THE MESSY SIDE OF GLOBALIZATION: WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN
TALK GIVEN BY NASRINE GROSS
SYMPOSIUM ON GLOBALIZATION AND WOMEN IN MUSLIM SOCIETIES
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, D.C., NOVEMBER
2000
I will first describe to you the situation of women
and the way globalization has found its way in Afghanistan. I will then
talk about the feminist movement of Afghanistan and suggest ways to get
out of the debacle.
First let me describe the current situation from the mouth of an Afghan
woman herself:
ìI am an Afghan woman living inside Afghanistan. I want to tell you
about my ground realities: The last four years I have been ordered to
cover myself with a chadari and wear shoes that don't make noise. Four
years since I had a bath, as it's not permitted to visit public baths
and I don't have running water. Four years since I had food for my soul,
as Islam prohibits me to pray without a bath after my period. Four years
since I am coerced not to hear music or celebrate any cultural feasts or
see a magazine with pictures. My daughter is forced not to go to school
and not to know what a book is; but to get good at pushing drugs. I am
forbidden to work, and driven to eke out bread money by begging,
stealing and some night work. For justice, I am treated to stoning,
public execution, cutting of hands and legs, and my nation is forced to
watch. All this is accomplished by decree. The smallest infraction from
these edicts and I am whipped, imprisoned,
beaten and ridiculed with no recourse. I am constantly exposed to
thieves, muggers, extortionists and gunmen with beards and foreign
tongues who exact on me rape, forced marriages and selling of my
daughters. Where I live, grenades, rockets, mines and bombs are a
constant reminder of lurking danger.î
So these are the decrees of the Taliban and the condition of women. And
yet, until 1996 when the Taliban took over Kabul, Afghan women were an
integral part of society, they worked outside the home, they went to
school, and chose their own doctor. Women constituted 50% of the student
body in the universities, 60% of the civil servants, 75% of the
hospitals workforce, a majority of teachers for boys and girlsí schools,
and had businesses of their own. In the city of Kabul alone, there were
around 17,000 women teachers. The 1964 and 1977 Constitutions of
Afghanistan provided for gender equality and women were fully vested in
the political process including the right to vote and get elected. Many
women also wore either a chadari or scarf on a voluntary basis.
What is important to note is that the rights of women are now revoked
officially and systematically. Thus the situation is one of politics
rather than trampling of rights.
But who are the Taliban? They are a group exported from the outside into
Afghanistan. They are not an indigenous force. The popular lore has it
that they are composed of men, many of them Afghans who were raised
outside Afghanistan as orphans in orphanages without the influence of
women. As such they were ripe for indoctrination, which
they got in religious madrassas of Pakistan. So, they have not seen the
warmth of mother and they are void of knowledge about Afghan culture.
However, this description does not explain their success and their
well-thought out albeit devilish philosophy.
Their philosophy is to show Afghanistan as a failed state, and to have
total control. The revocation of the rights of women is nothing but to
deconstruct the Afghan society and show it as uncivilized, illiterate
and incapable of self-governance. That way, with borders not important
anymore and the world being a village, it becomes very easy for another
supposedly more capable country, to govern it, i.e., Pakistan. There is
no question in my mind that by negating the rights of Afghan women, the
Taliban and their backers, the Pakistanis, have been trying to negate
the right of Afghanistan as a sovereign and independent country.
To reach total control, the Taliban abuse in a systematic way, tribal
and social traditions of Afghanistan, and the religion of Islam. At the
beginning, this abuse created a major problem of fighting them back; it
was hard to say no, this is wrong. Like, if we forcibly put Mennonite
ministers in a Catholic congregation; or, make the wonderful traditions
of the Amish people, a Supreme Court requirement for all US citizens.
