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An Alternative Perspective on Humanitarian Assistance to Afghan Women

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An Alternative Perspective on Humanitarian Assistance to Afghan Women Third World Quarterly, Vol 23, No 5, pp 909–930, 2002 Exploited by whom? An alternative perspective on humanitarian assistance to Afghan women SULTAN BARAKAT & GARETH WARDELL ABSTRACT Over the past six years, Afghan women have been the subject of unprecedented levels of interest and international attention; most of it well intentioned, much of it ill-informed. This paper considers the recent debate surrounding their plight and asks whether Western-originated approaches that seek to target or ‘single-out’ women, in isolation from their wider social, cultural and family context, have more to do with international politics and the agendas of external agencies than they do with meeting the felt and expressed needs of the majority of Afghan women. It identifies five important points to emerge from research conducted into the ways in which Afghan women describe themselves. Following a brief historical overview tracing the impact on women of tensions between traditionalists and modernisers within Afghan society, it considers each of these points in turn, including: distinctions between urban/rural and educated/ uneducated women; the different spheres of influence inhabited by women and men within Afghan culture; the impact on women of war, displacement, and refugee life; vulnerability and coping strategies; and the divergent perspectives of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ on Afghan life and culture. Finally, it offers a number of suggestions for ways in which agency interventions may work with Afghan women, by harnessing their capacities in ways that are consonant with their social, cultural and family context. Introduction: listening to Afghan women’s voices A recent BBC report noted: Western journalists and aid workers who thought that piles of burqas would be burned in the street as the Taleban ( sic) made a quick getaway are in shock. They are incredulous that what has been perceived as the arch symbol of Taleban rule is worn even when the regime is long gone. (George Marcus, BBC News Online, 23 November 2001) The West’s recent ‘discovery’ of discrimination against Afghan women (dis- crimination that passed largely without comment when perpetrated by anti-Soviet Mujaheddin allies in a cold war context) is indicative of the political agenda behind much of the recent posturing on Afghan women; an agenda which has Sultan Barakat and Gareth Wardell are both at the Post-War Reconstruction and Development Unit (PRDU) at the University of York, Derwent College, York YO10 5DD, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/02/050909-22 q 2002 Third World Quarterly DOI: 10.1080/0143659022000028585 909 SULTAN BARAKAT & GARETH WARDELL seen figures such as Laura Bush and Cherie Booth (Blair), each making public pronouncements on the rights of Afghan women (BBC News Online, 16 November 2001). It is also indicative both of a wider ignorance of the realities of Afghan culture and of discrepancies between the ways in which ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ perceive and interpret Afghan life. Less than two weeks after the Taliban’s departure, permission to hold a women’s march through the streets of the Afghan capital was refused by the West’s new allies in Kabul (BBC News Online, 27 November 2001) and within a month of the Taliban’s overthrow, tele- vision news bulletins were broadcasting images of Northern Alliance soldiers more redolent of their Taliban predecessors: Soldiers stand with whips, and beat the women in the crowd to keep control. ‘The men in the crowd listen to us, but the women don’t. They need discipline,’ one of the soldiers said. Old attitudes here are hard to break. (Hilary Anderson, BBC News Online, 8 December 2001) Discrimination against Afghan women did not appear with the advent of the Taliban regime and there is ample evidence to suggest it is unlikely to end quickly now that the regime has gone. Rather, it is symptomatic of much longer- standing religious and cultural tensions between traditionalists and modernisers in Afghan society. The proliferation of ‘Gender Advisors’ and specialist gender sections in many international humanitarian agencies over recent years has led to a welcome and much needed focus on the plight of marginalised women in many countries around the world. However, it has also resulted in a tendency towards ‘template’ solutions that fail adequately to take account of the local social and cultural context. Since the advent of the Taliban, much ink has flowed on the subject of Afghan women. Many have claimed to speak for Afghan women, sometimes at the expense of listening to them. This article takes as its starting point the ways in which Afghan women describe themselves. Research undertaken with a group of Afghan women during the Taliban regime, 1 identified a number of important points. First, broad, generalised references to ‘Afghan women’ have led to the misconception that they somehow constitute a single homogeneous group. In