The world’s most forgotten women

By Phylis Collier

What happens when the full wrath of a military takeover, a police state, and a Holy War is turned against a country’s women? What happens is that any barbarism, any vengeance, is justified in the name of religion. The demons are unleashed.

The Taliban, a militant, ultra-fundamentalist Islamic group, seized power in Afghanistan in 1996 after a bloody civil war. Nearly 90% of the country, including the devastated capital, Kabul, is under its control. Before the Taliban, Afghanistan had no corner on the world’s crimes against its people. Nobody was prepared for how quickly that would change.

In a ruthless drive to achieve its image of a pure Islamic state, Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, revered by his followers as Prince of All Believers, has enforced barbaric rules supposedly based upon Islamic law. His interpretation of Islam is a radical departure from the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, but an effective religious whip to control the people. In just four years, the Taliban has sapped the country of its vitality, outlawing television, films and music, while increasing disease, illiteracy and mortality rates.

However, it is the women of Afghanistan who suffer a special fate. The Taliban has earned its place in history for instituting its own "final solution" for women: a crippling gender apartheid. For the crime of their sex, women have been placed under house arrest, stripped of their rights, their dignity and, inevitably, their desire to live.

An Afghan woman today is forced to accept a life that no woman in the western world would tolerate. Her role: to satisfy men’s sexual needs, procreate, and handle domestic affairs. She is completely deprived of an education, the right to work, and cannot leave the house without a mahram ( male relative).

It’s important to understand these are modern women, many of them doctors, teachers and civil servants who suddenly can no longer support themselves or their children. It’s forbidden for women to be treated by a male physician, yet female doctors and nurses are prohibited from practicing, making health care for women virtually non-existent. The Red Cross has pleaded with the Taliban to allow a few obstetricians to work, so that now about 10% of Afghan women have access to health care.

But there is nothing to heal the trauma of the Taliban’s psychological warfare. The windows of all homes have been painted opaque so that women cannot be seen from the outside. Women cannot wear white, the color of the Taliban flag. They cannot wear make-up or heels that make a clicking sound. They cannot sing or laugh out loud. They cannot be photographed, filmed or written about in newspapers. They cannot ride in taxis alone. They cannot shake the hand of any male who is not a mahram..

Perhaps the most well-known symbol of female oppression is the shapeless burqua. All Afghan women are forced to wear it, completely covering the body from head to toe. Sight is possible only through a three inch piece of thick mesh. Within this suffocating shroud, not even a woman’s ankles or wrists may show. The burqua is responsible for hearing and eye problems; falls and accidents are frequent, and it’s especially brutal for asthma sufferers.

When Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist, interviewed Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, she agreed to wear the burqa as a sign of respect. Moments later, she was unable to stand its confinement and threw the garment off, calling it a "medieval rag:"

So, what happens when any of these rules are broken? Women’s fingers have been cut off for wearing nail polish. They have been publicly whipped, stoned, and beaten for inadvertently showing their ankles. Punishments are carried out by the members of the Department for the Propagation of Morals and the Suppression of Vice. These rabid squads seem to appear out of nowhere, grabbing women off the streets and punishing them for showing an inch of their skin.

An Afghan woman tells of a couple on bicycles being stopped by young Taliban boys: "The woman was asked why she would break the rules and expose her ankles. ‘ I am with my husband. It is not your wish for me but his wish for me, and if he does not mind, then who are you to say?’ she asked. An older Taliban came forward.

He said, 'I will deal with this shameless woman.’ Then he shot the husband in the foot and the woman straight in the heart. He killed her, and everyone who saw it ran like crazy and the two of them were left lying on the ground."

Punishment is severe because anything female is seen as tempting a man to depart from his duties to God. Yet under Taliban rule, certain times are evidently allotted for departure, because gang-rape and other sexual crimes are every day occurrences. Women disappear from sight only to have their lifeless bodies found later. Rape is common not only against girls and women; young boys are victims as well.

