The Hindu : Women's rights in Afghanistan

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Friday, Feb 21, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Women's rights in Afghanistan

By Apratim Mukarji

In Afghanistan, forces opposed to constitutionally guaranteeing women's rights have put up a stiff resistance.

LARGELY IGNORED by the outside world, an intense struggle between liberals, on the one hand, and conservatives and Islamic hardliners, on the other, is on in Afghanistan over the issue of enshrining women's rights in the draft Constitution. The draft Constitution, now being prepared by a nine-member commission including two women, is expected to be submitted for debate and ratification before a loya jirga (national assembly) in October.

The period till October will prove to be crucial for the fight for enshrining women's rights in the draft Constitution and the powerful forces opposing it have brought under scrutiny a relatively neglected field of the final struggle of Islamic radicalism, obscurantism and terrorism in Afghanistan.

It is a measure of the determined resistance being put up by the Islamists, including forces outside Afghanistan, to enshrine women's rights in the draft Constitution that despite an equally determined fight by leading women activists and women's organisations, the issue remains unsettled over the last five months or so during which the Constitutional Drafting Commission has been at work.

On the other hand, to go by what one hears from women activists in the country, the forces opposed to liberal democracy are far from feeling dejected over a lost cause. Far from including women's rights as part of the fundamental rights of citizens to be guaranteed under the draft Constitution, there is a well-coordinated move to include at least two Articles in the document "limiting the rights of female citizens".

The opposition to allowing women rights to be guaranteed by the Constitution rests on the argument that this particular issue should be addressed separately, after the draft Constitution is approved and brought into existence, by formulating a civil code for women. In support of this obviously retrograde step being sought, the Islamists and their supporters are seeking to include those two Articles in the draft document so that the policy of relegating women's rights to an uncertain future becomes a fait accompli.

Observers and women activists in Afghanistan feel that it is the same nexus of the survivors of the Taliban and Al-Qaida, in collaboration with the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan and forces in several other Islamic countries, intensifying their military activities lately, which is masterminding the opposition to enshrining women's rights in the draft Constitution.

According to Nasrine Gross, Afghan-American writer and member of Negar-Support of Women of Afghanistan, "The most serious threat to the establishment of a full democratic regime in Afghanistan is the interference of enemies. There are countries which do not have full women's rights in their own societies ; there are countries which oppose a fully independent, religitimised and self-ruling Afghanistan ; and there are the extremist groups which do not want to see all their gains in Afghanistan come to naught. For them, women's rights is the pawn in an international chess game.

"Along with their stepped up military activity, these groups are currently working very hard inside Afghanistan to not only create fear and confusion among Afghans about women's rights but also to engineer a couple of articles in the Constitution limiting the rights of female citizens.

"They are also hard at work outside to convince the world that it is really Afghanistan itself that is intolerant and against women's rights. The interests of these enemies in this Constitution are a powerful force against democracy and freedom." (in communication to this writer)

The forces opposed to constitutionally guaranteed women's rights have put up such a stiff resistance that this has forced women's activists and civil society leaders to launch a full-scale counter campaign. A major component of this is the massive signature campaign launched throughout the country to bolster support for the Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women. Right from the President, Hamid Karzai, through Government and societal leaders to common Afghans, thousands of people have added their signatures to the Declaration. The Paris-based Nager-Support of Women of Afghanistan plans to present a copy of the signatures to the Declaration to the United Nations in New York on International Women's Day and to the Constitutional Drafting Commission in Kabul well before the fate of women's rights in the draft Constitution is sealed.

Ever since Afghanistan began its still uncertain journey towards democracy and progress a little over a year ago, the intense tussle between traditionalism and modernity has broken out in various fora, a major one being the arena of women's rights, for women were the most visible victims, along with children, of the inhuman and anti-civilisational Taliban period. In a little over 16 months since the fall of the Taliban in Kabul, women have travelled a surprisingly long way in regaining their usurped role in Afghanistan.

There are three women Ministers in the Karzai Government, five women Army Generals, at least 12 divisional chiefs in various Ministries, two women commissioners in the Constitutional Drafting Commission; and the percentage of women employees in the Government is on the rise. Women number 40 out of the 320 employees in the Foreign Affairs Ministry inside the country, nearly 1,800 out of about 75,000 employees in the Interior Ministry, 100 out of 300 employees in the Planning Ministry, 30 per cent of the 3,000 employees in the Aviation Ministry, and so on. In the Education Ministry, which is also the largest employer of women in the country, there are 939 women out of the total 4,576 employees. Women form a large number among the total number of 64,852 teachers in the public schools, run by the Ministry.

Against this background of a steady progress towards reconstruction and development, it is more than disconcerting to find that there are people sufficiently close to the powers that be who employ the same argument that the Taliban advanced in demolishing the Afghan woman's role in society, namely, that that the traditions, culture and religion of the country are against the rights of women. Quite expectedly, the campaign to deny women the benefits of constitutionally guaranteed rights has been concentrated in rural areas where the majority of the illiterate women and men live. Afghanistan clearly lacks the infrastructure to counter this campaign by reminding the people that women were made equal citizens with men in the 1964 Constitution, which incidentally has been restored and is in force until the new Constitution is formed and takes effect.

While, not surprisingly, attention is usually focussed on the rising incidence of terrorism in Afghanistan, the tussle over women's rights presents an aspect of the ongoing struggle that is not adequately revealed and studied. Yet, as women activists and observers feel, the outcome of this fight may well go a substantive way to indicate the future of Afghanistan, and well within this year.

(The writer is a Senior Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi.)

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