The Underground Girls of Kabul Read online

  7 Women burn themselves to death Human Rights, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan Kabul, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Geneva, Harmful Traditional Practices and Implementation of the Law on Elimination of Violence against Women in Afghanistan, December 9, 2010, unama.​unmissions.​org. “Among the most tragic consequences of harmful traditional practices is self-immolation—an apparently growing trend in some parts of Afghanistan.”

  8 daughters are still a viable, informal currency Human Rights, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan Kabul, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Geneva, Silence Is Violence: End the Abuse of Women in Afghanistan, Kabul, July 8, 2009. It states: “Monetary compensation or baad is often also part of what is seen as an acceptable solution to all parties.”

  9 literacy rate is no more than 10 percent Ibid.: “The adult literacy rate of Afghans over 15 years is 28% including 12.6% for females. In rural areas, where 74% of Afghans reside, it is estimated that 90% of women cannot read or write.”

  CHAPTER 2: THE FOREIGNER

  1 lives of Afghan women were to be improved For information on European Commission aid for Afghanistan and the inclusion of “gender” in its programs, see European Commission, Country Strategy Paper Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2007–2013, eeas.​europa.​eu.

  2 Celebrated for publishing several travel guides See Nancy Hatch Duprée, An Historical Guide to Afghanistan (Kabul: Afghan Air Authority, Afghan Tourist Organization, 1977).

  3 the country’s last king, who was ousted in 1973 Afghanistan’s last king ruled for forty years before he was removed. See Barry Bearak, “Mohammad Zahir Shah, Last Afghan King, Dies at 92,” New York Times, July 24, 2007, nytimes.​com.

  4 stand guard in Habībullāh Khan’s harem Habībullāh Khan ruled Afghanistan from 1901 to 1919. See Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, www.​britannica.​com.

  5 Afghans have been driven out Zarif Nazar and Farangis Najibullah, “Kabul Housing Shortage Leaves the Middle Class Behind,” Radio Free Europe, January 31, 2011, rferl.​org.

  6 figures ranging from twenty-three to twenty-nine million Andrew Pinney, Snapshots of an Intervention, The Unlearned Lessons of Afghanistan’s Decade of Assistance (2001–11) (Kabul: Afghanistan Analysts Network [AAN], 2012).

  7 for an illiterate person to have memorized See Louis Duprée, Afghanistan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, sixth impression, 2010), pp. 74–75, in which he says Afghanistan “has a literate culture, but a non-literate society.” Duprée’s book, written before the Soviet invasion, is still one of the most comprehensive sourcebooks on Afghanistan, as Louis Duprée was a lifelong researcher of the country. The Louis and Nancy Hatch Duprée Foundation at Kabul University is dedicated to helping to preserve the cultural heritage of the people of Afghanistan and support education about it: dupree foundation.​org.

  CHAPTER 3: THE CHOSEN ONE

  1 The Taliban no longer rules The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, “Some of the Restrictions Imposed by Taliban on Women in Afghanistan,” rawa.​org/​rules.​htm (accessed January 31, 2014), notes: “18. Ban on women’s wearing brightly colored clothes. In Taliban terms, these are ‘sexually attracting colors.’ ”

  2 Afghan police are among the most popular targets See Jon Boone, “Afghan Police Hit by High Death Rate and ‘Quick Fix’ Training, Says EU,” The Guardian, October 1, 2009, theguardian.​com; and Susan G. Chesser, “Afghanistan Casualties: Military Forces and Civilians,” Congressional Research Service, December 6, 2012, fas.​org. Statistics in this report state that in 2008, Afghanistan national army casualties were 259 killed, 875 wounded; Afghanistan national, local, and border police casualties in 2008 were 724 killed, 1,209 wounded.

  3 the conviction of martyrdom and the prospect of virgins Ibn Warraq, “Virgins? What Virgins?” The Guardian, January 11, 2002, theguardian.​com.