There was a teacher who defied the laws and ran a school for girls. She was shot and killed in front of her husband, daughter and students. A young pregnant woman, on her way to a clinic, paused for a moment in an alleyway to lift her burqa for a breath of fresh air. She was immediately seized and viciously beaten, while pleading for her "brothers" to have mercy. She miscarried hours later at the clinic and then died.
Never in the history of the world’s most shameful moments has this type of methodical cruelty been inflicted upon women.

In November of 1999, Manhattan College gave a lecture titled "Gender Apartheid." Their statistics told the story of a different reality before the Taliban: 50% of women were educated and employed (outside the home) 60% of teachers at Kabul University were women. Fifty percent of students at Kabul University were women. Fifty percent of government workers were women. Forty percent of doctors in Kabul were women.

And the women remember. Their depression is growing and their despair is life-threatening. Many are committing suicide by swallowing laundry detergents which burn away the throat, an agonizing and slow death; yet more and more women are preferring it to the living death they suffer daily.

With their faces hidden, women’s voices have been silenced as well. A woman must ask her mahram to speak for her to a shopkeeper, because she might excite him with the sound of her voice. Women who who have lost male relatives in previous wars lose both their voices and their lifelines. International relief estimates there are close to 50,000 widows in Kabul alone. Unable to work, they’re forced to adopt one of the two professions open to them: begging and prostitution. Now women beggars litter the sidewalks, their sleeping children at their feet, while more and more succumb to the brutality and disease of brothels.

Approximately forty non-governmental organizations and UN groups are attempting to provide food and health care to women and their families. The Taliban fight this aid at every turn. A July 1997 edict limits food distribution to women who can be accompanied by a mahram. The Taliban has also looted Red Cross convoys and those of other non-government organizations. With access to aid cut off, women’s health is quickly deteriorating and they’re dying from lack of basic care.

Nobody can guess where this hatred of women will end, much less how it all began. Is it resentment of women’s strength behind the Taliban’s need to subjugate them? Is it the same fear of female mystical powers that fueled the Inquisition? Or is it a male inferiority complex built into the Taliban psyche that demands women be bullied and raped rather than risk their rejection?

Whippings, stonings and beatings are explained as "the will of God," yet the Taliban’s treatment of women is a product of a sociopathic society, not the religion of Islam. In the same way that Saudi Arabia’s law forbidding women to drive reflects that culture’s repression of women. The Koran clearly states that women are fully equal to men. Prophet Mohammed said, "The pursuit of knowledge is obligatory over every Muslim, male or female." Regarding their right to work, the Qur'an Sura 4 Verse 32 states: "And in no ways covet those things in which Allah hath bestowed His gifts more freely on some of you than on others: to men is allotted what they earn, and to women what they earn."

Ironically, the Prophet was actually an innovator, a crusader of women’s rights. He protected women with legal status, property and inheritance rights. Not only are women of Islam allowed to participate freely in public life, but they can marry and divorce whom they choose.

Deepak Chopra, in his book, "How to Know God," notes that tyranny is protection gone too far, becoming rules without mercy. The Taliban consider themselves to be not only the defenders of a purist Islamic state but also the protectors of Afghan women from vice. Physicians for Human Rights interviewed these "protected" women in Kabul, and found them severely malnourished, while 68% had been detained and physically abused during the last year.

An Afghan woman refugee told of the dark night of her soul. "Four years ago a girl who was living next door to us was raped and later another girl was stolen from our neighborhood. I was in such a bitter state of depression that I tried to kill myself a number of times. Once when I was taking my mother to the hospital and saw a Taliban whipping at the back of my sick mother while shouting abuses, I felt so appalled that I ran in front of oncoming cars, however I was stopped by people passing by and seeing my mother crying and asking me to stop. However, I don’t think I will be able to find convincing reasons for continuing this miserable and bitter life."

