Sisters with a vision
Activists say it’s Afghanistan’s women who can make a difference—and that Canada must still help
Full Article: http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/06/06/sisters-with-a-vision/
There’s a lot that’s confusing about Afghanistan. An expression here—translated from Dari—says, “I cannot answer your question because my mouth is full of water.” It means, effectively, “I cannot tell you the truth because someone may get into trouble.” That may explain a nation where so much appears contradictory: a country that embraces religious piety but treats its citizens with brutality; where violence is part of almost every family and men have impunity; where pop music blares from kiosks on the street while mullahs wail from mosques on the corners.
Liquor is forbidden, yet restaurants serve wine. In what may be the worst traffic chaos on the planet, hardly anyone wears a seat belt lest they be accused of copying the West. Garish palaces, built with the illicit gains of drug barons and known as “narcotecture” or “poppy houses,” have sprouted all over Kabul. Laws are written with verbal gymnastics—language designed to dance around religious jurisprudence. Police reform is a priority, but changing the cockeyed judiciary is not (how can you do one without the other?). And Afghans have made gossip and innuendo an art form. If you rise to the top, the likelihood of being accused of religious crime or drug smuggling or election tampering is as common as the call to prayer.
It’s no country for the faint of heart.
Canada has done an immense amount for this fractious tribal land, including being a start-up funder of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which has been hailed as a stunning success story. Canada is also funding the badly needed reform of family law, has invested $210 million in improving government services, including education, and has even provided backing for the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a brave initiative to preserve the arts in a country that has been at war for three decades.
The overall investment—$821 million over the last three years (without military and police expenditures), according to the Canadian International Development Agency—has benefited no one more than Afghanistan’s women and girls. Says Karokhail: “Women have a vision for themselves now. They want to be connected to the world, to networks and advocacy groups. They want their voices to be heard as decision makers.” But make no mistake, she adds: “Women in this country are still controlled by men who use Islam as an excuse to keep us down.” And when it comes to President Hamid Karzai and the coterie of men he surrounds himself with, help does not appear to be on the way.
Murwarid Ziayee, 36, a high-energy reformer who worked on gender issues in the president’s office as well as at the United Nations, has witnessed significant changes for women. “Now, in the second parliament,” she says, “women have learned how to deal with the men, to make alliances with other women; they’re becoming influential in some of the decisions.” Ziayee is currently the executive director for a non-government organization called Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, whose goals are to train teachers, boost literacy skills, stock libraries and provide much-needed science kits. “Education is the way forward,” she says. “It is the single item that can turn this country around.” Illiteracy, which overall stubbornly lingers above 80 per cent, is often referred to by women as “being blind.” When asked to explain, one said, “I couldn’t read so I couldn’t see what was going on.” In fewer than a dozen words, she described the reason men in power want to deny women and girls an education.
Ziayee admits that life has improved in a variety of ways for women. But the recent increase in urban suicide bombings, particularly the brazen January attack at the Finest supermarket in the upscale Wazir Akbar Khan area of Kabul, has ratcheted up fear and the perception that reform efforts in Afghanistan are failing. “I go to the supermarket late at night hoping to avoid a bomb blast,” Ziayee says. “I watch my four-year-old daughter’s every move. Others send their kids to school in a school bus. I send mine with an armed guard. I am what is known as a soft target because I work for Canadians. The market isn’t safe, the streets aren’t safe, the workplace isn’t safe. There are security barriers everywhere that are constant reminders—you are not safe. This is not a life. We know what will happen when the international community leaves—we will lose the rights that we gained.”
Macleans by Sally Armstrong on Monday, June 6, 2011 10:30am
