Kabul, Feb 3 : Pre-dawn in Kabul. In each dark street a
short line of giant lightbulbs switch on, red, green and white, marking bakeries
where warm slabs of golden flatbread are handed through open shop-front windows
to sleepy little boys in white tunics and to men with blankets round their
shoulders picking up lunch on their way to work.
"This is man's bread,"
says Hamil Fareed, a young baker. "Women's bread," he explains, is different,
the dough kneaded at home by mothers and cooked out of sight at the back in the
clay ovens and returned to the family.
The segregation of Kabul's daily
bread is not a cultural tradition, but started under the Taliban in the 1990s.
Faced with a half-starved city of war widows barred from working, studying or
leaving their homes, someone began a clandestine communal fire pit where women
could bake flatbread for their children and earn a few coins by selling them on.
The UN, impotent in quelling the vicious war, encouraged more such schemes and,
when the Taliban soldiers who roamed the streets seemed to tolerate figures in
burqas creeping out to little backstreet bakeries, heralded it as a "step
forward" in women's rights.
The international community said the fall of
the Taliban in 2001 would bring in a new era of rights. Afghanistan's women and
girls would be returned to schools and workplaces and freed from the infamously
fierce restrictions on their lives. It was a key political justification used by
the British and Americans for their continued presence. That year US secretary
of state Colin Powell declared that restoring women's human rights would "not be
negotiable". Prime minister Tony Blair promised: "The conflict will not be the
end. We will not walk away, as the outside world has done so many times before."
Now, with the withdrawal of international forces and their caravan of
international agencies, consultants and contractors looming in 2014, there is
evidence that Afghan women have seen very few of the promised changes and are
terrified of the future.
The outside world has used Afghanistan as a pawn
in its geopolitical "great games" since the 19th century and ensnared it in a
labyrinth of strategic and economic interests. Since 2001 the country has
received some £60bn of aid; there have been tangible improvements in education,
maternal mortality, employment, and the representation of women in governance.
But there are signs that those gains are too fragile to survive the
international community's departure.
A 2012 survey of women across
Afghanistan by the charity ActionAid found that nine out of 10 feared the
departure of the international community, believing that their lives will
significantly deteriorate. And violence against women has never been higher: 87%
of women report domestic abuse.
The return of 2.2 million girls to school
after 2001 was considered the international community's great triumph, but in
the past few years schools have been closing behind the departing backs of
phased-out foreign forces. There have been reports of schoolgirls poisoned and
beaten, headteachers assassinated and classrooms firebombed. The majority of
girls don't stay on after fifth grade and nine out of 10 15-year-old girls are
illiterate. Some girls are enrolled in schools but never go.
The British
and other forces have built dozens of rural schools which the Afghan government
cannot afford to keep open after 2014, and the same is true of the health
clinics. Of the 5.8 million without access to healthcare in Afghanistan, 4.4
million are women.
There is rhetoric. And there is reality. Last year the
UK's international development committee found "little evidence" to back up the
British government's claims of commitment to promoting the rights of Afghan
women. Among projects that receive the current £178m of UK annual aid poured
into Afghanistan, only two are earmarked to help women.
The Elimination
of Violence Against Women Act was brought into law in 2009, but it is widely
ignored by courts, religious leaders have declared it un-Islamic, and in 2012
the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai undermined it by upholding
the right of a husband to beat his wife.
Half the female prison
population are convicted of "moral crimes" – which include running away from
violent husbands, fathers or in-laws. Federal law is universally ignored in the
local courts, where nearly 90% of all criminal and civil legal disputes are
settled, and where girls are bartered to settle family disputes and a man who
kills his wife can expect a fine.
It is estimated the US government put
$15m (£9.3m) into supporting the "informal justice" sector last year,
entrenching repressive mentality. In April 2011, the Afghan government sought to
reintroduce public morality laws, regulation was drafted to impose wedding codes
to ensure that brides were modestly dressed, to ban music at weddings and to
prevent male and female guests mixing. Shops were to be fined for selling
inappropriate wedding clothes.
That caused consternation among the
businessmen owners of Kabul's kitsch wedding halls. But Afghan's wealthy are
unlikely to be around much longer. In the capital building grit still smothers
the air, rising from spades and pickaxes as men work the giant ditches that line
the pock-marked, uneven streets, but construction is slowing – many villas
remain half-built and building sites deserted. The boom is over, the exodus has
started, and property prices are dropping as houses empty of foreign agencies
and wealthier Afghans.
Outside Kabul, in Balkh Province where the Taliban
is gaining strength, signs of its influence are everywhere. Few women in
Mazar-i-Sharif travel without a burqa – last year the religious council of the
famous Blue Mosque, one of the few places where women are able to socialise in
public, banned women from its weekly meetings.
The women I spoke to in
Afghanistan were deeply afraid of the future, and thoroughly exhausted by their
precarious lives, in which bombs and rockets still explode. 2014 will bring
elections and a powerful network of conservative men; Taliban and warlords are
edging into the gap the internationals will leave. And the little clay ovens
still cook up women's bread and men's bread in a country expecting their
return.
