tehelka.com
I think there is no God and no
Muslim living in this world"
- Mariam, in Peshawar
In the first of a powerful four part series, Meena Nanji - a film maker from Los Angeles - speaks
to a range of Afghan women on the run from
the Taliban. Teachers reduced to prostitutes, doctors to beggars, Nanji brings home the
true terror of the Taliban
Throughout the ages women have been treated as second-class citizens in Afghanistan as in so many other parts of the world. Afghan women's history is one of oppression and suffering, subservient to their fathers, husbands and other elder male relatives. Some exceptions to this dismal scenario have been evidenced, such as Queen Gawhar Shad who, in the early 15th century, ruled an empire stretching from the river Tigris to the borders of China. Her husband, King Shah Rukh, was a weak man which gave her the chance to reign politically. She was also a great patron of the arts and architecture, of poetry and philosophy, all of which thrived, in her court.
But these are exceptions and not norms. For the most part, women have been under male domination. Yet they have enjoyed certain basic freedoms, to move around, to get together, to laugh and certainly some amount of authority in the private domain, in the household and over their children.
The 20th century ushered in some positive changes towards improving women's lives. The period between 1919 and 1929 when Amanullah ruled as the King of Afghanistan exemplify a modernizing period and women's emancipation was a part of it. For example he encouraged women to discard the veil. Changes were modest but at least a beginning was made. During the tenure of General Mohammed Daoud who became Prime Minister in 1953, women were encouraged to be educated, to take an active part in government and to join the workforce. For the first time the gate of the Kabul University was thrown open to women.
However all these changes took place largely in the urban context; whether they were embraced or not was largely determined by the cultural codes of the various ethnic groups. For example, the Hazaras in the central Afghanistan region were more liberal than say the Pashtuns of the south and eastern Afghanistan. In rural areas life went on much as before, though some changes did manage to trickle down.
With the initiation of the Communist regime in 1978, the government insisted on forced literacy and co-education for women. This heavy dosage of reform was too much to be digested by the entrenched, conservative male bastion, at least a good number of them. The debate over the role of women in society became a hotly debated issue with resentment running high against the Communist government. It became one of the main reasons for the outbreak of fighting against the Communist government.
Ironically, it was during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that women made their greatest strides towards freedom and status equality. The Soviet occupation offered them greater opportunities in education, professional training and work, and thousands of women took advantage of these. In Kabul, women came to hold 70% of all teaching jobs. They constituted a significant part of the professional workforce, holding government as well as civilian posts. Thousands of women also joined the Mujahideen movement, struggling alongside their male counterparts to rid their country of Soviet occupation.
However women's struggle for emancipation was short-lived. With the coming of Jehadi (Islamist) power, once again it was women who bore the brunt. Women's role in the freedom movement went unacknowledged and the Rabbani government curtailed their newly found rights. But the worse was yet to come. It is the Taliban under whose barbaric regime the oppression of women has reached a new height. Under Talibani laws women are barred from going to school, from working, from going outside without a close male relative as escort. The list doesn't end here; women must be protected from public gaze, so windows have been darkened, they cannot be treated by male doctors and virtually by no women doctors as well since they are banned from working. Thus it is almost impossible for women to get any health care at all.
Some of the edicts seem almost laughable: women cannot wear high heels since men are not allowed to hear the sounds women make; by the same logic, women are not supposed to laugh or make any sound in public. Beatings, rape and torture of women are common and perpetrators go unpunished. Many women are undergoing serious depression and feelings of isolation while many more have taken their own lives preferring to die rather than live under these inhuman conditions.
When I first heard about the Taliban and their edicts controlling women's lives, I was horrified. As a Muslim woman, I was appalled that the Taliban pronounced these edicts in the name of Islam, and that other Islamic countries were least bothered to condemn this blatant breach of human rights and brutality against women, rather tacitly and overtly like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, supporting them.
For the last five years with the Taliban ruling major parts of Afghanistan, the saga of atrocities against humanity has been continuing. There has been much publicity about the deplorable conditions of women and certainly international outcry has resulted in sanctions being placed upon Taliban's Afghanistan. Yet despite this, conditions for women inside Afghanistan have not improved at all.
I went to Peshawar in Pakistan (since I was denied entry into Afghanistan!) to research a documentary on the plight of Afghan refugees. I wanted to know how the women coped living under these conditions, to see for myself and learn first hand of their experiences under the Taliban regime.
I interviewed many women refugees, some of whom had lived in Pakistan on and off for several years, new arrivals, women who were actively working to improve their condition and a prostitute who recounted her days of horror in Kabul. The one thing all these people have in common is their absolute condemnation of the Taliban, decrying them as 'thugs'; ignorant men with guns who knew nothing of their history, culture or Islam, let alone how to administer and run a country.
