20 Year Occupation

During 2001-2021, many girls and women in Afghanistan relished the freedom of being able to pursue an education or earn their own wages. They no longer were required to be chaperoned by male relatives when leaving their home. 

Women also experienced greater representation in politics. In 2005, 68 out of 249 seats were reserved for female members in the lower house of parliament, and 23 out of 102 designated for women in the upper house. Since Afghanistan’s constitution first introduced universal suffrage and equal rights for women in 1964, approximately 10 to 15 percent of Afghan women served in leadership positions.

Fundamental Misunderstanding?

Afghan women’s progress was halted by the recent rise of the fundamentalist group when the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan fled the country. The premature collapse of the government created a chaotic vacuum of power as the U.S. withdrew troops per the 2020 Doha agreement.

Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States and first female ambassador to the United Nations, Her Excellency Adela Raz somberly said, “If this was the end of the story and our inevitable reality, then why did we even struggle 20 years ago?”

The Saviorism

The idea of saviorism and the trope of the subjugated Afghan women has existed in the last twenty years. The plight of Afghan women was repeatedly used to justify the War on Terror, rendering the language exploitative and inherently violent towards Afghan women. The saviorism rhetoric and decontextualized media portrayal victimized Afghan women by reducing them to a monolith which fails to recognize their diversity, plurality and power. 

Although rarely reported in Western mainstream media, women in Afghanistan are incredibly diverse, and many of them have been at the forefront of social change in their country for decades.

In response to a Taliban edict in 1997 that banned public education for girls, Afghan women quickly began hundreds of schools in their private homes. Countless Afghan women worked underground, helping young girls find their own voices by encouraging literacy in the midst of a repressive regime. 

Afghan women have also helped leading organizations that offered training programs to support other women. As a result, many women began home-based businesses, often becoming the breadwinners of their families, while others worked as midwives or doctors. 

Afghan Women Excellence and Leadership

Dr. Habiba Sarabi, a Hazara (long-persecuted ethnic minority) who became the country’s first female governor, worked underground as an educator for Afghan girls, both in Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan. Dr. Sarabi travelled back and forth through the rugged border in a sheer Harriet Tubmanesque determination to oversee more than 50 secret schools for girls she had created. In the 2014 presidential election, she was the only female candidate for vice president.

Fawzia Koofi, a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, drafted the Elimination of Violence Against Women legislation which has been implemented in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan. She has also helped improve women’s living conditions in Afghan prisons, and helped to amend the Shi’a Personal Status Law (an outlandish law that denies women basic human rights). 

Fatima Gailani is the daughter of the founder of Afghan freedom fighters who opposed the Soviet Invasion (1979). At age 25, she became the female face of Afghan resistance. When Gailani, a sexagenerian, closes her eyes today, she can still see and smell Afghanistan from the “Golden” age when it was a peaceful, albeit imperfect, kingdom.

Sharifa Zurmati Wardak, a former journalist who taught Afghan girls in a secret school she created in her home, won a seat in the lower house of parliament in 2005.

“Everyone is thirsty for peace.” She reminds us that lasting peace is the overarching goal.

These Afghan women leaders have been working tirelessly so that the country can peacefully enter a new era of independence where women’s rights are respected.

Paradigm Shift

According to the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, more than 10 million youth and adults in Afghanistan are illiterate. There is a substantial gender gap in literacy rates, with men at 55%, while women are only at 29.8%.

An anonymous Afghan women’s rights activist commented that in the early days of her work, some parents in rural tribal communities would not even acknowledge the existence of their daughters. Since young girls would soon become married and leave their home, they were thought to offer no value to parents.

In the past, Afghan girls may have been indoctrinated into believing that they have no place in the patriarchal society, however, the norms are shifting, and women demonstrate defying the interim government which denies them representation. They refuse to relinquish their paradoxically “fundamental” rights. 

Women’s Right to Education 

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry has recently stated that girls will be allowed to return to schools soon. “In a very short time, all the universities and schools will be reopened and all the girls and women will return to school and their teaching jobs.”

Former President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai (2001-2014), and other Islamic leaders strongly support education for girls.

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan said, “The idea that women should not be educated is just not Islamic.” 

The Foreign Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said, “Qatar should be used as a model for a Muslim society. Our system is an Islamic system but we have women outnumbering men in the workforces, in government, and in higher education.”

Qatar experienced much success with its “Education for a New Era” initiative, which asked the RAND corporation (a nonprofit global policy think tank) to examine its education system in 2001. Today, Qatar is one of the most literate Arab countries, and has a literacy rate of 93.5%, which attests to the importance of education in society. 

If Qatar can establish an Islamic system while respecting women’s rights, then so can Afghanistan. There is hope for substantial change in Afghanistan, especially when the temporary restrictions are removed. Afghanistan’s representative for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said UNICEF is closely coordinating access to education for every child with the de facto government. 

With access to education and a truly inclusive representative government, Afghanistan will rebloom as progress cannot exist without women’s rights. Most importantly, the power stems from the women and people of Afghanistan, not foreign actors who use women’s issues as propaganda.

“We bury our seeds and wait,
Winter blocks the road,
Flowers are taken prisoner underground,
But then green justice tenders a spear”
— Rumi