Afghan Watch

The Biggest Danger to Women's Rights in Afghanistan

2009-07-28T20:47:14Z

When people in the US talk about the scourge of violence against women in Afghanistan, discussion tends to stop cold at one word: culture. As if culture is some sacred terrain upon which we dare not tread. The flawed syllogism goes like this: misogyny is endemic to Afghan culture. We can’t criticize that culture without reinforcing a racist agenda and justifying US military intervention. Therefore, we can’t take a stand against misogynist violence in Afghanistan.

We can argue the assumptions embedded in that logic, but ultimately, the culture conversation misses the point. Afghan culture may be misogynist, but so is every culture. There’s nothing unique about the suffocation of women’s potential to live as full human beings, backed up by extreme violence and justified by religion and nature. The difference between Afghanistan and any other place is the extent to which women have succeeded in winning rights and transforming culture in the process.

What, then, is obstructing progress for Afghan women? For one thing, women who seek to exercise their basic rights are systematically hunted down and killed. A new United Nations report grimly confirms what women in Afghanistan have been telling us all year: women are being harassed and even assassinated for holding jobs, speaking out for their rights or simply appearing in public without a male chaperone. Women politicians, teachers, nurses, artists, aid workers, journalists and other professionals are being targeted by ultra-conservatives aiming to create a society in which women have no rights and no role in public life.

Despite the danger, Afghan women continue to demand their rights. Remember the hundreds of women who took to the streets of Kabul in April? They took their lives in their hands to protest a new law sanctioning marital rape.

Ultimately, though, Afghan women’s prospects for transforming their society are undermined by the US-led war. In fact, many Afghan women activists identify the war as the biggest danger to women’s rights in Afghanistan

Over the past eight years, uncounted numbers of women and their family members have been killed, displaced and terrorized. The war has had a disproportionate impact on women, who have had to sustain family life and meet everyone’s needs for food, water, childcare and a host of other services through years of violence, constant insecurity and grinding poverty. In addition to endangering women’s lives, the war has eroded the political space for women to advocate for their rights.

That’s why the Feminist Majority Foundation’s endorsement of the US war in Afghanistan is so perplexing. The FMF rightly argues that the US owes a tremendous debt to the people of Afghanistan, having induced 30 years of war and misery there. They’ve got the history right, but the conclusion wrong. US guns, bombs and military occupation cannot bring about a society based on human rights. However, a US commitment to education, sustainable agriculture and equitable economic development just might.

Those kinds of policies are what’s needed to reinforce a beleaguered but vibrant Afghan women’s movement, including courageous activists involved in securing food, housing, healthcare and education for women and families, defending women’s shelters, holding peace demonstrations, demanding women’s full participation in public life and fighting for interpretations of Islam that support women’s rights. No foreign military occupation is going to do those things. Afghan women themselves will have to do it.

Through our Afghan Women’s Survival Fund, MADRE is working to support the women who risk their lives to defend women’s human rights. For more information about the Fund and how you can help, click here.

*Cross-posted on myMADRE.

Frontlines and Orchards: A Guide to Where War and Peace Have Taken Hold in Afghanistan

2009-07-14T21:02:01Z

When one hears a compelling tale of war and loss in Afghanistan from NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson or the New York Times’ Carlotta Gall, one wants to understand where and in what context these stories took place. Some might get a bit confused about how one part of the country is suffering combat while other parts are enjoying revival.

Here is a quick reference guide to Afghanistan, region by region, which should help Afghan Watchers better understand how war and peace coexist in the tumultuous country as of July 2009. (Map link coming soon)

Frontlines
US-led International and Afghan forces pursue a strategy of consolidating control over the central region, then pushing south and east into traditional Taliban strongholds, under-staffing the north since it is traditionally anti-Taliban. However, the Taliban have a counter-strategy of avoiding frontlines altogether, attacking politicians, police stations and military convoys in all parts of the country including the north. The insurgent strategy at first seems illogical. Why waste costly weapons and valuable manpower attacking areas of the north they can’t possibly woo? Well, imagine what would happen if 30,000 US forces currently concentrated on 19 provinces are forced to re-distribute 5 or 6 more provinces without any additional troops? Their current strongholds will be under-staffed and therefore more vulnerable. To complicate this forward probability is the suggestion by many Afghans that the presence of the international forces is itself one reason many otherwise impartial young men join the insurgency. Here are some recent articles which sum up the regions.

NATIONAL. Troop Surge across the central region and eastern and southern fronts: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2009/02/afghanistan_a_h.html

SOUTHERN FRONT. “Helmandis Braced for Taleban Battle”: http://www.iwpr.net/?p=arr&s=f&o=353865&apc_state=henparr

ONCE PEACEFUL NORTH. “Insurgency Gaining Ground in Afghan North”: http://www.iwpr.net/?p=arr&s=f&o=354177&apc_state=henparr

Central Government Strongholds Still Facing Resistance
The Afghan Government’s center of power is in the long-time capitol, Kabul. US-led international forces remain focused on holding Kabul despite continued terror attacks and raids by Taliban insurgents. Meanwhile, large swaths of the central mountainous region remain under Afghan government control with Afghan and international security bases, but continue to suffer hit-and-run attacks by insurgents based in the rural areas. Here life is cyclical. During the winter as insurgent attacks dissipate, many people are optimistic enough to invest in new enterprises, plan their future. But each spring, insurgent attacks return, Afghan troops block roads to search vehicles, leading to a tense mood through autumn.

KABUL. Nadene Ghoury reports for PBS Frontline World, “Afghanistan: Law and Order”: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2009/04/afghan_law_and.html

PANJSHIR, WARDAK, GHAZNI, ZABUL, PARWAN, KAPISA, NURISTAN, NANGARHAR. While the central government controlled provinces range from Panjshir, the high valley long-controlled by Tajiks once led by the North Alliance commander Ahmed Massoud which remains behind the government, to Nangarhar, the province hosting a periodically secure roadway through Jalalabad and the Khyber Pass to Pakistan which is sometimes put on high alert for Taliban raids.