All stated very strongly that the Taliban is distorting Islam and using it to legitimise its brutality against women and also men. There are thousands of Afghan refugees enduring unimaginable loss and hardship, each with their own unique experiences and stories. Here is one of them.
MARIAM'S STORY
It takes about two hours driving to reach this refugee camp from Peshawar. For miles all one sees is dry, barren landscape, punctuated only by massive towers, brick factory chimneys that spew thick black smoke into the sky. We turn off the main road onto a dirt lane and drive for about ten minutes, until we reach a long mud brick wall, difficult to distinguish against the seemingly endless brown desert.
The camp entrance has two towers on either side resembling sentinel posts, and a makeshift gate that isn't likely to keep anyone out. The camp doesn't really look like a camp, rather it seems more like a small village, made up of mud brick houses in neat rows, a central square and playing area for children. It has been in existence for about 15 years.
I had heard about it through an Afghan Womens' Rights Group, called the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, (RAWA) that I had been working with. They told me that a good number of this camp populace had been professionals; doctors, teachers, and intellectuals. A group of elders administers the camp who have managed to make it a liveable, peaceful place over the years.
The camp has running water once a day for an hour, electricity, even satellite television. It has got a school for boys and girls, attended to by children of other camps as well and a small clinic that takes care of basic ailments. The people are gentle and extremely hospitable, resilient, hungry for knowledge of the outside world with a burning desire to return home one day. Mariam lives here with her two young sons. One of the sons wants to become an engineer with a mission to help rebuild Afghanistan. The other wants to be a doctor so that he can heal wounded soldiers who're fighting against the fundamentalists. Mariam is 37, with a strident, prematurely lined face. She is strong and vibrant and while she cracks jokes and laughs to make me feel comfortable, one can sense the underlying pain and suffering that she is enduring. Once the interview starts, she begins to speak forcefully. Soon, however, she cannot hold back her tears. In a monotone she tells the story of the last twenty years.
Her husband had turned a mujahideen or freedom fighter after the Soviet invasion. He and a band of men from his village in the North took to the mountains for years at a time, defending their village. He became quite famous as a brave and good fighter, and the Soviets largely stayed away form their area. Mariam also helped the war effort by taking care of wounded fighters, feeding them, sewing their clothes.
Once the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Mariam and her family rejoiced, expecting that peace would return with a new Afghani government and that their lives would resume normalcy. But things did not happen as wished rather they got worse. The Jehadi groups began fighting amongst themselves. Rocket shellings, bombs, landmine explosions became the order of the day. There was no guarantee of any security: anytime, anywhere one could become victim to the violence of roving bands of different Jehadi factions.
Mariam explains: "The Jehadis were much worse than the Soviets. They stopped people from working in hospitals and schools. Intellectuals and those with knowledge were arrested and many were killed. Those who could, fled the country and went to the West. We were left with only illiterate people and those who knew nothing. So my family left the country and we came to Peshawar in Pakistan and lived here for five years. This was during the time of Gulbuddin , Rabbani, and Massoud, leaders of different Jehadi parties). They were trying to take control of the country. When the Taliban took over, we believed that the situation would become better. They promised peace and security and an end to all the terrible crimes that the Jehadis were committing against their own people."
Mariam and her family and many others who had fled the country returned to their homeland in the belief that life would return to normalcy, that the Taliban would provide stability and guarantee of human rights. But once again hopes remained elusive.
As Mariam says, "Within two or three weeks of our return, some people knocked on our door. They were Taliban. At that time they were on a mission to disarm people and asked them to hand in their guns, which we believed was a very good thing. They asked me if we had any guns. I told them that we had just returned from Pakistan and we were very poor, so we didn't have any guns. There were ten of them at the door. They said "no" - they didn't accept my words and then they started to beat me. I was beaten very badly. My husband was not at home, only my daughter was with me. I screamed a lot but they carried on beating me. My daughter and I were screaming at them to stop, and finally they pushed me in a ditch. My lower back was damaged by my fall and it continues to give me problems even today. After one week they attacked and raped my sister-in-law, and took away her husband. She could not take it and committed suicide. She had four children and her relatives began to take care of those children."
It became clear to Mariam and her husband all too soon that the Taliban rulers were not what they had hoped for. They were not going to bring peace to Afghanistan but were just perpetuating terror. Her husband, well known in the region as a good fighter and a knowledgeable person, went underground. He knew that if the Taliban caught wind of his whereabouts he would be a dead man. The Talibans were already known to be rounding up "people with knowledge". For a while they lived in relative peace. But a few weeks after Mariam's beating the Taliban again knocked on their door.
