An Uneasy Peace (Page 4)

The interim administration will run only to June, when a traditional loya jirga, or grand council of elders of some 1,450, headed by the 87-year-old King if it is safe for him to return, will help select a subsequent transitional government. This is expected to lead to democratic elections eighteen months later. Since proof of citizenship is usually a prerequisite for voting and 98 percent of Afghan women do not possess identity cards, their voting rights could be threatened unless they are registered in the next two years, according to Noeleen Heyzer, head of UNIFEM, the UN women's affairs agency.

In the meantime, Afghan women activists are working hard to make sure they are fairly represented at the June loya jirga. "We sincerely hope it will be better than what we had in Bonn, when it was three out of thirty," says Sima Wali, president of Refugee Women in Development in Washington, DC, and a delegate at both Bonn and the Afghan Women's Summit in Brussels that followed. While 160 seats are guaranteed for women, early indications are that their numbers are unlikely to exceed 200, making the ratio considerably lower than the 15 percent they had in the last meaningful loya jirga, in the mid-1970s.

The twenty-one members of the UN-appointed loya jirga commission, charged with convening the larger body, are of key importance--especially amid reports of large amounts of money changing hands in factionalized horse-trading as warlords jockey for position. Interested states are also involved. "We know the Russians gave a lot of money to Rabbani before Bonn; they printed the Afghanis for them," says Barnett Rubin, a leading Afghan analyst and director of studies at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. "The US is paying their people, and the Iranians are supporting their own [Afghanistan's Shiites, a 15 percent minority]."

Many Afghans are outraged that a number of those on the loya jirga commission were ranking Communists during the Soviet occupation, including Soraya Parlika, one of the commission's three women. Parlika was head of the Democratic Afghan Women's Association, a government-affiliated organization, during the Najibullah regime. "Afghanistan's tragic legacy of total destruction began with the Communists. The Marxist-Leninists killed more than a million Afghans trying to force their ideology on us," complains Zieba Shorish-Shamley, an anthropologist and executive director of the Women's Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan, based in Washington, DC, who was a delegate at Brussels.

Even as Karzai calls for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Afghanistan, the sad fact is that his interim administration includes a number of known war criminals, such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, a barely literate, brutal and self-appointed general. Dostum was named deputy defense minister, a classic case of the wolf guarding the chickens, in an attempt to stop him from being a bloody spoiler. The transitional government is unlikely to escape such associations, as feudal warlords, many of them big-time drug traffickers, and war criminals from the 1980s Communist regime are certain to make the final cut. Despite loya jirga restrictions meant to exclude such people, the commission's chairman, Ismail Qasimyr, has already stated that all members of Karzai's administration have an automatic right to attend.

A number of insiders believe that the UN--including Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN Secretary General's special representative for Afghanistan--is willing to turn a blind eye to such problems. "The truth is, Brahimi's priority in Afghanistan is not human rights," says the senior UN official. "This has been a major concern of Mary Robinson [the UN human rights chief, who recently said she was stepping down]. Brahimi's imperative is to make sure the political process in Afghanistan works. Karzai could be a donkey with a red rosette pinned to his back. The UN's entire credibility is behind him and the political process. But if nothing is done about the human rights violations, there will be major problems down the road."

Afghanistan's challenges appear almost insurmountable. But now, says Shorish-Shamley, is the best time to fight for women's rights. "Patriarchy has existed for thousands of years in Afghanistan," she says. "As we reconstruct the country, we are also restructuring the society. If we don't push now, we will not get anywhere." Many women in Kabul would agree with her.

"Young women especially are raring to go and want to have opportunities. They have such spirit," says Wareham of Medica Mondiale. "Girl students and women teachers who are back in school are thrilled to be there. There's a tae kwon do class for women starting in Kabul, even a driving course. These are things they couldn't have dreamed of before." But right now, funding and security are the biggest obstacles.

Afghan women activists see a parallel between their lives and the condition of the once much-loved women's garden, Barg-i-Zenana, in the capital. The flowers and lawns are gone, and so too are the almond trees, their trunks blown up, their branches taken for kindling by the Taliban. All that remains today is a barren, walled-in plot. "It was a magical place before the fighting, a huge, beautiful garden, where women and girls loved to come and relax," says Fatima Gailani, who was an adviser at Bonn. "The garden, when it is restored, will be a symbol for Afghan women. If it can come back, so can we and the country. It will be a microcosm for the nation."

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.