Read an Excerpt
Contested Terrain
Reflections with Afghan Women Leaders
By Sally L. Kitch UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2014 the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-09664-8
CHAPTER 1
Working for Women in "Postconflict" Afghanistan
Hope is a relative term, since it depends on expectations. So it was inspiring to see that, war-torn and battered as the OSU conference attendees and their country had been for so long, they still felt hopeful, even as they recognized that conditions at home were far from perfect. At least now, they seemed to say, problems can be aired, some progress has been made compared to the mujahideen and Taliban periods, and we can propose new solutions. Because these women were comfortable in the international arena, they were especially cheered by foreigners' interest in Afghan women's situation, despite the obvious blunders by foreign powers that had hampered true progress.
The conference began with sessions that addressed what the leaders in the room thought life was really like for ordinary Afghan women and how they as activists were trying to address those women's needs. All attendees spoke to that question from the perspective of their own work and interests, yet there was a surprising level of agreement among them.
Were things better for Afghan women since the Taliban had departed? Everyone thought yes. More women were getting educated. There were three female ministers (out of seven) in the Karzai government. There was one female provincial governor, Habiba Sarabi, in Banyam Province. Women constituted 20 percent of the constitutional jirga in 2004. Women made up 25 percent of the lower house of Parliament in 2005. Since the defeat of the Taliban, women were at least technically able to work outside of their homes. Their clothing, shoes, and fingernails were no longer subject to constant scrutiny, although modesty in dress, family limitations on their activities, and the uncertain security climate remained powerful constraints on their lives.
Were there still problems for Afghan women? Unsurprisingly, everyone again said yes. This list was longer. Aziza Ahmadyar, a modestly dressed middle-aged woman who was then a deputy minister in the Ministry of Information and Culture, said that security was still a huge problem, especially for women working with international NGOs. Maternal and infant mortality was still high. Early forced marriages were still implicated in violence against women. Eighty-two percent of women were illiterate. As she ticked off these obstacles, she unconsciously pulled her light shawl over her hair, which suggested to me both modesty and mourning for the sad facts she recounted.
Masuda Sultan, a young Afghan raised mostly in the United States who was working in New York with the NGO Women for Afghan Women, said somberly that women's major problem was the cultural belief that they were the enemies of an Islamic society. Women had internalized that idea, she said, and accepted men's judgments about their minimal worth, their continual threat to family honor, and their unruly emotions and desires. Until that actually un-Islamic belief changed, women would still be special targets of suspicion and abuse in Afghanistan. Masuda also pointed to the high maternal mortality rate (as high as 60 percent at the time) and the pathetically small amount of money targeting the problem (only $15 million). She reiterated the importance of working through Islam to solve Afghanistan's problems, and she warned that a failure to do so could actually make things worse for women.
Jamila Afghani emphasized the lack of female teachers, without whom girls could not get educated, and the continuing lack of consultation with women themselves as international donors and the Afghan government designed programs to meet their needs. She also lamented the recurring use of women as symbolic tools of fundamentalists' causes and Afghans' inability to distinguish between "Islam, culture, and politics." Of the self-immolations among young women that were burgeoning in parts of Afghanistan in 2005, Jamila said that the girls were expressing their "anger to be a woman." Without options, life looked unlivable to them. "Women need options."
Marzia Basel expressed the opinion that as exciting as it seemed, just having women in the Parliament did not mean that things would instantly improve for women. In fact, she said, things could get worse, because so many warlords had been elected and they would never work on behalf of women. They might even defame women in Parliament to better their own positions. In addition, there was no evidence that the Parliament was interested in working for women's rights at all, even the women parliamentarians themselves.
As speaker after speaker expressed her doubts as well as her hopes, each also explained the elements she thought might turn the tide. Among the women's suggestions were direct international aid to Afghan organizations or workers rather than payments to U.S. contractors, peace education for Afghans, a true democracy, basic skills training and microloans for women, a more robust civil society, more unity among women, an effective Ministry for Women's Affairs, a women's agency in every ministry, factories where women could work with family approval, improved health care, continued support from the international community, and more coordination among NGOs.
The women's extensive list of necessities seemed overwhelming. Although it was difficult to decide how to prioritize it, I found myself most impressed by the laser-like foci of Marzia and Jamila on the importance of legal reform and the need for more and better education and skill training. Both seemed fruitful paths through the complex and difficult tangle of Afghan women's needs.
