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NEWS & LETTERS, November 2002
Afghan women debate country's future
New York--The conference "Afghan Women Report:
Achievements and Challenges One Year After Bonn," sponsored by Women for
Afghan Women at Barnard College Oct. 19, brought together a remarkable group of
Afghan, Afghan-American, and U.S. women, whose efforts to improve conditions for
women in that devastated country put them in conflict with their own
governments. Most Afghan women have seen no improvement since the U.S. military
installed a new Afghan government last year. Women are still afraid to leave
home without wearing a head-to-toe burqa, only a small percent of girls attend
schools, and recently eight girls' schools were bombed, burnt down or closed by
fundamentalist warlords. The loudest criticism at the conference was aimed at the
warlords--who rule most of the country with guns--and at the U.S. for
maintaining the status quo of war, oppression of women, and poverty by bombing
civilians, funding the warlords and not funding reconstruction, education or
means of survival. Several women came from Afghanistan including the first
woman in government, Dr. Sima Samar, who was made minister of women's affairs
last year. "No one knew or cared what the ministry would do, and it had no
funds," she said. "I had no office for two months; then I got an
office, a desk and one chair, but there was no electricity. Having a ministry
doesn't mean women have rights.... Yet women's voices are the loudest ones for
peace and security." Samar is now human rights commissioner, another position
without funds or power. Her aim is to establish a radio station so women, most
of whom are illiterate, can learn they have legal rights such as the vote. Most
women do not have identity cards and so are not even counted as citizens.
Another wish of hers is to investigate the mass graves that dot the country
after 24 years of warfare. Belquis Ahmadi, a founder of the Afghan Women's Network in
Kabul and Peshawar, described one remote area where there are no buildings
except mud huts, no electricity nor any other form of light such as candles, and
so little food that people eat poisonous berries. It is ruled by a warlord who
takes women for slaves. The suicide rate for women in such areas is high. U.S. FALSE CLAIMS REFUTED A state department employee spoke, making a number of false
claims about the success of the democratic process in Afghanistan, and when
pressed about including warlords in the government, she actually said,
"Wouldn't you rather have them in the government than fighting against
it?" The Afghan women exclaimed no! and insisted that if the U.S. stopped
funding them, the warlords would lose their power. Eleanor Smeal, head of the Feminist Majority, claimed that
our government's interest in Afghanistan is to secure an oil pipeline, which it
can accomplish by bribing local warlords more easily than by building up a
strong central government. Smeal, playwright Eve Ensler, and many of the
Afghan-Americans present denounced the U.S. government for claiming it was
"liberating Afghan women." The U.S. and other countries have promised
much less aid than is necessary to rebuild the country, several speakers
explained, and the money that does come in goes for the military and for cash
and arms to war and drug lords. One warlord recently received $400,000 in U.S.
"aid." Helena Malikyar argued that the best way to help women is
to fund the reconstruction of the infrastructure and the state. She said life is
getting worse every day, with much of the country having no water or crops and
suffering deforestation. Other women argued for immediate aid directly to women. RAWA KEPT OUT OF U.S. RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan)
had been invited to the conference, but the U.S. refused to give its
representative a visa. I missed hearing RAWA's principled stand that only a
secular government can establish women's rights. Since all the Afghan speakers
had either advocated a moderate Islamic government, avoided the issue, or
assumed that was the best one could hope for, I asked the speakers to address
the issue of a secular government. The idea was dismissed as impossible
"because people won't accept it" by Fatima Gailani, who had been the
spokesperson for the Mujahadeen (religious army) when it was fighting the Soviet
Union, and who only recently became active in women's rights. Several speakers mentioned movements within Islam that hold
progressive interpretations of religious law and they urged women to enter into
the religious discourse. But they had no answer to the question raised by Masuda
Sultan, a young Afghan-American: "How do we convince the mullahs to
interpret Muslim law the right way?" One influential Afghan woman who lives
in the U.S. told me privately that she thinks only a secular government could
assure that fundamentalism does not dominate the treatment of women. --Anne Jaclard |
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