The Hindu Business Line : Afghan women still at receiving end

On April 23, Reuters reported the first public stoning to death of Amina, 29-year-old married Afghan woman in a region west of Faizabad, the provincial capital of Badakshan. She was accused of adultery by her husband who returned from Iran after five years.

What was worse was that the public stoning, reportedly the first after Hamid Karzai was installed in power, was ordered by a district court, confirming fears expressed by women's organisations like the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) that Afghanistan has to go a long, long way in restoring women's rights. Incidentally, the man with whom the woman was alleged to have an extramarital relationship was released after 100 lashes!

Close on the heels of the public stoning of Amina, which has stunned the international community engaged in development work in Afghanistan, comes the report of the gruesome killing of three Afghan women, who were working for NGOs, in the Baghlan region. A local Afghanistan English newspaper - Daily Outlook - reported that the police had found the bodies of the three women piled on top of each other in a ditch, with a letter warning: "Other women working for NGOs will suffer the same fate."

While the directorate of women's affairs and human rights in Baghlan condemned the murder and the district administration promised to find and punish the criminals, women's organisations are both sceptical and outraged. The daily quoted 25-year-old Marzia, who works with an NGO, saying, "How long can we afford to be silent in the face of the prevailing situation? If such crimes continue unabated, we will either have to die or quit our jobs from which we earn our bread and butter."

Commenting on the gender situation in Afghanistan, Parveen, an Afghan RAWA activist based in Kabul, feels that even though "some change for the better has taken place on the gender front after the fall of the Taliban, it is not enough and much more needs to be done". Her biggest fear is that the liberal stance taken by the Karzai administration is more due to "pressure from the US. Many women are fearful that several top people in the Government, including some of the senior most ministers are fundamentalist at heart. Right now they are just paying lip service to issues such as women's emancipation, but many Afghan men still force their women to wear the burqa; there is a lot of domestic violence and the woman has no chance to lodge a complaint against any form of violence at home."

She adds that there is an overwhelming number of women in Afghanistan today who have no access to education, no jobs and no houses. RAWA is also apprehensive about the topmost judiciary of the country and say that most of them really believe that a woman can never be equal to men, and that her real place is the home and she has no role in the public domain. What is worse is, RAWA activists point out, that some of the top judges have been handpicked by Karzai.

Jean Mazurelle, Country Manager of the World Bank in Afghanistan, concedes that the country has a long way to go in improving the gender situation, as well as other development parameters like health care, education, safe drinking water and sanitation, better roads, electricity supply, etc. But on the gender front, "we from the international community will have to tread lightly, because if westerners are seen as spoiling their culture, then I'm afraid there will be a severe backlash."

But it is heartening to see the young and pretty Mehriya Walizada manning the front desk of the World Bank office in Kabul. A couple of years after the Soviet invasion she and her family left Kabul and settled down in Peshawar. They had sufficient money to buy a house in Pakistan and "for 14 years I studied in a good school in Peshawar." Two years ago they returned to Kabul "which we love, and last year I got this job; where I work as an office assistant, handling office correspondence, answering telephone calls, etc; the work is sometimes too much, but I'm very happy here," says the woman dressed elegantly in a Kashmiri embroidered top that she picked up in Dubai and a pleated white long skirt which "I bought in Delhi, which we visited on our way to Bangkok for a training course."

She too feels that the country has to "do a lot to improve the lot of women in the provinces; in Kabul, its okay to come out and work, but the women in the provinces face all kinds of threats," she says.

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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