SEWA does what the Taliban abhors — support and empower war-affected Afghan women by training them.
SEWA does what the Taliban abhors — support and empower war-affected Afghan women by training them. And this is believed to be one of the main reasons for the second shocking attack in a little over one year on the Indian embassy complex in Kabul on Thursday early morning.
The Embassy houses office of Ahmedabad’s internationally acclaimed voluntary movement for women - Self-Employed Women’s Association on the ground floor, which has five women workers from Ahmedabad and about 200 Afghan women working regularly.
In spite of the constant peril on the lives of its workers, SEWA courageously set a base here in 2007 to help local women live in dignity. The angry Taliban are believed to have led the July 2008 attack on the complex which killed 60 persons, including a senior IFS officer.
“We have known that the Pak Taliban are quite upset with SEWA’s help to Afghanistan’s war-ravaged women. The government’s assessment is that Indians are being targeted mainly because of two reasons - SEWA’s programmes and India’s help to the Afghan government with infrastructure like building the Parliament and a large power grid project,” said Reema Nanavati, director of economic and rural development at Sewa.
She re-asserts that though the lives of SEWA workers are constantly in peril, there is no question of pulling back. “If we withdraw, it means we are succumbing. Indian embassy has been very cooperative and given us good security,” she said.
Over the past year, hundreds of women of the war-ravaged community, widows, orphans and the wounded, have been trained through a vocational training programme for horticulture, floriculture, embroidery, stitching garments, processing fruits, etc.
SEWA established a center in Kabul in response to a request by the Afghanistan government to the Government of India. Soon after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Aghanistan in 2006, SEWA was selected for the programme. Women’s delegations visit Ahmedabad every second month for vocational and management training.
The programme has been a success in Kabul, rehabilitating at least 1,000 families. Women earn a daily stipend to work in SEWA and their products are sold in local markets. While SEWA’s work has received much global repute, the NGO’s efforts were recently appreciated by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who visited their outlet in Mumbai. “Women are the worst victims of a war, and it is women who will have to bring about peace in the country,” Nanavati observed.
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