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The Pain of Afghan Women

January 6, 2013 •

Do you recall this photo, a young refugee whose pierc­ing gaze con­fronted read­ers of National Geo­graphic dur­ing the Soviet Union’s inva­sion of Afghanistan? Her image became an endur­ing icon of that war’s hor­rific impact on Afghan fam­i­lies and orphans.

Photo of young Afghan refugee from cover of National Geographic

© 1984 National Geo­graphic

For many peo­ple this photo sym­bol­izes the suf­fer­ing of peo­ple pow­er­less to pro­tect them­selves or loved ones from the hor­rors of war­fare, cor­rupt gov­ern­ments or greedy war­lords.

Afghan Women

Then as now few peo­ple are as pow­er­less as Afghan women and girls. For cen­turies their tra­di­tional cul­ture has oppressed women. All aspects of their lives are utterly con­trolled by the men in their fam­ily, bound by the con­straints of a cru­elly nar­row-minded honor code.

Girls and women live in fear of say­ing or doing any­thing, even unwit­tingly, that might bring dis­honor to the fam­ily or tribe. The small­est infrac­tion could trig­ger an honor killing if the fam­ily or tribe decides it’s war­ranted. Hus­bands, fathers, broth­ers, uncles — all have the power to kill an Afghan woman whose behav­ior is seen as dis­hon­or­ing the fam­ily.

The offenses that might merit ston­ing are unimag­in­able to some­one who has grown up in a per­mis­sive West­ern cul­ture. Dis­play­ing one’s face, arms or ankles to a stranger; mak­ing eye con­tact, talk­ing while unsu­per­vised to a male who is not a fam­ily mem­ber — the list goes on and on.

Photo of women in burqa

Women in burqa

For most Afghan tribes the best way to avoid the risk of dis­honor is to pre­vent women and girls above a cer­tain age from being seen by any man out­side their fam­ily. Hence the burqa, a shroud-like gar­ment which cov­ers the form from head to toe, con­sid­ered manda­tory for hon­or­able women when doing errands away from home.

Most Afghan women are trapped inside the home, chained to the kitchen and an unend­ing cycle of chores. Once a girl is deemed old enough to marry (as young as 9 in some fam­i­lies), she can no longer leave her home unless escorted by a male fam­ily mem­ber. If need be, sons escort their moth­ers to the bazaar for shop­ping.

Is Education the Solution?

This seques­tra­tion of women makes it very dif­fi­cult to intro­duce West­ern-style reforms such as edu­ca­tion, let alone the right to vote or hold office. West­ern­ers have tended to believe the solu­tion lies in build­ing schools and libraries, fund­ing teach­ers, and cre­at­ing edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties for girls.

The say­ing among phil­an­thropists goes, “Edu­cate the girls and the whole fam­ily ben­e­fits. Edu­cate the boys, and they’ll leave home to emi­grate to places with bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties.” This is cer­tainly what my friends and I have believed. We were enthralled with the hope­ful pos­si­bil­i­ties raised by books like Three Cups of Tea, the mis­sion to edu­cate girls in order to improve the soci­ety in which they live.

Just build­ing schools and libraries — “build it and they will come” — may be doomed to fail­ure, because it ignores the cul­tural real­i­ties that keep Afghan women trapped in poverty and illit­er­acy. In My Father’s Coun­try, a thought-pro­vok­ing book by an Afghan woman who moved to the US at age 15, raises chal­leng­ing ques­tions:

So much atten­tion is paid to build­ing schools for girls, but their men refuse to allow them to go. In a cul­ture where women are so depen­dent on the good­will of men, how can we expect to move wom­en’s rights for­ward with­out get­ting the men to bring them to the new age of lib­erty and democ­racy?

— Saima Wahab, In My Father’s Coun­try, © 2012

Saima’s book tells her jour­ney from Kabul to Port­land (and back to Afghanistan), with an empha­sis on the impact of Pash­tun cul­ture on every­day fam­ily life.

One Woman’s Perspective

Like Shar­bat Gula, the young Afghan girl in the iconic photo, Saima Wahab lost her father to the Sovi­ets. Like her she was forced to flee with her fam­ily to Pak­istan when their vil­lage came under con­stant attack from Russ­ian bomb­ing.

Unlike the orphaned Shar­bat Gula, Saima was lucky enough to have rel­a­tives who could spon­sor her emi­gra­tion to Amer­ica, along with two sib­lings, in the late 1980s. Join­ing her uncles’ house­hold in Port­land, Saima learned Eng­lish, attended school and landed a full-time job.

Despite liv­ing in Amer­ica, her uncles con­tin­ued to enforce the Pash­tun way of life and its restric­tions on women. Their rules were so con­fin­ing that Saima even­tu­ally rebelled and moved out of their house, once she earned enough money to pay rent.

As one exam­ple, phone calls from male class­mates could send Saima’s uncles into a frenzy, falsely accus­ing her of provoca­tive or licen­tious behav­ior despite her efforts to avoid any­one’s notice. The fact that these male callers were gen­er­ally seek­ing home­work help did not excuse her behav­ior in her uncles’ eyes, one of whom was a col­lege pro­fes­sor.

In 2004 Saima was recruited as a trans­la­tor by a mil­i­tary con­trac­tor (there were very few flu­ent Pashtu-Eng­lish speak­ers at that time). This enabled her to return to Afghanistan, where Saima served as an inter­preter for US mil­i­tary com­man­ders in charge of recon­struc­tion mis­sions and liai­son to gov­ern­ment offi­cials. While work­ing in Afghanistan, Saima took advan­tage of every pos­si­ble oppor­tu­nity to meet and talk with Afghan women in their homes and vil­lages.

Saima’s life story and her inti­mate con­ver­sa­tions with Afghan men and women make her book, In My Father’s Coun­try, a com­pelling insid­er’s look at the cul­tural real­i­ties and con­flicts of con­tem­po­rary Afghanistan. It’s well worth read­ing by any­one who wants to under­stand what life is like in today’s Afghanistan.

Sadly, the book does not offer any pat answers to the ques­tion of how best to help Afghan women. It raises trou­bling ques­tions about the effi­cacy of today’s well-inten­tioned NGO and phil­an­thropic approaches. (It also reveals the per­va­sive cor­rup­tion within the Afghan gov­ern­ing struc­ture.)

What it does make clear, how­ever, is that any last­ing solu­tion must be forged by peo­ple who truly under­stand the cul­ture and its mores, who oper­ate from within the sys­tem to pro­mote changes through solu­tions that will pro­voke less resis­tance from the peo­ple with power over wom­en’s lives.

If only all we had to do was build libraries and schools to make a dif­fer­ence to these pow­er­less women…

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Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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