The Eastern Front
The mountainous northeastern Afghan-Pakistani border has hosted great shifts in political power since the beginning of Afghanistan’s civil war in 1979. It is important to understand that each mountain valley hosts a different political context with some communities attempting to remain neutral, others trying to placate all sides in the conflict to avoid destruction, and others remaining steadfast partners with one of the fighting sides. While local farming and herding communities have often remained rooted on their land for decades, if not centuries, the fighting groups tend to migrate in and out depending on their battlefield successes and failures. Most commonly, Taliban fighters, sometimes backed by Al Qaeda advisors or partners, will meet with councils of elders for each of the isolated highland communities and try to woo them to their side until US-backed Afghan forces compel them to flee for safety in the nearby Tribally-Administered autonomous areas of northwest Pakistan.

KUNAR & KHOST. Here’s an interesting US military dispatch series which presents the region from that perspective, Matt Dupee’s Long War Journal: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/02/afghan_militants_nab.php

LAGHMAN, LOGAR, PAKTYA, PAKTIKA.

The Southern Front
After an initial focus on the Taliban base of Kandahar and long-time capitol of Kabul in 2001, US-led international and Afghan forces put the brunt of their fight on the eastern border with Pakistan. By 2009, a revised surge strategy has led to Operation Khanjar, a broad campaign to liberate the southern provinces of Helmand and southern Kandahar from the Taliban. Disputed Uruzgan province may be next.

HELMAND & KANDAHAR. IWPR‘s Dayee and Tassal report “Helmandis Braced for Taliban Battle”: http://www.iwpr.net/?p=arr&s=f&o=353865&apc_state=henparr

URUZGAN.

Taliban Strongholds in South, Where There are Few International Forces
While US-led international forces have backed Afghan government forces in its struggle to control the northeast, central, and south central parts of the country, Afghan forces still plea for additional international support to secure troubled Farah, where US forces are building a presence, and Nimroz, the remote desert region on the Iranian border where Afghan government forces face the Taliban backed only by a few loyal tribal leaders. This region is best known for the recent, tragic civilian casualty incident in Farah.

FARAH. Jason Motlagh reports on the US airstrike on Farah which went awry, for PBS Frontline World: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2009/05/afghanistan_the_2.html

NIMROZ. Few Western journalists are covering this vital, troubled province.

Long-Peaceful Areas in the North and West Now At-Risk for New Conflict
Northern Afghanistan, from the northwestern desert province of Herat to the northeastern alpine province of Badakhshan, has long been anti-Taliban. This is largely because of three reasons. First, the Taliban leadership has long been seen by northern Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hezaras, Kuchis, and Wakhis as an ethnic Pashtun-led organization. Second, northerns tend to have more moderate Islamic views, largely due to tradition but also related to the relations many Tajiks and Uzbeks have with their ethnic brethren in post-Soviet central Asia. Finally, ethnic Tajik and Uzbek strongmen created mini-kingdoms in parts of the north , choosing to treat the Taliban as a foreign political force. While Massoud dominated the Panjshir Valley, Rabbani dominated the northern provinces of Takhar, and Badakhshan, Dostum ran Mazar/Balkh, and so on. Today, times have changed as many young men without income or future prospects are becoming angry at the presence of foreign troops and considering joining the insurgency.

KUNDUZ & JOWZJAN. IWPR’s Abdul Latif Sahak reports that the Taliban have taken the town of Chahrdara, Kunduz, and threaten Jowzjan in a region formerly assumed to be solidly pro-government: http://www.iwpr.net/?p=arr&s=f&o=354177&apc_state=henparr

HERAT. Jason Motlagh reports on under-reported civilian casualty incidents in areas including Herat for Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900842,00.html

BALKH, BAGHDIS, GHOR, FARYAB, SARI PUL, SAMANGAN, BAMYAN, BAGHLAN, TAKHAR, BADAKHSHAN

As time marches on, one will very likely see the political situation evolve, so stay tuned to changes to the above summary.

Marines and Embedded Photographers Trapped by Fire

2009-07-10T05:06:15Z

NPR's David Gilkey journeyed with US Marines and other photojournalists out to the frontline only to be trapped by endless firefights. Miraculously, despite repeated ambushes, few of any foreign troops or journalists were killed. Check out the first dispatch sent by cell phone:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2009/07/report_from_mian_poshteh_afgha.html

Bloodlines and Afghanistan's Traditional Tribal Dispute Resolution System

2009-07-02T05:49:19Z

Karzai is a Pashtun, of the Durrani tribe. Hekmatyar is a Pashtun-Kharoti. Academics and journalists love to throw these details out to add context to a story. But what does it mean politically for Afghanistan and its people’s pursuit of peace? Here’s a quick guide to how Afghanistan’s tribal leadership, justice and dispute resolution system works, with links to the best related online media:

Marakas, Jirgas, and Shuras, Oh My

The Pashtun, Tajik, Hezara, Baluchi, Kuchi, Turkmen, and other ethnic groups of Afghanistan share a traditional societal structure academics call “segmentary lineage”. Others call it “tribal society.” Like many Arabs, Punjabis, Somalis, Chechens, and other groups, the people of Afghanistan have a long reliable path to peace in their traditional dispute resolution mechanism, which functions along their network of traditional tribes and clans which is, collectively, more powerful than the fledgling government. Yet many global decision-makers postpone talk with the tribal network and focus first on the state at risk of forging a law or agreement no one plans to follow.

When an Afghan family runs into a challenge—a wedding, birth, harvest, murder, rape, fistfight, stolen chicken, discovery of an alien spaceship, or what-have-you—the father does not go first to the state police or mayor, he typically goes to his bloodline elder.

Depending on the difficulty of the challenge or dispute, the elder may decide to elevate the issue to the bloodline village council (maraka, in Pashtun), the tribal council representing the local collection of related tribal clans of the same language group (qawmi jirga, in Pashtun), or even an ad hoc regional council (shura). If there is an issue of great national importance, either for a single ethnic group or across ethnic groups, the leading elders may call a grand national council hearing (loya jirga). Tajiks and others typically use the Arabic word, majlis, for similar councils.

