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NEWS & LETTERS, OCTOBER 2003'Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan'Berkeley, Cal.--On the anniversary of September 11 there was a meeting with readings from a new book, MEENA, HEROINE OF AFGHANISTAN, by Melody Ermachild Chavis with an introduction by Alice Walker. Walker read her introduction, stressing what Meena’s life meant. Chavis said, in the voices of the families of victims who oppose the use of their loved ones’ memory to perpetuate Bush’s war, she heard the voices of the women of Afghanistan. She called her audience and the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) a “third force” opposed to both Bush and bin Laden. She said, “we are people in the millions who are for civil society, for the rule of international law.” She noted that going to Afghanistan was like going home to her fundamentalist Irish family in Texas--encountering the same church of hatred. She asked, why has fundamentalism grown so much everywhere? Why was science not able to “save” us from it? Her answer was that science is not neutral; it gave us the depleted uranium bombs, for example. Chavis compared Meena’s founding of RAWA in 1977 when she was only 20, to the U.S. Civil Rights struggle. Meena and other women in RAWA decided to advocate for democracy and to practice it in their own lives. RAWA was to be inter-tribal and inter-ethnic. Chavis compared Meena to Harriet Tubman: though she was hunted, she kept crossing the border to smuggle things in and people out. Meena (and RAWA) are proud of the many schools they founded. One person asked about the wearing of the burkha. Chavis answered that it is never about the clothes, but about human rights. When the government says you have to wear something to remind you of your devotion, that is an attack on genuine religious feeling. I raised the question of building solidarity with women of Afghanistan based on their vision of democracy practiced in everyday life. Chavis’ translator, an Afghan woman, Latifa, liked the question because she is dismayed at the image of Afghan people as backward and wants to be a partner in a dialogue. This meeting of genuine solidarity with people who want freedom contrasts with the sentiments at anti-war rallies, where many want to confine our critique to that of the U.S. The need for concrete expressions of what solidarity means has never been greater. --Urszula Wislanka |
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