If Afghanistan has produced a surprise of late, it is the vocal and fearless entry of its women into the traditional male domain of politics.
With the continuing discoveries of weapons, violent clashes between warlords, and politics so confused that the description byzantine barely catches the complexity, it can sometimes seem to outsiders that little progress is being made in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
For women, that is not the case. Just six months ago, under the Taliban, they were not allowed to leave the house uncovered, or receive education beyond the age of 8. Now they have found their voice — to the joy of many, and the consternation of some.
“Afghanistan has come out of a very dark and terrible graveyard,” said Dr. Nazdama, assistant director of the hospital in the town of Gardez, southeast of Kabul. Nazdama, who uses just one name, was one of the Pashtun women who last month were delegates to the grand council, or loya jirga, which marked the firm emergence of women in Afghan politics.
Nazdama was one of 200 women who joined 1,400 male delegates and determinedly used the platform to show Afghanistan that women want peace, not war; education, not guns; construction and jobs, not poverty.
Getting airtime
“The last nine or 10 days have changed things a lot in the whole of Afghanistan,” said Nazdama, referring to the effect of speeches by women broadcast over national television and radio.
“Six months ago you would not have been able to stand here and talk,” she said to a female reporter. “Nor could I have done so.”
A group of female delegates berated a group of warlords and political leaders as they sat in one of the side tents the first evening, the women blaming the men for causing so much of the suffering and destruction of recent years. They fielded a female presidential candidate, and a woman was elected deputy chairwoman of the loya jirga.
`It takes time’
Despite their gains, many of the outspoken women said they felt the strong undertow of resistance to their return to public life, and pondered how far women had to go to win equal rights in their country.
Sima Samar, the interim minister of women’s affairs for the last six months, was cautious in predicting rapid change in a society where women for so long have had no voice.
“We will see the effect in a while; it takes time,” she said.
Fatiha Serour, a senior adviser on women’s issues to UN special representative Lakhdar Brahimi, said women had to coordinate better in order to be effective. She hopes that a network of 40 women who emerged from the loya jirga as clear leaders will be able to make connections across Afghanistan and work on an agenda for elections in two years.
Still, the very spectacle of women jostling with men for a microphone to make speeches from the floor at the loya jirga was a stark contrast to the disappearance of women from public life for five years under the Taliban. Women spoke, too, from the podium, and some even approached the UN press organizers to ask them to transmit more footage of female delegates.
Samar, one of two female ministers in the interim government, was elected deputy chairwoman of the loya jirga, beating a dozen male candidates in a secret ballot.
Playing with fire
Now, despite facing taunts and even implied death threats for her role and her outspokenness, she has agreed to head the new commission for human rights, a post that will bring her up against many of the most notorious commanders and warlords. “I am used to playing with fire,” she said. “Somebody has to do it.”
In the competition for the presidency, the second-place finish of 35-year-old Massouda Jalal, behind Hamid Karzai but ahead of two other men, was a genuine surprise.
“I think it has changed the mentality of people, for women not to be so weak, or like second-class citizens,” said Jalal, a pediatrician who works for the World Food Program.
“Now everyone knows that Afghan women have the right and still have the courage to be president,” said Mariah Sazawar, a journalist for the weekly newspaper Bedar, and a delegate from the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif.
“It was very important to show from the start that women want to be considered for all the highest posts,” said Fatima Gailani, the daughter of a religious leader and one of the female delegates. “It would have been more difficult if we had waited until the next elections.”
The price to be heard
The newfound visibility has come at a price. A newspaper published two days before the loya jirga began on June 11 quoted Samar as saying she did not believe in Islamic Sharia law — a misquote, she says — and called her the Salman Rushdie of Afghanistan, intimating she deserved the same death threat that the British author earned for alleged blasphemy in his work.
Days after the council concluded, she disclosed that she had received threatening notes from the floor as she presided over the proceedings.
Many other female delegates came up against milder, but no less insidious forms of opposition.
“Nine men and two women came from my province, and the men did not want us to come–they were making excuses, that for example there was not good security on the roads,” said Saleha Mirzad, a school director from Nimruz province in southwestern Afghanistan. “But we women said: `Whatever the conditions, we will go.'”
Sazawar, the journalist from Mazar-e-Sharif, was standing outside the Kabul Polytechnic compound where the loya jirga was held, lamenting its democratic shortcomings, when a policeman barged into the conversation, shouting her down. She and her female colleagues quickly moved away.
A passing male delegate, Haji Abdul Khaliq, from Helmand province, said: “In my opinion, rights should be given equally to men and women. They can do things equally. But from the Islamic point of view, women do not have the right to be a judge or president.”
Even Pir Gailani, a much revered religious leader, was accused by other delegates of trying to start a quarrel by bringing his daughters to the gathering, Fatima Gailani said.
“There is some pressure from our brothers who carry guns, but they cannot totally control us,” Gailani said. “Especially today, people spoke very strongly against warlords and guns, and they said they want educated experts in government posts. Everyone asked for that.”
