Burqa: Garment As Signifier

Burqa: Garment as Signifier

The significance of the signifier does not reside in the object beheld, but in the beholder.

Published by Henna Page Publications, a division of TapDancing Lizard LLC Stow, Ohio, 44224 USA

Catherine Cartwright-Jones

Burqa: Garment as Signifier

Cultural Geography, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology

Burqa: Garment as Signifier

7 yards of polyester as Honor, Protection, Purity, Prestige, Oppression, Resistance, Violence, Poverty, and a Justification for Military invasion

The significance of the signifier does not reside in the object beheld, but in the beholder.

“Burqa: Garment as Signifier” was a research paper originally written as part of completion of the Masters of Liberal Studies degree at Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio, USA, by Catherine Cartwright-Jones in 2004. The paper was edited, and a foreword added in 2012.

In 2012, Catherine made a good faith effort to reconnect with the original websites and contact image owners cited in the paper. Most of the original websites no longer are online, and the contact emails were returned “Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender.” In lieu of explicit permission, TapDancing Lizard LLC claims fair use of material quoted for academic research and educational material, with full citations.

This paper was originally written in partial fulfillment for PhD, 2004, with notes and introduction added 2012

The significance of the signifier does not reside in the object beheld, but in the beholder.

Contents:

Foreword …………………………………………………………………………………7

Part I: Burqa: Garment as Signifier …………………………………………………….17

Veiling within Islamic Geographies: Signifier and Discipline in Space ………………..21

The Burqa and Veils within Islamic Geographies: Law and Resistance ….….…………25

The Burqa as Signifier in Context: Islamic Pashtun Afghanistan ………………………27

The Burqa in the Shop …………………………………………………………………..28

The Burqa within Afghani Geographies: Ethnic Signifier ………………………...……31

The Burqa within Afghani Geographies: Signifier in Personal Expression …………….32

The Burqa within Afghani Geographies: Physical Environment of the Steppe ……...…34

The Burqa within Afghani Geographies: Physical Environment of the Marketplace …..35

The Burqa within Afghani Geographies: Public Spaces and Men’s Places……………..40

The Burqa in Afghani Geographies: Private Spaces ………………………….…………45

Part II: The Burqa and the Taliban: The Burqa and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan:

Boundaries Disrupted….…………………………………………….…….…………….48

The Burqa and the Taliban: Boundaries Re-Established…………………………….…..49

The Burqa and the Taliban: Boundaries Enforced ………………………………………52

Part III: The Politicization of the Burqa in the West: Images of the Burqa and Afghani

Women in West prior to 2001, and Sharbat Gula ….……...…………………………….57

The Burqa and RAWA………………………………………………….……………….61

RAWA uses the Burqa as a Signifier to the West …………………...………………….62

RAWA creates the discourse of “Fundamentalism-Blighted” Afghanistan ……...……..63

The Burqa as Signifier Extracted from Indigenous Geography and offered to US News

Media Following 9/11……………………………………………………………………68

The Western Gaze and the Burqa ……………………………………………………….72

Burqa as Signifier used by Rand, AP, Reuters and the US Government ……….………80

Lifting the Burqa becomes a Signifier of Support for the West …………………...……84

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………97

References ……………………………………………………………………………….98

Figure 1: Cover image: Engraving of Persian woman in a Burqa. 1843. Librarie Historique-Artisique. Author’s collection

Foreword:

Figure 2: A chador, a form of burqa, worn by a Muslim woman in India, 1922. Author’s collection.

I wrote “Burqa: Garment as Signifier” in 2004 as part of the preparatory work for my

PhD dissertation in cultural geography. I was focused on the geographies of henna, and part of that focus included studying women’s body scripts in the cultures where henna is an indigenous tradition. I searched and saved every news article from every media I could access that had any mention of henna, as part of being a diligent researcher. After 2001, I found increasingly frequent mentions of henna in Afghanistan, if for no other reason than henna is worn by Afghani women, and the USA was involved in military action in

Afghanistan.

Figure 3: “Jewish Women” L.C Page and Company, 1900

The media, viral emails, newsgroups, and news reports on television increasingly used images of women in blue burqas as a signifier of oppression, and as a justification for western allies to send military forces into Afghanistan. I had file cabinets and shelves lined with books of the history and practice of women covering and secluding. As a

‘the burqa equals oppression’ was simplistic and ill informed. The ubiquitous blue burqa seemed to me to be a red herring for escalating western military presence in Afghanistan, while the actual strategic objectives, political, economic, military, while a masked vendetta following 9/11 was obscured.

Though it is always tempting to simply yell at the 6 o’clock news, social media, and online news groups for purveying misinformation, such expressions are usually fairly futile. I had an assignment in Geographic Thought to produce a research paper through post-structural approaches to conflicts in cultural geographies, significance and signifiers, the beholder and the beheld. I thought that the western perception of the burqa as instrument of oppression, conflated with fears of conservative and vocal Islamists, had interesting potential for analysis. I settled into researching and writing,” Burqa; Garment as Signifier from the Umma to the USA: 7 yards of polyester as Honor, Protection,

Purity, Prestige, Oppression, Resistance, Violence, Poverty, and a Justification for

Military invasion.”

There are some points implicit in western misunderstanding of women’s covering that I would like to review in this introduction.

Covering has been a fashion for women in semi-arid regions of this planet for thousands of years. Women in these regions all cover to a greater or lesser extent, because a fine fabric, drawn over the face and shoulders provides some shelter from the ever-present

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 10 dust, bursts of wind carrying dust, and occasional simooms (dust storms). Dust is irritating to the eyes and nose, and long exposure to dust can cause respiratory damage.

These regions also have high albedo (reflected sunlight) and exposure to sun weathers skin and causes skin cancer. Where there are shopping areas with butcheries, vegetable sellers, and restaurants without western-style plastic hygienic packaging, refrigeration, antiseptics, and waste disposal systems, flies find attractive accommodations. Flies are a nuisance and disease vector to any person who has the slightly damp and fly-attractive spots of eyes, nose and ears. Covering the face with a fine gauze cloth is a simple, sensible way for a woman to mitigate environmental hazards to her health in this environment. The effects of sun, wind, and pestilence, among many other things, were once culturally framed as ‘The Evil Eye.’ Women avoided the Evil Eye by covering themselves, wearing amulets, and other behaviors which often coincidentally were beneficial habits.

Much of the semi-arid zone happens to currently coincide with demographic prevalence of the Muslim faith and culture, but covering is not limited to Muslim women. As you can see from the images in this introduction, Coptic Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women in this region all have worn variations of the burqa. Covering and secluding the female body is not an exclusively Muslim concept, nor is covering an exclusively Muslim response to environment. Sandstorms, sunburn, and flies inflict their annoyance upon people without regard to culture or religion.

Figure 4: Coptic Christian Woman in Egypt, Hodder and Stoughton, London, UK, 1918 (Author’s collection)

Western culture has had women’s covering traditions, and they are well tolerated within the west. Female covering predates the separation among the monotheistic religion, and the disporas of these religions have adapted the ordinances of modesty and covering to

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 12 one extent or other. Some covering garments are private, and others are public. The undergarments required of practicing Mormons 1 is a form of devotional covering, but it is invisible to other than the trained eye. Externally recognizable Amish women’s covering is part of the tourist attraction to their markets. Catholic nuns are still challenged about their piety when they wear clothing that they believe facilitates work and communication with their parishioners. Bras mask the motions of breasts; girdles mask the motions of buttocks, placing the same claim of modesty as required by mullahs who exhort that all the female body be covered. The negotiation of areas to be covered often seems rather arbitrary: Breast and buttock cleavage may be alternately permitted or abhorred. The nape of the neck may be ordained extraordinarily sensual or totally irrelevant. Breast- feeding a child would seem a necessary function, but some places forbid the exposure of a female breast in public, even for the purpose of succoring a hungry infant, while male nipples are not considered indecent. Some times, law requires that toes be covered, other times, toes are exposed and toenails painted. Navels, knees, and elbows come and go.

The coverage of a woman’s body is framed in regional and temporal style more than law and function. Clothing laws are often passed as enforcement of local values, 2 becoming viewed as quaint, obsolete, or downright peculiar within decades.

1 The Temple Garment, a form of long underwear popular at the time of the codification of the Mormon Church: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_garment 2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothing_laws_by_country Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 13

Figure 5: “Moslem Women Attired in Mandels and Izzars” E. P Dutton and Co., Boston, Mass., 1904

A woman’s public body and private body are differently constructed in all cultures. Both women and men have a different range of dress and undress within their homes or private area than in public. Covering is adapted to the onlooker and situation. Covering and privacy is associated with honor and piety in many religions; Christianity, Judaism, and

Islam being among those which regard public nakedness as inappropriate, dishonorable, and lewd. When the western eye (or camera) focuses on a woman accustomed to covering in front of people outside of her own family, she will often quickly cover for privacy, or just out of habit. Viewers of these images such as Figure 6 may assume that such women are always covered. They are covered the moments we see them. Similarly, a western woman might tidy up a room, straighten her clothing, or comb her hair when expecting visitors. Our homes are not always clean, our clothing may be rumpled, our hair may often be in disarray, but we like to present ourselves well to others.

Privilege is a facet of covering. Before the industrial revolution, finely spun and woven cloth required far more labor investment than coarse cloth, and large pieces of veil might represent months of skilled labor. Wearing yards of delicate cloth was a conspicuous display of wealth before cloth could be cheaply manufactured on industrial looms.

Privilege is also implied in the act of covering. In the cultures of semi-arid zone ecologies where recourses are limited, precious things are covered, guarded, and kept secluded so they will not be ruined by dirt, sun, sand, or theft. A woman’s beauty is considered tempting and precious. If a woman secludes and covers herself, she communicates

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 15 through this coverage that she is not only modest and pious; she is of worth and valued.

By extension, she communicates that her family is of worth and value.

Figure 6: “Turkish Women” L. C. Page and Co., Boston, Mass. 1900

The assumptions that the burqa is unique to Afghanistan, that the burqa is inherently oppressive or humiliating, that the burqa is unique to Muslim culture, or that the burqa is a product of terrorism, are fictions constructed in the West. It is not unusual that the

West misunderstands the outward appearance of people in other cultures, and occasionally embarrasses itself through actions based on these misinterpretations. I believe misinformation has rarely been crafted with such cynical opportunism as was the image of the burqa during the western military intervention into Afghanistan.

Figure 7: Woman with Allied soldiers, Philippeville Airfield, 12 th Airforce Base of Operations, Skikda, Airport, Algeria, 1943 Author’s collection

I honor the sacrifices made by service men of many countries made during Afghani military action, and during the other military interventions in the Middle East. I do not believe that they sent to liberate women from seven yards of polyester.

Figure 8: Woman in Burqa, Afghanistan Gallery, http://www.angelfire.com/va3/ultimate/mirror/burqa_afg.jpg , (accessed May 2004)

Part I: The Burqa; Garment as Signifier from the Umma to the USA

"A burqa, you know, is something a person outside sees. You are inside it. You

don't see it, or think it strange. It is there to stop others from seeing you, not you

from watching them. You see everything. Inside it you feel free, all alone with

yourself. You don't have any impertinent eyes coming in when you want to be left

alone..." (Molteno, 1987, p 90)

Anthropologists in the Malinowski tradition analyzed clothing as a function and indicator of social transitions, cultural upheavals, and colonial situations. From this emerged a discourse of clothing as a “universal and visible cultural element consisting of sets of body symbols deliberately designed to convey messages at different social and psychological levels. (Kuper 1973: 348) Simply put, people use clothing as a signifier to inform other people of their status, character, and intentions.