Only if the traditional bloodline representatives, applying traditional or customary law (Pashtuns call theirs the narkh; and their sub-code for personal behavior, pashtunwali) with the aid of their Islamic advisor (most follow the Hanafi school, but the ultra-conservative Taliban follow a Salafist code), will the elders bring the issue to the state. Here’s a great introduction to the Pashtun traditional dispute resolution system, followed by a link to a list of Pashtun tribes:

http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan017434.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtun_tribes

Tribal Alliances and Relations with Fighting Groups

Knowing how to quickly navigate the tribal network from the bottom-up has enabled the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and many mujahedin groups before them to secure the loyalties of, or some would say to blackmail, local leaders much faster and for longer periods than foreign armies and urban bureaucrats, who typically negotiate from the top-down, have been able to.

However, since 2003, the ruling government of Afghanistan has teamed up with NATO and aid agencies to carry out an enormous, hybrid civilian-military collaboration with tribal councils called the “National Solidarity Programme” (NSP). It is one of the largest efforts in history of an international force seeking to rapidly merge or interweave traditional, Islamic, and state representational and justice systems in a country. See more about the NSP, followed by how the Afghan government is structured, here:

http://www.nspafghanistan.org/
http://www.understandingwar.org/themenode/afghan-government

Many tribal leaders now get a chance to hear presentations not only from the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or unrelated aid agencies operating in the area. They now also get contrasting series of Powerpoint seminars from NSP aid workers as well as the Afghan government which hopes integrating the tribal with the state will enable Kabul to forge and secure alliances more successfully than the Taliban.

Difficult Choices for Local Leaders

It ain't as easy as choosing between liberal economic opportunity and an ultra-conservative Stone-Age poverty. Frontline village leaders along the Afghan-Pakistani and Afghan-Iranian border often face a harrowing choice which could lead to their community’s salvation or destruction.

Even if a village leader wishes to pursue peace or even join one side in a conflict, his first loyalty must typically be to his community’s tribal affiliation. Collectively, the tribal alliances then must choose whether to pick a side, remain neutral, or pretend to be on the side of whomever shows up that day.

The NSP/Government or Taliban delegations typically come as political or even as humanitarian missions. They park their cars by the hard top highway and hike up a narrow mountain path, lugging laptops, hand books, and rifles (though aid workers with the NSP usually do not and should not go armed) until they reach the outer line of farmers or herders.

The first local man to spot the delegation goes himself or sends his son up to the head of the maraka, a traditional bloodline council of elders, who either calls a militia to scare the delegation away or, more often, prepares a place for the council to host the group for tea.

The first group to query the local council before any major fighting erupts in the area is usually the Taliban. Sometimes there is rumored to be a representative from Al Qaeda. The Taliban delegation knows how the traditional law and decision-making process works and they are led from the battlefield; that is why they are the first to make their plea. They argue in their special way how the local tribal group, and its autonomous militia, should support the Taliban for God, country, etc, or face mysterious fate, x.

Then the combined NSP team arrives, a bit higher tech, a bit less armed, to make their case. Where the Taliban offers salvation, the NSP team offers economic integration and greater regional decision-making power.

At this point, if the tribal leaders choose to be neutral, they will continue to get approached from both sides who may return with greater motivational tools or more painful choices. If the tribal leaders pick one side, very likely the next months will bring some form of violence form the side which was rejected. To pretend to be on both sides would guarantee that the winner will remember their support, but to be discovered as a collaborator with the enemy could bring even greater destruction than choosing a side.

While the Afghan government and international forces are relying on the NSP and related civil-military efforts to sell the most attractive package to gain the trust and support of local tribal decision-makers, Pakistan, modeled on Iraq with US backing, is bolstering their offer by offering the tribal councils weapons with which to arm their local militias in exchange for their alliance. Here’s more on that:

http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-36603220081120

To best comprehend this campaign to win the trust of thousands of local tribal councils, imagine an election campaign in which your community has to vote in a block and whichever party you do not vote for may show up one day and arrest all of the male leaders or simply burn the village down.

If you have more information, preferred links, or would like to discuss this, please add your comments below.

Afghanomics and the Evolution of a Wartime Marketplace

2009-06-26T03:44:30Z

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While Western governments, media-consumers, and soldiers tend to focus their attention on the civil conflict rocking Afghanistan, most Afghans are more concerned with their local markets. The global economic crisis has surely slowed the march toward recovery in the region, but there is another dimension to Afghan market woes, the increasing economic and cultural divide.

This past spring, my Afghan colleagues and I drove down to the Lycee Maryam shopping area in suburban Kabul to buy a suitcase to ship files back to the home office in Washington, SC. My folks back home imagined a rough-neck huddle of street toughs armed with Kalashnikovs selling a bag of beans. But they would be pleasantly shocked to find that Kabul’s markets are modern and growing despite the war.

The otherwise mundane task of buying the suitcase presented a grand opportunity to explore how the market had changed through the war period since my economic research four years earlier. Back then, research I conducted in Kabul, Kunduz, and Tajikistan pointed to a relationship between security barriers and hunger.

Food prices could be affected when the area was isolated due to fighting near the main road, when police extorted bribes from traders, or when opium production raised incomes for some while reducing the local production of affordable food. If you're curious, here are some video snapshots of Kabul’s shopping environment:

The BBC offers a positive view of the Kabul food market:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz-SgaLjYRY&feature=related

Kabul’s old town market, in normal times, with more raw footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeCw2YAntzg&feature=related

But here’s the view of the same market, wintertime, but with bombs bursting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhjKrhwLvn0&feature=related

The Kabul shopping mall is not only a radical departure from the norm, it may be the future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwUUK9QjiJI

And for you economists out there, here’s a means of following staple food prices: http://wwww.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/ASAZ-7S7J2J?OpenDocument

The challenge of the market right after the Taliban’s fall from power was primarily for traders to overcome security risks just to fill markets with mass consumption goods which sustained lives. Traders would risk bringing in what they knew for sure that all families would want to buy: rice, wheat, cooking oil, salt, tea, onion, turnip, lentils, tomatoes, sheep, chicken, auto repair tools and parts, cooking fuel, and then, after the sure things were selling, they’d procure new and diverse products to fill other needs.

