By Yuri Fenopetov
Glossary and Acronyms:
| Taliban – Taleeb, a Seeker of Truth, sometimes also used as a description for a student of Islam.Sharia – Islamic law.Burqa – A veil worn by women, covering the body from head to toe.
Pashtunwali – Non-written ethical morals of indigenous people living in Pashtunistan, an area divided by the Durand Line, which constitutes today’s border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Madrassa – A school for the study of Islam, strictly only for young males, lead by a Mullah. |
ISI – Inter-Services Intelligence.AUF – Afghan United Front.UNAMA – United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
UNICEF – United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. |
Afghanistan, Kabul, November 1996. The Taliban have just captured the Afghan capital Kabul after a bloody armed conflict that swept through most of Afghanistan’s rural areas and major cities for the past two years. The fundamentalist group was now in full grasp of most of the country and began to exert control, issuing a decree relating to “women and other cultural issues:”
The decree continues to list basic rules and responsibilities women have according to the Taliban’s interpretation of Sharia Law. Under Taliban rule women, in particular, were subject to discrimination. The discrimination often took cruel forms such as described in the decree presented above, disallowance to education, physical violence and public execution.
The fall of Kabul to the Taliban movement ignited a vicious civil war between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the de-facto Taliban, and, the Islamic State of Afghanistan, or “Afghan United Front” – the so called “Northern Alliance,” a military alliance between the former Afghan Government and non-Pashto warlords with support from mainly Russia and Iran. The conflict left many civilians dead and raised the need to discuss the treatment of women’s issues in Afghanistan. The war continued until 2001, when the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia invaded Afghanistan and together with the AUF fought the Taliban to regain full control of the country, an initiative now known as Operation Enduring Freedom.
Taliban fighters were eventually pushed back by the invading powers, mainly into rural areas and over the Afghan-Pakistani border, where they have enjoyed close ties all throughout the former civil war until present day with factions of the Pakistani military and the Pakistani ISI secret service.[2] The movement shifted its strategy to smaller, well-targeted and coordinated attacks, then retreat into safe-havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas, in an effort to counter governmental reforms and security, and particularly a foreign presence. Nevertheless, today, despite incidents of tensions between the Afghan people and the occupying powers, there is a firm effort of the international community to rebuild a war-torn Afghanistan.
When discussing the course of development of a country like Afghanistan, which remains one of the poorest countries in the world,[3] a key necessity is to focus on education. Apart from economic incentives to build roads, hospitals, and eradicate opium cultivation, it is essential to stress the importance of educating the Afghan population at all levels, specifically both male and female subjects. It is my strong belief, that education is a necessary pillar for any society to progress in terms of living conditions and economic advancement. To see if the Afghan war effort by the occupying powers has encouraged the process of developing education, and if it was successful in making education possible for women, we can ask ourselves the following questions: In regard to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1974 (2011), how successful was the effort to achieve gender equality in forms of access to education for women in Afghanistan since 2001 by the international community? What were and are the challenges posed by these developments to the effort and, most importantly, can these challenges be overcome?
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1974 was adopted unanimously in March 2011, after recalling former resolutions on Afghanistan. The Resolution extended the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan until 2012. The Council realized that there is no military solution to the situation in Afghanistan after ten years of foreign military occupation. The Resolution repeats the support of the international community to the Afghan people in rebuilding Afghanistan. Therefore, a guiding principle of the Resolution is to reinforce Afghan ownership with specific focus on:
Apart from addressing political and military issues, such as opium-cultivation, refugees, protection of humanitarian workers, these main points also reiterate the importance of education, specifically in the context of economic development, tolerance, and universal human rights.[5] Point e of the Resolution goes into more depth in regard to the protection of civilians, especially issues regarding women:
The Afghan Constitution, referred to by the Resolution, evolved from the Afghan Constitution Commission mandated by the Bonn Agreement, an international initiative intended to re-create the State of Afghanistan. The Constitution was adopted in 2004 with the signing of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. In respect to the Resolution, the Afghan Constitution states that men and women enjoy equal rights.[6] The Constitution goes even further in including a clause concentrating specifically on the education of women: “The state shall devise and implement effective programs for balancing and promoting of education for women.”[7] Furthermore, the Constitution requires each political party to nominate a certain number of female candidates. Clearly, we can see that there is a firm drive from both the Afghan Government, considering the Constitution, as well as the international community, in the context of the Security Council Resolution, for making education possible for women in Afghanistan since the departure of the Taliban in 2001.