Mariam recounts, "The next time they came at midnight, in the winter. When they knocked on the door, I told my husband to let me open the door because it might be the enemy on a mission to kill him. I didn't really believe this though, but I knew my husband feared for his life. I thought that it was probably my neighbour. I asked who was at the door. There was no reply. When I opened the door, like insects they swarmed inside, about twelve of them. I couldn't shout to warn my husband as one of them held my mouth shut. They started to search the house. We didn't have a hiding place and so my husband was trapped in our room. There was no way to escape. They found him of course. I still didn't believe that they would do any harm to him, because we were poor and didn't have any guns. But they took him away".
Mariam heard nothing about him for a few days. Since her husband was a respected man in the village, the villagers too were very much concerned about him. A group of elders went to the Taliban headquarters to inquire after him. Mariam says, "They used to give different answers about his whereabouts. They said, "Go to this man", or "Go and see another man", and would never speak the truth. In this way the elders would spend days and nights looking for him.
Finally one day some guards went to the elders and said, "Come, the person you are looking for is sick, he has a stomach ache." When they got to the room, they saw that my husband was dead. The elders asked them "how did he die?" Those who saw the whole episode told them that he had been tortured. He was beaten very badly and then put inside a big 'bellar' (a big tin in which is water). They ducked him in the water and held him there for minutes at a time and then brought him up. Then they put him in the ground and buried him up to his neck leaving him like that in the freezing cold. Then he was taken out and into the 'bellar' again. This happened for three to four hours non-stop, they said. Afterwards they left him inside a room alone, without any medical care or food. He did not survive.
They kept the body, maybe for a night and a day, because they knew that the elders would be very upset and angry. The Talibans who had killed him had left the village before we found out. Almost 30 people went to collect his body. They brought him to the village and we buried him.
For two years I stayed in the village. I would just cry and cry, my husband was dead, my children were small, and I had nobody to help me. I couldn't work because the Taliban didn't allow women to work. It was difficult for me to come out of the house. I would cry day and night, and I didn't know how to lead my life. The children would ask for things to eat and wear.
My condition was very bad. Those mannerless Talibans were abusing the people in my village very badly and there was nothing we could do about it. I would watch them every moment. In a single night they would search 10-20 houses. They could do this because they had guns. Sometimes if people had no guns to give them, they would make men go and buy new guns, and then give them up. If families had young girls, the Taliban would take them and rape them. They would also take husbands and sons and beat or kill them. I was very upset by seeing all these things. I didn't know what was I living for. Each second passed on me just like a whole day. I was fed up of this life and thought sometimes of taking my own life. My children would have become orphans without any future".
Eventually Mariam, with the help of friends and relatives was able to reach Pakistan. Her relatives had heard about the women's rights' group, RAWA, and sent her to them. They took her in, and helped her to set up a house in the camp. They provided her with food and helped her to begin doing handicrafts and embroidery so that she could earn money for herself. They also helped her to get a loom so that she could begin carpet weaving.
She says, "I came to Pakistan to escape all the bad conditions of Afghanistan. If it were not for RAWA I do not know where I would have been today. They helped me so much, and they also taught me about women's rights. Living in Pakistan is better for me as compared to Afghanistan, because here I can find work of carpet weaving. I can work outside the home. Still, I want very much to return to Afghanistan. I love my country and I am praying that it should become free. Not only the country, but also the people should be free. The conditions there should be such that all of us can work again, and we would be happy there if we could do all the things that we could do before the Taliban took over."
I ask her what she thinks now about the Taliban, whether she thinks that they are establishing a 'pure' Islamic state as they claim. She responds unhesitatingly, "They all, Taliban, Gulbuddin, Rabbani and others are claiming to be Muslims because they have defeated the Soviets, but in reality they are not Muslims. Taliban and Jehadis are all hopeless infidels. They are not ruling according to the Islamic laws. They are not bothered about God but just stress that women have no right to work, no right to be educated. In this way they can treat us worse than animals. According to Shariat (Islamic law) man and woman both have same rights to work, to go to school. Woman is a human being just like man. We are witnesses to the fact that they are misusing Islam for their own benefits and lying in the name of God. These are not the word of Allah or His Prophet. They have made these words for themselves.
I am also a Muslim but when I see Taliban and Jehadis and their attitudes, I put a big question mark before myself and doubt my religion and faith. My hopes and desires have been destroyed and everything in my life, even my faith as a Muslim has been thrown into question. When I watch the Jehadis, Taliban, and think of the thousands of young men who have been killed and thousands of women and children who have become widows and orphans…. I think there is no God and no Muslim living in this world. If there is any God than why does he not listen to the cry of thousands of mothers and fathers? Why the real Muslims do not help us to fight against these brutalities being committed in the name of Islam? I think it must be because they do not exist." |