Of course, the tradition that they have abused the worst is Islam
itself. And at first, it was the most difficult to talk about. For 1300
years Afghanistan has been a Muslim country, following mostly the Hanafi
sect of Islam. The religion was very tolerant and the God of
Islam we worshiped was the compassionate and the merciful. I am
currently in the process of analyzing the Taliban edicts coming out of
Mullah Omarís mouth, and I donít want to commit blasphemy, but this
manís God is one of anger, disrespect, spying and punishment. In almost
every edict there is talk of using informants to ensure enforcement, of
the anger and wrath of God, and of punishment, mostly corporal, that
must take place on earth, without exception or recourse. And, as I
mentioned earlier, the Taliban have endgamed women from praying (the
last six months men too). In a trip to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in June of
this year, many recent refugees told me that if this is the real Islam,
they would rather have another God, another book.
This is very serious for Islam as a global religion. I personally
believe that now that literacy and education are commonplace in the
Islamic world, the leadership of Islam must try to create learned
explanations of it, rather than let poorly educated catechism students
malign this comforting, inspiring and deep faith. They must strive to
help create Islamic civilizations, like in the olden days, rather than
means of controlling the masses and inventing outdated
supremacist-colonialist power pools.
The Taliban are also abusing Afghan social traditions, such as wearing
of the chadari (burqa), which in Afghanistan is about 150 years old and
has come from India and was used primarily in the cities, not in the
villages, and completely as a voluntary cover and at the discretion of
families. The Taliban now require by decree all twelve million Afghan
women (CIA factbook, February 2000) to wear this modern-day chamber of
horrors, whether or not they wore it in the past. And they assign a
large part of the responsibility of this requirement, under threat of
punishment, to the men of the family. In this way, the Taliban
accomplish control over both men and women. They not only obliterate
womenís presence but also by usurping what was the purview of the
family, they put to shame the men of the family, thus rendering them
disempowered. The chadari is also used by men, spies, foreign settlers,
drug traffickers and terrorists to travel back and forth between
Afghanistan and Pakistan, as the border post does not check women much.
In Dushanbe, many recent refugees of Mazar-e Sharif told me that prior
to the take over of Mazar the second time, the Taliban infiltrated the
city, wearing chadaris. Very effective tool of control and transborder
illicit traffic.
Among other traditions the Taliban abuse, are the tribal code of
silence, the idea of giving sanctuary to a guest and the idea of tribal
leadership and hegemony. In the tribal areas the code of silence
requires every tribal member to keep mum about, or even defend his/her
tribal leadership, good or bad. The Taliban have abused this tradition
very effectively both in the area of controlling people and giving an
aura of popular support; and in the area of poppy cultivation - - never
mind that poppy cultivation has criminalized their population, and
controlling schools has kept their children from becoming literate,
loyalty and solidarity they must give to the tribe. I have talked to
dozens of tribal people who privately tell me this is a disaster and a
shame. But publicly, they must keep silent, which unwittingly (!) helps
perpetuate what is truly akin to the treatment of Jews just before the
holocaust.
It is this abusing of religion, traditions and culture that
instantaneously creates the understanding among Afghans that the Taliban
are an invading foreign force. By now, as we all know, their conquest of
Afghanistan is nearly complete. What that means and it is becoming
increasingly public and clear, are two things: One, that the Taliban do
not have the support of the people of Afghanistan. Of the over 24
million population of Afghanistan (CIA factbook), 64% are openly against
them and of the other 36% who are the Pashtun tribal people, indications
are that a large number does not agree with them. In fact, recent
visitors to the US who in the last four years have lived under the
Taliban, have told me that no one supports the Taliban; that there is no
relationship between this small elite crust at the top and the masses
under their thumb.
The other point about the Taliban victory is that every piece of
military equipment and infrastructure left over in Afghanistan from the
Soviet war, including American equipment, is now under the control of
Pakistanis, as madrassa students are not into tanks, radars, stinger
missiles, command and control and other advanced technology of warfare.
So, to recap, the Taliban are a regional, some say global, force that
control the Afghan people. And their main backer, Pakistan, is in
control of the military.
But, where, really, where did the Taliban come from? Who created them
and why? It is not just in the obliteration of Afghanistan as a viable
people and country that this tragedy of globalization lies. It is also
that there is no shred of accountability. No body in the world has taken
responsibility for this modern-day plantation politics at its worst. The
success the Taliban have achieved is no small matter; it requires huge
sums of money, huge amounts of technological expertise, and huge amounts
of knowledge about techniques of information (and disinformation)
handling. The silence of the world as to who is responsible for such a
destructive and desecrating yet successful and cohesive force has been
deafening, and to me, as a woman, as a Muslim and as a mother with a
child just entering adult life, very alarming.
