Experts say oppression of Afghan rural women remains heavy

By Stephen Kaufman
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad says he is encouraged by the January adoption of Afghanistan's new constitution, which declares men and women to have equal rights. He describes the constitutional article calling for an Afghan parliament with a quota of 25 percent women members as "a revolution."

In a February 25 interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), he said some elders and religious leaders are publicly calling for women's registration and participation in the election.

Khalilzad said it was in the interest of every region of Afghanistan to allow both men and women to participate in the political process. "[A]ny region which does not allow women to participate in the election will lose its weight in the political future of Afghanistan and I think all regions know their interests," he said.

Masuda Sultan of the New York-based advocacy group Women for Afghan Women said although the vast majority of Afghan women are illiterate, they are capable of advancing women's rights.

"The amazing thing is that they may be illiterate, they may not know what constitution means, but they know what their rights are. They know they're not supposed to be forced into marriage, they know they're not supposed to be sold, they know that their daughters shouldn't suffer abuse," she said at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington February 10.

"If they know what mechanism they can use to get there, they will. It just needs to be a mechanism that can talk to them, that can engage them," she said. "It just takes a little more effort."

Sultan said she was concerned over legal cases in some rural areas of the country, where most legal authorities have little or no schooling in Afghan civil law.

"[J]udges are ruling left and right, whatever they decide. They're taking bribes, they're marrying the women that are coming to them for help. It's chaos," she said.

In a recent interview with the Washington File, Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United States Said Tayeb Jawad acknowledged Afghanistan's need for judicial reforms and better training for the country's judges. Those concerns, he said, are a result of Afghanistan's need to rebuild its legal institutions.

The Afghan ambassador said his country is engaged in a national institution building program with goal of seeing that "qualified Afghans occupy every position in the administration in Afghanistan, including the judicial branch."

Atiq Sarwari, of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute, said that the many obstacles standing in the way of true women's equality, including a resurgence of Taliban activists and women's illiteracy rates, will ensure that Afghanistan remains "a traditional society for a long time to come."

However, "there is also some hope on the horizon," he said. Comparing national data on women's registration for Afghanistan's upcoming elections, he found that while the conflict-ridden southern and eastern provinces showed the lowest percentage of registered women, the northwestern province of Herat, a "most conservative place," boasted 33 percent rate of registered women voters, above the national average of 22 percent.

"The bottom line," he concluded, "is where there is ... peace, prosperity, commitment and resources available, there will be hope for a good implementation of some of these women's rights in the constitution."

Masuda Sultan said that when measuring the status of Afghan women, outsiders should not view the relative freedom of women in Kabul as typical.

Sultan said many of the Taliban-era bans on women's freedoms of movement, education, marriage, and employment had been put into law and implemented in the country, not only by the Taliban, but also by warlords of the former Northern Alliance.

Particularly in rural areas, Afghanistan's newly established independent human rights commission will need to intervene with local authorities and "work with cultural issues that haven't quite been addressed yet," she said.

"My experience from Kandahar is that my mother always wore a burka [full body covering], she never went to school, she is illiterate in her own language ... and she is more representative of the population of Afghanistan than the women who talk about life in Kabul," she said.

"[E]ven the women who know that Islam encourages and allows women to be educated, [know] it's the culture that stands in the way," said Sultan.

Most non-governmental and humanitarian aid agencies in Afghanistan do not operate outside the capital, Kabul, because of security concerns, she said.

However, a few are meeting the challenge of helping women in the provinces by reaching out to those who can't leave their homes and providing employment projects, such as embroidery, as well as health care, and education.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)