Even extremist Islamic groups have denounced the Taliban. The majority of Islam doesn’t support them, and the international community refuses to recognize them. But there are three countries which do: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Unfortunately, the sanctions imposed by the US and the UN which freeze Taliban assets overseas, ban their international flights and prohibit trade and other transactions with US citizens, don’t apply equal pressure on the countries helping to support them. Critics of US policy theorize it would be politically unwise to usurp an Islamic fundamentalist regime in one country, Afghanistan, while sustaining and encouraging another group in a different country, like Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the Taliban is the very group created and armed by the US in the 1980s to fight against the Soviet Union.

When the USSR occupied Afghanistan, the CIA fed millions of dollars into Pakistan to support militia forces called Mujahideen (freedom fighters). When the USSR pulled out at the end of the 1980's, the United States assumed that Afghanistan would rebuild and flourish. We left and never looked back.

Instead of peace, different factions of the Mujahideen touched off a struggle for power. The Taliban, whose name means "religious students" came out the victor. These young boys and men mainly of Afghan descent, were raised in Madrassas (strict religious schools) in Pakistan, funded by the Saudis.

The Taliban harvest a fortune from the poppy and the drug trade, with 46,000 tons of opium produced in 1999. Mullah Omar’s self-serving interpretation of Islamic law condemns the use of opium, but condones the selling of it. In reality, Islam forbids both the use and selling of any illegal drug.

While Pakistan is the Taliban’s main system of support, the biggest money comes from the petroleum industry.

UNOCAL, a California based gas company, led the Cent-Gas consortium that planned to build an oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan. The Taliban stood to gain over $100 million a year. The outcry from individuals and groups was heard the world over, and in 1998 UNOCAL aborted the deal

But other US and international groups are vying for Taliban business. Just recently TSI (a New Jersey based telecommunications firm) signed an agreement with the Taliban to install satellite based systems throughout Afghanistan. If corporate investment isn’t stopped, it will finance gender apartheid with billions of dollars.

The Taliban are still fighting The Northern Alliance, also known as the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (UIFSA). Seven political parties have entered into this alliance in order to regain control of the government. Unfortunately, the Alliance is just as treacherous as the Taliban, with an established record of human rights abuses. That’s why RAWA is fighting them both.

RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) was established in 1977 by a young Afghan woman named Meena. She tried to toughen women with her courage and get them to speak out. Her many protests and rapidly growing followers made her a formidable threat, and on February 19, 1987 she paid with her life. No one has been tried for her murder, but Meena has been martyred in death and her legacy is stronger than ever. Although RAWA is now centered out of Pakistan because of death threats, they continue their fight, building schools and health centers in refugee camps for thousands of families.

RAWA also provides more than hope for women’s education. With schools for girls closed or turned into religious seminaries, and the universities denying them access, education must be smuggled into homes by teachers brave enough to risk it. By gaining support worldwide through its website, RAWA is able to get this home schooling within Afghanistan. Their hope is that the UN will use the Taliban’s hunger for international recognition to negotiate human rights legislation. Then, perhaps, actual intervention will be possible.

"Sanctions will not severely hamper Taliban activities," a RAWA spokesperson cautions, "because the Taliban has long been looting Afghanistan of its wealth and ammunition, stockpiling it for just such a day. It is the people who will suffer most from UN sanctions. If the UN or countries such as the USA really seek a solution to Afghanistan's problems, they must start by disarming the Taliban. We ask the U.N. and Mr. Bill Clinton to put these fundamentalist criminals on trial."

The price of wheat flour, staple to the Afghan diet, has indeed doubled and the local currency afghani has lost 10 percent of its value since the sanctions were announced last October. Flour is now too expensive for most in Kabul, where a laborer might be lucky enough to earn a dollar a day and children gather leaves as fuel.

Meanwhile, outrage grows. One of the loudest voices in the United States is that of the Feminist Majority Foundation. Its Chairwoman, Mavis Leno, wife of Jay Leno, has created vital publicity with a "Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan" campaign that has networked more than 130 leading human rights and women’s organizations in the US and around the world. It’s also helped to raise world consciousness and pressure the US and UN to exercise the full strength of their powers.