It is with this perspective that an Afghan woman in Paris by the name of
Shoukria Haidar, formed an organization called NEGAR-Support of Women of
Afghanistan. She wanted to show the world the reality of the Afghan
woman. She visited Afghanistan several times and then attended hundreds
of conferences around the world, telling people what the Taliban say
Afghan women are is not true. She soon realized that one, all the
feminists she met asked what they could do to help, and two, that it
must be Afghan women themselves who say who they are and what they want,
otherwise she, Shoukria, would remain just one solitary voice. So, in
June of this year, with the help of non-Afghan feminist and human rights
advocates and about 40 organizations, she organized a conference in
Dushanbe, Tajikistan, for the women of Afghanistan. Three hundred
Afghan women from inside Afghanistan, and refugees from Iran and
Tajikistan along with Afghan women from Europe and America, and 45
non-Afghan activists from five continents attended the conference. This
conference accomplished a major goal. The Afghan women were able to draw
up a Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women, saying these
are the rights we hold for ourselves.
The Declaration is fashioned after United Nations declarations and has
four parts: The first part explains why this Declaration at this time,
and each point more or less is related to one of the United Nations
declarations. The second part mentions the ten documents that the
Declaration uses as its foundation: Seven from the United Nations, the
Beijing Declaration and two constitutions of Afghanistan, the ones from
1964 and 1977. The third section are the ten articles of rights, each of
which is connected to one of these documents and is a response to one or
more of the Taliban decrees. Section Four talks about how the women of
Afghanistan think these are their inalienable rights and the state of
Afghanistan must respect and implement them.
Our objective with this Declaration is to make it part of the peace
settlement of Afghanistan so that it eventually becomes part of the next
Constitution of Afghanistan. We believe that only by approaching the
problem at the bullís eye, can we give it the correct blow and also
avoid a future repetition.
So, our task now is twofold: One to secure buy-in from Afghans and, two
to get the sponsorship and support of organizations and individuals
working for womenís rights. For this, we have developed a Statement of
Support that we give out along with the Declaration. In the Afghan area,
it is a slow process because Afghans are so scattered. But weíve had
good reception with those weíve approached, because this Declaration
Immediately empowers them as well.
The second part of our approach is actually the good side of
globalization, and that is, to get the support of non-Afghan
organizations, feminist and otherwise. It is this global power that we
find to be with us and we want to harness it for a cause that is at the
core of fate of women the world over. We believe it is the fate of the
women of Afghanistan that will be the standard bearer of treatment of
women and nations in the 21st century, and we must not let it slip. The
interest we have generated is overwhelming. For example, during October,
we attended the march of women in Brussels, Washington, D.C. and New
York and distributed several thousand copies of our literature, and saw
more than 20 thousand women from 5,500 organizations from 159
countries. Each person we met face to face told us she or he is ready to
support. We also have given the Declaration to the United Nations
political office.
We realize that this is a long, hard and slow road. And I know that many
of you understand how hard, much better than I do. We need your help,
individually and as institutions. I have brought copies of the
Declaration and the Statement of Support and will distribute them among
you. Please share with your colleagues and friends and please give us
your endorsement.
In closing, let me reiterate that we must all do what we can, to ensure
that our legacy as women of the world, is not violated. The power we
feel, at this juncture in history, within ourselves and without, we must
use, so that ethical and moral behavior continues to remain the basis of
all power, wherever it travels, however it travels - - in Afghanistan,
in the world of Islam and in the rest of our global village.
Nasrine Gross, an Afghan American, is the compiler/author of Qassarikh-e
Malalay (Memories of the First Girls' High School in Afghanistan) and
Qadam-ha-ye Awshti (Steps of Peace and our Responsibility as Afghans).
She now works full-time with Negar-Support of Women of Afghanistan on
the Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women. Her email is
kabultec@gmail.com, website is
www.erols.com/kabultec
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