A Cry From Afghanistan

The UN estimates that nearly 90 per cent of Afghanistan's women suffer from some sort of domestic abuse

The extraordinarily high levels of violence taking place within Afghan households, which is documented in this report, indicates an environment in which women are valued less than men and where hurting or even killing women can be acceptable and enjoys impunity. In Afghanistan, as in every other country in the world, the presence of domestic violence is symptomatic of deep-running inequality between men and women and of social institutions and political structures that condone and perpetuate this inequality.

Possible reasons for higher incidences of domestic violence along the border zone include greater levels of armed conflict in this region as well as the influence of the Taliban with its oppressive ideology towards women. Insecurity limits the reach of the central government into these zones, restricting the availability of public services such as schools, hospitals, courts, and police forces, compared to the rest of the country. The availability of support services for victims of domestic violence is even scarcer than in other provinces as both local and international non-governmental organizations find it more difficult and dangerous to work in these areas.

mistreatment by family members :  “according to the findings of surveys on domestic violence conducted with women in 4,700 households in 16 provinces located across Afghanistan in 2006.”

·         30.6% – husband

·         23.7% – mother-in-law

·         16.5% – none of those listed

·         10.4% – sister-in-law

·         9.9% – brother-in-law

·         7.4% – father-in-law

·         1.5% – husband’s uncle

The Story of Aisha:

Bibi Aisha, 18 years old from the southern Afghan province of Oruzgan

 When she was 12 Aisha was given to her husband as a payment to settle a dispute “a practice in Afghanistan that goes by the fitting name of "baad".

6 years later Aisha fled her husband’s house after being beaten and mistreated by

Her husband and her in- laws, she escaped to the only place she could go, back to her family home. It was here that the Taliban arrived one night and demanded that the girl be handed over to face justice. She was taken away to a mountain clearing, where the local Taliban commander issued his verdict. She was then held down by her brother-in-law, while her husband first sliced off her ears and then cut off her nose. Aisha passed out from the pain but soon awoke choking on her blood, abandoned by her torturers and the ad-hoc judiciary of the Taliban.

According to Time, the Taliban commander who awarded the punishment later said that Aisha had to be made an example "lest other girls in the village try to do the same thing".

The Happy Ending:

Thanks to an American medical facility in Afghanistan, Aisha was transported to a safe shelter in Kabul and in August she was flown to the U.S. by the Grossman Burn Foundation to stay with a host family.

In December 2010 she had a prosthetic nose fitted at the non-profit humanitarian Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital in California as part of her eight-month rehabilitation.

Dr Peter H Grossman said they hoped to give Aisha a more 'permanent solution'.

This could mean reconstructing her nose and ears using bone, tissue and cartilage from other parts of her body.

Ref:

The United Nations Development Fund for Women

www.womenforwomen.org

New york Times magazine

www.nytimes.com

The Guardian

www.guardian.co.uk

Daily Mail

www.dailymail.co.uk

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

www.rawa.org

When Reality bites...

At first sight, when one speaks of women in conflict, my mind transports me to the plight of women in the DRCongo and in Afghanistan, although women do face such situations world over. Having dabbled a little with the issues in DRCongo, I chose to work on the situation in Afghanistan. My initial knowledge and tryst with the prevalent situation in Afghanistan that challenges women and girls, came from a copious amount of reading- Khaled Hosseini, Jean Sasson, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon and the like. But precious little prepared me for the real horrors that these women face, as I gathered when I began reading international documentation speaking of the horrors in the state. There really is a reason for this state being the worst place in the world to be a woman. 

2011, Thomson Reuters

The Taliban has ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001. During its tenure, the scale of oppression faced by women was incomparable. Women were prevented from working. They were kept away from the public, being disallowed a public appearance bereft of a full-length blue burkha. Women were kept from receiving an education, and could never walk outside of their houses without a male to escort them. If even one of them broke any of these rules, they would find themselves in a predicament where they would be beaten, and sometimes, killed.

Almost immediately after they came into power, the Taliban aggressively kept women under the thumb of heavy oppression. Under these restrictions, women were denied basic rights to education and health care. Women couldn’t quite leave their houses at all because they couldn’t afford a burqa sometimes. They would have to wait for hours until a male relative could escort them. Women stayed at home and painted their windows so that no one could look in or out. Women in Afghanistan under the Taliban were put under house arrest. Women who, at one point, held such respectable positions, were forced to wander the streets in their burqas selling everything they owned and begging in order to survive.

2011, Thomson Reuters

The exclusion of women from work and social life set Afghanistan into a tough phase. Pre-Taliban, most teachers were women. But now, the restrictions on women’s employment have left the education system in disarray. Though women were banned from most jobs, women in the medical field were allowed to continue working since the Taliban required that women could be treated only by female physicians. But women in medicine suffered the consequences of their continued labour. They were often beaten, and sometimes had to watch their colleagues get beaten.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban was displaced and overthrown. Although some women did manage to regain their hold over their rights and their freedoms, a greater part of these rights remained a dream for the women in Afghanistan, when the Taliban began to regain its stronghold over power. Women now live under the yoke of a nation ruled by warlords and zealots, with a massive market indulging in drug trafficking and weapon trade.

Today, the state of affairs in Afghanistan, what with targeted violence against female public officials, dismal healthcare and desperate poverty, has led to the tabulation of the state as the world’s most dangerous country in which to be born a woman.

In the coming weeks, I hope to tackle some of the key issues pertaining to women in Afghanistan- their rights, the abuses meted out to them, governmental policy, the impact of intervention, the question of integration of women into political and social life, the impact of education and the need for the same, domestic violence and the influence of religion on the lives of women along with a touch-and-go comparison with the predicament of women world over. 

Kirthi Jayakumar