When we entered Afghanistan, we were supposed to have a passport photo to give to the police at the airport so that they could make an identity card for us. To have for what...exactly? No one had an answer. It is one of those details that seemed so superfluous, it never got locked into my brain, nor into the brains of two other members of our delegation. By Saturday, our failure to have identity cards was making our guide so uncomfortable that he insisted upon taking us to have our photos taken; then go to police headquarters to have our identity cards made. We chose to see it as an adventure.
To say there are mixed messages about women in Afghanistan is to engage in the most extreme understatement. The walls and windows of the photo shop were covered with photos of scantily clad, provocatively dressed women and young girls. No scarves; no burkas. Not a lot of clothes either. Lots of mammary glands and make-up. Imagine looking out the window with those photos in your peripheral vision to the burka-clad women outside. There are some things my brain just balks at trying to reconcile.
Our visit to police headquarters turned out to be a rather amusing exercise. They were very serious about what we could bring in except when they weren't. No cameras if the person checking you sees one after opening and closing your bag four times. If the person checking you doesn't see the one in your hand, you get to take it in with you. We were escorted into a little room where thousands of identity cards were being put into hundreds of piles. Somehow the little gnome doing the sorting knew which pile on which to put which card. Each card required a great deal of contemplation. Fascinating. I took photos. No one there seemed to mind. We were handed our useless identity cards and off we went.
We soon met up with the rest of our group at the headquarters of Roz ("The Day") Magazine, a relatively new publication funded by Elle Magazine. Its articles cover such issues as the law, fashion, cooking, civil society--and the lack of it. The hope in publishing this magazine is to "help educate women and teach them how to help each other." If only they had the money to buy the magazine they probably can't read or keep in a place where it won't be found by the man in the house.
Once again, security was the main focus of interest for the women working there. They want the Afghan security forces trained and funded well enough so that they can function reliably as a counter to the Taliban. Until then, women cannot hope to both work and feel safe; universal education will remain a distant dream.
Back at the UN offices, two more amazingly courageous women were waiting for us. Each had been a leader in the demonstration against President Karzai's signing of the Shia Personal Status Law. They were both no more than 30 yet had the presence of women much older and more experienced. Razia Arifi is the Communications Manager of Afghan Mothers for Peace and Shakila Haidari, a nurse now, was a student at the time of the demonstration.
Shakila had a gut feeling that there was something untoward about the law. Only 10-15% of Afghanistan is Shia. It was impossible to get any information about the law and the media never published anything about the effects it would have on women. Ayatollah Mosheni, a warlord and a mullah, has a TV channel that was wildly in favor of the law, claiming that without it, Islam is in danger. Shakila finally found a lawyer who was willing to conduct a workshop at her university to explain the law.
She was horrified. But it was not until Mosheni announced on his TV station that the law could never be changed that she realized she had to do something. Though terrified, the 300 women held their ground, waving signs saying that the women of Afghanistan do not want Shia law; they want equality. Had the police and many journalists not been at the demonstration, there would have been bloodshed. The experience changed her life. She now deeply believes that there is power in having women connect with each other.
After the demonstration, Mosheni's thugs attacked a girls' high school with stones and guns, claiming that it was teaching Christianity. The real reason was that one of the demonstrators taught in the high school and thugs wanted to maximize their intimidation of her and the young women she teaches.
It would be difficult to imagine two less threatening looking women but with their nerves of steel and their unswerving determination to bring social justice to all the people of Afghanistan, they faced that mob of a thousand stone-throwing angry men and did not back down. In fact, they are looking fearlessly forward to more demonstrations. Out of their experience, they formed Afghan Women's Awareness, an organization to keep the demonstrators connected and ready to act again.
The world-wide attention brought by the demonstration forced President Karzai to meet with some of the women, promising to form a commission to remedy the law. No women were allowed to attend the meetings and the Minister of Justice would not allow them to see the commission's findings. The law is still on the books. Karzai--our man in Kabul.
Shakila and Razia desperately want women to have better access to education, which now can only be had with the permission of a man. Even though both wanted more money for women's education and economic development, they see the money spent on foreign occupation as necessary to protect them from the Taliban. It is hard for them to see that life does not have to be a zero sum game.
That said, they both resent the huge footprint of the foreign occupation. Massive security for the US Embassy and Camp Eggers, with their high concrete walls topped with barbed wire, serve to alienate Afghans and broadcast the fact that there is no trust between the occupiers and the occupied. They do not see how Afghanistan can move forward in the absence of trust.
I want President Obama to ask President Karzai publicly, "Where are the women?"
To no avail, some of us tried asking Mahmoud Karzai that very same question at dinner. Mahmoud, the President's older brother, had invited our intrepid troop to dine at his home. Once past his guards, we were surprised to see how modest his home is. In fact, it was bare bones, monochromatic and understated. His wife, Wazhma, was warm and welcoming and dressed as if she had just walked out of an office in the US. Well--she almost had. She and her husband had been living in the US for decades. Their children still live here.
Needless to say, when his brother became President, Mahmoud saw an opportunity to leave his modest US restaurants behind and make some headway in Afghanistan. Not that he prospers from his connections or anything. He insists that he does not.
Unlike our previous dinners, there were no Ministers nor politicians. Just a lot of "contractors." And the ever-present Haidari, of course. There is something about us he apparently likes.
Mahmoud was pretty clear that the plight of women is not on his radar. Getting a read on his ability to effect change for women was what lead me to hang out with Wazhma, who literally had just arrived that day to live again in Afghanistan. She made no excuses for her lack of enthusiasm for what lies ahead for her. But watch out Afghanistan if she holds sway! We can only hope.