The Taliban regime is notorious for its treatment of women. Their interpretation of law is based on Islamic Law, or Sharia. Women are forced to stay inside their domestic spheres and in case of ever leaving the house, have to wear a burqa. Additionally, females are not allowed to work, and consequently are forbidden to enjoy formal education, except the study of the Quran, the latter also being true for the male. These measures are interpreted as being necessary to create “secure environments where the chasteness and dignity of women may once again be sacrosanct.”[8] – Basically, a worldview that is reminiscent of early 8th century rural Muslim society, and still much of today’s rural Afghan tribal-based society.
It is important to take into account that the Taliban movement was very much a nationalistic movement of mainly ethnically Pashto peoples of which the majority lives in the Pashto-belt that stretches across southern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. Thus, the Taliban’s Sharia is strongly influenced by non-written ethical morals called Pashtunwali. Due to these circumstances, other ethnicities that live in the more historically liberal orientated areas of the North, such as the cities of Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif, have suffered in many ways when Taliban forces conducted their conquest of Afghanistan and consequently began their exert of control, mainly due to ethnical and political tensions. Most fighters that the Taliban recruited, and continue to recruit, are young, male, madrassa-educated orphans who have rarely enjoyed the presence of females in their lives. Thus, the implementation of policies regarding women was not a difficult task. However, as explained earlier, the Taliban have been driven back in 2001, forcing them to fight from the background: from remote tribal areas in southeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan that lack proper governmental oversight and control. The reemergence of the Taliban poses a great challenge to the Afghan Government and remains one of the foremost important political topics of today’s discussions concerning Central Asia, or even global stability. Returning to women and education, we can look to statistical information to see how successful the drive of the Afghan Government and the international community has been in giving women access to education since 2001.
During the Taliban regime, the literacy rate for women was 5.6 percent.[9] In 2011, the Australian Government Agency for International Development aid programme recorded the literacy rate for women enjoying a significant increase to 12.6 percent.[10] School enrolments have increased as well: from about one million in 2001, of whom virtually none were girls, to seven million in 2011, of which 2.5 million were girls. Although a large part of the young female population still does not attend any educational facilities, this progress shows a significant improvement that will affect the literacy rate of women positively in the coming years. However, we must take into account that a large portion of the Afghan population is in school age. About one in every five Afghans is in the age group between seven and twelve years old. In 2006, mid-way of our analysis, it was reported that 74 percent of girls drop out of primary school before finishing.[11] We can conclude that initially sending children to school is not that much of a problem than keeping them going to school until graduation. 51 percent of parents mention that the main reasons for girls to not go to school are accessibility.[12] The educational infrastructure in Afghanistan remains insufficient. Only 40 percent of schools are conducted in permanent buildings. The remaining percentage constitutes classes that take place in UNICEF shelters or “desert schools” that take place in the deserts near villages.[13] State development agencies, such as the United States Agency for International Aid, and other non-governmental organizations have built and continue to build numerous schools in Afghanistan. Additionally, much of the schoolbooks used remain woefully insufficient and a standardized educational curriculum does not exist. There has been improvement conducted by international experts to improve the number of schoolbooks and their content, as many still contain extremist Islamic teachings. Additionally, according to statistics of the Afghan Ministry of Education, 80 percent of teachers lack proper credentials and rarely exceed secondary school education equivalents. These issues remain main challenges to the effort in improving educational circumstances. However, the number of schools built might increase accessibility, and the educational material might increase globalized educational standards, but they do not omit the remaining fact that a majority of girls are still dropping out of primary school. The other reasons for the high-rate of primary school dropouts by girls were mainly marriage, family obligations or the fear of a remaining Taliban presence; the latter being an issue of security and the former being issues of traditional Afghan cultural practices.
Afghanistan remains one of the worst affected countries by violence against education. Movements such as the Taliban and other fundamentalist militant groups exert violent attacks on girl schools, which have often had to operate underground during the Taliban regime with teachers fearing execution. Although the Taliban are now in the background, attacks on girl schools still persist. In 2008 alone, there have been 670 incidents of violent attacks on education, the majority of which have been girl schools.[14]
On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, one of the main challenges to keep girls in primary school is deeply vested in cultural practices that are based on conservative Afghan traditions. Gender relations in the Afghan household construct a very distinct gender order. Women generally deal with housework and childcare and stay outside the decision-making spheres of the traditional Afghan community, which is dominated by the male. It is the duty of the male to protect the female from “other corrupt” males who can do harm to the family’s well being. However, domestic violence remains a key issue in providing gender equality and safety for women. Women are thus stuck between two worlds of having no place in public spheres of Afghan life, and fear of violence at home. According to the Afghanistan Woman Council, domestic violence can include “emotional abuse, physical abuse, economic abuse, sexual abuse, using children, making threats, using male privilege, intimidation, isolation, and a variety of other behaviors used to maintain fear, intimidation, power and control.” Although domestic violence exists all around the world, it is reinforced by the common acceptance of domestic violence as being normal in much of the broader traditionally conservative Afghan society, which makes it extremely hard, additionally to it taking place at home, to condemn and oversee – even more so in rural parts of Afghanistan. Women are essentially classed as second-class citizens and denied basic human rights.
