In the second of a five-part series from Afghanistan, MARY FITZGERALD, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, reports from Kabul on fears that the victories which Afghan women have won since 2001 are being steadily eroded
THE ONCE livid scars on Shista’s nose are beginning to fade, but her constant fidgeting and unwillingness to look anywhere but the floor betray psychological wounds that will take far longer to heal.
Shista, not her real name, but one – meaning beautiful in Pashtu – which she requests to protect her identity, was 15 when her husband cut off her nose and an ear while she slept. He was 30 years older than her, she says, and wanted to avenge a dispute he had with her father over money.
Shista has undergone six operations and will require more. Her home now is one of a handful of women’s shelters in Kabul. Her closest friend, Mina, is also there – a young woman who has lived there for five years since her father discovered she had fallen in love with an unsuitable boy.
Thirteen people, including the boy and Mina’s grandmother, have been killed in the ensuing feud. “So many times I have thought of killing myself too,” Mina says. “My family will never accept me again. This life has no meaning for me.” The other residents of the shelter, a nondescript building surrounded by high walls with coils of barbed wire – its location a secret to prevent enraged relatives from finding the women – tell harrowing tales of domestic violence, forced marriage and other abuses.
Their stories make up only a tiny proportion of a far wider phenomenon, as the majority of victims are too ashamed to seek help, says Mary Akrami, director of the Afghan Women Skills Development Centre (AWSDC), who opened the first women’s shelter in Afghanistan six years ago.
Despite some progress on women’s rights since the Taliban regime was overthrown in 2001 – Afghanistan now has a ministry of women’s affairs, constitutional protections against abuse and a quota system that reserves a quarter of parliamentary seats for women – activists like Akrami say there is a long way to go. The honour-bound obligation for men to defend zan, zamin and zar (women, gold and land) still largely defines the dynamics of what remains a deeply patriarchal and profoundly conservative society.
While in theory women now have the same rights as men to work, vote and go to school, in rural Afghanistan, where the majority live, traditional mores often prove more powerful than the rule of law, and social and psychological pressures weigh heavily.
In Kabul, uniformed school girls can be seen on the city’s streets, along with women who shun the burka in favour of loosely tied headscarves, and the odd female driver. However, for most women in the countryside, often treated as little more than a commodity to be bartered, sold or fought over, life has not changed much in the past eight years.
The women at the AWSDC shelter, a project supported by Trócaire, have fled mostly from the villages and hamlets of rural Afghanistan. “In rural areas women are very seldom allowed outdoors,” says Martina Lordan, Trócaire’s country director. “They are very often subject to extreme violence, with little recourse to protection and legal assistance.”
The picture conjured up by aid agency figures is grim: 87 per cent of Afghan women are illiterate, and only 30 per cent of girls have access to education; one in three Afghan women is subject to physical, psychological or sexual violence; the average life expectancy for women is 44, and as many as 80 per cent of women endure forced marriages. In 2007 a law banning marriage for girls under 16 was passed, but advocates say most Afghans are not even aware that it exists, and marriages between girls as young as six and much older men still take place.
Thousands of desperate women have resorted to suicide, many by dousing themselves with cooking fuel and setting themselves on fire, a trend that gives Afghanistan the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world with a higher suicide rate among women than men.
“Are the women of my country so fed up that they would rather die than live?” asks Malalai Joya, a young outspoken female MP who has survived four assassination attempts by those who wish to silence her criticisms of the status quo. “The situation of women here is as tragic as it was under the Taliban,” she sighs.
Joya is one of a small but growing number of Afghan women who defy traditional gender roles by working as parliamentarians, teachers, doctors and journalists, or running businesses and NGOs. Two women are running in August’s presidential elections. But taking part in public life often carries a price – many of these women routinely experience threats and intimidation.
Female students and working women have proved some of the easiest targets for militants, and the resurgent Taliban regularly attacks projects and schools run for or by women. A number of high-profile women have been assassinated.
Last year, gunmen shot dead Malalai Kakar, Afghanistan’s highest ranking female police officer, a formidable woman who, despite being only five feet tall, was known to beat men who were abusing their wives.
A month ago, Sitara Achikzai, a provincial legislator in Kandahar, the southern city considered the Taliban’s spiritual birthplace, was killed outside her home by several men on motorcycles. Last November, unknown attackers sprayed acid on female students in front of their school in Kandahar.
As the Taliban makes strides and the country’s embattled president Hamid Karzai courts hardliners, many of whom share the Taliban’s ideas about women, to ensure his re-election later this year, there are real fears that the victories – large and small – which Afghan women have gained since 2001 could be steadily eroded.
Last month, the introduction of a new law relating to women from the Shia minority – who make up about 10 per cent of the population – caused considerable unease and prompted one of the biggest street demonstrations by women that Kabul has ever witnessed.
The legislation, which has been interpreted as legalising rape within marriage, also restricts Shia wives from venturing outside the home without their husband’s permission. Female parliamentarian Humaira Namati decried the law as “worse than during the Taliban”. Later, bowing to domestic and international outrage, Karzai ordered a review of the bill, which is where it now stands.
“We fear that if today they bring [in] this law for Shia women, then tomorrow Sunni men may say they want it for Sunni women too,” says Mary Akrami, who was one of several activists to raise concerns about the statute at a recent meeting with the president.
There is also trepidation over what might transpire following efforts to reach a reconciliation between the government and the Taliban.
Many women activists say they feel increasingly vulnerable as international support grows for some form of engagement with the very people who imposed severe limits on women’s freedom when they ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001.
“We have many concerns about this,” says Noor Marjan of AWSDC. “The country will regress if women’s rights are not respected in such deals with the Taliban. The compromise must not be made on our rights. Women must not pay the price for peace.”
This series was supported with a grant from the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund run by Irish Aid