The Taliban, in its austere vision of society, had prohibited recorded music, images of humans or animals, and modern conveniences, so from 1996-2001, there were very few fashion, technological, or recreational supplies in the market. By 2004, traders were making up for lost time.

When the Taliban fled to the mountains, and the northern and more moderate members of Afghan society returned to run the marketplace in the early 2000s, the market opened up more broadly to technology, entertainment, and the arts, but supply was of course dependent on how many people were willing and able to buy. This year, as I trekked through the muddy streets from shopping plaza to shopping plaza, I found the market unrecognizable from four years earlier.

Chinese everything can be found now in the shiny malls, Indian actress look up from posters and DVDs. But for those still either committed to the Taliban’s ultra-conservative vision, or convinced they should maintain it for fear of the movement’s wrath upon a potential return to power, the market is a pasture filled with difficult decisions.

What is newly available is often too expensive for those of traditional livelihoods, prohibited to the very religious, or offensive to those who've never seen such things before. While the moderates, former socialists, and the new America-philes are excitedly filling up on the latest technology, DVDs, music, fashion, cafes, wedding palaces, thai food, and frozen dinners, the traditionalists among them are likely furious that they cannot enjoy or afford any of the new windfall. It is one of the daily tensions – economic as well as spiritual – that one sometimes forgets to consider or cover in war reporting when documenting the pursuit of peace and its many political barriers. What do you think?

For more on Afghan market evolution, the BBC still covers it best at news.bbc.co.uk while the UN maintains the best compendium of economic indicators at www.reliefweb.int.

What the U.S. Should Do in Afghanistan

2009-06-11T18:55:53Z

CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans interviews Mariam Nawabi, an Afghan-American attorney, social entrepreneur, and activist about Afghan women and Congress’ rush to pass another $94 billion for war this week. Nawabi is a founding member of the Afghanistan Advocacy Group, a national network of Americans who wish to engage in dialogue with policymakers regarding development and security in Afghanistan. She served as senior adviser to the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce and Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce from February 2006 until April of 2007. From January 2004 to January 2006, she worked at the Embassy of Afghanistan, serving as Commercial & Trade Counsel. This interview was originally published at Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jodie-evans/afghan-women-speak-out-ma_b_213529.html

]]> CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans interviews Mariam Nawabi, an Afghan-American attorney, social entrepreneur, and activist about Afghan women and Congress’ rush to pass another $94 billion for war this week. Nawabi is a founding member of the Afghanistan Advocacy Group, a national network of Americans who wish to engage in dialogue with policymakers regarding development and security in Afghanistan. She served as senior adviser to the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce and Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce from February 2006 until April of 2007. From January 2004 to January 2006, she worked at the Embassy of Afghanistan, serving as Commercial & Trade Counsel. This interview was orgininally published at Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jodie-evans/afghan-women-speak-out-ma_b_213529.html

Jodie Evans: What would you advise Obama to do?

Direct more money into economic development and the creation of jobs. To end the violence, the money needs to reach villages — if the money doesn’t get to the village itself, there is no change and the young men are left without support and become fodder for the Taliban.

Whether we call it democracy or not, there is no difference in (Afghan) way of life (under the Taliban or US troops), they still living in the crossfire between Taliban and U.S. forces. If the U.S. wants the Taliban out they are going about it backwards.

JE: Should we negotiate with the Taliban?

This whole notion of trying to negotiate with different members of Taliban might be too late. In the beginning, we went against groups we could and should have talked to; we should have talked to them then. When we labeled Taliban as the enemy and sided with warlords, we created categories and ended up creating enemies.

Once you create economic stability, you can have peacekeeping. That is part of the equation and it has to be sequenced in the right order. There may be different areas of the country that require different strategies because of where and who they are.

JE: But the U.S. has invested some money in development?

What the U.S. does now for economic development is mostly wasted. Capacity building is needed and good models of the public/private working together. When we leverage money with private sector we begin to get more efficacy. When you have advice and trainings without tools, nothing happens.

There is a plan to send 4,000 outside-civilian advisers, but these advisers go in for a year and are barely acclimated and then it’s time to go. Instead they should send expats back in, they won’t have as many language issues, and can be more effective at delivering real support. Afghanistan has had a huge brain drain — so much of countries brain power left or killed. They need to come back.

Money now spent on military would be much better spent on infrastructure, jobs, and international partnerships. The people don’t have the tools the need to move toward a peaceful reality.

JE: What is the effect of additional troops?

As we (the US) brings in new military, we continue to create these little cities for our military to sit in. Afghans wonder, what is the point? They see the cities/bases just as places for the military, just another target for insurgents to bomb — from there (the military) are just engaging in protecting themselves, not bringing change into Afghans lives. They are these little military oasis’ that are not benefiting the community at all.

The Afghan people look over the walls of the bases and see the troops have everything they don’t have. And the violence increases. They know (the troops) are not there to help them. The women are particularly aware of this. The military needs to get out in villages and relate with people so people see them as an asset.

There is a National Solidarity Program that Congress is looking at to fund this. (Through this program), a village creates its own priorities. For example, the people need a well. They vote on it, it goes to community for vote, and they get block grants to implement that. That’s real democracy-building. Women have to be included; in this program, women can have their own council and they can vote and have their own projects funded.

That is what the Obama administration should be doing instead of this focused-on-military side,where they go in and then say, “OK, now how can we get out of this?” If you leave Afghanistan in the position where it can’t sustain itself, it will just go back into conflict and more fundamentalism.

I would also tell the Obama administration,”whatever money you are spending, monitor it better.” The problem is a wild west frontier — the contractors and NGOs get the money and there is no accountability. They realize no one is checking up; they realize they can do whatever they want. It’s creating these zones where people who are there to “protect” Afghanistan people are actually just there to help themselves.