A mother of two teenage daughters, Fawzia Koofi, 36, has been MP
for Badakhshan Province for seven years, and recently announced her intention to
stand as a presidential candidate in 2014. Her husband died in a Taliban prison.
Her father was killed by mujahaideen during the civil war. The seventh daughter,
as a newborn she was left out in the sun to die before her parents
relented.
If it hadn't been for the Taliban, Koofi would be a doctor now.
"I was studying medicine when the Taliban came in 1996. That was my last day as
a student. All of a sudden I was at home. You can see everything from your
window, but you can't taste it, you can't touch it. I felt like a dead
body."
Today she fears for the security of women in the public eye. "When
the opportunity came in 2001, that was the time many of us started thinking of
doing greater things, to contribute. We started programmes in health and
education. We were told the international community was behind us – it was as if
life had begun again after having been buried away in a box for so
long.
"But the reality has not been what we were promised. There is lip
service paid by the Afghan and US governments – gender projects created – but we
can't access budgets.
"A few in this nation have come to the
understanding that stopping girls' education halts a family's progress. I'm
hopeful we will not go back to scratch. But I also know we will suffer – the
main victims of the political games will be women and children."
She
believes the women of Afghanistan have become "stronger" and adds: "They know
how to use social networks, and if a woman is beaten in the streets then I hope
there will be a phone camera and the world will know." But for women activists,
"day by day it becomes more difficult. How many women really make their voices
heard? I can count them on my fingers. There are 18 committees in our
parliament, and I'm the only woman chair.
"When we talk about rights,
about the taboos we face, they undermine you. Then they will use all the
techniques including commenting – men will comment on your clothes, the way you
talk and look, to bring you down.
Dr Qumar Frahmand, 40, is the head of a
busy public clinic for women and children in Balkh Province. She sees 35 to 40
patients a day. "The situation has been getting better all the time because of
the international NGOs coming in, and access to family planning, and vaccination
for children has improved. But we still have a big problem with malnutrition
because of poverty and ignorance.
"In the past 10 years, women have
started to come out of their houses and see that having fewer children could
mean a better life. Before, if a woman didn't have a boy she would keep having
babies until she did.
"But will it all slip back? There is so much
uncertainty, insecurity and rising unemployment, and the big thing I'm seeing is
a rise in domestic violence. Last week a woman who was five months pregnant came
here very seriously beaten and the foetus died. She went back to this husband
because she has no other opportunity.
"We worry where we will find the
money to keep the clinic going when the troops leave, and I cannot think what
will happen if these clinic doors have to close. It's too terrible to think
about. The security situation is worse for women in the rural areas and if they
cannot come here I'm terrified to think how their lives will be."
A large
desk puts space between Zarghona Walizada and her visitors. Beneath her chair
are two large stones, her second line of defence. "I keep them close to my
hands," she says. Her office in a suburb of Kabul – where she runs her own
freight firm – is no longer a safe place.
"They came in cars with windows
blacked out," she says. "My assistant tried to lock the doors, but these men
with scarves around their faces came up the stairs with guns and broke down the
door. I sat here behind my desk and stayed calm. I offered them tea, but I had
my stones ready.
"They threatened me and demanded why I was not at home.
For a long time we argued. They said it was not right for a woman to run a
company. I thought they might shoot me, but finally they left. They'll be
back."
On the wall is a newspaper cutting, a report of a speech by a UN
official citing Walizada as an example of how women are forging ahead in
Afghanistan. But Walizada is not the rule – she is the exception. "Women are
encouraged by the US and the UN and the UK to make handicrafts, not to make
business. The US army has contracts but gives them only to the corrupt
politicians."
A widow, she trusts no one but "my driver, my brother and
my sister. That is all. I can't worry about what people think. In Afghanistan
two people accept me and 20 don't. People say bad things. Even the young boys
make threats and throw stones."
She fears troop withdrawal in 2014 will
kill the firm she has built. Her truck drivers face increasing threats from
bandits, and three have been murdered in as many years. Fuel prices are rising,
and those firms with US and UN contracts, which will dry up after the
withdrawal, will come looking for the smaller freight contracts, like those she
holds. "But I have my son studying in Paris, and at least I have done that –
educated my son."
Medical student Maryam Farid, 20, lost her voice after
being caught up in a bomb blast aged six and still has a speech impediment. Her
father, a university professor, is liberal in allowing his seven daughters to be
educated – their mother ran an underground girls' school in their tiny flat
during the Taliban rule – but he has chosen her future specialisation,
gynaecology, so she will only work among females.
"Is it what I want to
do?" asks Farid. "Maybe not. But there is no choice, and I have accepted that."
Farid studies hard and looks tired. She shares a laptop with her sisters, but
internet access is prohibitively expensive for most young Afghans and the
computer is mostly used to play educational CDs.
"The boys my age are the
worst – they think we should not be studying," she says. "They say: what is the
point, because after 2014 we will have to go back into the home again. They say
it is against Islam. I know it is not. I love Islam. I am proud of my
religion.
