Rather than daydreaming about graduation parties and gainful employment, Beth Raboin spent much of her last semester at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington thinking of women forced to leave their jobs and schools, wear cumbersome garments that cover their entire bodies and endure beatings when their shoes squeak or when they break other rules.
It is the women of Afghanistan who have weighed heavy on Raboin’s thoughts. Before the Taliban regime took over in Afghanistan, many women there were doctors, teachers and even judges. The stripping of their freedoms and accomplishments, like something out of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has impassioned Raboin and other American students to write letters, organize rallies, sign petitions and raise money.
“It’s a blatant abuse of power that is just so over the top–we have to help,” said Raboin, 22, who recently graduated with a degree in sociology and political science. “You hear about these women who were on the same path as we are and now they are confined to their home.”
For nearly 20 years, war and related abuses have plagued Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion and subsequent occupation of the south-central Asian nation lasted from about 1979 to 1989. Following the 1992 collapse of the Soviet-based regime, a civil war began. As a result of the years of turmoil, the United Nations lists Afghanistan as one of the world’s poorest nations, with one of the highest infant and child mortality rates and millions of land mines.
In 1994 the Taliban, an ultraconservative Islamic militia, emerged and in September of 1996 took control of the capital city of Kabul. At that point the strict rules were instituted and punishments started. Many of the decrees were directly aimed at the country’s women, many of whom are war widows. Currently the Taliban, which translates as “students of Muslim religious studies,” occupy about 85 percent of Afghanistan, according to State Department information.
Under the guise of shari’a, or Muslim law, the Taliban regime forces all women to wear the burqa, a heavy, floor-length garment with a small mesh medieval-looking patch over the eyes.
Prior to the takeover, women chose how to dress, enrolled in schools and universities and were professionals in fields such as medicine and teaching, according to State Department reports. Most women and girls now are prohibited from working, attending most schools, leaving home without a close male relative and receiving medical care from most hospitals and male doctors. They also are not allowed to wear socks or shoes that are white, the color of the Taliban flag. Windows that face a public street must be covered with opaque gray paint.
Punishments for breaking Taliban rules include severe beatings, stoning, amputation and public execution without a trial or other forums for justice.
“This is blatant gender apartheid,” said Eleanor Smeal, Feminist Majority Foundation president, who says she and her staff have done months of interviews and research to verify the condition of Afghan women.
“When people say it’s not that bad for women, women can move around, I say you have to go inside and see it,” said Zohra Rasekh, a senior health researcher for the non-profit group Physicians for Human Rights. She has traveled to the region twice to collect data and interview women. “Yes, I saw women in public. I saw women walking around. They were like these bags moving around with no identity. Most of them didn’t have a male relative to go outside with, but they have to. They have to buy food. They have to take a child to the doctor. What happens is, if they get caught, they get a beating. Imagine the fear. Every second that you are out you think `I am going to get caught.’ Every second you look back in fear of the Taliban. There is someone coming in front of you and you think, `Oh my God, it’s the Taliban.’ “
On her first trip back to Afghanistan (she was born there but moved away as a child), Rasekh almost was beaten by the Taliban. She pushed her long sleeves slightly past her wrists, and one of the Taliban religious police noticed, she recalled.
“I was walking in the streets of Kabul and I saw the Taliban coming in front of me with the lash and yelling at me,” she said. “He was about to beat me. I escaped. I jumped over a wide ditch and ran. I was angry. I was humiliated. I was upset. I just felt like a criminal.”
The 35-year-old Rasekh shares her experiences when she speaks on college campuses. She has given presentations at Harvard, Columbia, Boston, Georgetown and George Washington Universities, among others. Young women react with outrage, she said.
“Young women are responsive 99 percent of the time,” she said. “They get angry. There is also a lot of interest on campus, especially (among) students of medicine and law. I always have students calling me saying they want to help. I get e-mail from them all the time.”
Electronic communication links many campus activists, serving as a fast way to trade information and draw attention to the cause.
“I don’t think people realize how interconnected students are from state to state,” said Raboin, who is on an electronic mailing list of other college women involved with the Feminist Majority’s campus movement.