Recently, the resurgence of face covering or veiling in Islamic countries, variously known as hijab, niqab, and burqa, has received a great deal of attention in western counties. Images of women with veiled faces and bodies are juxtaposed with images of terrorism, oppression, and tragedy by news media, governmental bodies and NGO’s, religious and secular groups. Analysts, both official and “armchair” then attempted to link these garments to political explanations of social phenomena and popular justifications. (Chatty, 1997, 127) The burqa, an indigenous Afghani female face and body covering has been specifically employed as a signifier by both the western and eastern media since the rise of the Taliban and the US invasion of Afghanistan following the tragedy of September 11, 2001.

Figure 9: Afghani women wearing Burqas http://archives.theconnection.org/archive/2001/10/1011b.shtml (accessed May 1, 2004)

Regrettably, the western significance attached to veiling was largely formed in a vacuum of information about Islam and Middle Eastern culture.

Muslim women do not cover up out of shame. Veiling is about modesty and

privacy. In fact, it can be empowering to see without being seen. Westerners often

feel a loss of control when they cannot see the women behind their veils. Perhaps

some prefer to believe that veiling oppressive so they do not have to acknowledge

that it is threatening to them. Yet if people let go of their preconceived notions

about the veil it would cease to be the unknown and come to be understood as a

part of dress and an expression of identity. (Barr, Clark, Marsh 2003)

Figure 10: Afghani woman wearing a burqa http://www.angelfire.com/va3/ultimate/mirror/afghan_burqa2.jpg (accessed May, 2004))

By improperly judging an alien religion, the veil becomes a symbol of oppression

and devastation, instead of a representation of pride and piety. Despite Western

images, the hijab is a daily revitalization and reminder of the Islamic societal and

religious ideals, thereby upholding the conduct and attitudes of the Muslim

community. Americans share these ideals yet fail to recognize them in the context

of a different culture. By sincerely exploring the custom of Islamic veiling, one

will realize the vital role the hijab plays in shaping Muslim culture by sheltering

women, and consequently society, from the perils that erupt from indecency. The

principles implored in the Koran of modesty, honor, and stability construct a

unifying and moral view of the Islamic Middle Eastern society when properly

investigated. As it was transcribed from Allah, “Speak to them from behind a

curtain. This is purer for your hearts and their hearts” (Brooks 1995).

Veiling within Islamic Geographies: Signifier and Discipline in

Space

In Islamic space, umma is the public space occupied by male believers in a democratic collectivity based on shared beliefs. The purdah or harem is the private domestic space, the world of sexuality and the family, that is occupied by women. (Mernisi, 1987: 138-9).

These two spaces are strictly bounded. If a woman enters the umma , she is “out of bounds”, and is an unwelcome anomaly. If a non-kin man enters the private domestic space of purdah or harem , he is “out of bounds” and an unwelcome anomaly. Of course men and women cannot completely live apart, so some sort of portable boundary, such as the veil, can manage the intrusions of one gender into the other’s space. In the case of

Afghanistan, and many other areas through history, this portable boundary is the burqa.

The negotiation of these boundaries, and the reason for their existence are discussed in the Quran:

"O Prophet, tell your wives and daughters and the believing women

to draw their outer garments around them (when they go out or are

among men). That is better in order that they may be known (to be

Muslims) and not annoyed..." (Quran 33:59)

"Say to the believing man that they should lower their gaze and guard their

modesty; that will make for greater purity for them; and Allah is well acquainted

with all that they do. And say to the believing women that they should lower their

gaze and guard their modesty; and that they should not display their beauty and

ornaments except what must ordinarily appear thereof; that they should draw

their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their

husbands..." (Quran 24:30-31)

Figure 11: Afghani women wearing burqas, walking by a mosque with a child. http://www.angelfire.com/va3/ultimate/mirror/afg2.jpg (accessed May 2004)

The Quran does not mandate veiling, but simply speaks about modesty, respect, and not selfishly drawing attention to oneself when a person crosses into another space. The proxy boundaries are to soften the impact of breached space. This does not only apply to women in the umma ; male modesty is more frequently referred to in the Quran than female modesty. The umma is an area of public activity and potential conflict, so men too are encouraged to behave cooperatively rather than competitively. Boundaries, modesty, and veiling are constructed as an act of social sensitivity meant to prevent aggression and exhibitionism that can disrupt orderly society.

Cover your nakedness, do not play your with your femininity as a commodity. Be

proud and save your intimate best for the one who stands by you in good and bad.

Speak loud and clear; the game-and-promise bedroom voice does not belong on

the streets. Walk firm and tall; the swaying and jingling advertisement of the body

carries a “for sale” sign on it. (Surah 33:32)

Islamic gendered space and veiling discourse is framed as discipline, stability, and honor as opposed to wantonness, instability, and dishonor. Veiling is in this context is a matter of people showing respect for each other, and enabling respectful relationships with each other. In most Muslim societies veiling is voluntary rather than legally enforced. Women may choose whether or not to veil, though most defer to their family’s wishes regarding covering, and through that compliance show respect for their kin and their beliefs.

This concept of orderly gendered relations within public space gave rise to the Islamic urban spatial ideal where women are rarely seen, and if they are seen, they are veiled. Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 24

This signifies that the ideal Muslim society is so honorable, prosperous, and perfectly maintained that all women are so completely cared for and protected that they not need to labor outside the home. This ideal is set in opposition to spaces where women frequently leave the house to earn an income, get an education, do agricultural labor, obtain goods, and may choose not to veil out of out of necessity, or it’s hindrance to mobility and vision.

Each Muslim woman, when choosing whether or not to veil, responds to Quran, her family’s influence, her economic necessities and opportunities, her country’s laws, the world at large, and these decisions change from one occasion to the next.

The Koran to some is a divine guide for just living. To others, it's an archaic code

whose spirit, more than the letter, should be applied today. Stories of young

women donning veils their mothers and even grandmothers fought to take off are

abundant.

Nadia Tewfiq, an Egyptian journalist studying Islamic political thought in

London, was devastated to find on her last trip home that her 15-year-old niece,

Nihal, had started wearing hijab. "In the beginning of the 20th century, women

took off the veil in Egypt, because it was seen as a veil on the mind itself," says

Ms. Tewfiq. "It was a symbol that you're a piece of meat, a sex object. But today

women are putting it back on, voluntarily."

"A woman's body is like honey," Nihal told her aunt, "and you have to keep the

flies away."

For some, the act of rebellion is a family affair: choosing to cover in a household

of women who don't, or refusing to veil in a family of women who do. At one

Kuwaiti suburban home, for example, Nura el-Enezi's daughters differ. She and

her two older teenage girls wear hijab. But 14-year-old May refuses to wear the

veil, even though most girls her age do. "It's too hot," says May al-Enezi, smirking

at her sisters, who tell her God will punish her for disobeying.

Ilene R. Prusher, Staff Writer of The Christian Science Monitor

http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/08/11/fp8s1-csm.shtml

2000-08-16 18:08:03 PST (accessed May 2004)

Burqa and Veils within Islamic Geographies: Law and Resistance

Laws regarding veiling vary among Islamic countries. Presently, strict laws about women's dress are often used to emphasize the religious orientation of a particular government, as in Iran or Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, Turkey has banned the veil in public offices and universities because the Turkish state is committed to a more secular identity. Young women are excluded from classes and from receiving their degrees if

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 26 they appear in headscarves 3. Turkey’s courts rationalize these anti-veiling laws by quoting the country’s constitutionally mandated secularism, which Kemal Ataturk imposed when he created modern Turkey. Because some interpret this anti-veiling legislation as an infringement on basic human rights to freedoms of association and expression, these restrictions on veiling are now, paradoxically, imperiling one of secular

Turkey’s great ambitions: joining the European Union.

There are similar legal prohibitions on veils through the region, for the same political reason – to assert that the state is to be based on rational law rather than divine law. In

Egypt, for example, as in Tunisia and Uzbekistan, there are laws in place banning the full veil, yet women resist the laws.

By choosing to veil when otherwise prohibited, such as is the case in Egypt, a woman visibly signifies that she lays claim to Islamic modesty, and is critical of adopting foreign styles, often associated with immorality. Veiling signifies the rejection of western colonialism and continued hegemony. This resurgence of veiling since the 1970s has grown in popularity among students and white-collar workers. (Guindi, 1999) By the

1990s, it had spread to the lower classes aspiring to be elite, rural areas aspiring to be urban, and has been adopted by African and some Filipino immigrants in Cairo so that they would avoid harassment in the streets.

3 Elements of this ban were lifted in 2008, and 2010, after this paper was initially written. The banning or permitting of headscarves in Turkey is a regular part of political platforms in elections. The constitutional court tends to support the ban on the basis of the founding principles of the Turkish constitution, but informal permissions to wear headscarves are not presently prosecuted. Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 27

"In Gaza they wear scarves they didn't have to 10 years ago because they don't

want to be harassed by thugs," says Karma Nabulsi, a politics fellow at England's

Oxford University.

"In Syria, the veil became a way of showing displeasure with the regime," Dr.

Nabulsi says. "It was the only thing you could do to show opposition."

Ilene R. Prusher, Staff Writer of The Christian Science Monitor

http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/08/11/fp8s1-csm.shtml

2000-08-16 18:08:03 PST (accessed May 2004)

The Burqa as Signifier in Context: Islamic Pashtun Afghanistan

In Afghanistan the burqa, the local expression of the veil, is related to the aforementioned concepts of Islamic concepts of honor and space and to Pashtun ideals of honor and purity. However, unless a man was so wealthy that he could provide for all of his wives’ needs within his home, a woman would have to leave purdah and go into the umma from time to time. If she left the house, she could cover herself with the veil as a portable purdah , so she would still be secluded from men’s gaze, and not cause disorder in the umma . Veiling and seclusion became the twin instruments with which social stability and family honor was defended.

Before 1994, most women in rural Afghanistan areas wore a burqa when outside the home, because the burqa was their ethnic interpretation of veiling and was their customary garment, particularly in Pashtun communities. In urban areas, women made a personal choice to veil or not, or to wear a burqa, though they deferred their choice to accommodate the wishes of their husbands and extended family.

The Burqa in the Shop

Figure 12: A burqa offered for sale in an online store in 2004 Afghanistan Online: Burqa $45. http://www.afghan-web.com/shop/nproducts/ (accessed May 2004)

The color, cloth, extent of embroidery and shape of the burqa has varied through time, geographic area, clan, status and personal taste. The most common form of the burqa as

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 29 of spring 2004 is an ankle length garment with an open work mesh-embroidered area over eyes. A burqa has a very tight fitting cap section, necessary to keep the burqa from sliding out of place. The open work area has to stay directly over the woman’s eyes so she can see. The full length of cloth is pleated to the cap, and women are critical of pleats that are too large or are uneven. Fine pleating is admired, as is delicate embroidery at the face, cap, and hem.