I don’t see just Taliban as the problem. I see the corruption, drug smuggling as bigger problems, men in suits taking money and not getting it to the community at all. We (the US) puts our money in and then steps back. That is a dangerous combination. People learn how to play the game, but the game is not on battlefield — it’s in halls of ministry. People learn how to take money, and their families are in India, Dubai, Canada. So money goes back out. And if things go south, they have an exit strategy.

The question is not who likes the U.S. more (under great presence). The question is who will the Afghan people see as a government that best represents their interests. They haven’t had that. Now the game is all we have, all the millions of dollars coming in, and who can grab more of it. (It’s) waste of resources. And people get disillusioned and angry; for seven years we haven’t paid attention to the fact they have been oppressed.

JE: How, given the culture, do we get women at the table?

For the most part, the women leaders look out for interests of the village. You do have some women who are partnered with warlords, but comparatively, we risk less conflict if women are making decisions.

Economic empowerment is the best way to empower the women and give financial support to women who are demonstrating leadership abilities.

This election coming up in Afghanistan is not just presidential election but also province elections. I heard that in eight provinces, not one woman is registered. There are security issues, women are being targeted and feel fearful. But U.S. women have not helped bring them the tools they need to run. We can’t demand women at the table if we do not provide the support they need. If a woman is campaigning, give her resources to campaign and print posters.

In some areas we see more women (in office) and there is great progress because they have created their own supportive communities. Sometimes the only women who win are those bankrolled by the warlords. They can win with the warlords’ support but do so without their own voice.

Currently the Minister of Women’s Affairs (Husan Bano Ghazanfar) (sic) that should be encouraging and supporting women is passive, she was appointed for exactly that reason. The new funding bill gives her money, but she does not represent the women and has failed at her job. But we send money anyway, without a way to monitor or guide.

Afghan Women Are Killed for Demanding their Rights

2009-05-19T22:17:35Z

Women in Afghanistan are routinely denied basic human rights, including education, healthcare, freedom from violence, and freedom of movement. Afghan women who fight to change this reality are attacked and even assassinated by ultra-conservatives.

Meanwhile, US airstrikes that kill civilians further endanger Afghan women and their families. They also increase the power of the Taliban and other reactionary forces as more Afghans turn to them for protection from the United States.

Each woman who is targeted and killed is meant to serve as a warning to any woman who would dare to stand up for her rights. Yet Afghan women continue to do just that. MADRE is supporting their courageous struggle through our Afghan Women's Survival Fund.

Below, we profile a few of the women who have been killed or threatened for daring to demand their rights.

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Sitara Achakzai spent the years of Taliban rule in Germany and returned to Afghanistan in 2004 to join women working to promote their human rights and struggling to secure peace. She became a member of Kandahar's provincial council, using that position to advocate for women's rights.

For International Women's Day on March 8, 2009, she played a major role in organizing a national sit-in of more than 11,000 women in seven Afghan provinces. They were joined in this effort by women across the globe, who wore blue scarves in solidarity with the call for peace with justice.

On April 12, 2009, Sitara was gunned down in broad daylight in front of her home. As she stepped out of her car, four men on motorcycles drove by and opened fire. A Taliban spokesperson soon claimed responsibility. Just two weeks before, she had survived a suicide bomb attack on the provincial council building that left 13 people dead.

Safia Amajan fought for women's rights in Afghanistan for decades and served as the head of the women's department in Kandahar's city government. She began her career as a teacher at girls' schools. Her popularity as a teacher led people to refer to her as "Amajan" or "dear aunt," a name that stuck to her.

She opened six schools in Kandahar, training over 1,000 women. Her fight to ensure the right of girls to attend school made her a target of the Taliban.

On September 25, 2006, Safia was gunned down while leaving her home by two men on motorcycles. A Taliban spokesperson later announced that she had been "executed." Malalai Kakar, a woman who would later lose her life in much the same way, investigated her murder and said, "She was this wonderful person we heard about growing up in Kandahar. I made a point of meeting her and I took guidance from her."

Malalai Kakar was Afghanistan's most prominent policewoman, serving as the head of Kandahar's department for crimes against women. She was the first woman to attend and graduate from the Kandahar Police Academy.

She had joined the police force in 1982, following her father and brothers. Malalai knew that her high profile made her a target. She survived multiple assassination attempts, once emerging from a shoot-out with three assassins. In reference to threatening letters regularly pinned to her front door at night, she said, "The notes say things like 'Quit the force, or else.' Of course, I won't."

On September 28, 2008, as Malalai left her home for work, she was shot in her car and died instantly. Her teenaged son was injured in the attack. After her death, a Taliban spokesperson announced, "We killed Malalai Kakar. She was our target, and we successfully eliminated our target."

Shaima Rezayee became a pop culture icon for Afghan youth, as the host of "Hop," a music show on a private television network. Her appearances on the show, often wearing make-up and without a burqa, drew the condemnation of conservatives.

When questioned by a journalist, Shaima warned, "Things are not getting better. We made some gains, but there are a lot of people who want to take it all back. They are not even the Taliban, they are here in Kabul. ... The bad days are coming back, we'll have to go into exile again."

On May 18, 2005, Shaima was shot and killed in her home.

Zarghuna Kakar (no relation to Malalai Kakar), a member of the provincial council in Kandahar, has repeatedly requested additional security from the government, knowing that being a woman politician puts her life at risk. She turned to Afghan President Karzai's brother for support, and she reports that he dismissed her saying that she "should have thought about what may happen before [she] stood for election." Zarghuna was with her family in a market when they were attacked, and her husband was killed. She has now fled her home and is in hiding.

Suraya Pakzad founded the Voice of Women Organization in 1988, secretly teaching Afghan women to read and providing shelter from domestic violence. The organization emerged from the underground with the end of the Taliban regime, but today she warns of the resurgence of those forces.

Her own life has been threatened because of her work, and she worries for her safety everyday. In an interview, Suraya said, "I change routes to go to the office. I cannot share my schedule even with my friends, with my staff and even sometimes I'm not secure using the phone."

