Former White House resident George W. Bush warned Americans last night that it would be a mistake to leave Afghanistan too early. Speaking to Fox 'News', of course, Bush said:
"My concern, of course, is that the United States gets weary of being in Afghanistan and says, 'it's not worth it, let's leave,' " Bush said. "If that were to happen, women would suffer again, and we don't believe that's in the interests of the United States or the world to create safe havens for terrorists and stand by and watch women's rights be abused."
After nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan, how have the lives of Afghan women improved? Malalai Joya, a former elected member of Afghanistan's Loya Jirga and described as "the bravest woman in Afghanistan", had this to say on Monday when she spoke at Harvard:
“The United States invaded my country under the banner of women’s rights, human rights and democracy, but today we are as far from those goals as we were in 2001,” Joya said. “They keep the situation lawless and unsafe to have an excuse to stay on in Afghanistan for their own interests.”
Joya told an audience at First Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts that:
The Obama administration’s surge of forces has led to only “more massacres, more tragedy, more violence.’’ ...
She said she did not fear a US troop withdrawal, which Obama has said would occur by 2014. “We have three enemies: the warlords, the Taliban, and foreign occupation. When the occupation ends, we’ll only have two.’’ ...
“It’s already a civil war,’’ she said. “Nobody’s talking about the brutal war that’s already going on. When the [US forces] leave, the backbone of the warlords will break. . . . As long as the warlords are in power, there’s no hope to change the life of women in my country.’’
She was initially the State Department denied her visa granting her permission to enter the U.S. because she was unemployed and "living underground". Joya was suspended from the Afghanistan's parliament in 2006 after delegates called her a "prostitute" and guards threw her out. Afterward, she was assaulted. Joya has received threats of rape and death to silence her. She has survived five assassination attempts on her life. Joya believes that she was first denied a visa because she is speaking out against the U.S.-led occupation of her country. She told Time in an email:
"[The Afghan government] has probably requested the U.S. to not let me enter ... because I am exposing the wrong policies of the U.S. and its puppet regime at the international level."
Since being expelled from office, Joya has "campaigned behind the scenes at home — and widely abroad — blaming the U.S. for civilian deaths and for working with corrupt power brokers who have debased Afghan women."
The latest sign of trouble for women in her eyes? President Hamid Karzai's administration drafting new rules that would ban private shelters for women who have run away from abusive relatives, placing them under government control. Under the new policy, women would have to submit to medical examinations and forced eviction if their families demand their return. Joya and a host of human-rights activists insist these restrictions show the lengths Karzai is willing to go to appease fundamentalists sympathetic to the Taliban, and fear it could foreshadow greater setbacks for women if and when a peace deal is struck.
Joya is right to be alarmed. Karzai has a track record in selling out women for his only political gain. For instance, he let legislation legalizing rape, permitting a husbands to beat and starve his wife, and stripping away Afghan Shia women rights to become law in 2009 to help shore up support for him in the corrupt 2009 Afghan presidential election. Now he's at it again and seemingly with the approval of the United States. Last month, the Washington Post reported the U.S. had shifted its strategy on Afghan women’s rights as it eyes wider priorities.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has been removing conditions to contracts it awards that required "winning contractor meet specific goals to promote women’s rights". The Post quotes an anonymous "senior" official in the Obama administration as saying, "Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities... There’s no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in our rucksack were taking us down."
Last month, the CS Monitor noted that the fight for women's rights is losing out to Afghan tradition — culture and religion.
"There has been a lot of effort to damage the situation of women in the law of Afghanistan” in the past five years, says Naheed Farid, a member of parliament from Herat Province. “I cannot say that there is no progress. As a woman I did not have the right to go out shopping [before 2001], but now I am a member of the parliament.” However, she adds that more needs to be done in order to protect the rights of women.
Throughout Afghanistan, women like Mrs. Farid increasingly appear to be encountering a number of hurdles. The fall of the Taliban may have brought a wave of change for many women in major urban areas, but today women are running into cultural barriers that go beyond the Taliban's influence.
The meager gains for Afghan women since the 2001 invasion are now being repealed.
New rules being drafted by President Hamid Karzai’s government would bar private safe houses for women who are fleeing abuse and place new rules on those seeking refuge in the country’s 14 public shelters, including forcing women to submit to medical examinations and evicting them if their families want them back. The proposed rules would also bring the shelters — funded by international organizations, Western governments and private donors — under the direct control of the Afghan government.
Women’s advocates say the restrictions on shelters, which have been embraced by religious conservatives sympathetic to the Taliban, are an early sign of the compromises the Karzai government is willing to make to reach a peace deal with insurgents.