  4 Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium Seventy-four percent of global illicit opium production in 2012 came from Afghanistan, and Afghan opium cultivation reached a record high in 2013. See United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, World Drug Report 2013, unodc.​org; and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Ministry of Counter Narcotics, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2013 Summary Findings, November 2013, unodc.​org.

  5 Saur Revolution, when the Communist People’s Democratic Party The Saur Revolution took place on April 27, 1978. See “Afghanistan: 20 Years of Bloodshed,” BBC News, April 26, 1998, news.​bbc.​co.​uk/​2/​hi/​south_​asia/​83854.​stm.

  6 With ideological and financial backing from Moscow Orzala Ashraf Nemat, Afghan Women at the Crossroads: Agents of Peace—Or Its Victims?, The Century Foundation, 2011. Nemat writes: “The massive reforms of the PDPA regime were all directly supported by the Soviet Union and facilitated by Soviet advisors—which led the majority of the Afghan population to see the government in Kabul more as an agent of alien outside power rather than as an internal grassroots movement.”

  7 setting out to replace religious law with a more secular system For background on the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), its ties to Moscow, its aims of secularization and reforms that came to be considered “un-Islamic” by many, see Asta Olesen, Islam and Politics in Afghanistan (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies) (Kindle Locations 8046–49), Taylor and Francis, Kindle Edition.

  8 Amanollah Khan had tried to assert rights for women Valentine M. Hoghadam, “Revolution, Religion and Gender Politics: Iran and Afghanistan Compared,” Journal of Women’s History (Johns Hopkins University Press) 10, no. 4 (Winter 1999). Hoghadam states: “The king was forced to abdicate by a tribal rebellion opposed to schooling for girls, restrictions on polygyny and prohibition of the bride price.”

  9 Soraya, who famously cast off her veil See Sunita Mehta and Homaira Mamoor, ed. Sunita Mehta, Women for Afghan Women (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), where the authors note that “as early as 1921, King Amanollah Shah abolished the mandatory donning of the burqa, and his wife, Queen Soraya, appeared in the public unveiled and wearing skirts that revealed her legs.”

  10 equal rights in the Constitution of 1964 See Arline Lederman, “The Zan of Afghanistan—A 35-Year Perspective on Women in Afghanistan,” in Mehta and Mamoor, ed. by Sunita Mehta, Women for Afghan Women, in which Lederman mentions women’s role in drafting Afghanistan’s 1964 constitution.

  11 receive mandatory educations Dr. Huma Ahmed-Ghosh discusses the many social and economic reform programs under PDPA rule and how tribal chiefs “viewed compulsory education, especially for women, as going against the grain of tradition, anti-religious and a challenge to male authority” in “A History of Women in Afghanistan: Lessons Learnt for the Future or Yesterdays and Tomorrow: Women in Afghanistan,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 4, no. 3 (May 2003).

  12 Rapid attempts at reforming society and culture See Hoghadam, “Revolution, Religion and Gender Politics.” The author explains one of the most controversial government decrees, Decree No. 7, which “fundamentally would change the institution of marriage and position of women.” In the decree, “the government outlawed traditional cultural practices widely regarded as ‘Islamic.’ Thus, the PDPA placed a limit on bride price, banned forced marriages and the practice of levirate, and prohibited marriage through subterfuge or coercion. Whereas girls usually were wed immediately upon puberty, the new government set a minimum age of marriage of sixteen years for women and eighteen years for men.”

  13 “the greatest threat to peace since the Second World War.” President Carter’s quote is mentioned in Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald, “Excerpts from The Apostle’s Diary,” in Mehta and Mamoor, ed. by Sunita Mehta, Women for Afghan Women. The authors offer background on the similar goals that the U.S. administration (fighting “Godless communism”) and Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanstan had in the struggle against the Soviet Union, since they shared “a c
rusader mentality.”

  14 In the spring of 1992, Kabul erupted President Mohammad Najibullah’s regime fell in April 1992 and the mujahideen entered Kabul. See Alfred Aghajanian, ed. by Peter R. Blood, Afghanistan: Past and Present/Comprised of Afghanistan, A Country Study and Country Profile: Afghanistan, A Report by the U.S. Government’s Federal Research Division, September 2007.