Figure 13: Women shopping, examining the quality of a burqa http://www.suprmchaos.com/burqa_051103.jpg (accessed May 2004)

Though silk burqas of imported Japanese georgette are most desired, most of those in shops are made of 7 yards of affordable cotton or polyester cloth. In 2002 through 2004, high quality blue polyester from Korea was popular, though often unavailable because of

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 30 the war and economic disruption. A woman purchasing a burqa hopes to get about 5 years of wear out of it, so fashions in burqas evolve slowly. On http://www.afghan- web.com/shop/nproducts/ blue burqas sell for $45 (accessed May, 2004). As of April 12,

2004 on Ebay, there were 11 listings for burqas in blue, gray, black and purple, selling for about $20 each. 4

Figure 14: Afghani women wearing burqas, with children hiding under their mother's burqas. http://www.angelfire.com/va3/ultimate/mirror/aghan_outdoor.jpg (accessed May 2004)

The current form of burqa is described disdainfully in “ Shuttle Cork Burqas ” by Nina

Martyris in The Times of India, March 20, 2004:

4 In September, 2012, the average price of burqas on Ebay was $35. Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 31

The Pathan dress code for women is the burqa which is also used in Afghanistan

and which was imposed strictly during the Taliban reign. In Pakistan, these

burqas begin with a cap-like head cover that billows into a pleated tent-like veil

with a tiny net opening in the front for the eyes to look out, have a special name.

They're called Shuttle Cork burqas because their shape remind one of the shuttle

used in badminton and the people of Karachi and Lahore are inclined to laugh at

this practice. In Peshawar, Shuttle Cork burqas come in many colors — blue is

the favorite, but saffron and beige can also be spotted. A burqa costs between Rs

200 to Rs 400 a piece and is available in cotton and synthetic, which works well

for the permanent pleated look.

Times of India, April 3, 2004:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/572242.cms (accessed

mayM)

Burqa within Afghani Geographies: Ethnic Signifier

Afghanistan has many ethnic groups. The largest group is Pashtun, followed by Tajik,

Uzbeck and Hazara who have differing head covering practices. The burqa, then, is not only a statement of personal values, but of membership in the dominant ethnic group.

When a Pashtun woman wears a burqa outside of her house she signifies that she aspires to ideal Pashtun female behavior, and that her family has honorable social standing.

When asked why a Pashtun woman wears the burqa, she typically responds, ”We do

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 32 these things out of love and respect for our husband and family.” (Daly, 1999: 157) A woman’s choice to wear a burqa signifies that she supports the ideals, values and beliefs of the Pashtun people and of Islamic culture. This is very different from western observers who surmise that women cover themselves because ideal female behavior was

“passive, modest and obedient” (Dupree, 1978: 10-15).

Burqa within Afghani Geographies: Signifier in Personal

Expression

Figure 15: An Afghani seamstress selling burqas from her home workshop, negotiating a price with her customers. Afghan Women’s Association International http://www.awai.org/parwaz0603.html accessed May 2004

Though burqas are so similar as to be indistinguishable to the untrained eye, as western men’s suits are very similar, a woman makes personal choices in her burqa, and takes pride in her choices, just as a man does when ordering a tailored suit. These choices are a

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 33 mark of her socio-economic status, age, and clan affiliation. Younger women wear machine-embroidered burqas, with brighter colors. Older women wear darker colors, and may have costly hand embroidery. Some burqa are heirlooms, brought out for important occasions (Daly, 1999: 158).

Figure 16: Silver embroidered black lace burqa over a dress featured in a fashion show http://www.ragistan.com/feb02/ (accessed May 2004)

The burqa is a valued fashion item, and fine ones are much coveted. Adolescent unmarried girls in Kandahar, Afghanistan, may wear a burqa for holiday celebrations, as a sort of “practice” for being a real grownup woman, as 13 year-old girls in Cleveland,

Ohio, USA, may wear a fashionable black mini-dress, stockings and heels at a Bat

Mitzvah. Women who don’t want to have “just another burqa off the rack” purchase cloth as fine as they can afford, then take it to a seamstress to have their burqa custom sewn, and fuss over how much to pay the seamstress. In 1988, a very fine hand made burqa cost about 600 Afghanis, compared to a prayer scarf that was about 20 Afghanis

(Doubleday, 1988: 63).

The Burqa within Afghani Geographies: Physical Environment

Afghanistan has an arid steppe ecology. The Sistan basin has blizzards and subarctic cold in the winters, and the southern plateau has intense heat in the summer. In the western and southern regions a northerly wind, known as the "wind of 120 days," blows during the summer months bringing dust storms and whirlwinds between June and

September. These "dust winds" generate at midday and often advance at 97 to 177 kilometers per hour, raising high clouds of dust. This intense heat, drought, and sand storms that accompany these winds make life very difficult for the people living in this area. (The Library of Congress - Country Studies, 2004) A woman is well served by her burqa when she is outdoors, as it offers her eyes, mouth and lungs some protection from the dust storm. The length keeps her clothing from being soiled, and the tight cap keeps the garment in place. A veil would offer less protection from the dust clouds, and would be more likely to be lost in the high winds.

The Burqa within Afghani Geographies: Physical Environment and the Marketplace

Seclusion in the home, in the harem, is regarded as a privilege, and women whose husbands can afford to seclude them express pride in this seclusion because it proves that their husbands are rich men. (Belghiti, 1970:58) A closely secluded and veiled Pashtun woman’s husband may do all the shopping for her. If a husband rarely gives his wife permission to go out, someone else has to bring her what she requires for the maintenance of herself and the household: housekeeping tools and supplies, health and sanitation necessities, children’s goods and toys, clothing, food and drink, items for leisure and adornment.

There the wealthiest families employ servants to carry water from the well and to

work in the fields alongside family males. Mature women of these families may

make rare appearances in the fields to bring lunch to the family males working

there and sometimes to supervise laborers. Thus elitism is expressed in women's

exclusive domesticity, with men providing economic necessities for the family.

Only women of poor and low-ranking groups engage in heavy manual labor

outside the home, especially for pay. Such women work long hours in the fields,

on construction gangs, and at many other tasks, often veiling their faces as they

work .

http://countrystudies.us/ Source: U.S. Library of Congress: “ Veiling and Seclusion”

(accessed May 2004)

A woman who does go out to do the shopping may often be accosted by men who presume that if she is out in the marketplace, she must be a must be a woman with neither honor nor protection, a low class woman or maid. Women who do venture into the market wear a burqa, hoping they will suffer less harassment. An unveiled woman wandering in public would be regarded as a prostitute, or at least tolerant of, or inviting the advances of men. (Mernissi, 1987: 142)

Other Afghani women shop for themselves out of necessity. They often complain about their husband’s poor choices in clothing, especially that the slippers they purchase for their wives are the wrong size.

Figure 18: Afghani women shopping in the market http://www.angelfire.com/va3/ultimate/mirror/kabul_street.jpg (accessed September 2004)

" Women who were banned by their husbands from shopping or were too embarrassed to deal with male storekeepers, would have had to ask their spouses, brothers or sons to make purchases for them, For instance when they go to the street bazaar the men tease

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 38 them. They want to buy Kotex (sanitary pads) or they want to buy bras and the men tease them. They say bad words to them”. (Kabul shopping By AFP/Madeleine Coorey, http://www.thingsasian.com/goto_article/article.2749.html (accessed May 2004)

Figure 19: Women shopping, pulling their burqas back to more clearly see items for purchase. http://www.angelfire.com/va3/ultimate/mirror/Kakul_shopping3.jpg (accessed may 2004)

When women wish to see something more clearly in the market place, they can quickly tuck back their burqa. The burqa is a malleable boundary, being quickly gathered up to shelter from an intrusive gaze, pulled firmly to the face to allow better vision, flung out to

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 39 make a gesture, and raised back to greet family. Young children duck underneath their mother’s burqas when they feel shy. Women who wish to have a private conversation in public will “double up” under burqas, making it one large tent. The garment is not simply a spatial boundary, but one that permits considerable and emotional expression.

Figure 20: Women shopping in a village market in Afghanistan

The Afghani village market area usually includes live animals being brought through the streets, butcheries filled with uncovered, unrefrigerated fresh slaughter, vegetables and plant waste. The pathways are generally unpaved, and dusty, dirty, occasionally muddy.

Good clothing would be soiled walking through the market, so the burqa protects women’s clothing, and may also shield them from flies and odors as well as the gaze non- kin males.

Recently, a “Women Only” modern shopping center has opened in Kabul, so that women may cross into a secluded women’s space, tuck back their burqas, and shop for fashionable clothing, lingerie, cosmetics, and jewelry away from the gaze of men and out of the filth of the traditional village marketplaces.

Burqa within Afghani Geographies: Public Spaces - Men’s Places

Figure 21: Women in burqa conversing in a village street

Secluded women in Afghanistan are permitted to visit cemeteries twice a year, and go to the baths twice a month. When women are outdoors on these occasions, or celebrating

Noruz in a public park, they retain their private gendered space and their honor by keeping their burqas on, creating a female zone within the outdoor male area.

Some women are educated, have jobs and leave the home to work. When women do choose to work outside of the home, from necessity or desire, men often make snearing remarks , “Look at them, they are working like foreigners.” (CBS evening news,

Afghanistan, CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey, Oct. 7, 2002) The burqa guards women from men’s eyes, but a woman can come home aching from constant “body slams” as men “accidentally” make full body contact with a woman, or pinch and grope her when he does make contact.

Figure 22: Women walking to work. http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/central/03/11/kabul.6months/ (accessed May 2004)

Sarah Kamal, an unmarried young woman still wearing a veil rather than the full burqa, wrote in her online diary about Iranian men’s behavior similar to the “burqa body slams” in Afghanistan.

“ You see, I was walking in the streets a few days ago when a guy started

following me and asking for my phone number etc, etc, ad nauseum. I didn't give

him the time of day. Then another guy began trying to arrange a date with me,

and I told him to get lost. By the time a third guy began hounding me, I was pretty

annoyed. Men in Tehran can be pests, but this was ridiculous! It was only a

bloody fifteen-minute walk, and I seemed to have chosen the street full of idiots.

So I just ignored this third guy - he wasn’t even worth the bother of speech.

But he was persistent. He followed me for a good half-kilometer or so, muttering

things at me the entire way despite the fact that I was almost sprinting to get away

from him. Then he fell behind, and with a sigh of relief I began walking across a

small park towards a shopping complex.

But of course, since I no longer had an idiot, I had to find me another idiot. And

this idiot was in the form of a tall bearded man who told me to put my headscarf

on properly. So I whipped around and said "what business is it of yours?!!", gave

him the finger, and walked on, taking my headscarf off my head completely and

flipping my hair in his direction. I was now fuming.

As I walked into the shopping complex, I replaced my headscarf loosely, hackles

still raised. And it was at this unfortunate moment that idiot number three decided

to catch up to me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I don’t remember much,

other than him saying something like "I've found you now" and then my sensing a

hand touch my waist, and then KAPOW!! My fist shot out into his kidney. When

he turned a completely shocked face to me, I pointed my finger in his face, said,

"don’t touch me" in a quiet and intense voice, then marched on. He disappeared.”

(http://afghanistan.unitycode.org/welcome/afg2.html (accessed May 2004)

Of course, the burqa can also be used in flirting and seduction, by swirling and swaying, lifting it to fan oneself, and as a disguise when going through the streets to meet a lover.

A woman can waft the sent of her perfume or her body by fluttering her burqa, or allow the cloth to slide across a desirable male. The folds of the burqa extend gesture, extend line, exend scent. The folds of the burqa can reveal, obscure, emphasize, enfold, entice.

The burqa is an expressive extension of the woman and her personal space within public space.

In a burqa, a woman can go places without her husband, or anyone else, recognizing her.

Omar S. Pound lamented in a poem that when he looked down the street, he couldn’t recognize his wife, in her burqa,

“Pet onion!

In your layers of veil and gown;

All beauty in one mirror, or

A turnip in a sack?

