[ALBSA-Info] NYTimes.com Article: The Rifle and the Veil

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The Rifle and the Veil

October 19, 2001 

By JAN GOODWIN and JESSICA NEUWIRTH


 

Anyone who has paid attention to the situation of women in
Afghanistan should not have been surprised to learn that
the Taliban are complicit in terrorism. When radical Muslim
movements are on the rise, women are the canaries in the
mines. The very visible repression of forced veiling and
loss of hard-won freedoms coexists naturally with a general
disrespect for human rights. This repression of women is
not about religion; it is a political tool for achieving
and consolidating power. 

Sher Abbas Stanakzai, then the Taliban regime's deputy
foreign minister, admitted as much in a 1997 interview.
"Our current restrictions of women are necessary in order
to bring the Afghan people under control," he said. "We
need these restrictions until people learn to obey the
Taliban." 

In the same way that many Islamic extremist crusades use
the oppression of women to help them gain control over
wider populations, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden are now
employing the tactics of terrorism to gain control. 

The Taliban did not start the oppression of Afghan women,
nor have they been its only practitioners. 

In 1989, Arab militants working with the Afghan resistance
to the Soviet Union based in Peshawar, Pakistan - and
helping to finance the resistance fighters - issued a
fatwa, or religious ruling, stating that Afghan women would
be killed if they worked for humanitarian organizations. At
that time, a third of the Afghan population of 15 million
were displaced from their homes, and many were heavily
dependent on humanitarian groups for food and other
necessities. Among the 3.5 million of these refugees who
were then living in Pakistan, many were war widows
supporting their families by working for the aid groups.
After the fatwa, Afghan women going to work were shot at
and several were murdered. Some international aid groups
promptly stopped employing Afghan women, and though many
women were infuriated, most complied after being
intimidated by the violent attacks. Soon afterward, another
edict in Peshawar forbade Afghan women to "walk with pride"
or walk in the middle of the street and said they must wear
the hijab, the Arab black head and body covering and
half-face veil. Again, most women felt they had no choice
but to comply. 

In 1990, a fatwa from Afghan leaders in Peshawar decreed
that women should not attend schools or become educated,
and that if they did, the Islamic movement would meet with
failure. The document measured 2 feet by 3 feet to
accommodate the signatures of about 200 mullahs and
political leaders representing the majority of the seven
main mujahedeen parties of Afghanistan. The leading school
for Afghan girls in Peshawar, where many Afghan refugees
still lived, was sprayed with Kalashnikov gunfire. It
closed for months, and its principal was forced into
hiding. 

When an alliance of mujahedeen groups took over in Kabul in
1992, it forced women out of news broadcasting and
government ministry jobs and required them to wear veils.
But it was the Taliban who institutionalized the total
oppression of women after Kabul fell to them four years
later, and who required the total coverage of the now
familiar burqa. 

Now, as Afghans, Pakistanis and Americans look to the
future of Afghanistan, most plans call for a broad-based
new government giving representation to all of
Afghanistan's ethnic groups and major political parties,
including the Taliban. No one, however, has called for the
participation of women, even though women, after many years
of war, now almost certainly make up the majority of the
adult Afghan population. 

Afghan women gradually gained rights in the first decades
of the 20th century. Women helped write their country's
Constitution in 1964. They served in parliament and the
cabinet and were diplomats, academics, professionals,
judges and even army generals. All of this happened well
before the Soviets arrived in 1979, with their much-touted
claim of liberating Afghan women. 

Many of the forces now opposing the Taliban include
signatories of the later fatwas that deprived Afghan women
of their rights. History is repeating itself. 

Any political process that moves forward without the
representation and participation of women will undermine
any chances that the principles of democracy and human
rights will take hold in Afghanistan. It will be the first
clue that little has changed. 


Jan Goodwin is author of "Price of Honor," a book on women
and Islamic extremism. Jessica Neuwirth is president of
Equality Now, an international women's rights group.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/19/opinion/19GOOD.html?ex=1004731521&ei=1&en=dff2a08957caa98c



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