Afghanistan: On the road to women's rights, one step at a time

From RFE/RL Afghanistan Report Volume 2, Number 35
SPECIAL FEATURE By Isabelle Laughlin

In a report released this week on the status of women in Afghanistan, Amnesty International (AI) presented what for many in the West has become a depressingly routine litany of horrors Afghan women continue to face: rape, domestic violence, forced underage marriage, chastity checks, even so-called honor killings -- not to mention the less menacing, but not less damaging, informal prohibitions on attending school, working outside the home, and shedding the burqa.

Published on 6 October, one day before the two-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion to drive out the Taliban regime, the AI report declared that "nearly two years on, discrimination, violence and insecurity remain rife, despite promises by world leaders, including [U.S.] President [George W.] Bush and [U.S.] Secretary of State Colin Powell, that the war in Afghanistan would bring liberation."

Few are in a position to understand the ramifications of all this as well as Habiba Sarabi, Afghanistan's minister of women's affairs. Yet on a visit to Washington this week to take part in a Council of Women World Leaders meeting, Sarabi neither dramatized the state of the Afghan woman today nor downplayed it. "The last two years have made us realize that we have a long and difficult road ahead," she told a group of reporters at a press conference. "The international community have placed so much pressure on us to make a quick impact on women's lives. Changing customs and traditional gender roles takes time, as you see in your own society.

"Legally it's not difficult for women to take part in society," Sarabi continued, "but we have a problem and it's not because they don't have the rights. The problem is tradition and custom. We have to change the minds of people -- women and men, too."

Sarabi herself may be the best example of how to incrementally bridge the gulf between the position Afghan women find themselves in and the liberated future well-intentioned Westerners envision on their behalf. Soft-spoken, dressed in a plain gray suit and a white headscarf, she projects an air of modesty, even shyness. Yet she presides over a staff of 1,300 people in Kabul and 29 provinces and, during the Taliban's reign, she risked dire punishment by teaching girls in underground schools.

Sarabi's approach is to work from a base of traditional values women are comfortable with, starting with those enshrined in Islam. Prior to taking her ministerial post in December 2001, Sarabi worked at the Afghan Institute of Learning where, among other things, she taught girls interpretations of the Qur'an that emphasized the value of women. "Men translate the Qur'an, so they want to take the benefit themselves," she said. "Mostly they want to say the Qur'an is against women's rights. It is very clear in the Qur'an that education is a necessity for both women and men, and going out of doors and getting a job is very important. Khadijah, Muhammed's wife, was a businesswoman."

Recently Sarabi enlisted the help of clerics to endorse her point. The ministry of Women's Affairs invited religious scholars to a conference "to explain the Islamic values to the people, that we have a very clear idea in Islam that women have rights. We got very good help from a religious scholar," she said. In rural society, too, Sarabi sees a foundation for women's rights that can be built on. Today girls are returning to classrooms in Afghanistan in record numbers -- this week UNICEF announced the milestone figure of 1 million -- but that number constitutes less than 35 percent of school-age girls, and attendance is concentrated in cities. Left behind are millions of women and their daughters in the provinces. Sarabi wants to educate women in conservative areas about the continuum that links their traditional roles with potential new ones.

"Traditionally, women in rural areas take part in society," she said. "I have seen it with my own eyes, they can take part in the agriculture side very openly. They can go to fields, make the harvest, take part with male members," she said. "But some women who are a little bit not open-minded -- when they take part in society [in this way], I can say there is a lot of opportunity for them."

Ultimately, Sarabi says, education is key, not just for young girls but older women. So is the public codification of their legal rights. Ninety women are slated to attend the Constitutional Loya Jirga in December as delegates, 18 percent of the whole (see "RFE/RL Afghanistan Report," 17 July and 7 August 2003). In light of the harassment and intimidation faced by women, opposition leaders, and minorities at the emergency Loya Jirga two years ago, Sarabi says she hopes the combined efforts of the Afghan government, the United Nations and international peacekeepers will make for a more protected environment.

"The most important thing for women is the constitution," she said. "It is something basic. On that basis we can build a nation of Afghan people that all have rights: women and men (see "RFE/RL Afghanistan Report," 18 September 2003)," she said. "After that, the judicial system is very important, because women are suffering from implementation of the law rather than the law itself."

Through influence on judicial reform -- the Ministry of Women's Affairs has an adviser to the Judicial Reform Commission -- combined with the constitution itself and the continued drive to educate Afghan girls and women, Sarabi said, "maybe we can bring a good change to women's life."

Isabelle Laughlin is a freelance writer in Washington who covers Afghanistan for RFE/RL.