No matter where I look:

Up or down

You’re not my pet or sweet

Or even a human bean-

Wrapped in that black and purple skin

You are an aubergine.” (Pound, 1976)

Figure 23: Women walking and talking to each other. http://www.taparts.org/PictoralPop.cfm?ImageID=125 (accessed May 2004)

The Burqa in Afghani Geographies : Private Spaces

The burqa permits a woman to carry her gendered boundary with her when she passes from the purdah area in her home through the umma into another gendered space such occurs when a woman goes to a hospital. Through these transitions, such as come with contacting physicians, nurses, kin and non-related women, she can choose whom to permit inside that boundary, and that boundary is flexible. Within the burqa’s boundary, women wear any clothing that their budget and taste allow, as they would in their own homes.

Figure 24: Mother, grandmother, triplets and siblings in a hospital in Afghanistan Cavanaugh, E., Afghanistan: http://afghan.smugmug.com/ (accessed May 2004)

When secluded women are in their homes, with related women, in an entirely female geography, they dress as colorfully, as fashionably, and as beautifully as is their taste and means, expressing themselves through their choices at family occasions, such as at the wedding shown in figure 21.

Figure 25: Afghani women at a wedding party. http://www.ciriello.com/site/pix/46/460225.jpg (accessed May 2004)

Women and their families did not generally see this landscape with its gendered areas as oppressive; it was simply a way of life.

“I'm 53, and when I was growing up in Kabul, Afghanistan was a world of

villages and walled compounds with virtually no technology, no factories and no

industries -- a society of tribal peasants who eked out their subsistence as farmers

and herders. In this world, life was divided, not exactly between men and women,

but between a public realm and a private one. The public realm belonged, indeed,

to men. Women rarely left the shelter of their compound walls without male

escorts and then they wore chadris, that body-bag veil now known as the burqa.

The roles of men and women were firmly divided: Women were in charge of

home, household, food, domestic animals, marriage, children and the

fundamentals of early religious instruction. Men were in charge of farming,

fighting, commerce and government. This wasn’t Afghanistan in medieval times.

This was Afghanistan when Elvis was king.

What’s more, although Afghanistan represented an extreme, this concept of a

divided world prevailed down through south Asia. It didn't just spring out of

Islam; it came out of a deep soil of local traditions. And here is what outsiders

didn't realize: The private realm, at least in old Afghanistan, was a universe unto

itself -- big, rich and complex. In that hidden universe, women had authentic

power. You want proof? The first three female heads of state in the modern world

emerged not in France, Italy or the United States, but in Pakistan, India and Sri

Lanka. Clearly, in that hidden universe, women were somehow growing up

trained for leadership.”

(soc.culture.Malaysia, Tamsin Ansary, 12/7/2002) (accessed May 2004)

Part II: The Burqa and the Taliban

The Burqa and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: Boundaries Disrupted

Figure 26: Woman holding her child. http://www.angelfire.com/va3/ultimate/mirror/afghan_yellowburqa.jpg (accessed May 2004)

In the late 20 th century, Afghanistan was in a region where religion, countries, and ethnic traditions supported veiling as a normal and necessary part of social spatial behavior, and the choice to veil often implied an antipathy for colonialism and western hegemony.

There was great variation of interpretation of veiling among the sects of Islam, the laws of different Islamic states, and people within those states.

The USSR invaded Afghanistan from1979 to 1989, aided by Afghan communist military and civilian collaborators who were hoping to secularize and modernize the country.

This conflict brought genocide, slaughter, torture, disappearance, the largest recorded refugee outflow in history, and a scourge of landmines. The collapse of this invasion and the following Soviet puppet regime in 1992 spawned a power vacuum. The subsequent civil war was fueled by support from neighboring countries and other regional powers, hoping to gain control of this corridor between South Asia, the Middle East and the

USSR. In this anarchy, Kabul was virtually destroyed by rocket shelling, mortar fire, and aerial bombing. Afghanistan was completely disrupted by this collapse in authority, and the population was decimated and impoverished, with much of its population fleeing into

Pakistan to refugee camps.

Burqa and the Taliban: Boundaries Re-Established

In November 1994, a new group named "Taliban" emerged as a military and political force. Talib means "students of Islamic religious studies.” The Talib were mostly rural

Pashtun youths, recruited from refugee camps, educated in religious schools ( madrasas )

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 50 in neighboring Pakistan. Madrasas are traditional schools associated with mosques, established for the preservation and transmission of the Islamic religious tradition, and

Islamic scholarship.

In the late 20 th century, one of the madrasas’ focuses was the teaching of fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence. Much discussion of fiqh was applied to western hegemony, and the destruction of Afghanistan and other Muslim countries in post-colonial collapse. The talibs’ discussions spawned ideas of creating perfect Islamic states, which would exist entirely within their concepts of ideal Islamic society. These people, influenced by post- colonial thinkers such as Said and Fanon, cultivated radical thinking and the masdrasas became centers for “freedom fighters”, the Taliban, known to the West as “terrorists”.

The Taliban movement, led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, a 31-year-old religious leader, claimed to be restoring peace and security through the imposition of a strict Islamic order. With no functioning judicial system, many municipal and provincial authorities use the Taliban's interpretation of Shari'a (Islamic law) and traditional tribal codes of justice.

The Taliban laid claim to Afghanistan. After taking control of the capital city of Kabul on September 26, 1996, the Taliban reestablished gender boundaries based on their understanding of fiqh , Pashtun tradition, and the intrusion of western concepts of gendered space and boundaries. The Taliban interpreted the Islamic law and Pashtun preference that men support and seclude women in the home by criminalizing any women who left her home unaccompanied by a husband, father, brother, or son. The umma gender boundary was legislated as a requirement for women to be covered from

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 51 head to toe in a burqa when in public. Houses and buildings enclosing females were to have their windows painted black, so the women within could not be observed. The

Taliban restored order, and gender boundaries, to Afghanistan. The laws regarding women instated by the Taliban were in accordance with a narrow interpretation of

Quranic law and Pashtun tradition. Taliban restrictions on women focused on gendered space and the boundaries of those spaces, and included the restrictions on women of a:

1. Complete ban on women's work outside the home, though a few female doctors

and nurses were allowed to work in some hospitals in Kabul.

2. Complete ban on women's activity outside the home unless accompanied by a

mahram (close male relative such as a father, brother or husband).

3. Ban on women dealing with male shopkeepers.

4. Ban on women being treated by male doctors.

5. Ban on women studying at schools, universities or any other educational

institution.

6. Requirement that adult women wear a long veil ( burqa ).

7. Whipping, beating and verbal abuse of women not clothed in accordance with

Taliban rules, or of women unaccompanied by a mahram .

8. Whipping of women in public for having uncovered ankles.

9. Public stoning of women accused of having sex outside marriage.

10. Ban on the use of cosmetics.

11. Ban on women talking or shaking hands with non-mahram males.

12. Ban on women laughing loudly.

13. Ban on women wearing high heel shoes, which would produce sound while

walking.

14. Ban on women riding in a taxi without a mahram .

15. Ban on women's presence in radio, television or public gatherings of any kind.

16. Ban on women playing sports or entering a sports center or club.

Western observers, when they had access or interest, were horrified.

The Burqa and the Taliban: Boundaries Enforced

Taliban gender boundaries were enforced with vigor to rebuild the anarchy of a destroyed society. The "religious police" (Department for the Propagation of Virtue and the

Suppression of Vice) often brutally and arbitrarily enforced these laws with immediate public beatings. Foreigners were expelled, and In Afghan staff members of international organizations were threatened, harassed and beaten. The establishment of Islamic gendered boundaries was coupled with a rejection of western signifiers, as the Taliban regarded western influence as being a largely responsible for Afghanistan’s collapse into anarchy.

Taliban’s Religious Police Edict:

"Women, you should not step outside your residence. If you go outside the house

you should not be like the women who used to go with fashionable clothes

wearing much cosmetics and appearing in front of every men before the coming

of Islam ." Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 53

Figure 27: Afghani women during the 1980's http://www.ciriello.com/site/pix/46/460219.jpg (accessed May 2004)

Prior to the enactment of these laws, many relatively affluent and educated Afghanis had adopted western dress, according to their means, taste, peer group, and family permissions. Though many Afghani women had worn burqas all their lives, others had not, and found the transition difficult.

Torpikai, a 65-year-old widow with snowy hair and striking green eyes,

remembers a scene from her girlhood: her grandmother putting on a burqa to go

out. It was the 1960s, and burqa -wearing was dying out, especially among

educated women in the capital.

"I remember it seeming to me to be this very old-fashioned thing, and I was glad I

had been born after it was no longer necessary," she said. Five years ago, when

the Taliban took over, she found herself wearing a burqa for the first time. "I felt

that time was going backward," she said.

She felt bad for herself, she said, but worse for her granddaughters, who had been

brought up to believe they would go to the university and have jobs. She found

herself keeping more and more to home. When she ventured out on a sultry

summer's day, she felt faint from lack of air inside the burqa.

Newsgroups: alt.religion.islam Date: 2001-12-31 11:21:30 PST

From: MIRSE ( [email protected] )Subject: Fox News Article on Burqa -

wearing (accessed May 2004)

Figure 28: Woman wearing a white burqa. http://www.repubblica.it/gallerie/online/cultura_scienze/afgani/5.html (accessed May 2004)

Certainly, the Taliban’s ferocity in enforcing the gender boundaries of women in the umma was startling, and often violent. Also, the Burqa requires some getting used to, and is more suitable for rural and village landscapes than to urban situations with rapidly moving vehicles. Women unaccustomed to wearing burqas found their usual means of situating themselves in their contexts disrupted.

Bibi Amina, a 45-year-old tailor, has always been clever with her hands.

Bustling about her small house to make tea for a visitor, her movements are deft

and graceful.

The burqa, though, transformed her into someone clumsy and unsure.

"The first time I wore it, I was dizzy from not being able to see well -- I got

a terrible headache," she said. "I would trip all the time, and nearly fall."

The worst day, she said, was when she stepped into the path of an oncoming bus,

her peripheral vision obscured by the close-knit mesh covering her face.

She never even saw the bus until it was almost on top of her, only hearing the

cries of passers-by and the shriek of brakes, sickeningly close.

"I thought of my five children and what would have happened to them if it hit me,"

she said. "And I thought, 'what a stupid reason that would have been to die.' "

Shopping trips became time-consuming because she could only carry a small

parcel or two at a time. If she carried more, she said, she was afraid of not being

able to hold her burqa closed.

Once, she thought she saw a childhood friend coming out of a relative's house a

short distance away.

But she did not greet her friend, whom she recognized only by her movements.

She was afraid to call out -- women were not to raise their voices -- and she was

afraid of attracting attention by rushing after her.

Newsgroups: alt.religion.islam Date: 2001-12-31 11:21:30 PST

MIRSE ( [email protected] ) Subject: Fox News Article on Burqa-wearing (accessed

May 2004)

At the same time, Men were required to wear beards, turbans, loose tunics and trousers.

These were male signifiers of boundaries and respect, comparable to the burqa. Men were also punished for failure to comply with these clothing restrictions. The west made much of the requirement that women wear burqas, though there was little comment on the requirement that men wear tunics and loose trousers, beards and turbans.