reality, there are significant differences between urban/rural, educated/uneducated, rich/poor and between different tribal/ethnic groups. It is no more valid to make sweeping, unqualified generalisations about Afghan women than it is to speak of Afghan men as constituting a single group. Second, it is important to understand the traditional division between public and private worlds within Afghan life. While the formal representation of Afghan women in the political arena is limited, they have a much greater role in decision-making processes at family and community level. Third, the experience of war, displacement and refugee life have led to changes in women’s roles, offering greater levels of responsibility on the one hand and exposing them to greater levels of vulnerability on the other. Fourth, there is a cultural dissonance between values advocated by many Westerners and those that Afghan women fight for (based on tradition, culture, religion, etc). Consequently, many of the solutions proposed for addressing gender inequity are culturally insensitive and unpopular with Afghan women themselves, particularly 910 AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE TO AFGHAN WOMEN where this has involved sanctioning aid. Too often, the approaches adopted in the delivery of assistance have relied on standardised, ‘one-size-fits-all’ blueprint solutions, rather than seeking genuinely to understand and harness the traditional mechanisms that women have established for leadership in the past. Finally, violations of women’s human rights in Afghanistan are not a recent phenomenon, rather they form part of a larger landscape that has been shaped by 23 years of conflict and has to be addressed accordingly. We will return to each of these points in due course, in an attempt to develop an alternative perspective on humanitarian assistance to Afghan women. How- ever, if future initiatives aimed at assisting women in the post-Taliban era are to be effective, it is vital that they are predicated on a realistic assessment of what is feasible within Afghan culture. To this end, it is instructive to give a brief historical overview of previous attempts at initiating changes on gender-related issues within Afghan society and the repercussions of such initiatives. Women’s emancipation: a ‘tug of war’ between traditionalists and modernisers Early moves towards women’s emancipation (1927–79) One of the very first experiments with female emancipation occurred in the late 1920s. On their return from a six-month tour of Europe in 1927–28 , King Amanullah and his wife Queen Soraya unleashed a programme of new reforms, including the creation of a constitutional monarchy, an elected assembly, a secular judiciary and, most significantly, the complete emancipation of women, compulsory education for both sexes, and plans for co-educational schools. The extent and pace of the proposed reforms led to an uprising and the overthrow of the King and it was another 30 years before any further significant moves towards women’s emancipation occurred. In 1959 the government of King Zahir Shah formally announced the voluntary end of female seclusion and the removal of the veil. However, it was left to individual families to decide how to respond to these greater freedoms and, outside the major urban centres, life for most women remained largely unchanged. Nevertheless, in the intervening years some gradual changes did occur, including the introduction of girls’ schools and medical facilities for women, where they received training in both nursing skills and in administration. The constitution of 1964, introduced by the country’s male leaders, accorded significant rights to women, including the right to vote ahead of many other countries (eg Swiss women only gained the vote in 1970) and the right to education, although only a tiny minority of women were in a position to take advantage of these rights. However, Nancy Dupree (1998a) notes the reaction that even these limited reforms produced amongst religious conservatives. There were violent demon- strations, particularly at Kabul University, where unveiled women students in short skirts had acid thrown at them. Gulbeddin Hekmatyar, one of those partici- pating in such violent attacks on women, went on to become a leading figure in the Mujaheddin. Hailed as ‘freedom fighters’ by US President Reagan, both 911 SULTAN BARAKAT & GARETH WARDELL Hekmatyar and the party he led, Hizb-e-Islami (Islamic Party), received con- siderable US diplomatic and military support during the 1980s (Moghadam, 2002). Women themselves responded to such incidents by demonstrating as a group for the first time. Conservative religious reactions to women’s education and emancipation were a key feature of the anti-government protests of the 1970s, which finally resulted in the leftist coup d’é tat of April 1978 (Dupree, 1998a). Proactive social engineering (1979–92) If the reign of King Zahir Shah was characterised by a low-key but facilitative approach to women’s emancipation, a much more audacious, proactive pro- gramme of social engineering marked the period of communist government from 1978–92.
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