A horrific trade-off for women

For Kabul based school teacher Saliha Soma Rawfie, there is an inescapable sense of déjà vu in watching the developments across the border in Pakistan. “During the Taliban period, women here were forced into their homes in Afghanistan. Implementing the sharia laws in Swat is an effort to force women back into those times.”

It has been a bad week for women’s rights in the region. A chilling video shows a Taliban firing squad gun down a couple accused of adultery in northwestern Pakistan.
The incident comes hard on the heels of the signing of the Nizam e Adl regulation by Pakistan’s National Assembly, which allows the Taliban to implement traditional Sharia law across the Malakand division of the NWFP, which includes the Swat Valley, about 200 kms from Islamabad. “It is a horrific trade off for women,” says Saba Gul Khattak, Islamabad-based policy analyst. “The agreement may contain armed conflict, but education, mobility and the right to work for women will suffer.”

For many women in the region, the recent events reveal patterns that are only too familiar. “Afghan women want to be independent, and we thought that after 2001 things would get better,” says Farouk, an 18 year old student. “But instead we are getting less and less space.” Farouk was one of the approximately 150 women who gathered outside the main Shia mosque in Kabul last week to protest a law that critics say legalises marital rape. The small group of protestors was swamped by a counter demonstration of around a thousand men, who abused the women for being “slaves to Christians.”  “This is a religious society and it is very easy for conservative leaders to influence public opinion. It has always been the men who define women’s rights in Afghanistan, and they want to adjust the laws to their benefit,” says Rawfie.

The problem, points out Afghan parliamentarian Shukriya Barakzai, is not limited to a particular region or even religion. “In the spread of extremist movements, women’s bodies, their beings, their rights are always the first to go,” she says. “The honour of a family in traditional societies is associated with their womenfolk,” says Pervez Hoodbhoy, Lahore based academic and peace activist. “To punish the women publicly is to disgrace the family, and hence to demonstrate the terrible power of the punishers.”

For businesswoman Sima Ghani, who was also part of the protest in Kabul, however, the targeting of women by extremist movements has less to do with religion and more to do with the insecurity of men. “Sharia law actually treats men and women as equals,” she says, pointing at the crowd screaming at her. “These men are very insecure and probably don’t know anything about the law they are defending.” Agrees Hilai (name changed), who works for an  NGO in Peshawar, “Women are soft targets. By flogging young women in Swat or shutting down girls schools, the Taliban get international attention and establish their power.”

The current crisis has led several activists to draw parallels with General Zia’s military dictatorship. “It would seem we are back in that time, when everything about women’s rights was being questioned,” says Anis Khatoon. The Womens Action Forum, of which Khatoon is one of the founders, had been established as a response to such repression during those difficult years. “Once again, it is up to the women’s movement to defend our constitutional rights,” she says.

According to Hoodbhoy, however, far more is at stake than the rights of women. “Pakistan is fighting for its life. If it loses the battle, the world’s first fascist Sunni state may well be born. It will first devour its own people, then those around.” Agrees Khattak, “This time women are not the only ones being targeted. Men are also being slaughtered, beheaded and dismembered.” While women may be the first targets of the violence, she adds, “It is sure to spread to different levels and beyond the region. It is the brutalisation of an entire society.”

With inputs from Kabul by Anders Hammer