Part III: The Burqa Becomes Politicized in the West:

Images of the Burqa and Afghani women in West prior to 2001, and Sharbat Gula

Figure 29: National Geographic Image of Sharbat Gula http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/afghangirl/ By Cathy Newman Photographs by Steve McCurry (accessed May 2004)

The west saw few images of Afghani women prior to the 1984 image of an Afghani girl,

Sharbat Gula , photographed by Steve McCurry, and featured on the cover of National

Geographic. McCurry's photo of the girl was selected as one of National Geographic’s

100 Best Pictures.

Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is

Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is the ongoing tragedy of

Afghanistan. Invasion. Resistance. Invasion. Will it ever end? “Each change of

government brings hope,” said Yusufzai. “Each time, the Afghan people have

found themselves betrayed by their leaders and by outsiders professing to be their

friends and saviors.” National Geographic Magazine, April, 2002

The presentation of Sharbat Gula, and the search for her after 2001, cast her and her country into the western discourse as “victims”, something to be “rescued” by the west.

This image of Sharbat Gula was so firmly fixed in western consciousness, that a burqa advertised for sale on Ebay was listed as being, “ “identical to the NatGeo Burqa” in

April of 2002.

People on western internet discussion forums, including National Geographic’s forum, linked from http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/afghangirl/, responded immediately, strongly, emotionally, from a western Orientalist discourse, and with some amazing ignorance to these images: (texts unedited, left as they were posted)

“The pain in her beautiful eyes makes people realize how they should stop the

nonsens in the world!! Help these people out with the millions of money you have

... Don’t be selfish!!”

(Posted by: Violet from 65.94.21.79 on December 12, 2003 04:29 AM

http://www.stefangeens.com/000133.html (accessed May 2004)

“Her eyes are the demonstration of the fear in the world...but in the same time is

the personification of wild.

(Posted by: Maura from 62.11.211.143 on March 4, 2004 02:42 PM

http://www.stefangeens.com/000133.html (accessed May 2004)

My dad had that picture on a cork bulletin board by his desk (and still does) when

I was much younger, though. I always loved to stare at her eyes. I thought they

looked animalistic and spiritually possessed with some sort of magnificent quality

that not everyone was born with. S

(Newsgroups: alt.fashion Date: 2002-03-14 00:03:35 PST (accessed

May 2004)

If that's the same girl 14 years later, when did she have the time and money to go

get a nose job? Am I the only one who doesn't think it looks even remotely like her?

(From: Ripley7173 ( [email protected] )Subject: Re: Stunning photos of Afghan

girl

Newsgroups: alt.fashion Date: 2002-03-14 08:56:11 PST, (accessed May

2004)

Did this woman receive any money for doing this show?

joe cousins: [email protected] ; National Geographic Forum on

Sharbat Gula, March 10, 2003 3:00 AM, ( accessed May 2004)

The western lack of awareness regarding Afghani women, their social relationships, their spiritual relationships, and their geographies as expressed through their burqas became a convenient vacuum into which policies, polemics, and propaganda could be poured as the

Afghani situation became politically explosive.

Figure 30: Image of Afghani women displaced by war published by Rawa RAWA.org (accessed May 2004)

The Burqa and RAWA i

RAWA, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a secularist Maoist group, was established in 1977, and agitated for women’s rights and democracy. Afghani women had had the vote since 1920, but RAWA was a group of university educated socially elite women who wanted a more secular, democratic style government. During the Russian/Afghani war, they began to appeal to the west for humanitarian aid. Their resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in December 1979 made them attractive to American aid organizations, and they were able to get aid and access to promote their cause. From a base at Wellesley College, the largest center for feminist and women’s studies, RAWA made use of the western discourse of “aiding helpless victims” and “freeing the oppressed” to get awards from humanitarian organizations, funding, and attention to their cause. Their photographs of suffering women always included a burqa-clad woman, as any Afghani woman would be if she were out in public space. The connection between “suffering woman” and “woman in a burqa” became indelible and automatic.

During the period of Soviet invasion, the Pentagon backed and armed groups such as those under Gulbaddin Hekmatyar. These groups, often Pashtun, opposed the secular intrusion of communism, and particularly opposed the Uzbeck Soviet troupes, as the

Pashtuns and Uzbecks were traditional rivals. The long and bloody warfare widowed women, who having with no other means of support and protection, turned to begging.

RAWA Uses the Burqa as a Signifier to the West

The Russian/Afghani War devastated Afghanistan. RAWA used images of women in burqas begging in the streets to present a picture of disruption, poverty and despair to the west, to solicit funds and support from western countries.

RAWA was successful in “marketing” their images and messages to the west, while obscuring their Maoist ideology, and gained press coverage and contributions. At the end of the Soviet invasion, the Taliban came to power, and RAWA’s message changed from simply requesting humanitarian assistance for women displaced by the war, to protesting the policies of the Taliban. Their images of suffering women in burqas gradually evolved to signify the evils of Islam, patriarchy and religious fundamentalism, very effective in soliciting funds and support from the west.

Figure 31: An Afghani woman begging with her children, published by RAWA RAWA.org, (accessed may 2004)

RAWA creates the discourse of “Fundamentalism-Blighted”

Afghanistan

RAWA seized the opportunity to the images of Afghani women in burqas to press their message that the Taliban was cruel, inhumane, and oppressing women by their insistence that women should not be in the umma spatial zone without full covering. Many Muslim countries expressed admiration for the Taliban’s creation of “The Perfect Islamic State”, and felt that Afghani women were being treated with the greatest respect by being sheltered in their homes, covered and accompanied by men when out of their homes.

Figure 32: Afghani woman begging in the street, published by RAWA RAWA.org (accessed May 2004)

Since the western countries were ignorant of the gendered spatial discourse of the umma ,

RAWA could present these photographs as evidence of oppression to the west, in absence of any other interpretation.

Figure 33: Women being disciplined by a member of the Taliban, published by RAWA RAWA.org (accessed May 2004)

RAWA coined the term “Fundamentalism-Blighted” Afghanistan, which USA readers interpreted within their understanding of “fundamentalist Christianity”. Fundamentalist

Christianity in the USA is often regarded as being in opposition to “liberal discourse”, and particularly liberal feminist viewpoints. Therefore, in absence of any understanding of the nature of Islam and Islamic geographies, the RAWA was able to extract the image of the burqa from its indigenous discourse and place it into liberal feminist western discourse. RAWA’s insertion of the burqa into western discourse as a signifier of oppression met with little criticism or resistance in the West. RAWA increasingly used

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 65 the burqa as an effective signifier of oppression to gain political support and financial contributions.

RAWA filmed the Taliban enforcing their spatial laws on umma and sent them out as press releases. The wording of “dared to remove her burqa” in this press release that was accompanied the image above implies oppression and resistance, whether or not either may have been operative. Western consumers of this press release read it uncritically, and were as outraged as RAWA intended for them to be. In this photograph, the woman is clearly wearing her burqa, so the discipline in this case may be related to some other civil infraction.

These photos are caught from a video film that has been filmed by RAWA on

August 26, 2001 in Kabul using a hidden camera. It shows two Taliban from

department of Amro bil mahroof (Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice,

Taliban religious police) beating a woman in public because she has dared to

remove her burqa in public.

Certainly, there were cases where women were reprimanded for not wearing burqas in public, and the ferocity and arbitrary enforcement of spatial boundaries was violent and frightening. Fox News played the following story in the west to encourage rage against what would appear to be the unwarranted beating of an innocent child. However, the discourse of umma presents a difficulty of determining the moment at which a female must begin to cover herself: a pre-pubescent female who could go with only a head scarf

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 66 was perceived by the police as a post pubescent female who would have to wear a burqa, and was punished for the infraction, whereas she and her family perceived her as still a

“baby” and had not yet secluded her.

In the early days of Taliban rule, Spoghmai was slowly becoming accustomed to

the sight of women hurrying about the capital in their long, shroudlike burqa,

mandated by the new rulers.

But she was only 14, skinny and small. Everyone in the family still thought of her

as a baby. She didn't think anything of leaving the house that winter day clad in a

long, loose smock and a tightly knotted headscarf.

Walking alone in a neighborhood where she had an errand to run, she suddenly

heard angry shouts. She had been spotted by a pickup truck full of turbaned

young men who leaped out and ran toward her.

"The Taliban surrounded me and began beating me with cables," she recounted

softly. "No one had ever hit me in my life. I cried, and turned this way and that,

trying to get away from them, but they kept hitting me and hitting me."

She finally broke away and ran to the home of a family friend who sent word to

one of her brothers. He came with a burqa for her, and they walked home

together, her breath still ragged with sobs.

Newsgroups: alt.religion.islam Date: 2001-12-31 11:21:30 PST

From: MIRSE ([email protected] ) Subject: Fox News Article on Burqa -wearing

(accessed May 2004)

After 9/11, Press releases from RAWA were picked up increasingly and uncritically by western media, and the implementation of Taliban law was cast in lurid negative description, and show minimal understanding of Afghani politics and its background.

Znet.com, Los Angeles Times, Sydney Morning Herald , December 29, 2003

by Meena Nanji

The 'actions' she was referring to took place largely during the reign of the

Jehadis (most religiously conservative mujahideen) from 1992-6. The Jehadis,

notorious for throwing acid in the faces of women, slicing off their breasts and

other atrocious acts, gained power during the 1980's when the U.S saw fit to fund,

arm and train them in the fight against Soviet occupation. During their rule, they

terrorized the civilian population with blanket rocket shellings, rape, torture and

killing, to such a degree that when the Taliban emerged in 1996, they were

initially welcomed.

Figure 34: RAWA marked International Human Rights Day by staging a demonstration in front of the UN headquarter in Islamabad. RAWA.org http://rawa.false.net/murder-w.htm (accessed May 2004)

Photographs of demonstrations clearly organized and posed for western cameras went unquestioned. One example is shown in Figure 30 , staged in Islamabad in front of the UN headquarters, with banners largely in English, and clearly aimed at western photojournalists and western readers.

The Burqa as Signifier Extracted from Indigenous Geography and offered to US News Media Following 9/11

RAWA sent out press releases following 9//11 to news agencies hungry for material on the Taliban, and were translated into reasons to support the US invasion of Afghanistan, ostensibly to “liberate women in “Fundamentalist-Blighted Afghanistan”. RAWA hoped

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 69 to lobby for the following image and release was played in heavy rotation on CNN and other news media.

Figure 35: Image of a woman being executed for a crime, published by RAWA. RAWA.org, (accessed May 2004)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Thousands of people watched as a woman, cowering

beneath a pale blue all-enveloping burqa, was shot and killed today in the first

public execution of a woman in Kabul since the Taliban religious army took

control three years ago.

The woman, identified only as Zarmeena, a mother of seven children, was found

guilty of beating her husband to death with a steel hammer as he slept. The

reason for the killing two years ago was a family dispute," according to a Taliban

soldier, who didn't give his name.

The Taliban have imposed their harsh brand of Islamic law in the 90 percent of

Afghanistan under their control. The Taliban say their version of Islam is a pure

one that follows a literal interpretation of the Muslim holy book, The Koran.

Under Taliban laws, murderers are publicly executed by the relatives of their

victims. Adulterers are stoned to death and the limbs of thieves are amputated.

Lesser crimes are punished by public beatings.

However, when this was repeated by the news media, it was presented not as a legal execution of a convicted murderess, enacted within a sovereign nation’s boundaries and within a country’s laws, but as an “atrocity”, “the most shocking film ever seen on television”, and the one woman convicted of murder and sentenced to be executed become three women cowering. The story, scripted by RAWA casts themselves as brave, death defying heroines and freedom fighters, carrying on revolutionary activities beneath their burqas. Their stories were used as a powerful incentive to get western donations for their cause, and to support the US invasion as an act of mercy and freedom.

The Taliban's bravest opponents By Janelle Brown October 02, 2001

The film footage is wobbly and blurry but stunning: A soccer stadium in

Afghanistan is packed with people, but there is no match today. Instead, a pickup

truck drives into the stadium with three women, shrouded in burqas, cowering in

the back.

