BY YUE WANG
The fragile situation of women in Afghanistan is likely to aggravate dramatically after NATO’s troop withdrawal by the end of 2014, say experts on the volatile region, in addition to women’s-rights activists.
NATO forces amount to a shield of protection for Afghan women and the possible chaos and power struggle ensuing NATO’s exit will lead to an erasure of whatever achievement made during the past decade, those experts say.
NATO’s military presence facilitates the environment for women’s-rights development in Afghanistan. It creates stability in the war-torn country and helps to develop the nascent legal system, which is crucial to the advance of women’s rights. There is widespread worry that NATO’s exit will leave Afghanistan’s own national security forces unprepared for the unrelenting onslaught of the ousted Taliban regime, which has systematically suppressed women’s most basic human rights during its rule.
“The Taliban and its messages are gaining ground,” said Candace Rondeaux, Kabul-based senior Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group, a non-profit aimed at preventing and resolving deadly conflicts.
“It is going to get much worse after the withdrawal of troops,” said Robdeaux, in a telephone interview.
Female leaders in Afghanistan call for a “responsible” NATO exit. Farkhunda Naderi, Kabul representative in the lower house of the Afghanistan’s National Assembly, said NATO must continue to provide training and education of the Afghan security forces, especially female security forces, and help put women in Afghan’s Supreme Court to ensure that women would not again encounter the inhumane treatment implemented by the Taliban regime.
“If the withdrawal is done in a very responsible manner, then of course at the end of the day we are the one that is responsible for our country,” she said in an interview in Chicago. “When you think about 2014, everything is happening very quickly; what you could accomplish in 10 years you could not accomplish in two years. We need more attention in different parts to ensure women’s rights.”
However, retraction of the protection of women’s rights is already happening in Afghanistan. In March, President Hamid Karzai endorsed the discriminatory edicts from the Ulema Council, the country’s top religious council (men are considered fundamental; women, secondary) under mounting pressure to get the Taliban back to the negotiation table. The reading of his move is that President Karzai is reaching out to the Taliban to make his tenuous presidency more secure after NATO’s exit.
“In the last five years, we have seen a progressive move towards more restrictions on their [women’s] access to work and the ability to go to school,” Rondeaux said. “The Afghan government has not demonstrated sufficient political will to protect women’s rights.”
There is still hope for women in Afghanistan, but much of it depends on international help, according to Zalmai Rassoul, minister of foreign affairs of Afghanistan. He characterized the promotion of women’s rights “irreversible” and said the movement has “very deep roots” in Afghan society.
“The only thing that will spark a catastrophe is the coming back of the Taliban,” said Rassoul, one of several experts and officials appearing at a recent event sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, “If the NATO alliance stops helping Afghan security forces in the next decade, we will go back in these things.”
Human-rights workers in Afghanistan say though there is some development in Afghan women’s rights, as demonstrated by the beginnings of women’s presence in politics, national security and the peace process today, women are still in desperate need of help because they simply don’t have any way of supporting themselves.
Maria Van Hoorn, development associate at Hagar International, an organization helping women and children recover from human-rights abuses, said about 80 percent of women and girls in the country have been subject to abuse and the cultural rules have only exacerbated the problem.
“This is extremely difficult,” she said, in a telephone interview.
Perhaps the only thing that can truly make things for Afghan women less difficult is education. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, only 12.6 percent of women in Afghanistan above the age of 15 can read and write, meaning that most Afghan women don’t even know they have rights.
Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, an office under the Department of State seeking to empower women globally, said educating women is a way of incorporating them into the peace talks with Taliban so they can have a say in how their country should be run. She said education should be extended to the entire society so male leaders could be more open to women’s rights and come to the forefront and do the right thing.
“They can make a big difference because they are in a position to influence so many others,” said Verveer at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs event, “Don’t underestimate for a second what it means when people are educated and when they are not.”