Marzia: The Rule of Law
Of all of her accomplishments, Marzia was perhaps proudest of having founded the Afghan Women Judges Association (AWJA) in 2002. She was quick to point out that her organization not only was two years older than the British Women Judges Association but also involved all women judges in her country (a mere 7 percent of all judges in 2005, but growing). She did acknowledge, however, that the U.S. Women Judges Association was thirty-seven years old.
Marzia explained that the purpose of the AWJA was to promote the rule of law, help reform Afghanistan's legal and judicial system, create solidarity among female judges, expand the legal and professional rights of women judges, stand up for the rights of women and indigents, and increase all Afghan women's knowledge of their rights and standing under the law. The AWJA especially wanted to get at least one or two women appointed to the Afghan Supreme Court, which, like its counterpart in the United States, has nine members. Marzia's work with the AWJA had impressed upon her the importance of educating women about their rights. Her experience had taught her that women must demand their rights and not wait for others to bestow them. Women needed to know that Sharia law guarantees their rights to education and to economic independence, which are embedded in Islam's holy texts.
In a speech that Marzia gave to about 130 people at the OSU conference, she explained that security and the rule of law were the "key components that can bring changes in a country like Afghanistan." She felt positive about Afghan women's political participation in the 2004 election, both as voters and as candidates, and despite her concern about the prospects for change in the near term, she believed that such participation was central to "the rehabilitation and rebuilding of the rule of law" throughout the region. She found women's recent political participation "a good omen" for their increased political clout, but she repeated her worry that many women candidates "were supported by ... strong power voters [warlords] whose legitimacy of power has been questioned by some [outside] civil society and international human rights groups." Still, "many women were securing their place in Parliament on their own merits." And that was a good precedent.
Marzia was also proud of the new Afghan Constitution's promise of gender equality and the government's promise "not to marginalize gender and ... to observe international rules and regulations about human rights." She celebrated the constitution's guarantee that two women from each province be elected to the lower house of Parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, which would mean the election of sixty-eight women from across the country. By the same token, Marzia praised the constitution for requiring the president to choose women for half of the upper house of Parliament, the Meshrano Jirga, consisting of appointed elders and roughly equivalent in its powers to the U.S. Senate. Indeed, she noted, the election would make Afghanistan one of the top-twenty countries in the world with elected women parliamentarians, at least 25 percent.
At the same time, Marzia's optimism was tempered by her long experience in Afghanistan through the mujahideen and Taliban periods. While legal guarantees from the national government were encouraging, the real political problem for women, she observed, was at the local or community level, "where most of the decisions impacting their lives are made by men." Decisions about whether a girl will attend school or go to work, have access to health services as well as justice, and have physical mobility are all made at the local or family level. Respect for national law also begins at the local level. Afghanistan's problem is not the lack of law but rather the lack of law enforcement. For example, child marriage is prohibited by civil law. But even though the minimum legal marriage age for girls is sixteen, families are still "selling their daughters at the age of seven, ten, twelve, or less than that." Unfortunately, "there is no provision in criminal law or penal code to criminalize this kind of action."
Moreover, women constitute more than 50 percent of Afghan society, but Marzia claimed that only twenty ("two zero") women out of twelve million had used the courts, as they are entitled to do, to adjudicate family problems, such as divorce or inheritance, because "going to the court is such a shameful thing that you will be rejected from society." And if a woman is arrested and jailed, often for defying a family or social norm for her sex, she is deprived of legal aid assistance unless she registers herself officially to the court and files a claim. "Do you know how long it will take for a woman who is in jail to make a document? Five days, with hundreds of Afghani [the currency] in bribes." In effect, then, women are deprived of the basic human right to legal representation.
The rule of law was also undermined by the history of Afghan power sharing. Marzia revealed, for example, that most Afghan judges at that time had no legal training whatsoever. "What would you think if I told you that the chief justice of Afghanistan has never gone to law school?" He was a mullah, educated at a madrassa, and appointed chief justice for political reasons. Moreover, "the chief justice has appointed twenty-five family members, including his sons, including his son-in-law; they are head of the courts. All are highest-level decision makers in Afghanistan."
