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Afghanistan: Will Obama Listen to the Women?
With the eighth anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan nearing and a leaked letter from our general in Afghanistan that he wants another 40,000 troops before the funding for the last request of 21,000 has really been fully voted on, we felt it was time to go to Afghanistan and speak to the women. What do they want to say to President Obama?
Nine of us arrived September 27 in the midst of an election scandal and reports of kidnapped Americans being held for a ransom of Taliban prisoners. A journalist, photographer, gynecologist, teacher, attorney, retired colonel and State Department member who opened the Afghan Embassy for the United States in 2001, we CODEPINK co-founders and our token male from a partner organization, Peace Action, made up our delegation. As the plane lowered through the clouds, we entered the dusty and broken city of Kabul. We wouldn’t take a clean breath until our return eight days later to Dubai. Rumor has it that more feces pollute the air of Kabul than anywhere in the world.
Women were to be our window into this broken world, but you cannot avoid the men. At our first meeting, the deputy director assigned to speak with us from Women to Women International was a man. In shock I asked why he had such a role, the woman who was program director for the last seven years smiling at the question. “Because so much of our work is too dangerous and can’t be done by a woman.”
Of course Nader, the deputy director, was needed in his role. Just to talk to the women they must first win over the Mullah, showing him how their work comes from the teachings of the Prophet. (The United States hasn’t been that smart in their communications with the Afghans.) At least Zainab and Sweeta, Nader’s bosses, have created an intelligent, highly functioning program that works. My western prejudices were constantly being uprooted.
I left the states with a judgment about some of the women who were members of the Parliament: So many are sisters and wives of warlords or tribal leaders chosen merely to fill the required quota of women. But Member of Parliament Shinkai Karokhal, a radical feminist from Kabul, reminded me that just their existence, that they constitute 25 percent of the body, is inspiring to women throughout the country. I told her she was right, it is a big step. We didn’t have such a thing in our country. She still managed to complain that it is a ceiling and not a floor: “Many of the women have received the majority vote for their election but were stuck in a quota slot.”
One such woman is Dr. Roshanak Wardak, gynecologist and MP from the Province of Wardak. She didn’t want to be an MP, but her community came to her and begged. She had been there through the Tali (as she call them). She did nothing, spent nothing and yet was elected over 29 other candidates. She is about five feet tall and can talk for hours passionately, intelligently and forcefully without stopping, repeating herself or tiring.
“The women in the provinces are suffering. Obama sent 3,000 troops to Wardak for security, and daily there is bombardment, and deaths,” she told us. “They kill these boys I helped into the world.” She asked the military the other day about a boy and his father who were not connected to the Taliban. “Why did you kill them?” “Because they had relations with the Taliban.” “I have relations with Taliban daily, Tali are Afghans. I have to go to their weddings and funerals.” She told of a harvest, with peaceful farmers collecting potatoes, helping each other. They finish one plot and move to another. A rocket kills them. She asked the soldiers, the governor, the chief of police and none of them know why. They asked officials at the base in Kabul and are told they thought there was a rocket there. But it was a shovel. All these innocent farmers leave wives and children with no means of support.
Dr. Wardak said Obama sent soldiers to her province so they could vote, but those who went to vote were killed. “How is that protecting us?” she asked. “Take care of your people and keep them home and keep us safe. So if you want to ask me this, ‘should we send more troops or not?’ I want to ask you, with 84,000 American troops what did you do? Please compare 2009 with 2008, and compare 2008 with 2007, and 2007 with 2006. Year by year, the condition became more worse.
“With no troops our condition was much better and we were safe. The only ones suffering are the women.” Answering another question from an NGO she said, “spend the money on education for women, which is very necessary for peace.”
One afternoon we met with the women who led a protest against a law justifying marital rape that Karzai signed. These few hundred women and very few men demonstrated outside the Mosque of the Ayatollah who pushed through the law, and an angry mob poured out, screaming and throwing rocks. All these women were frightened for their lives and yet have not backed down. Some were never political before but are now creating new organizations to be stronger for the next fight.
