Since I read the book by Ahmed Rashid, titled ‘Taliban’ I have followed the rise and fall of the Taliban till the election of Hamid Karzai. However, it took an encounter with a 17 year old raped and half-burned refugee, Safia, hailing from the city of Khost to realist that the worst victims were and are probably the female of the ruined and wrecked country of Afghanistan.
Safia, I was told, had been raped at the age of five, and tried to commit suicide after suffering abuses for 10 years by her husband because she failed to produce a child. She was one of the lucky few, who was taken in by an NGO and brought to India, to work as a housemaid and earn her own bread.
But what about the rest of them still entangled in the mess that Taliban left behind and the newly elected President Hamid Karzai only seems to be taking forward? The Afghan women are still repressed, specially in rural areas where they are forced into marriages and denied education. The school for girls have mostly been burned down and little girls are even poisoned to death for daring to attend.
What does this kind of violence lead to? Self-immolation or so I’ve witnessed. A woman, who was chained to a wall by her husband and who was set free only to cook him a decent meal, tried to ignite herself but, unsuccessfully. Till July 2009, there were 51 registered cases of self immolation out of which only 13 of them survived.
Not only the in-laws, but own parents are not behind in inflicting unacceptable pain on the girls. 10-year-old Zeva was sold by her father for 50,000 afghanis ($1000) and was then made the third wife of a 19 year old boy, so that they could produce more kids. According to NGOs, 90 Percent of Afghan Women have to suffer abuse from either their own family members or from their in-laws.
Those who expected the situation to improve with the election of Karzai were in for a shock when he made domestic rape legal. Yes you got that right. Now Afghanistan gives husband the right to have sex with their wives every once in four nights, and the women cannot refuse if they don’t have a proper excuse. By excuse, the law means being sick. So, that means if you’re an Afghani woman who does not want to have sex and does not have a ‘proper excuse’, you may well be ‘LEGALLY RAPED‘ by your husband. Or else you may be ‘LEGALLY DENIED FOOD‘. Take your pick. With this, the so-called Republican Afghanistan, has taken a step back in time, implementing women subservient rules just like the Taliban.
Before the onset of Taliban, the Afghan women not only taught in schools, universities, but also formed 40% of the medical practitioners. However, once the Taliban came into force, women and girls were forbidden to venture out unless accompanied by a close male relative. So, if the woman’s male relatives had died in the war (which was the case for many), they could not go out to even buy food for their 6 month old child. And the families, who depended on a sole-earning woman, ultimately lost their only source of livelihood, thus increasing the death toll.
Imagine a state were you have to be under continuous house arrest, with even the windows painted black, not allowed to speak in public and wearing a full body covering:- the infamous burqa. Violate these rules, and the females of Afghanistan would be beaten severally or even killed, and for accidental violations- like showing a bit of ankle, they were violently castigated.
To support their families some women practiced prostitution-the only way of earning bread. These brothels were naturally frequented by the Taliban. But as and when they felt sufficient, they punished the prostitutes (even adulterous women) by hanging them in public squares with there children as witnesses. For years, the women endured rape as a punishment since the formulators and executors of laws were one and the same -The CIA and ISI funded Taliban.
The Taliban may not be in the forefront anymore, and the rulers today are not much better. The judges seem to be unaware of the difference between rape and adultery. The victims of rape, are often at risk of being convicted of ‘zina’, the punishment for adultery, thus making them reluctant to come forward. There have been several brave women who have fought for their basic rights. One of them include Sitara Achakzai, who had decided to keep on fighting even though she knew her time was almost over. True to her premonitions, she was shot dead only weeks after she shared her views on the conditions of Afghani Women.
It is said that your society is measured by how safe its women are. In this context what do we see Afghanistan to be? We see it as a place where every hour two women die in childbirth, 87% women are illiterate, a third of the female sex have gone through (and is going through) physical, sexual , psychological abuse. The opium cultivating country sees 80% of its women forced into marriages. And they have an average life expectancy of just 44 years.
The country were its nine million citizens live on less than a dollar a day, has seen violence rise dramatically, with the US lending a helping hand to paralyze the country that has not even come out of its Taliban-inflicted paralysis. The US troops routinely kill the civilians and out of three women soldiers, they rape one without missing a single beat. ‘Bachha bazi‘ or boy-play, where small boys are sold to commanders, high-ranking officials to serve as their sex-slaves, is a regular practice even now.
The Soviet came and went. So did the Taliban. Now is it U.S of A’s turn to further ravish the country in a fight for power? There has been no social justice or progress since the US invaded Afghanistan. The war with the Taliban may come to an end pretty soon. But the war being fought by human right associations for the burqa clad women, may go on for ages.
My grand dad remembers Afghanistan as the land of Kabuliwallah and cheerful, God-fearing men who traveled far and wide to sell their beautiful fruits and carpets. I will remember the country as the 21st century’s war-land. Let’s hope my grand daughter will see Afghanistan not as I see it but as my ascendants did. Amen.
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