Indeed, Marzia explained, political parties, the judiciary, and certain government agencies "belong" to one tribe or one party in Afghan society. "For example, there are twenty-six ministries in Afghanistan; five are for this party, five for that party; it doesn't matter who you bring ... they can get in the door without any particular qualification.... The prosecutor is given to one party, Supreme Court is given to another party, the Justice Ministry is given to the another party." (Thus, Marzia's own education, which included a master's degree from George Washington University [GW], was unusual, to say the least, among judges of either sex in Afghanistan.) Not only did merit have little to do with the appointment of officeholders, but the appointees were also always fighting with each other, especially prosecutors and judges.
Poor education in general and poor training in law and politics in particular also hampered Afghanistan's efforts to create a viable governing structure and reduced women's chances to exercise their rights. In the 2004 election, Marzia explained, "most of the educated people didn't go to vote; this is why the warlords came on board." She called on the international community to "support Afghans to have a fair and just Parliament." This is especially important for women, because corruption in the election process would likely bring more extremists, who oppose women's rights, into the system.
The competitiveness endemic to Afghan culture also limited women's ability to become full participants in the decision-making process at all levels because they had no models for collaboration and solidarity in their own cause. Marzia made a plea for help from the international community in getting women to work for one another's advancement. Because of the lack of education, "we do not build what we have sometimes," she said. Both she and the other women at the conference said repeatedly that the scarcity of resources and opportunities, coupled with the low esteem in which women are held, had created a toxic atmosphere among women. It starts in the family, where mothers-in-law learn from their own experience to be harsh and even tyrannical to their daughters-in-law, in part because such tyranny represents the apex of their social power. That model passes from generation to generation, fueled by a gossip culture among women who have little outside activity to occupy their minds and imaginations. Low levels of literacy feed the small-minded competition, until a woman's achievements become the target of other women's negative attention. Marzia and other panelists at the conference thought that education was the best antidote for this phenomenon, as schooling would increase every girl's potential to achieve something and reduce their jealousy about other women's accomplishments. "People with too little to do care too much about what other people are doing," Marzia said.
Equally worrying to Marzia, however, was the first article of the Afghan Constitution, which says, "Afghanistan is an Islamic country." As a devout Muslim, Marzia had no problem with that idea in principle, but she could support it only if Islam is properly understood. "Islam [is] a tricky word," she said. "It can be interpreted any way that people want. So if we have these extremists in Parliament, then anyone could go to extreme reasoning in interpreting our law, which is really bad." She reiterated the Afghan Women Judges Association's hope to get one or two women appointed to the Supreme Court. Because one of the Parliament's first tasks was to bring changes to the Supreme Court, the AWJA intended to pressure that body. Her audience was aghast when she expressed the hope that the seven illiterate members of the Court would soon be removed. We wondered how there could be illiterate judges in the first place. Marzia also expressed the hope that "some rich woman who knows about women's rights ... will practice the women's right in Afghanistan." Alas, none of us knew who that could possibly be.
Jamila: Education
Jamila's hopes centered on the benefits of educating the population more broadly, especially its women. "We want to have a strong educated nation. And we believe that impartiality, unity, equality, and brotherhood will bring the changes in our community.... We want to empower widows, children, orphans, disabled [people] with different kind of programs like vocational programs and dependency programs." Making no reference to herself, she noted that handicapped women had a double disability, so they were especially in need of education. "We want to make technical, professional people, who are living outside or inside of Afghanistan to assist those people who are living inside Afghanistan," by teaching skills and increasing their professionalism. Such an effort, she asserted, could reclaim "the nation from the rich people ... for the poor community, and divide it for the very needy people."
Jamila's Noor Educational Center was dedicated to those missions, including empowering the poor. In 2005 NEC had activities in Ghazni, Jalalabad, and Kabul. They had sixteen centers in Kabul. There were seven centers and three suboffices in Ghazni, together offering a total of eight literacy programs. Jamila reminded us that Ghazni, a mixed-ethnic area, is very restrictive, "creating lots of problems for women," as she well knew herself. NEC was also supplying food for widows, who have no place in Afghan culture and often starve. In addition, the center was providing human rights program training for women in Ghazni, as well as English courses and vocational training.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Contested Terrain by Sally L. Kitch. Copyright © 2014 the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
