Genders 28 1998
 

Afghanistan's Forgotten Women
News and commentary.

by ROB SCHULTHEIS
Updated 1/4/99

[1] November 1997: Madeleine Albright tells a group of Afghan refugee women in Pakistan, "I will never forget you... I will do everything to help you to help your country." Today, as Taleban fundamentalist armies swarm across the Hazara tribe's homeland in Afghanistan's Central Highlands, Albright's words ring increasingly hollow, hollow and false.

[2] The 1 1/2 million Hazaras, Shi'ites in a Sunni country, Mongols among Indo-European tribes like the Pushtuns who make up 99% of Taleban's core membership, were the last bastion of women's rights in the country. Among the Hazaras you found women officials, teachers, doctors, medics, even soldiers; totally unlike life for women in Taleban-ruled territory. U.S. support for the Hazaras: nil.

[3] Amnesty International reports from the north, where other Hazaras have fallen under Taleban rule, tell of mass executions, atrocities, of women dragged away from their families never to be seen again. Albright's State Department? They are "studying the situation." The Amnesty International accounts "may be exaggerated." By the time the U.S. is through "studying" what is going on, of course, thousands more will die.

[4] I visited the Hazara heartland in central Afghanistan twice this year, both times with relief missions. Farmers' wives were attending makeshift schools in caves and mosques. The Hazaras had established a co-ed university; the head of the medical school was a woman, Dr. Rahula. In March, Hazara women celebrated the International Day of the Woman with a parade, speeches, and a march through the town of Bamiyan.

[5] At Bamiyan University, young men and women students unveiled a banner to welcome our medical relief team: "WE ARE WARMLY WELCOMING OUR RESPECTABLE AMERICAN GUESTS IN HAZARASTAN." In a women's school in a village mosque, the class smiled proudly as one student wrote in Persian on the blackboard, "Knowledge is the salvation of all nations." She wrote with a crumbling white stone; most Hazara schools were too poor to afford chalk.

[6] I also visited Taleban-ruled territory, where the picture was completely different. In the capital of Kabul, women flitted like frightened ghosts in shroudlike burkahs, contantly harassed by Taleban thugs. Women were forbidden to work, to study, to "walk loudly", in the words of one Taleban edict. A woman who dared to breastfeed her baby near the roadside east of Kabul was beaten till she died. Another woman who broke one of Taleban's myriad rules was flogged to death in front of a howling mob in a Kabul stadium.

[7] The sad part of the story is, the Taleban's misogynistic brand of Islam is foreign to Afghanistan. It is an ugly amalgam of the Wahabi cult of Saudi Arabia and a 19th century conservative Moslem movement called Deobandi that originated in India and spread into what is now Pakistan. It was imported into Afghanistan under the auspices of ISI, Pakistani military intelligence, and America's close ally Saudi Arabia, as part of a plan to colonize, take over, the country.

[8] Even worse, the United States lent and continues to lend its tacit blessing to the Taleban by doing nothing to stop them. In fact, American oil giant UNOCAL, closely tied to Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil, was hosting Taleban delegates to the U.S. and praising them in Washington at the same time the Taleban were murdering and terrorizing women in Afghanistan. And at the same time Osama bin Laden, who bombed our embassies in Africa, was living as a welcome guest of the Taleban and helping finance their takeover of Afghanistan-- a bit of incidental irony.

[9] The reason for this moral myopia? A projected UNOCAL-Delta pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, across Afghanistan, in cooperation with the Taleban, that would bring huge profits for American businessmen. Afghanistan, which sacrificed over a million people fighting against the Soviet Empire, is now viewed as nothing more than a corporate feeding-ground by American policy-makers. Just last week, Clinton's National Security Council lauded a multi-hundred million dollar deal signed between Taleban and a giant New Jersey communications corporation.

[10] Now, with the capture of the Hazarajat by Taleban, even more Afghans are dying. At least one male Afghan U.N. worker has reportedly been murdered; not coincidentally, he was working with an agency that focused on women's welfare and rights. There are reports that hundreds of Hazara civilians have been arrested and killed as well.

Film Clip:

Samantha Reynolds, a United Nations field worker in northern Afghanistan.
Requires RealVideo Player.
Note: Web congestion may stall the stream of video briefly

[11] Consider carefully the Department of State's instructions to its spokespeople regarding Taleban war crimes in Bamiyan, the Hazarajat heartland: "IF ASKED ABOUT WAR CRIMES: WE ARE AWARE OF CLAIMS THAT THE TALIBAN HAVE KILLED CIVILIANS DURING THE CAPTURE OF BAMIYAN. AT THIS POINT, WE DO NOT HAVE ANY INFORMATION THAT COULD PROVE OR DISPROVE THESE REPORTS." In the journalism business, we call this stonewalling last time I checked. It's a Brave New World in Foggy Bottom, no doubt about it.

[12] I think of the women I met in the Hazarajat: the hardworking teachers and medics, afire with idealism; the women leaders who told me proudly of how they celebrated the International Day of the Woman this March with a parade through Bamiyan; the writers who were preparing to put out a women's literary magazine, of poetry, stories, essays. Well, kiss it all goodby. It's all dead now, drowned in innocent blood and dirty oil.

Update 12/21/98.

[13] According to reports from Hazara refugees coming from Afghanistan, the Taleban have carried out widespread atrocities and massacres since they took over the Bamiyan Valley late this summer. There is no firm news about the fate of the various Hazara women's educational, medical and political groups in Bamiyan, but the Taliban continue to refuse to allow human rights observers into the country, and in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif they have committed literally thousands of murders and rapes of the city's Hazara civilians. No one in the U.S. government is doing anything to save the Hazaras or Afghan women in general.

[14] Unocal has pulled out of the pipeline deal for now, but recently American mineral/mining exploration executives visited Taleban in Kabul looking for deals.

ROB SCHULTHEIS has covered Afghanistan since 1984 for TIME, CBS,NPR, MOTHER JONES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, etc. His book on the Soviet occupation, NIGHT LETTERS, was published by Crown. He was last in Central Afghanistan, working with women's groups there, in mid-1998. He plans to travel to Iran in 1999 to work with Hazara there. His screenplay credits include work on SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET and the upcoming film QUINN'S WAY. He is currently researching a film on torture victims and trauma treatment centers around the world.

The illustrations and film clip are from a documentary by Robert Schultheis and Dean Rolley, WOMEN WITH FACES: INSIDE FREE AFGHANISTAN (1998). This documentary was made just a few months prior to the Taliban invasion of the area.

To find out how you can get involved with the campaign to stop gender apartheid, call 1-888-93WOMEN (1-888-939-6636). For news, updates and more information, go to www.feminist.org/afghan/intro.html

Copyright ©1998 Ann Kibbey. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Copyright ©1998 Ann Kibbey.
 

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