October 19, 2001
The Rifle and the Veil
By JAN GOODWIN and JESSICA NEUWIRTH
Anyone who has paid attention to the situation of women in
Afghanistan should not have been surprised to learn that the
Taliban are complicit in terrorism. When radical Muslim movements
are on the rise, women are the canaries in the mines. The very
visible repression of forced veiling and loss of hard-won freedoms
coexists naturally with a general disrespect for human rights. This
repression of women is not about religion; it is a political tool
for achieving and consolidating power.
Sher Abbas Stanakzai, then the Taliban regime's deputy foreign
minister, admitted as much in a 1997 interview. "Our current
restrictions of women are necessary in order to bring the Afghan
people under control," he said. "We need these restrictions until
people learn to obey the Taliban."
In the same way that many Islamic extremist crusades use the
oppression of women to help them gain control over wider
populations, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden are now employing the
tactics of terrorism to gain control.
The Taliban did not start the oppression of Afghan women, nor have
they been its only practitioners.
In 1989, Arab militants working with the Afghan resistance to the
Soviet Union based in Peshawar, Pakistan — and helping to finance
the resistance fighters — issued a fatwa, or religious ruling,
stating that Afghan women would be killed if they worked for
humanitarian organizations. At that time, a third of the Afghan
population of 15 million were displaced from their homes, and many
were heavily dependent on humanitarian groups for food and other
necessities. Among the 3.5 million of these refugees who were then
living in Pakistan, many were war widows supporting their families
by
working for the aid groups. After the fatwa, Afghan women going to
work were shot at and several were murdered. Some international aid
groups promptly stopped employing Afghan women, and though many
women were infuriated, most complied after being intimidated by the
violent attacks. Soon afterward, Another edict in Peshawar forbade
Afghan women to "walk with pride" or walk in the middle of the
street and said they must wear the hijab, the Arab black head and
body covering and half-face veil. Again, most women felt they had
no choice but to comply.
In 1990, a fatwa from Afghan leaders in Peshawar decreed that women
should not attend schools or become educated, and that if they did,
the Islamic movement would meet with failure. The document measured
2 feet by 3 feet to accommodate the signatures of about 200 mullahs
and political leaders representing the majority of the seven main
mujahedeen parties of Afghanistan. The leading school for Afghan
girls in Peshawar, where many Afghan refugees still lived, was
sprayed with Kalashnikov gunfire. It closed for months, and its
principal was forced into hiding.
When an alliance of mujahedeen groups took over in Kabul in 1992,
it forced women out of news broadcasting and government ministry
jobs and required them to wear veils. But it was the Taliban who
institutionalized the total oppression of women after Kabul fell to
them four years later, and who required the total coverage of the
now familiar burqa.
Now, as Afghans, Pakistanis and Americans look to the future of
Afghanistan, most plans call for a broad-based new government
giving representation to all of Afghanistan's ethnic groups and
major political parties, including the Taliban. No one, however,
has called for the participation of women, even though women, after
many years of war, now almost certainly make up the majority of the
adult Afghan population.
Afghan women gradually gained rights in the first decades of the
20th century. Women helped write their country's Constitution in
1964. They served in parliament and the cabinet and were diplomats,
academics, professionals, judges and even army generals. All of
this happened well before the Soviets arrived in 1979, with their
much-touted claim of liberating Afghan women.
Many of the forces now opposing the Taliban include signatories of
the later fatwas that deprived Afghan women of their rights.
History is repeating itself.
Any political process that moves forward without the representation
and participation of women will undermine any chances that the
principles of democracy and human rights will take hold in
Afghanistan. It will be the first clue that little has
changed.
Jan Goodwin is author of "Price of Honor," a book on women and
Islamic extremism. Jessica Neuwirth is president of Equality Now,
an international women's rights group.
Copyright 2001
The New York Times Company