All the women who speak out—from the MPs, to members of NGOs to those in the streets—fear for their lives, but it is not stopping them. The only women I met who told me they hadn’t received threats or felt afraid where five women journalists from the ROSE, a magazine for women on politics, culture and women’s lives. This is just weeks after they did an article about how much more women suffer from AIDS than men. Why aren’t they afraid? “We are just telling the truth, it is not political,” they told me.
When asked if they wanted more troops or the money invested in jobs, police training and infrastructure support most women choose the investment in their country. They know “military is not the answer,” which is a quote not just from them but from the director of the USAID office in Kabul. Everywhere we heard the recurrent theme, “Money for jobs, and make the Taliban obsolete with better alternatives.” And the recurrent question, “the United States is the power in this country, they pay for everything. Why can’t they do something about the corrupt government? Why can’t they hold these people responsible?”
In the last days of our trip, we joined a trialogue of women from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan discussing peace, which cannot occur without cooperation among their countries. We decided to offer a letter to Obama to bring him their voices. Members of Parliament, professors, NGO leaders, ex-ministers, and even the sister in law of Karzai signed the petition to Obama [see sidebar, “A Letter to President Obama”].
Won’t you join with them? It will take the women of the world to rise up and say militarism is not working. It will take the women of the world to force Obama and Congress to do the right thing and invest in the women instead. Militarism is a fire that is spreading across borders, and we need to find a new language. We need to meet not in rooms without windows but in the majesty of the mountains of this once beautiful country. Everyone has to be at the table. As the minister of women told us, “We have a mouth and a brain, we should talk.” Transparency, justice and real investment in the women of Afghanistan will bring peace and we need to start now.
-----
A Letter to President Obama
The delegation that went to Afghanistan to sound out Afghan women on what they wanted from the United States returned with an open letter to President Obama:
President Obama:
We, the women of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the United States, implore you to refrain from sending more United States military forces to Afghanistan.
Sending more military forces will only increase the violence and will do further harm to women and children. Instead, the funds should be redirected to improving the health, education and welfare of the Afghan people.
We encourage you to work quickly for a political solution in Afghanistan that will lead to a reconciliation process in which women will fully participate and a withdrawal of foreign military forces.
To add your name to this letter, click here.
-----This article was originally posted on the Women's Media Center.
13 Comments so far
Show All-“Why did you kill them?” “Because they had relations with the Taliban.” “I have relations with Taliban daily, Tali are Afghans. I have to go to their weddings and funerals.”
If there is anyone in the US interested in peace with the rest of the world, this is an important point to make. Anti-war Americans rarely if ever discuss who the Taliban are, let alone their goals. As for the Democrats the most they will say is that Afghanistan is "unwinnable", neglecting to mention what the fight is about or who the opponent is.
You hear often that the Americans think that they are supporting "the government" in Afghanistan and protecting Afghans from "the Talibam". of course the Afghan central government exists in name only in Kabul, and the Taliban are themselves Afghans.
So before wasting time arguing over winning and losing or about tactics and strategies of war, maybe all you need to do is educate Americans about who the mostly illiterate, religious, and tribal taliban are and describe to them the rather imaginary nature of the central government and how it exists primarily at the whim of the American occupation authority.
For this article, the name Nader was mentioned. The author should have given the full name instead of just the last name. There is already a well known Nader most of us know of, Ralph Nader.
Ummm, Jennifer,
Nader is a common first name 'elsewhere'. I think it's pretty clear that Ralph Nader is not running the women's ministry in Afghanistan. The women in the introduction to the article were identified by first name only, too.
Ok, thanks. I'm not good at foreign policy but am happy to learn. :)
There was a recent poll which said that while most Americans want out of Afghanistan, none expect that to happen. The war will simply grind pointlessly on and on and on. Obama, or whomever comes after him, will eventually encounter the Afghan version of the Tet Offensive, an enormous battle with many American casualties. What will the clueless jokers and jackasses who control the American government and military do then?
I'm an irony junkie, but some ironies are too exasperating to stomach.