"All the girls are worried – we all think about this issue all
the time, that after 2014 there will be no girl students and the women who
worked to help other women in society will be killed.
"When I go to
classes, only half of my energy is spent on my studies because the other 50% is
spent in dealing with harassment from the male students. The teachers do not
interfere because they do not want to get involved. You cannot complain to the
principal because they say there are not these problems at our university, and I
often want to leave. I am so tired of it."
Farid's mother, Shahla, is a
former judge and teaches in the faculty of law and political science at Kabul
University. She has acted as an advocate for battered women and is writing a
book about women's rights in Afghanistan. A fifth of her students are female.
She was the first woman from her region, Faryab Province, to study
law.
"At that time there were more girls studying than now," she tells
me.
"Myself, I am afraid for 2014. I have seven daughters – two are
married, five are studying. I fear my youngest two will not get the chance to go
to university even though both are best in their class. The youngest, Mahaba,
doesn't understand, but my 13-year-old feels hopeless about the
situation."
She says that when the foreigners go, Afghan men will fight
again. "Our government doesn't think about women. If I had known this would
happen I would have taken another path and not have been an activist. So I'm
angry. I am afraid for my daughters, who might be kidnapped or punished for the
advocacy work I have done.
"Women have started to reduce our activities,
because the closer we get to 2014 the laws made to support women are losing
their strength. My students who can leave are doing so.
"I've a daughter
who begs us every day to leave, but my husband will not. He says we must all
love our country."
Raihana Karimi is an engineer, like her husband. "But
in this country it is shameful for a man to know a colleague's wife's name, so
he could not have me working with him. He is happy now that I work among
women."
In 2008 she joined a programme that trained women as paralegals.
Now she runs a safe house for women, directly funded by the US embassy in
Mazar-i-Sharif. "It's usually girls escaping forced marriage or violence – if
they run away they can be arrested and go straight to jail. The effects of war
are plain, and women bear the brunt. I talk to families to see if anything can
be done to help solve the problems and their girl can return. But often they are
very angry – they want to find and burn down the safe house."
Karimi says
she now faces "a lot of threats. I know I will not only lose my job but will be
the first target after the international community pulls out in 2014. The safe
house will close, and although some NGOs say they will stay, everyone is working
separately – there is no one aim. Our government is weak.
"I burned my
burqa when the Taliban left; I don't want a new one. I beg the US and the UK, do
not leave us. Please stay. We are very vulnerable, we are very afraid."
A
28-year-old teacher in a boys' high school in Mazar-i-Sharif, Shekiba Azizi also
has three children of her own. She feels that uncertainty is allowing a creeping
conservatism to dominate women's lives once again in Afghanistan. "Most of the
other teachers now wear a burqa. But I hate it. I cannot see out and it's very
claustrophobic. To walk to the bus stop I have to pass some warlords' houses,
and they have armed guards who shout at me and harass me, so now I have to take
a taxi to work, which is expensive. I even have to carry a burqa in my handbag
now – just in case," she says, showing me the blue swathe of nylon fabric in her
bag.
"The international community has spent a lot of money in
Afghanistan, they say, but I have seen no effect on poor people. Now that they
are going, we have the right to know our own future. They have to be clear about
what is going to happen to us – they owe us that."
Dr Monisa Sherzada
Hassan, 53, answers the communal door to her small apartment block in Kabul. Two
small boys in the street stop and gape. Her head is covered but her heels are
high and her make-up liberal. "I am a woman, and in my own home I will allow
myself to be a woman even if outside I am not allowed," she says, leading the
way to her modest living room, where every surface is heavy with welcoming
platters of nuts and dried fruits. She escaped the Taliban in 1994, fleeing over
the mountains by donkey with her toddler daughter. Her son and daughter are
studying medicine in Germany. Hassan returned in 2001, and sits on a government
committee set up on the insistence of the Nato coalition to look at peace and
reconciliation.
"There are 70 members, and nine are women. The women have
just a symbolic presence. By voting they get nothing – committees only have
functions to hear, not be heard. For women it's not that they are not tough or
capable, but that their position is not equal. I see progress if a man says:
'Hello, how are you?' Otherwise they see a woman and they look over her
head.
"The younger women are the most broken and depressed. We try to
show them we are with them, but they see no future. They are dependent
financially on their families.
"If the US and UK wanted, they could
eliminate the Taliban in two days. They brought them and they can get rid of
them. Now they are trying to leave Afghanistan isolated.
"I don't
understand why the foreign forces would leave now, because they just ensure that
the next Afghan crisis will be bigger. Our young people have never lived without
bloodshed, and the hunger of youth is a great weapon for
fundamentalists.
"When the conservatives come back they will shoot all
these women who have been fighting for justice. Any fundamentalist knows the
addresses of those who speak out for women's rights. The international community
should support and protect these women, but they just think about their own
departure. These women think about what will happen when the doors of these
embassies are closed in their faces and when nobody at all will think about
them.
"I am lucky in that I've got a German passport and can leave when I
want, but I would beg the British and the American politicians who promised so
much: please make one page in Afghanistan's history a lighter one. Before it's
too late."
Ends
SA/EN