The gender order impedes on empowering women to choose their own life-paths by ‘Western’ standards. Through forced marriages and family obligations, women have to give up their educational possibilities and ambitions, which are represented in the high dropout rate of girls from primary school. Child marriages account for 43 percent of all marriages, and the mean age of a girl when marrying is 17.[15]
We can observe the developments of gender discrimination in Afghanistan through the situation of education. A combination of factors, such as poverty, conservative Afghan traditions and the effects of war contribute to the circumstances. Women remain exposed to hostilities and conflict, even with an increase in positive developments concerning the number of school enrolments by girls and legislative measures concerning women. The absence of political participation of women remains a key issue in Afghanistan. The relatively high number of women in parliament, which as mentioned earlier is vested in the Afghan Constitution, does not change the reality that women continue to be virtually non-existent in local-level decision-making.
We can conclude that the effort by the Afghan Government and the international community is leading Afghanistan into the right direction, but the reality of women’s position in Afghan society remains a crucial challenge. Apart from building schools and chasing down militant groups, the effort has to reach a firm stage that can fill the existing need to raise effective awareness concerning women’s issues. More work needs to be done in changing cultural practices, that will require sensitive and diplomatic approaches, in respect to the noble culture of the Afghan people and its history. It is my strong belief that this process requires much effort, attention and most importantly: time.
In a broader perspective, there should be a much stronger approach to demonstrate friendly intentions and a much higher level of adaptability by the international community, both politically and culturally. The result should be a firm and lasting commitment that is based across three levels: an international agreement, a regional agreement and a domestic agreement. One cannot simply eradicate issues Afghanistan faces quickly or in the form of ‘shock therapy’, and most crucially not be able to steer Afghan affairs without the consent of its peoples. An international solution needs to be found to end the ongoing war in Afghanistan, a regional solution to tackle foreign interference, proxy fighting, militancy, drug trafficking and bring stability to Afghanistan’s borders, and a domestic solution that will represent all ethnicities and layers of Afghan society fairly, and establish confidence in a unified and peaceful Afghanistan.
[1] Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban. London: I.B. Taurus, 2010. 247. Excerpt from the decree announced by the General Presidency of Amr Bil Maruf and Nai Az Munkar (Religious Police). Translation from Dari.
[2] Human Rights Watch. Afghanistan. Crisis of Impunity: The Role of Pakistan, Russia and Iran in Fueling the Civil War in Afghanistan. <http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan2/Afghan0701.pdf>.
[3] International Monetary Fund. Statistics Database. <http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2011/02/weodata/index.aspx>.
[4] United Nations Security Council Resolution 1974 (2011). Points are revised for simplicity reasons.
[5] Daily Times of Pakistan. Mar 24, 2011. <http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20113\24\story_24-3-2011_pg7_7>.
[6] Article 22 of the Afghan Constitution.
[7] Article 44 of the Afghan Constitution.
[8] Dupree, Nancy. Afghan Women under the Taliban in William Maley. Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban. London: Hurst and Company, 2001. 145-166.
[9] Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan. <http://www.rawa.org/facts.htm>.
[10] Australian Government. Australian Agency for International Development. <http://www.ausaid.gov.au/country/country.cfm?CountryID=27886219&Region=AfricaMiddleEast>.
[11] Skaine, Rosemarie. Women of Afghanistan in The Post-Taliban Era: How Lives Have Changed and Where They Stand Today. MacFarland, 2008.
[12] United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative. <http://www.ungei.org/infobycountry/afghanistan.html>.
[13] Najafizada, Maysam. Afghanistan: Education in a War Zone. Dec 19, 2008. Transitions Online. <http://chalkboard.tol.org/afghanistan>.
[14] Reuters. Violence, tradition keeps millions of Afghans from school. Jan 1, 2011. <http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/01/us-afghanistan-education-idUSTRE7000P220110101>.
[15] Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey. <http://www.childinfo.org/marriage_countrydata.php>.
Picture retrieved from :
websterirstudentunion 