For now, there’s only the grim prospect of future generations of Afghan women without education or basic health care; women who will have no memory of what it was like to dance to music, laugh out loud, or feel the warm sun upon their skin.

A young Afghan girls asks, "If I am not sleeping and this is not a nightmare then why the people in peaceful countries are not shocked by the crimes the fundamentalists commit in our country?"

At the exit of Dachau concentration camp in Germany, there is a sign that promises, "Never Again!" And yet, until the international community joins forces to expel the Taliban, Afghan women will continue to suffer, shut off from the world by barbed wire, as invisible as the women themselves.

For more information: Revolutionary Association of The Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)<www.rawa.org>, or Feminist Majority Foundation, <www.feminist.org> .

Banzer, the siege, and the market in Bolivia

By Alejandro Campos

La Paz, Bolivia, Apr. 21 (IPS)-- The end of the government-declared state of siege in Bolivia does not necessarily ensure a definitive social peace in a country whose people have accumulated 15 years of frustration with the market economy model, say political observers.

One military and four civilian deaths, 88 people wounded, 21 union leaders arrested and various governmental defeats is the balance after 13 days of siege, lifted Thursday by president Hugo Banzer, though it had originally been set to last 90 days.

Though all forms of protest had been banned, streets and roads were occupied by demonstrators throughout the 13-day siege.

The declaration of a state of siege was Banzer’s lowest point in his two years and eight months in the presidency, because not only was it incapable of containing the protests, it deepened existing conflicts and created a general feeling of contempt for the government.

The use of force only helped the sectors caught up in the conflict entrench their demands, and contributed to widespread criticism of Banzer’s government, even from some of its political allies.

The government lifted the state of siege after the Catholic Church and trade unions stepped up pressures and when it became apparent that a foreign debt relief program financed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank was in jeopardy. The funding was conditioned on government dialogue with civil society in defining how the resources would be used.

In Bolivia’s 15 years of democracy, the three governments preceding Banzer’s implemented a state of siege five times. In each of those cases, the siege lasted the three months established by the Constitution, but none of them resulted in human deaths.

The 13 days of violence seem to have left warnings, not lessons. Felipe Quispe Huanca, leader of the Union Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia, which organized the largest blockade of national roads in the last two decades, warned that recent events were just a rehearsal.

The peasants have made their stand, an indigenous leader known as Mallku (condor in his native Aymara language) told the press, adding that what occurred this month are the first steps towards taking political power.

Here the Indian question is not an issue of land, it is about power, he announced.

During the state of siege, the peasants won a battle with the government over the controversial Water Act, a law that had forced them to pay for using water from natural springs and wells.

Political analysts see the failed siege and the public’s discontent as an expression of disenchantment with a democracy that is limited to the electoral sphere.

Such as it stands, democracy is reaching its limits, warned Erick Torrico, an expert at the Simon Bolivar Andean University, of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN). The content of recent demonstrations responds to a situation that reveals the inadequacies of a merely (electoral) democracy.

The voting ritual no longer satisfies and the siege is a reflection of the dangerous and unproductive hardening of the system, according to Torrico.

The population’s patience has reached its limits, agreed sociologist Maria Teresa Segada, a specialist from the government-run Higher University of San Andres.

When the neoliberal economic model was implemented in 1985, government leaders asked the Bolivian people for patience and sacrifice, but now, 15 years later, patience has run out because the model did not meet their expectations, Segada said.

Analyst Rafael Archondo predicted that what occurred during the two-week siege, which was generally disobeyed by the public, is the beginning of the end for government models dictated by the Supreme Decree 21060, which in 1985 initiated the full implementation of the market economy in Bolivia.

To resolve this conflictive situation, the nation’s democracy must move beyond being an elected dictatorship and become an authentic process of co-leadership in the social and political spheres, where there is more society and less State, concluded Archondo.