March 8th, 2007
Afghan Women Battling Repression

Five years after the Taliban were ousted from power in Afghanistan, many women are still facing violence and discrimination

Olivia Ward
Staff Reporter

It's good news that Afghanistan's youngest member of parliament is an outspoken 28-year-old woman, who fearlessly criticizes the government and promotes the cause of women.

The bad news is that Malalai Joya travels with six bodyguards, cloaks herself in a voluminous burqa outside her home, and has survived four assassination attempts – by men. The dangers she faces are familiar to many active Afghan women today.

As International Women's Day dawns in Afghanistan, Canadian forces are still battling the Taliban more than five years after the Islamists were ousted from power. And the dramatic contrast between the rights that women have gained since then and the often bitter realities show that their ideology is still casting a dark shadow over female lives.

"The Taliban were an extreme movement even in the history of Afghanistan," says Vina Nadjibulla, of Women for Afghan Women, based in New York. "Women are delighted that it ended. But that doesn't mean the factors that caused the Taliban are gone. Getting rid of them will be a long-term endeavour."

Under the Taliban, women were effectively silenced and lived as though under house arrest. Girls were denied education and their mothers the right to work at most jobs. A draconian series of rules reduced the female population to slaves of their male relatives, and punishment for breaking the rules was often life-threatening.

Now, laws have been passed that give women basic rights. And, says Kathryn Lockett of the London-based Womankind Worldwide, "the instruments have been put in place for the women's movement to build upon."

According to the group's wide-ranging survey of the position of women in Afghanistan, that movement is growing healthily, alongside a new body of law that is meant to dismantle the damage done to women's rights by the Taliban. Women have been voted into parliament in encouraging numbers, and women's voices are regularly heard in the media.

The new Afghan constitution gives all men and women "equal rights and duties before the law," allowing women to work, run for parliament, vote and seek education. But Lockett says, "the real challenge now is to have the political will and security to enable the implementation of the laws."

For many Afghan women, the biggest problem is pervasive violence – often related to badal, in which girls and women are exchanged to settle debts or disputes, the practice of paying a "bride price" which turns women into a financial commodity, and early marriage that forces close to 50 per cent of girls into wedlock before the age of 16, and some as young as six.

Rape is common, and women may be punished if they report it. But "honour" killings go unpunished, and abuse of widows is widespread.

The despair of Afghan women is underscored by growing reports of suicide by self-immolation. According to research by German-based Medica Mondiale, 106 women and girls in Kabul and Herat alone burned themselves alive between May and July 2006, many of them victims of abuse after they were traded off to settle debts or feuds.

The Afghan Department of Women's Affairs says "forced marriages, lack of education and unacceptable customs are the main reasons for the suicides." The horrifying method is chosen because women have access to few tools other than cooking fuel to set themselves alight.

But less dramatic problems also plague the female population, says Nadjibulla. After a bombing near the U.S. embassy in Kabul last September, "women had to really struggle with their families to go to work. There is a feeling that if things are unstable, women should be at home."

Empowering women in Afghanistan will take decades, advocates agree. But they say the international community has a strong role to play.

"More and more international donor money is going to the Afghan government rather than groups that support women," says Lockett. "But they are the ones that have the best capacity to provide services and improve women's lives."

Canada gives small loans to more than 200,000 Afghan women to start their own businesses or buy land and animals. But until security comes to Afghan women, they will be fighting a dangerous battle just to live normal lives.

"They will kill me but they will not kill my voice, because it will be the voice of all Afghan women," MP Joya told the BBC. "You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of spring."