Wimpelmann, Torunn (2013) The price of protection: gender, violence and power in Afghanistan. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/16802 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. The Price of Protection Gender, violence and power in Afghanistan Torunn Wimpelmann Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in Development Studies March 2013 Department of Development Studies School of Oriental and African Studies University of London Declaration for PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________ Abstract This thesis examines contestations over gender violence as points of entry into an analysis of gender, politics and sovereign power in contemporary Afghanistan. It explores the evolving parameters of what ‘counts’ as violence against women in Afghanistan, articulated in legal frameworks and practices, in public and media debates and in the interventions of political leaders, diplomats and aid workers. The thesis asks whether violence against women has become a governance issue in Afghanistan and what this means for the position of women and for broader relations of power. These questions are investigated through an examination of the origins and fate of a new law on violence against women, a series of controversies over women’s shelters, attempts to bestow recognition on informal justice processes and the trajectories of individual episodes of violence as they travelled through different and sometimes competing legal forums. I show how the outcome of these struggles have the potential to redraw boundaries between government and family domains, and to subordinate women to kinship power, or alternatively, constitute them as independent legal persons. The thesis further analyses negotiations over and interventions into violence against women as revealing of shifting domains and claims of sovereignty, of projects of power and of political technologies. The processes detailed in the thesis illuminate a landscape of plural and competing legal regimes that in specific times and places presided over individual episodes of gender violence The thesis also shows that far from operating as a singular bloc, Western forays in Afghanistan produced multiple and contradictory effects on women’s security and protection. Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ 1 Abbreviations ......................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 4 I. ‘The President is selling the people’s honour’ ............................................................................ 4 II. Situating the thesis ..................................................................................................................... 10 III. Chapters outline ......................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 1: Gendered violations and sovereign claims ..................................................................... 15 I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 15 II. Gendered violations and sovereign power ................................................................................ 16 III. From gender relations to broader fields of power ..................................................................... 19 IV. Governmental assemblages, and their limits ............................................................................. 25 Chapter 2: Research on shifting ground ........................................................................................... 31 I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 31 I. Afghanistan during fieldwork: a snap survey of the political landscape ................................... 32 II. The extended case method ........................................................................................................ 39 III. Doing research in Afghanistan: Research trajectories, data access and ethics .......................... 41 Chapter 3: Intrusions, invasions and interventions: Historical lineages of gender, justice and governance in Afghanistan ................................................................................................................. 56 I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 56 II. Gendered boundaries and hierarchies ........................................................................................ 56 III. The emergence of a centralized legal system in Afghanistan ................................................... 66 IV. Legal reform after 2001............................................................................................................. 79 IV. International gender activism: post-2001 Afghanistan as a site of international gender expertise ............................................................................................................................................ 85 Chapter 4: ‘Good women have no need for this law’. The fortunes of the EVAW Law .............. 89 I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 89 II. The legal framework prior to the EVAW law ........................................................................... 91 III. The trajectory of the EVAW law ............................................................................................... 96 IV. ‘What is the basis for this law?’ Discursive strategies and hierarchies ................................... 101 V. Political ambiguity and discreet lobbying ............................................................................... 113 VI. Conclusions ............................................................................................................................. 119 Chapter 5: Between sanctuary and surveillance: The women’s shelters ..................................... 123 I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 123 II. The “run away woman” as a transgressor ............................................................................... 125 III. The Supreme Court directive on “running away” ................................................................... 130 IV. ‘What have been run by NGOs now belongs to the government.’ Attempts to “nationalize” the shelters: ............................................................................................................................................ 133 V. ‘What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan’: Bibi Aisha .......................................................... 135 VI. Nasto Naderi’s campaign against the shelters ......................................................................... 137 VII. Victory for the shelters ........................................................................................................... 140 VIII. Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 145 Chapter 6: Seeking the “real” Afghanistan: The informal justice agenda ................................. 148 I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 148 II. Defining informal justice ......................................................................................................... 150 III. The ‘National Policy on relations between the formal justice system and disputes resolution councils’ (and its discontents) ......................................................................................................... 151 IV. Expert authority and Afghan reality .......................................................................................