Armed men in turbans force a woman from the truck, and make her kneel at the

penalty line on the field. Confused and unable to see, the woman tries to look

behind just as a rifle is pointed against the back of her head. With no fanfare

whatsoever, she is shot dead. The shaky video camera captures the cheering

crowd as people rise to their feet, hoping to get a better view of the corpse on the

ground. The blue folds of the burqa begin to stain red with blood.

This public execution is some of the most shocking film ever seen on television; it

is perhaps the best document that the West has of atrocities committed by the

Taliban. It is just one part of an astonishing hour-long documentary called

"Beneath the Veil," currently in heavy rotation on CNN. Filmed by the half-

Afghan British reporter Saira Shah, who traveled undercover to Afghanistan last

year, "Beneath the Veil" neatly captures the horror of life under the Taliban -- the

public executions for infractions as minor as prostitution or adultery, the brutality

of fundamentalist police, the slaughter of civilians unlucky enough to live on the

front line of the civil war with the Northern Alliance.

RAWA, the most prominent Afghan-run organization to oppose the Taliban, has

become one of the fundamentalists' greatest enemies. Perhaps the aspect of the

group most infuriating to its opponents -- and a surprising key to its effectiveness

-- is that it consists entirely of women, nearly 2,000 in Afghanistan and Pakistan,

who use the cover of their burqas and the seeming powerlessness of their status to

strategic advantage.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2001/10/02/fatima/index.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,3604,565002,00.html (accessed

May 2004)

The Western Gaze and the Burqa

In 2001 and 2002, RAWA and other press photographers offered pictures of the burqa, and other images of suffering in Afghanistan to western eyes, to be assimilated within the context of western discourse. These were manipulated to gather support for US invasion and presence in Afghanistan, particularly from women and liberal groups who are commonly against invading soverign countries without provocation.

The discourse escalated quickly after 9/11, with comparisons to wearing the burqa to death and loss of agency.

CBS News Correspondent Thalia Assuras: Nov. 14, 2001 Under Taliban rule,

women have been banned from work and education and forbidden to appear in

public except under the suffocating shroud of the burqa.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/14/world/main318091.shtml

In the review for the ostensibly documentary film “Kandahar” The adjectives

“dehumanizing”, “vile”, “fascism”, “torture”, and the gratuitously applied

“pornographic”, cast the burqa in the most vivid negative terms possible.

As the money changes hands, Nafar is handed the garment whose presence will

function as the moral center of the film from here on out: the vile burqa. We soon

lose the family; when their little cart is plundered by roadside bandits (as the

docile husband prays fearfully to Allah), they ditch Nafar and flee back to the Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 73

relative safety of Iran (!). But Nafar remains, trapped inside the pornographic

cloth for the remainder of her quest.

It's one thing to know that female victims of Islamic fascism are forced, under

pain of torture, to cover the entirety of their bodies with heavy fabric at all times;

it's quite another, particularly for those of us who have never left the West, to see-

-or notice--the dehumanizing reality of that fabric for the first time. A woman

doesn't wear a burqa, she is confined within one. Much of the film's power lies in

the mounting discomfort of sharing that confinement: seeing through the tiny

eyeholes, hearing the labored breathing within. Once the burqa is introduced, it's

fair to say that Kandahar becomes a horror film whose primary subject and

symbol is the burqa itself.

SHARING THE CONFINEMENT: The Confusing, Sinister Beauty of

Kandahar

by Sean Nelson Kandahar dir. Mohsen Makhmalbaf Opens Fri Jan 11,

2002 at Broadway Market.

One of the most common comparisons of the requirement to wear a burqa was that of wearing a bra in the west. Women found this an immediate and persuasive argument for casting the burqa as “oppressive” because they saw it as related to the “bra burnings” of the feminist movement of the early 70’s.

Wearing a burqa is a matter of survival; wearing a bra is a matter of choice. I

rarely subject myself to the discomfort of the latter; I'm 53 years old, a 38 C+,

and I only wear a bra when I go to work and HAVE to. At home, in public, in tee-

shirts or loose casual shirts or comfy dresses, forget it. I don't have to look

"perky" any more. But no one is going to stone me to death in the soccer stadium

for not confining my breasts in a spandex basket.

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 11:43:41 EST

To: SpiderWomen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Subject: Re: [SW] Women retain their burqas in Afghanistan?

All of these were woven into an explicit platform for “benign intervention and liberation” of Afghanistan to “free women from the burqa”, espoused by liberal sources normally opposed war and invasion. The image of the burqa became synonymous with repression by December, 2001, particularly in the western summation provided by NPR, the woman with no face is deprived of her personhood, and is extended to “The burqa sets up all the other violations suffered by the women of Afghanistan”.

Tuesday, December 4, 2001

De-faced, de-valued, de-humanized

Marion Winik

THE IMAGE of an Afghan woman swathed head to toe has become a symbol

of the repression of women under the Taliban. Why, I wonder? Is it because we in

the West are so focused on clothes, on expressing our personality and our

sexuality through our appearance that we obsess on what people are wearing

rather than the fact that they are deprived of all basic freedoms and kept in line

by constant brutal punishments?

I don't think so. I think the burqa is a symbol of -- and in fact the key to -- the

other abuses of Afghan women.

Clearly, the burqa represses individuality. Americans don't like that. And it is

based on the idea that women's bodies are so sexual that even their outlines are

dangerous, or that a woman cannot be adequately faithful to either God or her

husband unless her female form is well hidden. A lot of us don't agree with that

either.

But in these regards, the burqa is no different than garments worn by Orthodox

Jewish women, Amish women, or indeed, Islamic women who wear a chador.

The difference is choice, right? As long as women choose traditional robes of

some sort, we have no reason to object, even if we disagree with the principles

underlying that choice.

That is true, but it is only part of the problem. The problem is that women who are

forced to wear a burqa have no faces. They cannot be seen. They cannot be

recognized on the street. And in this they are deprived of not just individuality, but

identity. They are not citizens. They have no public existence and no rights. Just

as the executioner wears a hood so that his killing is done not by that person, but

by the state, the woman with no face is deprived of her personhood. Imagine men

wearing burqas. It's immediately obvious that what they have lost is their

identities.

When we lose our faces, we lose our names, we lose our dignity, we lose our basic

purchase on humanity. The burqa sets up all the other violations suffered by the

women of Afghanistan.

Marion Winik is a commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things

Figure 36: “Women Denied Basic Rights in Afghanistan” Dawn Corbett, Internet/Communications Intern http://www.now.org/nnt/fall- 98/global.html (accessed May 2004)

Western women’s groups assimilated the RAWA interpretation of Burqa into feminist discourse: “symbol of the total oppression of women”, and not only supported US/British military intervention into Afghanistan, but also demanded such as an act of mercy, liberation and humanity.

"Women around the globe are living under oppressive conditions most of us can

only imagine in our worst nightmares," said Vice President Membership Karen

Johnson . "It is the duty of women's rights and human rights groups to make the

public aware of these atrocities and to pressure the U.S. government and U.S.

companies to stand up to those who abuse women's rights and bodies." NOW, 2001

Feminist leaders, celebrities, and organizations lent support to “consciousness raising” experiences, handing out burqas to women so they could put them on and “experience oppression and feel solidarity with their Afghani sisters.”

Feminist campaigns raised public awareness in many cases by making the burqa-

-and American repulsion to it--the emotional center of their projects. Oprah

Winfrey's critically acclaimed reading of Eve Ensler s "Under the Burqa ,"

to 18,000 people at New York City s Madison Square Garden told the story of

an Afghan woman under Taleban rule, ending with the appearance of a

burqa-clad Afghan woman. Audience members, who afterward signed petitions

against the Taleban in the thousands, pinned bits of fabric from burqas on

their lapels in remembrance.

The burqa is a "symbol of the total oppression of women," says Feminist

Majority Campaign's Norma Gattsek. Thus, the centerpiece of the Feminist

Majority's Campaign to End Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan, launched in

1997 as the group's first foray into international politics, is a project

that distributes burqas to schoolchildren across the country. Over 600

groups participate in the Feminist Majority's "Back-to-School" campaign.

The campaign draws attention to the fact that the Taleban outlawed female

education and employment (today, they allow girls' religious education up

till the age of 8). In addition to viewing a wrenching Marlo-Thomas-narrated

video, hearing lectures, and donating money to Afghan girls’ home schools and

NGO-run schools, participants are lent burqas to try on. Thousands of others buy

the group's "symbol of remembrance," a small swatch of mesh material

representing the burqa.

Figure 37: Dec. 6, 2001 , Mrs. Smith's grade 8 class reflect on being an Afghan woman under Taliban rule. . http://riverside.ednet.ns.ca/news/burqa.htm (accessed May 2004)

"It is the most smothering experience to put one on," says Gattsek. "Anytime a

group has used one, they have told us that that moment of putting that on was

overwhelming. Because it really made them feel, how could I live like this, totally

cut off from the world?"

misc.activism.progressive “Unveiling the Taleban Dress Codes Are Not the

Issue, New Study Finds” By Sonia Shah

Figure 38: “ Erin Anzelmo wore this Burqa made of American flag and walked the streets in Manhattan, New York, to show her solidarity with the Women in Afghanistan and to protest the forced policies of the Taleban / Al-Qaida extremists that forced women to wear Burqa in Afghanistan” http://www.hazara.net/takeAction/911/911.html (accessed May 2004)

Feminist organizations absorbed RAWA’s press releases and experiential projects, such as Erin Anzelmo’s project, the American Burqa project and Hazel Flyingdrum’s personal quest for solidarity with Afghani women ii .

In the “Worldwide Sisterhood Against Terrorism and War”, an organization of about 80 feminists including women from Central Asia and U.S. notables as Gloria Steinem, Alice

Walker, and Susan Sarandon launched a petition headlined "Not in Our Name”. This petition was willing to support a UN sponsored bombing and invasion of Afghanistan in preference to US/British military intervention, and they seriously suggested that the

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan should rule the country.

However, Sunita Mehta and Fahima Danishgar who co-founded Women for Afghan

Women, Central Asian women more familiar with Afghani politics than the American actresses, sharply reminded the group that RAWA was actually a very small, though vocal Maoist organization, unlikely to have the strength or support to do any sort of a credible job, and distinctly unpalatable to other governments.

Burqa as Signifier used by Rand, AP, Reuters and the US

Government

In 1999, the Rand Corporation published a paper drawing a clear connection between terrorism, suffering, and poverty. Rand added the image Figure 39 of a suffering woman in a burqa for emphasis.

Figure 39: “An Afghan woman and her daughter beg near a mosque in the village of Dasht-i-Qala on Nov. 9. Twenty-four years of war in Afghanistan — combined with drought, displacement, poverty, and human rights abuses — have turned the country into a humanitarian catastrophe.” AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/SERGEI GRITS (accessed May 2004)

Strike at the Roots of Terrorism

By Ian O. Lesser

Ian Lesser is a RAND senior political scientist and the lead author of

“Countering the New Terrorism”.

Terrorism has systemic origins that can be ameliorated. Social and economic

pressures, frustrated political aspirations, and bitter personal experiences can all

contribute to terrorism. Fertile ground is sown for terrorism wherever regimes

fail to provide for peaceful political change and wherever economies are unable

to keep pace with population growth and popular demands for more evenly

distributed benefits.