Even Karzai recently admitted that Afghan "women are still oppressed", but sees no problem with taking control of the women's shelters. Hussan Ghazanfar, the acting minister of women’s affairs in the Karzai government, accused the women’s shelters of being corrupt. The shelters are largely funded by Western governments and charities and "provide havens for women and girls fleeing sexual and physical abuse, and give the runaways an alternative to seeking help from the authorities, who often forcibly return them to their families — and sometimes subject them to further abuse".
Some women see no way out and set themselves on fire to escape their situation, Mother Jones reported earlier this year. In the first half of 2010 alone, Herat Regional Hospital treated 69 cases of self-immolation. "The hospital staff believes the real number of cases in any given year to be much higher than reported; many victims die before reaching the hospital. Many more refuse to admit to burning themselves."
"Three years ago, people had a very clear idea of the future for Afghanistan," Maria Bashir said. "Now we don't." Bashir is the first ever female chief prosecutor in an Afghan state.
As chief prosecutor, Bashir has sought to help women voice their grievances in the courts instead of by the gas can. She began charging families who sold their daughters into marriage with kidnapping. She started encouraging women who survived self-immolation to hold abusive husbands to account. But most survivors are too scared of repercussions when they return home from the hospital; they tell investigators that their burns are the result of accidents.
Bashir's house has been bombed and her children have received death threats. Her persuit of justice for the Afghan people have come at an enormous personal cost over the past four years. "Life is impossible and every day is worse," she said. Bashir is protected by armed guards hired by the U.S. government. The Afghan government refused her requests for 24-hour security.
"I hope that Afghanistan will have a better future," Bashir said, "but I know it won't come soon. It may take another generation. Or two. Maybe my daughter's daughter will have a good life."
Today, The Guardian reports the Afghan government plans a crackdown on revealing wedding dresses.
Under a new law proposed by the country's justice ministry and soon to be considered by Karzai's cabinet, "garments contrary to Islamic sharia" will be banned. Those dealing in "outfits that are semi-naked, naked, transparent, or tight in a way that reveals part of the woman's body" will be fined and, if they persist, closed down...
The government is also aiming to introduce various public morality provisions in yet another sign of the casual erosion of the small freedoms women have won since 2001.
And in an echo of the Taliban regime, which used to police weddings to ensure they complied with hardline rulings including a ban on music, the government also intends to set up "committees" to monitor weddings.
Lastly, women and their children are still being killed by the U.S.-led coalition. Two days ago NATO admitted it had "accidentally killed two children and two women" in an airstrike. USA Today analyzed the civilian casualty database maintained by the International Security Assistance Force, and found that Afghan civilian deaths are increasing despite President Obama's escalation of troops in Afghanistan. "Civilian deaths increased 19% in 2010 from the previous year, with summer months and the Southern provinces around Kandahar the deadliest. The U.N. data shows a 15% jump."
Airstrikes and improvised explosives caused the majority of the deaths. "Improvised explosives killed the most civilians, 777 men, women and children last year, with the Taliban increasing their use in the face of last year's U.S.-led military offensive that doubled troop numbers to 140,000."
The United States and its allies have had close to a decade to improve the lives of Afghan women and now the man who led the first invasion advocates staying for the sake of the Afghan women. With the corrupt, anti-woman Karzai in office and the Obama administration placing a lower priority on women's rights, combined with recent "kill team" revelations and increasing civilian causalities, it seems more like the U.S. has left Afghanistan too late. While some progress has been made, as Farid noted, it is steadily being eroded by Karzai's corruption and efforts to remain the "mayor of Kabul".
Joya had an opinion piece on Wednesday in The Guardian titled, Kill teams in Afghanistan: the truth. She wrote:
All the PR about this war being about democracy and human rights melts into thin air with the pictures of US soldiers posing with the dead and mutilated bodies of innocent Afghan civilians...
Successive US officials have said that they will safeguard civilians and that they will be more careful, but in fact they are only more careful in their efforts to cover up their crimes and suppress reporting of them. The US and Nato, along with the office of the UN's assistance mission in Afghanistan, usually give statistics about civilian deaths that underestimate the numbers. The reality is that President Obama's so-called surge has only led to a surge of violence from all sides, and civilian deaths have increased.
The occupying armies have tried to buy off the families of their victims, offering $2,000 for each one killed. Afghans' lives are cheap for the US and Nato, but no matter how much they offer, we don't want their blood money.
Once you know all this, and once you have seen the "kill team" photos, you will understand more clearly why Afghans have turned against this occupation. The Karzai regime is more hated than ever: it only rules through intimidation, corruption, and with the help of the occupying armies. Afghans deserve much better than this.
Yes, they do. The suffering of the Afghan people continues even despite America's efforts. Continuing to occupy Afghanistan and propping up Karzai for the long term is not the kind of help Afghans need now.