Jamilla Mujahid Barzai, a member of the police force in Kandahar, was a colleague of Malalai Kakar. She decided to remain in Kandahar to continue her assassinated boss's work. She remembers having witnessed a woman summarily executed by the Taliban in a soccer stadium, and these attacks on women have stiffened her resolve. She explains, "It is most important that now women try to get to positions of power to stop things like that happening again. It is dangerous. But we cannot go back to those days again."

*Cross-posted at myMADRE.

Call it a Massacre, Not a Mistake

2009-05-06T17:03:57Z

Yesterday, as many as 150 people were killed by US warplanes while they were huddled in their houses in Farah, Afghanistan.

So today, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai meets with President Obama, US officials in Afghanistan are heading to the site of the latest US massacre.

]]> now-routine pattern of official denials, self-investigations and apologies.

Yesterday's killings are now in the self-investigation phase, in case you're wondering. The denial phase was short because villagers who survived the attack trucked about 30 mangled corpses of children, women and other non-combatants to their local governor's office in order to prove that civilians had been killed.

Soon enough we'll be hearing the official "regrets." I don't want to hear them. I'm sick of the twisted logic that allows the US military to drop bombs on people and then claim it was a mistake when the bombs land on people. You don't deliberately do something with a known outcome and then get to call the result a mistake.

A massacre is a large-scale, indiscriminate killing; which is precisely the known outcome of the US air strikes in Afghanistan. So let's call this a massacre. And let's work to end the air strikes before another Afghan family has to hear how sorry the US military is.

*Cross-posted at myMADRE.

No Moral High Ground in the "War on Terror"

2009-05-05T15:29:13Z

On Wednesday and Thursday, May 6 and 7, Barack Obama will host Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari at the White House for this administration's first trilateral summit.

The Indian news agency, Press Trust, says the summit "is considered to be a crucial element in the US' 'war against terror' in the region, especially in Afghanistan where the US is sending thousands of troops this summer to fight the Taliban."

]]> The summit is also meant to bind Karzai and Zardari ever closer to the US approach to waging war in their countries. According to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, President Obama intends to lecture his colleagues about their "responsibilities" in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

I really hope not. As Commander-in-Chief of the military that killed hundreds of Afghan civilians last year alone, Obama does not enjoy the moral high ground here.

When the US began bombing Afghanistan in October 2001, it did so without authorization from the UN Security Council, making this war every bit as illegal as the war against Iraq. Within just a few weeks of the invasion, the civilian death toll in Afghanistan had greatly exceeded the number of people killed in the US on 9/11.

Civilian casualties soared again when the US tried a "troop surge" in 2007. Yes, the current "surge" is a do-over of a policy that already failed once. The first time around, when US/NATO troops were beefed up by 45 percent, more Afghan civilians were killed than during the previous four years combined. In fact, every year that the US occupation has dragged on, more Afghan civilians have been killed than the year before. Last year alone, more than 2100 civilians were killed, a 40 percent jump over the previous year.

Every compassionate person can imagine the human suffering that lies behind these numbers. But not everyone is aware that the raw grief caused by US air strikes quickly hardens into support for the Taliban.

One Afghan man, interviewed by The Guardian in a video feature about the impact of civilian deaths in his country puts it succinctly: "The people who are fighting with the Taliban are the sons, the brothers and the uncles of those killed by the Americans."

That fact is well understood by all Afghans, including President Karzai. That's why Karzai made this forceful statement the day after Obama was elected president: "This is my first demand of the new president of the United States - to put an end to civilian casualties."

Karzai is not exactly a great humanitarian. His government is riddled with warlords whose track record on human rights is arguably as bad as the Taliban's. MP Mohammad Mohaqiq, for example, is accused of nailing prisoners to walls. In 2007, Karzai granted Mohaqiq and his fellow warlords a general amnesty for their crimes. Yet, Karzai worries about the mounting civilian death toll precisely because he understands that each killing makes his government weaker and the Taliban stronger.

Every US killing of a civilian in Afghanistan is a grave human rights violation. It's also the surest way for Obama to undermine his own agenda in the region. Maybe Karzai should take the opportunity of Obama's first trilateral summit to lecture the US President about his responsibilities.

*Cross-posted at myMADRE.

The Courage of Afghan Girls

2009-05-04T15:14:56Z

This is the latest in a long line of recent stories demonstrating how threatened the Taliban and other ultra-conservative extremists are by the notion of women's empowerment.

That girls' education is a key to women's empowerment is one of the main lessons of people-centered development policies. Education is a human right of all girls and boys. But girls' education is also the surest way to raise a generation of women who can earn their own income, participate meaningfully in decision-making in their families, communities, and country and go on to become mothers who have a much higher chance of raising healthy, educated children. ]]>
In fact, girls' education raises national health, development, and economic indicators across the board, in what experts call the "virtuous cycle of girls' education."

To me, the most remarkable thing about these attacks is the sheer courage of the girls themselves. In November, extremists on motorbikes sprayed acid on a group of students from the Mirwais School for Girls in Kandahar. As Nader Nadery and Haseeb Humayoon wrote recently, "Several young women were severely burned." Yet, "It did not take more than a few weeks for even the most cruelly disfigured girls to return to school."

The young women of Afghanistan know that their best shot at a decent life depends on being educated. They are literally fighting for their lives, and we can stand with them by supporting Afghan women who are demanding that girls be able to go to school.

MADRE is working with the Shuhada Organization in Afghanistan, which ran underground schools for girls in the 1990s when the Taliban government made girls' education illegal. Today, they are working to ensure that every Afghan girl and boy is able to go to school and that the full range of women's human rights are upheld in their country.

*Cross-posted at myMADRE.

Afghan Women Defy Rumors of Our Demise

2009-04-27T17:47:31Z

By Katie Buckland

Reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mark Twain.

And in Afghanistan no less.

As readers of Women's eNews and most news agencies already know, the Afghan Parliament last month passed the unintentionally ironically titled "Afghan Shiite Personal Status Law." It was then signed into law by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who now says it was all a big mistake.

The law, among other horrifying provisions, allows a man to rape his wife every four days. It also mandates that she dress up and preen for him on demand, that she not leave the house without his permission and, in the event of a divorce, the children remain the property of the husband. In the event that the husband does not wish to own his children, they belong to the paternal grandfather.