1999, the Rand Corporation (accessed May 2004)

The British and US governments and governmental agencies picked up the equivalence of Burqa = Repression supplied by RAWA. And blended it with the message from Rand that suggested paternalist intervention was a useful platform. The burqa was a convenient signifier to excuse a military invasion, as RAWA had supplied it with associations with oppression, fascism, atrocity, and brutality, and Rand had suggested that relieving suffering, and feeding the hungry might relieve terrorism. The images of women in burqas were increasingly paired with dangerous looking men, presumed to be terrorists.

Figure 40: A woman in a burqa passes by a man with an automatic weapon. http://www.kargah.com/gallery1/index.php?action=show&picid=1367 (accessed May 2004)

A USA Today slideshow with suffering women in burqas, scary “Taliban”, and workers at the World Trade Center site cemented the connection of these signifiers: suffering women in burqas, terrorists, and defiant Americans.

Figure 41: USA Today image of Afghani women in a burqa walking along a barren wall http://www.usatoday.com/news/gallery/terr1102/contenttemplate6.htm (accessed May 2004)

Figure 42: USA today image of Afghani Taliban men shouting http://www.usatoday.com/news/gallery/terr1102/contenttemplate6.htm (accessed May 2004)

The implicit proposal was that if the intimidating-looking men (presumably terrorists) were removed, by force if necessary, the woman might remove her burqa, be given a good hot meal, 9/11 would be vindicated, and the international terrorist threat would evaporate.

Figure 43: USA Today image of workers at the 9/11 site. http://www.usatoday.com/news/gallery/terr1102/contenttemplate6.htm (accessed May 2004)

Burqa as Signifier of Terrorist Threat and Humanitarian Rescue

Increasingly after 9/11, Reuters and AP purchased photographs that placed the Burqa in contexts which express Western discourse about Afghanistan, deploying a visual signifier to justify the US/British invasion of Afghanistan as a humanitarian rescue.

Figure 44: News Image of Afghani woman posed with tank and armed men. ©September11News.com http://www.september11news.com/DailyTimelineNov.htm (accessed May 2004)

Senior British officials say that coalition forces are about to mount the

first significant ground offensive in an attempt to establish a

"humanitarian bridgehead" in a corridor from Uzbekistan through enemy

positions in northern Afghanistan "in support" of Northern Alliance

forces. U.S. jets continue to blast Taliban strongholds on Afghanistan's

http://www.september11news.com/DailyTimelineNov.htm

The British and US news and government leaders regularly used images of “suffering

(repressed) women in burqas” as justification for the invasion, and paired them with weapons of war.

Figure 45: Poster supporting the Republican Party platform http://www.jerseygop.com/posters.html (accessed May 2004) :

The Republican Party printed posters with the “burqa removed” as a symbol of liberation, with the logo implying that removing burqas was an act of “defending freedom again”;

“again” implying that the invasion of Afghanistan was one in a series of “liberations” by the US military, similar to that of the Philippines, Panama, Viet Nam, and others since.

President Bush has stated: "The women of Afghanistan, imprisoned in their

homes or beaten in the streets and executed in public spectacles, did not reproach

us for routing the Taliban."

Actually, that was hardly the case. In the National Geographic issue featuring the

“finding” of Sharbat Gula, she said, categorically, "life under the Taliban was better. At

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 87 least there was peace and order" And, tragically, the “horrors” presented by RAWA to feminists and other groups, used to whip up patriotic fervor and to justify the military offensive, were found to be lies, or at least, Afghani Urban Legends.

Kabul women keep the veil By Kate Clark BBC Afghanistan correspondent

Saturday, 24 November, 2001, 16:38 GMT

When Western politicians decry the Taliban’s treatment of Afghan women, it is

difficult to recognise the picture they paint. Many stories repeated as fact never

happened - at least not as far as I can judge from living in Kabul for two years.

Exaggerated stories

Afghan women never had their nails removed for wearing nail varnish or their

feet beaten for wearing white socks. Indeed, in Kabul, they walked proudly -

wearing high heels, platform shoes, fish-net stockings and tailored trousers,

letting their burqas flow behind them to reveal what clothes they wore

underneath.

Lifting the Burqa becomes a Signifier of Support for the West

Of course, if the burqa was designated the signifier of oppression, and whether or not there was any truth to that, the lifted burqa would have to be the signifier of liberation, and gratitude to western forces. Photographs were collected and disseminated so serve the purpose.

Figure 46: Women lined up for food being donated by the United Nations World Food Program http://www.faithfreedom.org/faq/4.htm AP Photo/Laura Rauch (accessed May 2004)

“An Afghan widow smiles after lifting her burqa in the United Nations World

Food Program bakery in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2001. About

350 widows, identified as the most vulnerable group in the city, received two cans

of oil and two sacks of wheat from the United States Agency for International

Development.” (AP Photo/Laura Rauch)

But as photographers, foreign aid workers and government agencies entered Afghanistan, they saw the burqa still in place in its indigenous geography. President Karzai decreed that women had the right to choose whether to wear a burqa. Despite this announcement, women inside and outside Kabul continue to wear the burqa. Some observers began to

Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 89 question the premise that “repression = burqa” and its corollary “liberation = removing burqa”.

While the images of Afghans huddled around radios listening to music, looking at

movie posters and shaving their beards has been heartening, these scenes of post-

Taliban life are missing something. Once the Taliban's suffocating oppression

was lifted, I imagined Afghan women running into the streets and heaving their

head-to-toe coverings, called burqas, into a massive bonfire. It would be a scene

akin to the 1960s bra burnings only with more passion and relief.

My first reaction to this timidity was frustration. How could these Afghan women

keep themselves from rushing to liberation? Frustration soon gave way to anger -

- not at these women, but at myself. How could I be so naive and arrogant to

presume to know how these women should react after having endured

unimaginable hardships?

The vision of a feminist revolt is so unrealistic and, yet, typically American.

Waiting, hoping, praying for liberation of Afghani women Athens Banner-

Herald on Sunday, November 25, 2001. Joanna Soto Carabello

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/112501/opi_1125010018.shtml

(accessed may 2004)

Even some women in Afghanistan who had worn the burqa under protest, and participated in counter Taliban activities found themselves still wearing their burqas.

Reserved

Wednesday, 31 March 2004

Afghanistan: Author Awaits Happy Ending To 'Sewing Circles Of Herat'

By Ron Synovitz

"They would arrive in their burqas with their bags full of material and scissors.

Underneath they would have notebooks and pens. And once they got inside,

instead of learning to sew, they would actually be talking about Shakespeare and

James Joyce, Dostoyevsky and their own writing. It was a tremendous risk they

were taking. If they had been caught, they would have been, at the very least,

imprisoned and tortured. Maybe hanged," Lamb says.

"I went to find the same women writers and I was expecting they would be very

happy that now they are free and they can write. One of them was studying at

Herat University, which of course was impossible under the Taliban. So I went to

see her," Lamb says.

The woman's name was Leila and she was among the first group of female

students to enroll at the Literature Faculty of Herat University in seven years.

Indoors, Leila wore tight jeans, high-heeled shoes, and lipstick. But the classes

were only for women, and Leila pulled on her burqa the moment she walked

outside.

"I was surprised because she seemed a bit depressed, and she said that although

she could now study, that it is segregated education in Herat. The literature

faculty where she was for women had very few books in the library still -- maybe

just a shelf of religious books and a few other books. And I was also astonished

that she was still wearing the burqa because she had spoken really vividly about

how imprisoned she felt inside it, and how there was no oxygen. She couldn't

breathe. She was always tripping over it. I asked her, 'Why are you still wearing

this?' And she said, 'You know, our society has changed [but] even though the

Taliban have gone, the mentality is still the same,'" Lamb says.

RAWA had been so successful in promoting its agenda, that the Afghani women’s continued wearing of the burqa in the umma because a cause for calling the organization into question; not only motives and tactics, but their financial accountability. RAWA had solicited millions of dollars from private individuals and humanitarian foundations, but did not seem to be able to account for money spent.

On Aug. 1, the prominent left-wing Feminist Majority Foundation declared a

"Victory for Afghan Women."

Legislation approved by Congress will funnel billions of U.S. tax dollars into

reconstructing Afghanistan. FMF had campaigned vigorously for the measure

and undoubtedly expects to guide the money slated for Afghan women.

Before this occurs, FMF should be called to account for its role in funds directed

toward the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan . In a blitz of

post-Sept. 11 media, RAWA became the sine qua non of Afghan women's

oppression, largely due to PC feminists, especially FMF, who acted as public

relations and fund-raising agents. The money poured in.

Skeptics who mentioned fiscal accountability were ignored. We are even less

likely to be acknowledged now that RAWA is embarrassing FMF

http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2002/0820.htm (accessed May

2004)

The Maoist collective group of revolutionary women eager to relieve Afghani women of their burqas were suddenly was no longer above law and accountability in the presence of other sources of information and interpretation. Afghani women’s problems were examined from different perspectives, and so was the burqa. Indeed, the burqa did cause some difficulties, though patriarchal oppression was not among them. Years of veiling kept sunlight off of women’s skin, making their bones fragile from poor calcium uptake.

Women had become shy and reclusive from years of seclusion.

Doc Risked Life For Women's Health

BOSTON, March 16, 2004

Samar's work often concerned the intersection between civil rights and physical

health. For example, according to the Canadian group Rights & Democracy, she

told Taliban officials that Afghan women forced to wear a head-to-toe burqa

received insufficient sunlight, exacerbating a common bone condition.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/16/world/main606655.shtml

(accessed May 2004)

"I think the burqa made women more or less invisible," says Esme. "It locked

them up in a certain place where they hardly had any interaction with friends and

suddenly they come out and they have to be amongst people again. The very

strange thing is that their social skills are actually quite bad because they have

been living in an isolated manner for six years, it's like a prisoner coming out of

prison and suddenly finding himself in the open and not knowing what to do next.

Women are trying to find their place and trying to find a way of dealing with each

other and trying not to hurt each other, which they did in the beginning."

Esme de Jong, a Dutch anthropologist

http://www.rnw.nl/development/html/burqa030123.html

Radio Netherlands (accessed May 2004)

The physicians and aid workers in Afghanistan also understood that the burqa was not going to leave its geography. If there was a “burqa removal” reported by photographers and newscasters, it was not by the indigenous Pashtuns, but by Pakistanis coming in over the border.

"The changes that you see in Kabul is that more and more women stop wearing

the burqa or so it seems. But what we found was that the majority of these women

actually come from Pakistan, not the old population that used to live there. It's

something that newcomers are bringing into the country, rather than women

suddenly taking off their burqas in the street."

Esme de Jong, a Dutch anthropologist

http://www.rnw.nl/development/html/burqa030123.html

Radio Netherlands (accessed May 2004)

"What is very complex is when you have forms of behavior that have been in

conservative societies for ages and that takes time to address. This is the kind of

thing that you cannot force down people's throats, nor do you want things to

happen in that kind of way," Manoel de Almieda e Silva, a spokesperson for the

United Nations Assistant Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told IRIN. (accessed

May 2004)

Figure 47: “A sea of blue and white burqas walked one and a half kilometres through the centre of Mazar to register for the forthcoming elections. Photograph by UN Assistant Mission in Afghanistan” Copyright © IRIN 2004 http://www.irinnews.org/printreport.aspx?reportid=23854 (accessed May 2004)

Figure 48: This promotional piece for the Royal Air Force features an Afghani teacher with her burqa pulled back so she can talk to other women; underneath she wears a trendy black leather motorcycle jacket. "The Lifted Burqa" Ministry of Defense, Operation Fingal http://www.operations.mod.uk/fingal/photo_gallery_school.htm (accessed May 2004)

An excellent example is Qasaba school, near Kabul airport; Royal Air Force and

Royal Engineer personnel based at the airport adopted the school soon after their

arrival, and have leant it much support, both moral and practical.

