By Rasil Basu
An unexpected fallout of the September 11 attacks on the
World Trade Centre and the Pentagon was the sudden concern
of the American and other governments with the plight of
Afghan women.America retaliated by declaring war on
Afghanistan to bring down the Taliban regime, end terrorism,
and to capture Osama “dead or alive”.
A further justification, added by President Bush in his address
to the UN General Assembly, was the Taliban’s treatment of
women. Laura Bush went further in her radio address to the
nation, with the plight of Afghan women providing her an
entree into political life. She was unequivocal in demanding
that Afghan women be involved in rebuilding democracy in
Afghanistan.
It has taken 13 years for America to recognise the problem
even though it contributed handsomely to the suffering of
Afghan women, as it was less concerned with their situation
and more with its own geopolitical interests during the period
of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
During the occupation, in fact, women made enormous
strides:
Illiteracy declined from 98 per cent to 75 per cent and they
were granted equal rights with men in civil law, and in the
Constitution. This is not to say that there was complete
gender equality. Unjust patriarchal relations still prevailed in
the workplace and in the family with women occupying lower
level sex-type jobs.
But the strides they took in education and employment were
very impressive. I witnessed these gains first hand when the
UNDP assigned me (1986-88) as senior adviser to the Afghan
government for women’s development because of my long
career with the United Nations working for women’s
advancement.
During this period I had drafted the World Plan of Action for
Women and the draft Programme for the Women’s Decade,
1975-85 adopted at Mexico City Conference (1975) and
Copenhagen Conference (1980). In Kabul I saw great
advances in women’s education and employment. Women
were in evidence in industry, factories, government offices,
professions and the media.
With large numbers of men killed or disabled, women
shouldered the responsibility of both family and country. I
met a woman who specialised in war medicine which dealt with
trauma and reconstructive surgery for the war-wounded. This
represented empowerment to her. Another woman was a road
engineer. Roads represented freedom — an escape from the
oppressive patriarchal structures.
But as far back as 1988 I could see the early warning signals
as well. Even before the first Soviet troop withdrawal,
shabanamas, or handbills, warned of reprisals against women
who left their homes. Followers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
started throwing acid on women who dared to venture into the
streets of Kabul in trousers, or skirts, or short-sleeved shirts.
Ironically, the US favoured the three fundamentalist
resistance groups of “freedom fighters” headed by
Hekmatyar, Khalis and Rabbani over the more moderate
Mujahideen groups.
Saudi Arabian and American arms and ammunition gave the
fundamentalists a vital edge over the moderates. Even more
tragic is the fact that this military hardware was used,
according to Amnesty International, to target unarmed
civilians, most of them women and children. But more about
that later.
In the fall of 1988, I wrote an article for an op-ed piece which
I submitted to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Ms
Magazine. I pointed out that ascendant fundamentalism in
Afghanistan had struck its first blow at women’s education and
employment. Since the Najibullah regime, which was still in
power, was anxious to accommodate the Opposition under its
National Reconciliation Policy, women’s rights were made the
first offering!
It was no coincidence that the backlash started in the ministry
of Islamic affairs, which began dismissing women on the
pretext of abolition of posts. A strict code of dress was also
imposed — a scarf to cover the head, the traditional full
sleeved long tunic, and pants. Lunch breaks, which enabled
women to meet, discuss problems, and protest against unfair
practices, were stopped. So was co-education, which existed till
sixth grade.
With acute scarcity of resources it was obvious that girls’
schools would receive low priority and standards would drop. I
recommended a number of steps which the Western world,
especially the US, could take to protect women’s rights. In
their aid programmes they could insist on the integration of
women in development projects.
Women’s colleges, vocational institutes, and NGOs could
provide fellowships to women to study abroad. My
recommendations were buried. And the above publications
also preferred not to publish my piece, obviously, because it
went against the perceived interests of the US.
The events, which followed, were worse than the most dire
predictions! The overthrow of the Najibullah government in
1992 led to fighting among warring fundamentalist groups for
territorial control. Massive artillery attacks killed and wounded
thousands of civilians, especially women and children. Afghan
women’s rights were violated with impunity as the Constitution
was suspended by the Mujahideen groups who seized power in
Kabul.
The ruling warlords ignored the legal system, dismantled the
judicial structure, assumed judicial functions for themselves in
several provinces, and for the Islamic clergy or local shuras
(councils of elders) in others. Trials were arbitrary and
punishments were barbaric like stoning to death and public
lashings of everyone including women. Amnesty
International’s report for the period April 1992-February 1995
lists horrendous crimes against women.
Rape by armed guards of the various warring factions was
condoned by their leaders; it was viewed as a way of
intimidating vanquished populations, and of rewarding
soldiers. Fear of rape drove women to suicide, and fathers to
kill their daughters to spare them the degradation.
Scores of women were abducted and detained, sexually
abused, and sold into prostitution. Most girls were victimised
and tortured — because they belonged to different religious
and ethnic groups. In addition to physical abuse, women were
stripped of their fundamental rights of association, freedom of
speech, of employment, and movement.