  15 like most other children in Kabul Ahmed Rashid notes the horrors Kabul’s children saw at this time in Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). The author cites: “A UNICEF survey of Kabul’s children conducted by Dr. Leila Gupta found that most children had witnessed extreme violence and did not expect to survive. Two-thirds of children interviewed had seen somebody killed by a rocket and scattered corpses or body parts. More than 70 percent had lost a family member and no longer trusted adults” (p. 109).

  CHAPTER 4: THE SON MAKER

  1 the United Nations calls the worst place in the world to be born Stephanie Nebehay, “Afghanistan Is World’s Worst Place to Be Born: U.N.,” Reuters, November 20, 2009, reuters.​com. Nebehay reports that “Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate in the world—257 deaths per 1,000 live births, and 70 percent of the population lacks access to clean water.”

  2 And the most dangerous place in which to be a woman See Lisa Anderson, “Afghanistan Is Most Dangerous Country for Women,” Thomson Reuters Foundation, 2011, trust.​org, listing “violence, dismal healthcare and brutal poverty” as the three primary reasons.

  3 eighteen thousand Afghan women dying each year Statistics are available at United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), “The State of the World’s Midwifery 2011,” unfpa.​org.

  4 on par with the poorest and most war-torn nations See UNFPA, “Trends in Maternal Mortality 1990–2010,” unfpa.​org.

  5 The life expectancy of a woman here is forty-four According to the World Food Programme Country Overview of Afghanistan, wfp.​org/​countries/​afghanistan/​overview (accessed January 31, 2014): “While life expectancy has increased slightly to 44.5 years for men and 44 for women, many of the country’s health indicators are alarming.” However, the CIA estimates for 2014 a life expectancy of 50.49 years for the total population in Afghanistan, of which male life expectancy is 49.17 years and female life expectancy is 51.88 years.

  6 Gerda Lerner pioneered the study of women’s history Historian Gerda Lerner (1920–2013) discovered that the existing historical record was deeply lacking on half the population—that of women. Instead, history books mostly told the story of men throughout the ages. Lerner set out to collect and analyze the existing research on ancient civilization, to understand how humankind began to organize societies from the very beginning. In her book The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), she explains how patriarchy is not “natural” nor “God-given” but “a historic creation formed by men and women in a process that took nearly 2,500 years to its completion” (p. 212) and provides context for many things that happen in Afghanistan to this day.

  CHAPTER 5: THE POLITICIAN

  1 most rural and undeveloped provinces Badghis ranks as the thirty-first least-developed province out of Afghanistan’s thirty-two and is 61 percent worse off than the world’s least-developed countries. See UNICEF, Best Estimates Provincial Fact Sheet, unicef.​org (accessed January 31, 2014).

  2 Badghis is dominated by Tajik tribes and has a Pashtun minority The Naval Postgraduate School’s Program for Culture and Conflict Studies fact sheet for Badghis province, nps.​edu (accessed January 31, 2014), states: “The province is inhabited by Tajiks who are thought to make up 62 percent of the population with Pashtuns making up approximately 28 percent.”

  3 Ahmed Rashid describes those who fought See Ahmed Rashid, “A Vanished Gender,” in Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, 2nd ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 105–116.

  4 upheld by 130,000 troops from forty-eight countries Ninety thousand of the 130,930 ISAF troops were American. See International Security Assistance Force (ISAF): “Key Facts and Figures,” November 15, 2010, isaf.​nato.​int.

  5 the standard playbook of “state building” In his chapter, “The Failure of Airborne Democracy,” in van Bijlert and Kouvo’s Snapshots of an Intervention, Afghanistan analyst Thomas Ruttig describes how the 2001 Bonn conference “already had substantial democratic deficits” as the Taliban was excluded, in favor of warlords and groups sponsored by Pakistan and Iran. As a result, he writes, “warlords … were allowed to take over not only the ‘new’ democratic institutions but virtually everything else that mattered in the country. Today they constitute the inner circle of advisors for an over-centralised presidential system and, because of their religious self-legitimisation, are difficult to challenge politically. They simply have put themselves above the law.”