In a backwards nod to female sexual pleasure, the law does mandate that the husband not go longer than four months without having sex with his wife. ]]> The United Nations Development Fund for Women stated the obvious and said that the law "legalizes the rape of a wife by her husband" and "violates women's rights and human rights in numerous ways."
Women Rose Up

The current popular wisdom about feminism would say that the response to this law should be discussion and commentary, but no actual demonstrable collective anger or action. The defining characteristic of today's activists is to see feminism as a route to individual empowerment, rejecting collective action. This often leads to the erroneous assumption that the women's movement, as a collective movement, is over.

But the women's movement around the world rose from its alleged grave and took to the streets, the airwaves and even to the White House in response to this law. On April 5, when asked about increasing NATO efforts in Afghanistan, President Obama used the opportunity to comment on the new Afghan law, calling it "abhorrent."

Afghan women and girls protested Saturday despite numerous dangers and obstacles. According to an eyewitness report published in The Guardian, they were physically restrained from leaving the house. If they made it past the barricade of men, they were called whores and bitches by angry madrasa students.

Among other insults, the women and girls were called "Jews and slaves of the Christians."

Some of the men spit in their faces.

Despite all this, the women and girls did not merely express their displeasure with the legislation, they attacked it head-on.

One of the most prominent clerics and supporters of the new law took to the airwaves Saturday night and instructed the male members of the sect to forbid their wives and daughters from attending the protest scheduled for Sunday.

So where did these brave women and girls stage their protest?

On the steps of this cleric's mosque.
Law Widely Condemned

The law has been condemned by not only the U.N. and President Obama, but by numerous other world leaders and is now "under review" by Karzai.

Karzai claims not to have read the entire document before signing it into law and met with a group of women's rights activists at the presidential palace in Kabul on Tuesday.

So the law may stand, or it may not.

Obviously, we fervently wish for its quick demise.

But what we do know right at this very minute is that there is a women's movement. Yes, it took appallingly barbaric new rules for women to set it in motion, but the protest did happen right there in Kabul, and world leaders did denounce the legislation.

We'll keep you posted on the status of the law.

In the meantime, whenever anyone tells you that the women's movement happened in the 1970s and then died a quiet death, or that young women are fundamentally not political, let's picture those Afghan girls and women sneaking out early in the morning to protest legalized rape.

This commentary was originally published April 23 in Women's E-News at: (http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3990. Katie Buckland is the executive director of The California Women's Law Center.

Teaching the Taliban Way (an excerpt from the manual)

2009-04-22T13:33:35Z

April 22nd, 2009 | Joe Tsali

******************************************

Here is a fascinating excerpt from Taliban methodology which has been circulated among aid agencies to remind them to be ever vigilant about security. Tragic, really. Many NGOs simply wish to help teachers improve their skills and teach kids math, science, and reading, but in this region even arithmatic can be a hazardous activity:

"The Taliban Book of Rules

"Did anyone catch this a few months ago? The Swiss paper Die Weltwoche published the new Layeha (book of rules) for the Mujahideen, basically the Taliban code of conduct. It's mostly mundane practicalities:

"24. It is forbidden to work as a teacher under the current puppet regime, because this strengthens the system of the infidels. True Muslims should apply to study with a religiously trained teacher and study in a Mosque or similar institution. Textbooks must come from the period of the Jihad or from the Taliban regime.
This shows their wish to smother secular knowledge, including the banning of standard textbooks.

"25. Anyone who works as a teacher for the current puppet regime must recieve a warning. If he nevertheless refuses to give up his job, he must be beaten. If the teacher still continues to instruct contrary to the principles of Islam, the district commander or a group leader must kill him.

"In other words, anyone teaching in a secular fashion, which is any teacher working for the state, should be stopped, if necessary by murder. If they are to brainwash the coming generations - or as they might see it, prevent the infiltration of the poisonous sacrilegious ideas of the degenerate Western infidels - then this is understandable.

"26. Those NGOs that come to the country under the rule of the infidels must be treated as the government is treated. They have come under the guise of helping people but in fact are part of the regime. Thus we tolerate none of their activities, whether it be building of streets, bridges, clinics, schools, madrases (schools for Koran study) or other works. If a school fails to heed a warning to close, it must be burned. But all religious books must be secured beforehand."

END QUOTE.

***************

What do you think?

Lovers in a Political Storm

2009-04-20T11:49:06Z

April 20^th, 2009, Washington | Joe Tsali

********************************

When I first arrived in Kabul, I hired a driver named, Hamid. Bearded and balding in his early thirties, he had very kind and honest eyes. He was one of the brilliant Pashtuns who in another life without war and forced displacement would have been a surgeon, a painter, or the son-in-law whom everyone is very happy to see at the family dinner.

Stuck behind a sandaled cart puller in a traffic jam in Shahr-e-Now, I noticed Hamid relax his usual smile just long enough to reveal deep anguish in his eyes.

"Can you talk about it?" I asked him, assuming it was political. Although we barely knew each other, he decided to confide in me.

"There is a woman I love." A gushing smile came to my face. I wanted to rib him, but he was angry about it. "Our family refuses us to be together. I fear our only answer is to run away together abroad. But where will we go? What if we have to come back?"

]]> April 20^th, 2009, Washington | Joe Tsali

********************************

Stuck behind a sandaled cart puller in a traffic jam in Shahr-e-Now, I noticed Hamid relax his usual smile just long enough to reveal deep anguish in his eyes.

"Can you talk about it?" I asked him, assuming it was political. Although we barely knew each other, he decided to confide in me.

At the time, Hamid's love affair, like the ubiquitous loves-denied of global lore, sounded romantic. The untrained observer of love in Afghanistan would assume that the kids may need to run away, but eventually the parents will value keeping the family together over whatever prejudices they have about the suitor's tribe or ethnicity or sect or cultural liberalism. And love will prevail and so on.

