Afghan Women

 

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Women's Rights in Afghanistan

 

Sonali Kolhatkar

 

            Many of us who first hear about the oppression of women in Afghanistan are horrified and shocked. We want to do something, anything, to help. When we try to help we are sometimes accused of imposing a western feminist approach on a country whose inhabitants are muslim. Yet, one cannot justify the legalized oppression of women as a cultural or muslim phenomenon. It is important to understand that the Afghan women's movement has suffered untold set backs in large part due to foreign interference.

            Today Afghan women have to abide by a set of laws enacted by an illegitimate authority called the Taliban. Much media attention is focused on these laws which are designed to destroy women's dignity and basic human rights. Amnesty International reports that Afghan women are not allowed to work nor can they leave their homes unaccompanied by a close male relative. They are denied education and healthcare. Women are additionally required to be covered from head to toe in an all-encompassing burqa (veil) when outdoors, and have to paint the windows of their home black. They may not even wear nail varnish or shoes that make a sound when they walk. Those who step out of line are beaten or brutalized by roving bands of Taliban police.

            While the "legalized" oppression of Afghan women is relatively new, Afghan women and Afghan people as a whole, have experienced terrorist destruction of their society and lives well before the Taliban appeared.  During the Cold War, the United States hired a set of 7 seperate groups of men to fight the Soviets. Through the CIA, billions of dollars of military training and equipment armed and empowered the "mujahadeen". While the US media called them freedom fighters, the CIA admitted these men were indeed "dictatorship" material. American historian William Blum declares: "American policy-makers could not fail to understand ... that support of the Mujahadeen could lead to a fundamentalist Islamic state being established in Afghanistan". Women were forced to stay at home for their own safety during much of the fighting that took place between warring Mujahadeen factions through the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Afghan men, women and children were caught in the cross fire of heavy rocket shelling and bombing by Mujahadeen, especially in the capital Kabul. Over 40,000 women were widowed in Kabul alone during the fighting. Serious wide-spread violations of "women's rights" by Mujahadeen soldiers included rape and torture.

            Turn the clock back a little further to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. While Afghan women enjoyed relative freedom especially in the cities, the imposition of women's rights by the Soviet regime was insensitive to Afghan culture. A serious resentment was bred toward groups struggling for women's rights like the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). RAWA was founded in 1977 by an Afghan woman named Meena Keshwar Kamal as a means for Afghan women to fight for women's rights on their terms. However, RAWA soon understood that the human suffering that came about during the Soviet invasion warranted a struggle for human rights in general. Their work continued through the Soviet withdrawal and subsequent civil war beyween Mujahadeen factions.

            Examining the history of the women's movement in Afghanistan makes it very clear that foreign intervention contributed heavily to the destruction of any progress made by Afghan civil society in viewing women as equals. Afghan women had won the right to vote as far back as 1965. For Americans, the responsibility toward Afghan women weighs heavily. The United States supported the fundamentalist and patriarchal Mujahadeen warriors for years after the USSR withdrew, up until a short while before the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan in 1996. Sadly today the United States government is more interested in retrieving suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden from the Taliban, than holding the Taliban and their predecessors accountable for their human rights record.

            Today Afghan women inside Afghanistan are amongst the most oppressed women in the world under the Taliban. The Taliban's (mis)interpretation of Islam is not one that is not in general condoned by Afghan men or the international Muslim community. Additionally, decades of war have resulted in Afghans comprising one of the largest groups of refugees in the world, most of whom are women and children and reside in neighboring countries such as Pakistan and Iran. However, Afghan women are not to be underestimated. RAWA, whose members number in the thousands today, runs an effective political and humanitarian campaign to empower Afghan women.  Their field work, which is severely under-funded, includes major political demonstrations in Pakistan, health and educational projects in Afghan refugee camps, as well as underground schools and orphanages inside Afghanistan. One of the best ways to help energise the women's movement in Afghanistan and to heal the lives of Afghan women, is to show your support for

RAWA.

            (The Afghan Women's Mission was founded as a sister organization to RAWA and collects donations to fund RAWA's health and educational projects.)   Further reading: www.rawa.org, www.afghanwomensmission.org

            A International Women's Day Benefit for The Afghan Women's Mission.  Poets and musicians Emma Rosenthal, Stephanie Abrahm, Sonali Kolhatkar and others. 7:30 PM.  Express Y[self Coffeehouse, 1359 N. Altadena Drive, Pasadena.  (626) 398-8654.