"Liberation", Afghan-style

For the women of Afghanistan, the change in regime has just meant a different set of shackles

Rare courage: Malalai Joya

THIS is the time of the year for endings and new beginnings. But in some countries, the promise of new beginnings remains buried under the mountain of injustices that it was supposed to end. Afghanistan, around this time in 2001, had been "liberated". Women, in particular, were expected to throw off the stifling constraints imposed on them by the Taliban, including the denial of basic rights such as getting an education, for instance. They were supposed to play an important role in the newly reconstructed Afghanistan.

In 2004, when the process of writing a new Constitution before general elections was underway, the world media reported the words of that brave young woman, Malalai Joya, who took on the conservatives at the country's first Loya Jirga by challenging their preconceptions about what women can and cannot do. She was ostracised and threatened. But that failed to curb her determination. She stood for elections in 2005 and won and is now one of the many women who have been elected to the lower house of the Afghan Parliament. They have exceeded their quota of 25 per cent of the seats.

But the good news ends there. Election to high office has not changed the lives of these women MPs, or that of their sisters in the rest of the country. On the contrary, many women officials find it impossible to do what their counterparts would do in any other part of the world — travel to their constituency, meet their constituents, strategise with them how to use their position in parliament to push through changes. The insecurity that continues to surround the lives of the majority of women in Afghanistan severely constrains the ability of women politicians to move about and travel in their line of duty.

The same old scenario

Reports from Afghanistan five years since the hopes of liberation were raised suggest that while some things have changed for the better, much more has deteriorated to pre-Taliban days. And it is the women of Afghanistan who carry the burden of this state of affairs on their shoulders.

A report by Laura Natasha in The Guardian (November 28, 2006) describes movingly the price that women who speak up must pay in this "new" Afghanistan that has failed to shed its dominant old values. Women like Malalai Joya. Under constant threat from her detractors, Joya has to change her burqa, change houses and be surrounded by gun-toting security men at all times. She is unable to visit her constituency or speak freely with her constituents. In Parliament, she is constantly berated for being what she is, a woman who is also a representative of the people.

Natasha quotes her as saying, "Here there is no democracy, no security, no women's rights. When I speak in Parliament, they threaten me. In May, they beat me by throwing bottles of water at me and they shouted, `Take her and rape her'. These men who are in power, never have they apologised for their crimes that they committed in the wars, and now, with the support of the U.S., they continue with their crimes in a different way. That is why there is no fundamental change in the situation of women."

During the Taliban period, women like Joya worked against all odds to defy the ban on teaching girls. Secret schools were run. The men and women who did this would have been killed if found out. You would have expected that with the change of regime, this at least would change. That girls long denied the right to learn would now be free to go to school. Indeed, many new schools were established in the first year after the Taliban were defeated. But recent reports indicate that in many parts of the country, these schools are empty, with few girls daring to attend. Worse still, teachers are under constant threat from a resurgent Taliban and there are constant reports of teachers meeting terrible deaths for no other reason than that they are teaching girls.

No legal protection

While in India, we have finally succeeded in bringing in a law on domestic violence, in Afghanistan women have little to protect them. Political changes have not made a difference to the lives of thousands of Afghan women, who continue to be forced into marriage, and who must suffer in silence the violence inside the four walls of their homes. Those who cannot bear this are now committing suicide. As the act of suicide is considered shameful and unacceptable, such deaths go unreported. But many women, often quite young, die painfully as they douse themselves with kerosene and set themselves on fire.

Even if there had been a law against domestic violence, it would have been impossible to implement given the system of governance that prevails today in Afghanistan. This illustrates only too well that imposing systems from above without ensuring changes from below ends up achieving very little in terms of real liberation for the most oppressed in such societies, the women. Yet those who play geopolitical games believe that manipulating the leadership at the top will create new democratic societies. As we end 2006, we do not need better illustrations of the falseness of such beliefs than the situation in Afghanistan, and in Iraq. For the women in both these countries, "liberation" only means a new set of shackles.

Email the writer: ksharma@thehindu.co.in