Editorial»
Afghan women remain stifled
JAN 02 - At the convention of the “loya jirga,” or grand assembly, to debate Afghanistan’s new constitution, an extraordinary thing happened. Malalai Joya, a 25-year-old female social worker from the rural province of Farah, stood up and said what no one up to now had dared say: that many of the jirga’s committee chairmen were criminals. Instead of being given influential positions, they should be tried for their crimes. The actions Joya referred to were committed by Islamic fundamentalists — mujahedeen, or holy warriors — from 1992 to 1996 and included widespread rocket shellings, torture, rape and mass killings of civilians.
Joya’s impassioned plea was particularly daring in Afghanistan. Although the United States and the United Nations hailed the defeat of the Taliban as a “liberation” for the Afghan people, the reality is otherwise — especially for women. Most people are afraid to speak out against those in power for fear of physical retribution. Joya is now under the protection of the United Nations after receiving death threats.
U.S. support of fundamentalists in powerful positions throughout the country has left Afghanistan’s dreams of freedom dashed, and women far from liberated.
Earlier this year, I visited Kabul to finish shooting a document ~ ~ ry about Afghan women. One of the women I followed, Shapiray, had returned to Kabul from a Pakistani refugee camp, where she stayed after fleeing the Taliban in 1998.
Shapiray’s circumstances exemplify the many difficulties women still face. She teaches in a small girls school near her home, 40 miles from Kabul. Walking to and from the school, she wears the traditional burka, the head-to-toe garment. She doesn’t wear it out of religious duty, but as a protective measure; she is fearful of public humiliation and physical attack at the hands of armed Northern Alliance moujahedeen who rule her area.
The moujahedeen do not approve of women leading any part of their lives in public, and harshly intimidate those who think differently. Except for going to work, Shapiray does not leave her home. She does not go to the bazaar for groceries; this is done by her husband. Increased opportunities for education, health care and employment for women are largely restricted to Kabul, where they have some measure of independence and security due to the presence of international peacekeeping forces.
In the rest of the country, however, where U.S.-tolerated regional warlords hold power, opportunities are severely limited. The United Nations and international human rights groups recently released reports detailing widespread beatings, kidnappings and rape by these warlords and their militias. And several girls schools around the country have been set on fire.
Women’s rights are under attack even in the courts. This is largely due to President Hamid Karzai’s appointment of Fazal Hadi Shinwari as chief justice of the Supreme Court. In violation of the constitution, Shinwari is over the age limit and has training only in religious, not secular, law. He is an ally of the pro-Wahhabi, Saudi-backed fundamentalist leader Ustad Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, who is a committee chairman in the loya jirga.
Shinwari has packed the Supreme Court with sympathetic mullahs, called for Taliban-style punishments and brought back the Taliban’s dreaded Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, renamed the Ministry of Haj and Religious Affairs.
It deploys squads to stop public displays of “un-Islamic” behavior among Afghan women.Posted on: 2004-01-02 03:34
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