old exiled monarch shares Pashtun ethnicity with the Taliban,
but
he is
popular because he treated ethnic groups even-handedly during his
40-year
rule
of Afghanistan. Tahira also holds out hope that the Northern Alliance,
which
allows girls' schools to remain open in the area it controls, will take
a
positive attitude toward working women.

However, the past behavior of the Alliance leaders offers little
indication
that women's rights will be taken seriously under the next regime. A
mishmash of conservative and more moderate tribal leaders, the Alliance
is
united for the sole purpose of combating the Taliban. A recent meeting
ofanti-Taliban leaders in Peshawar demonstrated that women's rights do
not
figure in their
deliberations.

What's more, as U.S. bombs hit civilians, the Pashtuns are becoming even
more
radicalized. The United States has had little success in wooing moderate

Pashtuns away from the Taliban -- a move that the administration
recognizes
is
necessary not only to win the current war but because Afghanistan's
future
stability depends upon cooperation among tribal factions. As the U.S.
bombing
continues, thousands of armed Pashtun tribesmen are gathering on the
Pakistan-Afghan border to fight alongside the Taliban.Political analysts
I
have
spoken with in Pakistan predict that even if the Taliban is routed, it
will
likely withdraw into the hills and fight the new government. Moreover,
the
Northern Alliance could plunge into internecine strife.

So although there is no doubt in my mind that women will fare somewhat
better if the Taliban is overthrown, I wonder what comes next. Unless
there
is a means of ensuring durable peace, women's rights do not have a
fighting
chance in
Afghanistan.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy, a journalist who worked for 16 years for Dawn newspaper
in
Karachi, Pakistan, taught as a Ford Fellow at Amherst College this year,

with a
focus on women and politics in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company





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Wednesday, November 14, 2001 9:53 AM

[MAPC-discuss] What next for Afghan women?