A petition from a Brandeis University student made its way around the Internet earlier this year. Students all over the country report receiving the petition, and Raboin and Rasekh said it was sent back to them several times. The school’s administration closed the student’s mailbox for fear of overloading the system.
The cyber group helped Raboin and her classmates organize a walkathon in March, which raised about $900 for education programs and refugee aid. About 70 students from the campus of 2,000 participated despite the rainy, cold weather. Dozens more helped organize the 5K walk and collect 200 petition signatures.
“When we explained what the problem was, people really understood and they wanted to get involved,” said Jill Bose, a 20-year-old junior who will take Raboin’s position next year as Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance president at Illinois Wesleyan. “It brought home that your rights can be taken away, and if you have them you should use them to help others.”
Similar walks took place on at least 10 other campuses throughout the U.S., including one in New York’s Central Park sponsored by Hunter College of the City University of New York.
Education is the primary goal of most college groups. University of Chicago student Rebekah Lusk stresses that it is a necessary first step given that some say this is a cultural issue, not a human rights violation. This spring Lusk helped arrange for a speaker to talk about life in Afghanistan prior to the Taliban, and she and others staffed an information table in the quad twice a quarter.
“It’s something every person has to deal with,” she said. “I don’t think it’s cultural. They are killing them off because they are women; they are targeting a specific group.”
When Rasekh addresses public groups, she emphasizes that calling the situation a cultural choice is covering the true horror–“it’s criminal, not cultural,” she says.
As a Muslim-American who immigrated with her parents to this country from Afghanistan when she was 1, Homa Naderi shares this belief.
“The Taliban are degrading Islam and are giving it a bad name,” says Naderi, a master’s candidate at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University who speaks to college and high school students about conditions in her homeland.
Naderi brings a burqa with her when she speaks, along with her respect and knowledge of Muslim law. Although she acknowledges shari’a calls for amputation as a punishment for stealing and some other crimes when they are justly proved, she is quick to say that most Afghans are stealing only because they are desperate. If the Taliban provided food, they would not have to steal, she said.
“I could be there,” she often tells groups. “I could be forced to cover myself and stay at home, but by chance–by luck–I am here in America. I have to do something as an Afghani and as a woman.”
The images Naderi and Rasekh share illustrate the extent of the situation. Two months ago while visiting Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, Rasekh met a man who said Taliban police murdered his wife because she ran a home school for women and girls. (Rasekh will not give the names of the people she interviewed for fear of endangering them.)
“She refused (to shut her school) and denounced the Taliban,” she said. “They walked into her home and shot her point-blank in front of her husband, 1-year-old child and her 40 students.”
Still, the mental anguish may turn out to be the cruelest torture.
“The first thing they would do when I asked them a question about their health is point to their heads and say, `We are going crazy,’ ” Rasekh said. “After a while I came to expect it. `We are going nuts. What can you do to help us? I have so much pressure on my shoulders. I have to feed my children. My children are not going to school. There is no health care for me. We are afraid.’ “
Distance does little to diminish the impact of the tales for women here.
“It scares me,” said Lusk, the social sciences major at the University of Chicago. “If it happened there, it can happen anywhere.”
A SYMBOL TO RAISE MONEY, AWARENESS
Many college students have been pinning their solidarity with Afghanistan women to their jackets.
Small mesh squares, made by Afghan refugees to represent the burqa they are forced to wear, are being sold to raise money for the cause and bring awareness to the plight of Afghanistan’s oppressed women. The pale blue and lavender symbols are a project of the Feminist Majority Foundation. They cost $2 each, half of which filters back into the organization’s “Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid.” The other dollar goes directly to the individuals living in refugee camps in Pakistan.
“They don’t have anything,” said Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal. “They don’t have toothbrushes. They don’t have Kotex. They have nothing.”
Carrie Johnson, who recently completed her freshman year at Duke University, sells the swatches on her campus, in addition to organizing educational programs and other events.
“We wear them all the time; you see them all around campus,” Johnson said.
The swatches can be obtained by contacting the Feminist Majority Foundation at 1-888-93-WOMEN or www.feminist.org. Electronic postcards calling attention to the campaign, petitions and more information can be found on the Web site.
