Afghan Women Aren't Cheering Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit AFGHAN WOMEN AREN'T CHEERING The Indedpendent - Nov 15, 2001 http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/natasha_walter/story.jsp?story=104987 Afghan women will still be ignored by Natasha Walter 'Everyone is delighted that women can take off their ghost costumes, but there is little discussion of the long-term picture for them' Celebrations are the order of the day, isn't it? Certainly, it's wonderful news if negotiation and aid can now begin to take over from tanks and bombs as the way forward in Afghanistan. Those of us who felt less than enthusiastic at the sight of B52s pounding Afghanistan didn't feel that disquiet because we hate America, but because we were concerned for Afghan civilians. There were always ways to intervene in the lives of Afghan people other than by bombing their cities, and we can feel immense relief that diplomatic pressure will now be given another chance. And not everyone is celebrating yet. There is still uncertainty about what will happen next - and that uncertainty is not just felt by Western pacifists. Seeing one group of fundamentalist fighters with a brutal reputation for rape, looting, murder and torture take over from another group of fundamentalist fighters with a brutal reputation for repression, murder and torture is not cheering everyone. On the day the Taliban were apparently collapsing, I spent some time talking to five Afghan women who now live in London. These women had come together with the feminist MP Joan Ruddock to launch a new organisation, UK Women's Link with Afghan Women. And the first thing that struck me was their continuing pessimism about the situation in their country. Sabah is 20 years old, and she looks like any other London student in her black sweater and sharply cut bob. But she tells me about a broken life, shattered dreams, and a family destroyed by war. "My family lived in Kabul. We had a good life, my parents both worked," she says coolly. "But then everything changed. My father was killed, my house was destroyed. I couldn't continue my education. I had to leave Afghanistan." Oh yes, I hear you saying. Another tale of how badly women were treated under the Taliban. But now that the Northern Alliance are sweeping through Afghanistan we can rest assured that the evils that women like her have had to suffer are over, can't we? Wait a minute. Sabah didn't leave Afghanistan because of the Taliban. She left because of the actions of the mujahedin - the Northern Alliance, as we call them. The men who liberated Kabul yesterday are the very men who forced Sabah to flee her country when they "liberated" the same city in 1992. She was just 12 years old when they entered Kabul. She and her brother fled the fundamentalist armies, first to Pakistan, and now she lives in London, where she and her friends look with scepticism on the jubilation that is surrounding the mujahedin's re-entry into Kabul. After a while I realise that it is hardly surprising that these five women are not in a particularly celebratory mood. All of them left Afghanistan because of the behaviour of the warlords who ran the country before the Taliban took over, and who are now taking power again. "The mujahedin were the first to destroy Kabul," says Nazifa, who also fled soon after they took the city nine years ago. Alia sits next to Nazifa. She has been living in London for five years. She has six daughters, and once upon a time she was a maths teacher in Kabul. "The Northern Alliance killed, robbed, they did everything. It is not a big difference between them and the Taliban," she says trenchantly. "They began the repression of women. When the mujahedin entered Kabul the schools were closed. We had to stay at home. They raped young girls. My oldest daughter was 15 at the time. I kept her in the house. Soldiers would say to parents that if they had daughters, they must give them to the soldiers to be their wives. I heard that young girls threw themselves from the balconies on the top floors of buildings to get away from them." Indeed, Amnesty International reported that from 1992 the mujahedin used rape and sexual assault as "a method of intimidating vanquished populations and rewarding soldiers". Employment and education were dangerous for women in Afghanistan even before the Taliban took over. To give one example, in March 1994, according to Amnesty International, armed men repeatedly raped a 15-year-old girl in Kabul after breaking into her family house and killing her father for allowing her to attend school. It was not, of course, the primary aim of this war to ensure a better life for Afghan women. But if countries both west and east want to see stability in Afghanistan so that terrorists cannot find such fertile ground there, the voices of Afghan women cannot be ignored. If civil society is to be rebuilt, it cannot be left in the hands of men who know nothing but war. We tend to see Afghan women only as wraiths in burkas. They are seen as the ultimate victims. We rarely hear them talk about what they want from their lives and for their country. But they have a tradition of education and democratic participation that predates the Soviet invasion. Just as in many Muslim countries, they were once able to work, be educated, and take part in government. Afghan women had the vote in the 1960s, and by the 1980s there were seven women MPs in Afghanistan. Before the rise of the mujahedin, 50 per cent of university students in Kabul were women. The Afghan women I spoke to, all of them highly articulate and educated women, were rightly proud of these traditions. "I had no idea that people might say that women shouldn't be educated," says Sabah. "I took it all for granted." In the rush to do deals with the new de facto rulers of Afghanistan, it looks very likely that the interests of women will be ignored. Although everyone is delighted that women can walk the streets again and take off their ghost costumes, there is little discussion of the long-term picture for women. We are hearing that a traditional tribal structure, the loya jirga, may be convened, or that the King may return, and of course there is much talk of the need for government to represent every ethnic group. But none of the influential players in the country, from the UN's special envoy to the politicians of the US, Russia, Pakistan, Iran or the UK, have spoken up with conviction about the need for any new government to represent women. Women have borne the brunt of outsiders' interference in Afghanistan, from the West's support of the mujahedin to Pakistan's support of the Taliban. If they continue to be excluded, Afghanistan will never be at peace. Yet they could now be brought into discussions about the country's future. There are many articulate, educated Afghan women in exile, and there are women's organisations such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan that can be drawn into negotiations. Sahar, a tall, forceful woman who left Afghanistan to go to university in 1985, intended to return and continued to visit her family in Kabul until 1992. She hopes to return one day, because, like all these women, she is still dreaming of a future when the women of Afghanistan are not just victims. "It may take a long time," she says, "But we want at least what we had before. We want basic human rights for women." ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytfem-11.15.01-04:08:10-25760