  6 as one more rationale for the war On November 17, 2001, First Lady Laura Bush took over the president’s weekly radio address, a transcript of which can be found at presidency.​ucsb.​edu. She said: “Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes.… The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”

  7 After years of being unable to peer out of any window The many Taliban restrictions on women, which included the compulsory painting of all windows, are enumerated in “Some of the Restrictions Imposed by Taliban on Women in Afghanistan,” Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, at rawa.​org/​rules.​htm.

  8 the mandated 25-percent-minimum female share of seats Article 83(6) in Afghanistan’s constitution from January 2004 states that two female delegates should be elected from each province; see servat.​unibe.​ch. Afghanistan’s electoral law of 2005 further details how the quota should be drawn from the respective province; see ecoi.​net/​file_​upload/​1504_​1215701180_​electoral-​law.​pdf.

  9 just as the Koran does The Koran is believed to contain the words of God, directly spoken to the Prophet Muhammad, and later recorded by scribes. Translations into other languages from the original can vary and are sometimes debated. In Iranian-American Muslim translator Laleh Bakhtiar’s English version, The Sublime Quran (Kazi Publications, 2007), sublimequran.​org, which is supported by the Islamic Society of North America, several verses affirm the equal standing of men and women. For example, see verses 3:195 (“each one of you is from the other”) and 33:35 (which lays out how God asks the same of both men and women). As for 4:34, the original text that is often quoted in other translations as men being the “protectors” of women and therefore interpreted as though they should have some decision-making power over women, Laleh Bakhtiar instead translates as men being the “supporters” of women.

  10 that men and women are equal The Constitution of Afghanistan, ratified January 26, 2004, “Chapter Two: Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens,” Article 22, states: “Any kind of discrimination and distinction between citizens of Afghanistan shall be forbidden. The citizens of Afghanistan, man and woman, have equal rights and duties before the law.”

  11 share no common cause Orzala Ashraf Nemat, Afghan Women at the Crossroads: Agents of Peace—or Its Victims? The Century Foundation, 2011, discusses the realities of the women members’ roles in parliament: “Not all of them were there to carry women’s voices, however. In fact, most of the women in the parliament are linked in different ways to powerful warlords and other power brokers, and do not have any agenda to change or improve legislation in favor of women and human rights. Only few outstanding voices came out of the parliament to champion women’s needs, while in general, the record of its achievements is very weak—almost total failure—in terms of legal reforms in support of women.”

  12 laws ratified that actually discriminate According to Human Rights Watch: “The law [passed during Karzai’s administration] gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance
from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands.… It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her.” See “Afghanistan: Law Curbing Women’s Rights Takes Effect—President Karzai Makes Shia Women Second-Class Citizens for Electoral Gain,” August 14, 2009, hrw.​org.

  13 amnesty has been handed out for war crimes Nemat’s Afghan Women at the Crossroads says this about the amnesty law: “Despite having 27 percent of the parliamentary seats filled by women, the parliament has approved a controversial amnesty law, calling for immunity for all those involved in war-time violations of human rights and women’s rights; approved the Shiite Personal Status Law, subjecting Shiite women to traditional religious controls, which later on was reviewed and amended to some extent; and pointedly did not approve presidential nominees for the position of minister of women’s affairs.”

  14 The largest religious authority in the country “The Ulama Council: Paid to Win Public Minds—but Do They?” by Borhan Osman for Afghan Analysts Network, November 5, 2012, afghanistan-​analysts.​org, explains the complicated role of the Ulama Council in Afghan politics and society.

  15 Louis Duprée described this contradiction See Louis Duprée, Afghanistan (Princeton: Oxford University Press, 1973, sixth impression, 2010), p. 104.