Afghan police in smart new uniforms provided security, assisted by ISAF troops,

and the children turned out in colourful traditional dress. Dr Karzai was clearly

overwhelmed by the occasion, and declared, "This is a happy, happy day. A very

happy day!"

Another school much in need of assistance is Abd-U-Ali Mustaghni School. The

British Embassy and 3 Close Support Regiment, serving with the British ISAF

contingent, have organised the provision of new furniture. There is no doubt that

much more needs to be done, the years of neglect having left the building in an

appalling state of repair where no less than 3,500 pupils, male and female of all

ages, are starting to receive once more a proper education.

A particularly special gift for Qasaba School arrived in early May - a

consignment of books and pens donated by the pupils of Aberdare Town Church

Primary School in Wales. The children organised a collection amongst

themselves after receiving a letter from an RAF dental officer serving with ISAF.

The gifts were very warmly received by the staff and children at Qasaba.

"The Lifted Burqa" Ministry of Defense, Operation Fingal

http://www.operations.mod.uk/fingal/photo_gallery_school.htm (accessed May

2004)

The “lifted burqa” remains as a signifier of humanitarian presence accepted in

Afghanistan though the burqa is no longer used as a justification for military intervention.

Conclusion:

In Islam the discourse of veiling and burqa was constructed in concepts of gendered space, privilege and honor.

"The link between dress...and sanctity of space is reflected in the Islamic rituals of

"dressing" The Ka'ba, the center of the holy site of pilgrimage...The

correspondence between the sanctuary of the Ka'ba and the home (as sanctuary)

is exemplified in the measures for protection and attitudes of protectiveness in

both spheres" (Guindi, 1999, 5-6).

The Western discourse on veiling and burqa was constructed in concepts of victimhood, oppression, and paternalist Orientalism. This discourse is completely removed from

Islamic, particularly Afghani, discourses of space, gender and agency. A garment that was a symbol of purity and prestige in its indigenous geography was interpreted as a symbol of oppression and violence when viewed from western context. This in itself is not unusual in the history of Orientalism. It is also not particularly remarkable that a signifier was used to justify an invasion in the name of “liberation”. What is unusual in the case of the burqa in the late 20 th century is that a group of indigenous women deliberately created and exported this discourse, equipping it with exaggerations, rumors, lies, profited off the enterprise, and therein constructed their own destruction.

Apart from the political challenges facing RAWA, tremendous social and relief

work amongst unimaginably traumatised women and children lie ahead of us, but

unfortunately we do not at the moment enjoy any support from international

NGOs, therefore our social programmes are presently greatly reduced for lack of

funds. RAWA.org. 2004

References:

Barr J., Clark I., Marsh M.

The Veil and Veiling http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/arthistory/ah369/finalveil.htm

Belghiti, M, 1970

Les Relations Feminines et le Statue de la Femme dans la Famille Rural”

Collection du Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc

Rabat

Brooks, G. 1995.

Nine Parts of Desire

New York: Anchor Books,

Cavanagh, Dr. E., 2003, 2004 http://afghan.smugmug.com/

Kabul, Afghanistan

Doubleday, V. 1988

Three Women of Herat

University of Texas Press, Austin

Dupree, N. 1978

Behind the Veil in Afghanistan

Asia, 1 (2)

El Guindi, F. 1981

Veiling Infitah with Muslim Ethic: Egypt’s Contemporaty Islamic Movement

Social Problems, Vol 28

El Guindi, F., 1999

Veil: Modesty, Privacy, and Resistance.

Oxford, New York: Berg.

Kroeber, A., 1919

On the Principle of order in Civilization as Exemplified by Changes in Fashion

American Anthropologist 32: 235-263:

Kroeber, A and Richardson, J. 1940

Three Centuries of Women’s Dress Fashions: a Quantitative Analysis

Anthropological Records, V, 111 – 153

Kuper, H., 1973

Costume and Identity: Comparative Studies in Society and History

15, 3: 348-367

The Library of Congress - Country Studies http://reference.allrefer.com/country-guide-study/afghanistan/afghanistan33.html

Linsisfarne-Tapper and Ingham, 1997

Languages of Dress in the Middle East

Curzon, Surrey, UK

Mernissi, F., 1991

The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam.

Lakeland, Mary Jo, tans. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Mernissi, F. 1987

Beyond the Veil, Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society

Indiana University Press

Molteno, M., 1987

A Language in Common

The Women's Press:

London

Pound, O, tr., 1976

The Persian of Iraj (1874 – 1924)

i RAWA, Mission Statement:

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, was established in Kabul, Afghanistan, in

1977 as an independent political/social organization of Afghan women fighting for human rights and for social justice in Afghanistan. The founders were a number of Afghan woman intellectuals under the sagacious leadership of Meena who in 1987 was assassinated in Quetta, Pakistan, by Afghan agents of the then KGB in connivance with fundamentalist band of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar . RAWA’s objective was to involve an increasing number of Afghan women in social and political activities aimed at acquiring women’s human rights and contributing to the struggle for the establishment of a government based on democratic and secular values in Afghanistan. Despite the suffocating political atmosphere, RAWA very soon became involved in widespread activities in different socio-political arenas including education, health and income generation as well as political agitation.

Before the Moscow-directed coup d’état of April 1978 in Afghanistan, RAWA’s activities were confined to agitation for women’s rights and democracy, but after the coup and particularly after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in December 1979, RAWA became directly involved in the war of resistance. In contradistinction to the absolute majority of the vaunted Islamic fundamentalist "freedom fighters" of the anti-Soviet war of resistance, RAWA from the outset advocated democracy and secularism. Despite the horrors and the political oppression, RAWA’s appeal and influence grew in the years of the Soviet Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 102

occupation and a growing number of RAWA activists were sent to work among refugee women in

Pakistan. For the purpose of addressing the immediate needs of refugee women and children, RAWA established schools with hostels for boys and girls, a hospital for refugee Afghan women and children in

Quetta, Pakistan with mobile teams. In addition, it conducted nursing courses, literacy courses and vocational training courses for women.

Demonstrations against the Soviet invaders and their stooges and later on against the fundamentalists, and unrelenting exposure of their treason and heinous crimes has been a hallmark of RAWA’s political activities. It was in consequence of its anti-Soviet occupationist struggle and agitation that RAWA was marked for annihilation by the Soviets and their cronies, while the Islamic fundamentalists vented their wrath on our organisation for our pro-democracy, pro-secularist and anti-fundamentalist stance. Our uncompromising attitude against these two enemies of our people has cost us dear, as witnessed by the martyrdom of our founding leader and a large number of our key activists, but we have unswervingly stood, and continue to stand, by our principles despite the deadly blows that we have been dealt.

For the purpose of propagating our views, aims and objectives, and to give Afghan women social and political awareness in regard to their rights and potentialities, RAWA launched a bilingual (Persian/Pashtu) magazine, Payam-e-Zan (Woman's Message) in 1981. Publication of this magazine is on-going and by- issues in Urdu and English for non-Persian/Pashtu speakers.

Since the overthrow of the Soviet-installed puppet regime in 1992 the focus of RAWA’s political struggle has been against the fundamentalists’ and the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban’s criminal policies and atrocities against the people of Afghanistan in general and their incredibly ultra-male-chauvinistic and anti-woman orientation in particular.

ii News for Anarchists & Activists:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo Burqa: Garment as Signifier Copyright © 2012 Catherine Cartwright-Jones TapDancing Lizard LLC This book is provided free by hennapage.com and mehandi.com Please purchase henna and body art supplies from http://www.mehandi.com 103

From: Dan Clore ( [email protected] )

Subject: [smygo] Pale Blue Polyester Eyes

This is the only artic le in this thread

View: Original Format

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive

Date: 2003-10-20 09:14:21 PST

Pale blue polyester eyes

Twenty-four hours in a burqa becomes a unique experience for

Santa Barbara woman

By Ted Mills, Special to the [Goleta Valley] Voice

It began not so much as a political statement as pure performance art, but for a 24-hour period

earlier this year, a woman named Hazel Flyingdrum spent life under a burqa.

Before the U.S. campaign to rout the ruling Taliban, the press focused on the plight of

Afghanistans women. The use of the burqa, a kind of dress that covers a womans body from head

to toe, became a symbol of the countrys fundamentalist oppressors.

Although the media had moved on, Flyingdrum hadnt forgotten the image of women in burqas.

So when her class in performance art gave a term-ending assignment to take on a completely

different persona for a day, the returning student had to think for a bit.

"At first I thought I would cover myself with henna tattoos," said the 50-something Flyingdrum in

a voice that still shows hints of her British roots (shes long been an American citizen). She did, but

it didnt feel right, not enough of a project, so she contacted RAWA, the local chapter of the

Revolutionary ssociation of the Women of Afghanistan, which has been publicizing the plight of

the Afghan women for years, and asked if they had a burqa she could wear.

Brianna Lawrie of RAWA not only had a burqa she could borrow, but apparently a selection of

colors. Hazel chose a pale blue one.

She soon learned a lot about these clothes that she had only seen on television. Theyre made of

polyester, and bear a manufacturers label from Afghanistan. They are, in their own way,

beautifully made. Theyre also incredibly hot and stuffy inside.

"I had no idea how enclosed Id feel," she says. "Just shut off."

Like a Halloween mask, it provides limited eyeholes and a reduced field of vision. "Someone

could have come up right beside me and I wouldnt have seen them," she says. "It was very scary."

She also felt depressed. "Just trying it on made me feel sad."

For her day in the burqa, Hazel set about following her usual routine -- dance class, health club,

college -- but decided to also follow the rules that women must follow in public in Afghanistan.

"Youre not allowed to speak at all in public. I nearly gave the game away a few times."

Whether people saw Hazel as a real fundamentalist following rules or as someone performing a

publicity stunt, she didnt know, but from inside the burqa, she watched as people at the health club

quickly shrank away. "One lady said, Stop staring at me! But I wasnt," she says. "She just couldnt

see my eyes."

What really struck Hazel was a trip on the bus. At one stop a longtime friend got on, and Hazel

resisted calling out to her, though behind the burqa she was smiling. "My friend walked up to me,

frowned, and sat as far away from me a she could. I was truly faceless."

The reaction of men and women differed down the gender lines. "Men were drawn to it," she says.

"They wanted to see underneath. But women generally didnt even look at me. I got the impression

that in Afghanistan men just must see shrouded figures, not women. Its like another planet."

Her burqa also come into play at a womens ceremony she attends annually in San Luis Obispo.

Called the "Longdance," its an evening of empowerment and ritual, and each woman was told to

come as a character. "I came in the burqa as Hidden Woman," she says.

Flyingdrum had planned to rip the burqa off at the end as a sort of rebirth, but the burqa has a

strange power.

"I suddenly decided not to as I walked around the circle of women, just silent, looking at each an

every one of them. Then I walked off. Nobody knew it was me, even by the next day." To take off

the burqa would have been giving a happy ending to a story that is far from over, she feels, so it

stayed on. "It was a powerful moment."

Strangely enough, though her project is over, her relationship with her burqa remains a complex

one. It allowed her a perspective that shes still coming to understand. "RAWA plans to sell these

burqas by the end of the year," she says. "I have so many other projects to do that the burqa keeps

suggesting. I hope I can buy my one back from them."

Hazel Flyingdrum initially wore a burqa as performance art, but the experience quickly became

much more.