But yesterday, I had to recall Hamid and his troubled love when I found this recent story. This week in Nimroz province, in the deep southwest of Afghanistan, the parents of two young lovers halted the kids' elopement and turned them over to an ad hoc Taliban court which ordered their execution. The lovers were shot to death in front of their mosque before the eyes of the community.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/15/afghanistan-taliban-lovers-elope-nimroz

Listening to Hamid tell me about his lover's conundrum in Kabul, I had a dozen ideas about how he could fight the hydra and win his girl. But it has taken me a great deal of time and consideration to realize that none of those ideas would work in the deeply complex and nuanced context of today's southwest Asia.

Radical theocratic violence here is not well explained by an overview of the traditions of Islam, of the Salafist radical conservative scholars of Islam, of Pashtunwali, or of gender apartheid. There is no passage in the Koran telling parents to turn their children over to death squads. And I doubt the Taliban as a movement is writing a manual for its followers on how to destroy love for God's sake.

Love is political in southwest Asia, for many. To choose to act on love here is a political decision. And one will suffer or overcome the challenge contingent upon the nuanced psycho-political goals of the actors on the scene.

In Hannah Arendt's book, On Violence, the author provides a deep examination on the origins of violence. Arendt suggests that humans are most likely to strike out when they have felt power and are then feeling it pulled out of their hands.

Taliban followers and Salafists in general are perhaps most obviously concerned with fulfilling their vision of God's will by political as well as social means. But could one imagine any sphere of life where radicals are losing power more quickly and thoroughly than in the romantic?

The world has seen this human quality before, not only in the Islamic world: The Spanish Inquisition, The Puritans, and beyond. Chechen and Montenegrin bridenapping evolved partly as a response to these trends. Travel to any cliffside village around the world and one will hear the story of two lovers who leaped to escape their family's displeasure.

The Taliban have carved out a world that prohibits any form of romantic love outside of or prior to arranged marriage. Now having lived so long without it, with so many of their people fleeing this austere world they have created, that romantic love has become as rare as the rubies of ancient Balkh. To then see it suddenly appear - like a sparkle off of a bracelet in a crowd - and then find out it is not theirs, they become furious.

What do you think?

Reconciliation instead of fighting

2009-04-19T18:06:37Z

I recently had a long conversation with an unenlightened American colleague of mine about the war on terrorism. "Just kill them all," he said. "These people do not know the value of life." He used the word "people" generously- I'm pretty sure he wanted to use a more sub-humane term.

Why is it so hard for people to understand that by killing more and more, we simply create more enemies and more terrorists, not less? While I understand there are a number of un-reconcilable elements in the world that have to be dealt with militarily, the vast majority really just want to live a normal life and stop fighting. This is especially true in Afghanistan, where many having experienced 30 years of war already.

We should be supporting efforts such as the Afghanistan National Independent Peace and Reconciliation Commission - http://www.pts.af. Reconciliation instead of fighting, don't you think?

Afghan Women Rally Against Oppressive Law

2009-04-14T22:41:09Z

Just received a statement from Human Rights Watch saying "the government of Afghanistan should listen to the Afghan women who are planning to hold a protest on April 15, 2009, at great personal risk, and repeal or reform the Shia Personal Status law."

(Image: Afghan teacher. © Advocacy Project via flickr)
]]>
OneWorld reported earlier this month on a new law signed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that would severely limit rights for women members of the Shia population in the country. Writing before the law was even published, the Feminist Majority Foundation said the new law was believed to restrict women from leaving their homes, working, going to school, or obtaining medical care without their husbands' permission. It also would grant child custody only to men and prohibit women from refusing their husbands sex.

Many believed Karzai agreed to the law in order to win votes from a conservative swing voting bloc in upcoming elections. Shia make up about 10 percent of the country's population.

Now Human Rights Watch is urging Karzai to take heed as women take to the streets tomorrow. The group has called on Karzai to repeal or reform the law. Karzai's handling of the law has raised serious concerns about his priorities ahead of potential talks with the Taliban.

Here's what Human Rights Watch just sent us [excerpts]:

The government of Afghanistan should listen to the Afghan women who are planning to hold a protest on April 15, 2009, at great personal risk, and repeal or reform the Shia Personal Status law, Human Rights Watch said today....

"President Karzai should not sacrifice women for short-term political deal-making," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "He is playing with fire. How will he be able to refuse demands for similar discriminatory laws from other communities?"

Women in parliament complained that the law was rushed through with the help of several prominent Shia leaders. Despite calls from women's rights advocates not to sign the law, President Hamid Karzai signed it in an apparent attempt to garner political support from powerful political factions in Afghanistan.

The provisions of the Shia Personal Status Law directly contradict the Afghan constitution, which bans any kind of discrimination and distinction between citizens of Afghanistan. Article 22 states that men and women "have equal rights and duties before the law." The law also contravenes the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, to which Afghanistan is a state party.

"All that Afghan women want is to be free, this is what we are demonstrating for," one Afghan activist helping to organize the protest told Human Rights Watch. "This law is ridiculous, women cannot believe it is real. It tries to take away our freedoms, so we have to speak out against it."

While Karzai has asked the Ministry of Justice to review the law, Human Rights Watch is concerned that the review will not be independent because those leading the process in the Ministry of Justice are from a conservative Shia background. Human Rights Watch welcomed the strong concerns about the law expressed by many other governments, including the US, the UK, France, Italy, and Canada, as well as NATO, but said that they need to keep the pressure on to make the necessary changes in the law and ensure the rights of women more generally....

Many activists who have spoken out against the law have received threats. The fears of women activists have been compounded by the killing this week of a prominent women's rights campaigner and local councillor, Sitara Achakzai, who was shot dead in Kandahar after receiving death threats.

Civil society activists have told Human Rights Watch that the government's handling of the Shia law leaves them even more concerned about plans by the Karzai government to enter into talks with the Taliban.

"Any deals with the Taliban and other fundamentalist groups should not be at the expense of women's rights," said Adams. "What small gains that have been won by women in Afghanistan must not be up for negotiation."

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Jeffrey Allen is managing editor for OneWorld.net in the United States. OneWorld.net publishes news and information about global affairs from the perspectives of people living the issues everyday, drawing on content produced largely by non-profit organizations working with affected populations around the world.