The Supreme Court of the Islamic State in 1994, issued an
ordinance on women’s veil which decreed that women should
wear a veil to cover the whole body, forbidding them to leave
their homes “not because they are women but for fear of
sedition.” This in a nutshell is the past record of the groups
that form the Northern Alliance.
Their warlords looked upon women as spoils of war — the very
same warlords, who are now strutting around Kabul, with the
support of the so-called civilised Western world under US
leadership.
In February 1995, the Taliban (students of religion), a strong
and popular political force, took control of nine out of 30
provinces and ushered in a new era. The Taliban established
its own interpretation of strict Islamic code of ordinances and
conduct. The ministry of promotion of virtue and prevention of
vice, also known as the moral police, was established.
Its edicts banned women from working, or going to school,
and forced them to wear the head to toe burqa. It ordered
people to paint their first floor windows black so that
passersby could not see the women inside. A Taliban
representative speaking from the attorney general’s office in
Kabul explained the edict to journalists: “The face of a woman
is a source of corruption for men who are not related to
them.”
The UN special rapporteur for violence against women,
Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka, reported “official
widespread, systematic violations of human rights of women
in the Taliban areas of Afghanistan.” In many rape cases, she
added, women were punished publicly for adultery and beaten
for violations of the ministry’s edicts, and under Rabbani’s
government from 1992-1996, some of the worst outrages
against women were committed.
One exception to women’s employment was made in the case
of opium poppy cultivation as it is a labour intensive task
which men refused to undertake. The report of the UN Drug
Control Programme quotes a woman: “Our major problem is
that weeding poppy fields takes a lot of time.
We have problems carrying the seeds to the field and often
get sick while lancing and collecting poppy.” With all the odds
against them, Afghan women showed amazing bravery and
heroism while resisting successive oppressive regimes. They
often paid for it with their lives.
Foremost in the struggle was the Revolutionary Association of
Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) formed in 1977. RAWA
organised women through successive regimes to resist their
oppression, by non-violent methods.
It organised underground schools and health facilities for girls
and women, and support and succour for rape victims, even in
the refugee camps in Peshawar and Quetta. RAWA’s founder,
Meena Kamal, continued to work despite being repeatedly
threatened for her “anti-jihad activities”, till her assassination
in 1987 in her house in Quetta. Although she had informed
the Pakistani authorities of threats to her life, she was not
provided police protection.
More recently (1993), the Afghan Women’s Council (AWC) was
formed by a number of professional Afghan women doctors,
teachers and university lecturers to provide schools and health
clinics for Afghan children and women in Pakistan’s camps.
Though they worked towards raising awareness of women’s
rights within the framework of Afghanistan’s religious and
cultural tradition they too were threatened by Mujahideen
groups.
The war in Afghanistan has come full circle. As of today the
Taliban seems defeated in all Afghan cities. Osama bin Laden
has not been captured “dead or alive’ nor is the terrorist
network destroyed. No estimates exist of the toll war has
taken of the lives of civilian men, women and children, nor of
those permanently disabled or seriously wounded.
The Northern Alliance, which is a conglomerate of various
opportunistic ethnic groups mostly Tajiks, Hazaras and
Uzbeks minus the Pashtuns, will play an important role in the
formation of the next government. Needless to add they are
the same groups who were in power before the Taliban.
Their treatment of women is well documented. The most
recent indicator of the Northern Alliance’s intent is the ban
imposed by interior minister Younis Qanooni on a women’s
freedom march in Kabul, planned by Soraya Parlika of the
newly-formed Union of Women in Afghanistan, for November
28. The ban, according to Parlika, is said to be “for security,
but that is just a pretext... they don’t want women to
improve.”
The UN Special Envoy Frances Vendrell has been holding
meetings with the exclusively male Northern Alliance and other
political leaders but not met with any Afghan women. Is this a
precursor of things to come?
Many of the countries — so-called victors of this “war” — have
their own agendas in Afghanistan, and their own ideas about a
future Afghan government. India is in a unique position to
take up this issue with the Northern Alliance with whom it is on
good terms. But will it? Is it at all interested in raising its voice
on behalf of the scarred Afghan women?
It is of utmost importance that the UN sponsored talks in
Bonn and elsewhere take up these issues with the seriousness
they deserve. US secretary of state Colin Powell has
underlined the need to involve women in the planning and
implementation of the new government and as beneficiaries.
Now is the time for him to stand up and be counted. RAWA
must be invited to participate in the talks, and the views of
Afghan women implemented. Minimum humane standards as
set out in the Geneva Conventions must be impressed on the
future government. Women’s human rights should be
safeguarded in any new Constitution and future legislation.
Otherwise it will be yet another case of lip service to the cause
of women. Just as it has been in the past.
Rasil Basu has spent 30 years in the United Nations working
on human rights and women’s issues.
Rasil Basu, India
Chairperson of EKATRA, a non-governmental organization for development
alternatives for
women. Formerly a U.N. civil servant in the Branch for Advancement
of Women and in
the Secretariat for the Conference on the Palestine Question.
Served as a UNDP
consultant in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1987 and 1988.