There are still progressives who subscribe to the view that continued intervention in Afghanistan is mandated by "Pottery Barn" rules-- although they might not use that term.
That is, they ostensibly reject imperialism and unilateral, unjustified, excessive US hegemony military force and military presence in Afghanistan. But they insist that, nevertheless, the US is obliged to stay there for what I've been calling "Peace Corps with an attitude" nation-building.
And one of the persistent justifications from this crowd is that "we"-- the Amerikan Empire-- cannot allow Afghan women to endure the oppression of the theocratic Taliban. We must think of the WOMEN! Thus, we must remain in Afghanistan for as long as it takes to impose the Blessings of Amerikan Civilization, especially the Freedom and Equality Amerika practices so flawlessly.
I guess Jodie Evans just didn't take the time to search out these desperate throngs of oppressed Afghan women begging the US to send ever-more knights in shining armor to rescue them from the clutches of the diabolical, phallocentric Taliban.
What an outrage! Here, the nation-building pwogs just KNOW that Amerika is Part of the Solution for the emancipation of Afghan women-- but Code Pink chooses to publicize the complaint from Afghan women that Amerika is really Part of the Problem; it's like maliciously putting a deep scratch across a record of Kate Smith singing "God Bless America"!
· Yr Obd't Servant
Sioux Rose
O.S. Erudite as always, your post hides a wonderful sensitivity that you must possess. Many men don't CARE about this situation. I think the same mentality that uses a fundamental form of Christianity to push abstinence, and treat the woman's vagina like some kind of religious zone where only church-based nuptuals grant rites of passage, is eerily reflective of a similar mentality over in Afghanistan. The pro-war church types use "right to life" (denying women abortions, or their right to self-determination when it comes to biologically-based destiny) to control women, while the Taliban has its own more primitive codes. The net result is the same: denying women their rights to be who they are!
In both spiritually retarded worldviews, women's sexuality is also keynoted, and while the real issue comes down to seeing women as property, macho behaviors are framed under the guise of some form of chivalry. The males in these groups posture their actions and motives behind THAT loftier fig leaf.
I remember the sick feeling I got when Laura Bush tried to prop up her disgusting spouse by suggesting his motive for being in Afghanistan was to help, to liberate the women. Then that lie echoed across the right wing media to the effect that this glorious goal had been fulfilled. And alas! Behold! Note the little girls heading to school again.
When it was published on this site that some CIA creeps were passing out condoms to old tribal "daddios" who had just gained access to "wives" 14 years of age, the naked misogyny that bound these males in trade-offs of power (at women's expense) was shown for the obscenity that it is.
This might be a good time to break out our new weapon.
It's called the money bomb. Our bombers fly over the country and where ever they see people, a bomb is dropped that lets loose money, money, money. In this way it would be easy to keep track of how much money is dispersed and we know it will start out in the hands of the people.
Come to think of it, that might work in the US as well.
Be on the look out for the money bombers when they fly your way.
Here's a better version of our new weapon the money bomb. Let's go local on currency and see how far Washington goes. It will be harder for them to snatch and misuse our tax money for their war spending and bailing out Wall $treet.
Where's the letter written to Obama & Co that reads:
Dear President Of The United States & Whomever Else It May Concern,
Get the f**k out of my country.
No Love,
The People of Afghanistan.
- Insurgent
Was this letter used to support Obama's candidacy for the Peace Prize?
Joe
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ10Df01.html
This article is a must read on what the future can possibly hold for Afghanistan. It seems like the U.S. may ultimately let the Northern Warlords do the fighting for them, thus satisfying the hoarse cries of 'Bring The Troops Home' Liberals and Conservatives.
The Northern Warlords are a tad better than the Talibs, which really doesnt mean much in the current context of Afghanistan's situation. The Northern Warlords have been accused of brutal rapes and murder and some claim they are worse than the Taliban. They may be the only ones who can tackle the threat of the Taliban since the U.S. and NATO dont have the stomach for it.
Any which way you look at it, the future of Afghan women looks bleak, to say the least. And for this the blame rests squarely at the feet of the U.S. and Pakistan.