Afghanistan (38 page)

Elites that do not object to women’s rights on Islamic grounds may subordinate these concerns to the reality of Afghan politics. In the future, the desire to bring at least some Afghan insurgents into the political process may be difficult to reconcile with their insistence that religion indicates women be kept remote from the public sector. Similarly, neither
embracing modernization nor opposing political Islam will necessarily safeguard women’s rights. Some religious Muslims, secular Muslims, and anti-religious Khalqis alike have considered it justified and even righteous to kill a daughter who would disregard an arranged marriage and elope, while others within these same socio-religious groups would treat the same woman with compassion or even support. But it takes only a vanguard of those willing to attack girl high school students or burn clinics where women are treated by healthcare workers to prevent education or healthcare from reaching many Afghan women.

Gender issues have been highlighted by Western popular culture more than any other subject in Afghanistan, in novels, memoirs, and motion pictures dealing with Afghanistan. Despite the media access accorded to individual Afghan female exiles and groups such as the Revolutionary Afghan Women’s Association (RAWA), Afghanistan’s women do not largely perceive themselves as an oppressed group looking for outside aid. Even though many outsiders still insist that the reluctance of many women to accept aid is really a symptom of oppression, this insistence will not change the fact that painting women as the social group in greatest need will incur great hostility from the majority of Afghans and will not solve the problems that are actually tearing the nation apart.

Not surprisingly, in a country of great economic underdevelopment and little income, polling suggests that security, employment at above subsistence level, and education are the primary concerns of women in Afghanistan and that men’s concerns are similar, with women being concerned about their rights.
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Women’s networks, some operating clandestinely, that were established under the Taliban largely aimed at achieving these goals when state power blocked them pre-2001. Women’s progress is reflected by their inclusion in those areas where life has been made better for all Afghans, especially education (expanding girls’ schools) and development of the health system (although infant and maternal mortality rates in rural Afghanistan still remain among the world’s highest). To succeed in these areas means that social and economic progress is being achieved across the board, because to have better schools and healthcare means there is security as well as resources available. The widespread availability of
cell phones has meant that relationships between women and their access to outside information can no longer be effectively controlled by husbands or a father (which leads to a view that the cell phone can be a tool of immorality in women’s hands).
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Institutions where women can participate outside of kinship and patronage networks, such as government employment, NGOs, and political parties remain, however, relatively beyond their reach. In the words of one educated Afghan woman in 2008, “We need to fight for things. But it is we who need to decide what it is we will fight for.”

Security, jobs, and education at basic levels are still the aspirations of many Afghan women. None of this means that there are not powerful or influential women in Afghanistan. They have included a few women who have been cabinet ministers or provincial governors, and more are found in parliament, in councils, government ministries, Afghan or foreign NGOs, or working with those that they have access to, which includes Afghan leaders (to whom they may be related by kinship) or Western journalists or aid workers. Afghan women, facing a difficult struggle, participate in existing Afghan patronage networks more often than they participate in support systems formed by outside foreign supporters. This is why many women participating in CDCs are those with patronage or familial ties to their male counterparts, rather than with the goal of representing women’s rights as a specific group. Kinship and patronage can trump gender in Afghanistan. But women can also access kinship and patronage and use them as tools. Those who instead access foreign supporters can use that to influence Afghanistan through that source. The Afghan Taliban targets all these sources, not only because they believe that female participation in the public sector is religiously unsupportable, but because, as totalitarians, they oppose all networks and loyalties they do not control.

It is difficult to generalize about Afghan attitudes to gender. In many ways, these are like ethnic and linguistic divisions, multiple and flexible. That “modest dress” and a black or white headscarf are required is a widespread belief; most everything else is negotiable. In some areas, such as support for girls’ education, its legitimacy has largely been accepted by the majority of Afghans, although some conservatives and Taliban
supporters remain opposed.
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Female representatives in parliament and CDCs often appear to have been as accepted as Afghan female doctors in medicine, even among conservative rural Pushtuns. Afghanistan’s gender-specific set-asides—mandating a greater level of female participation in representational politics than has been achieved in the West (except, perhaps, Norway)—have not alleviated either the conservative’s resistance to change in gender relationships nor the insurgent’s ability to use it as a rallying cry of Islam and women’s honor in danger. Yet the use of gender set-asides is not always popular. In 2009 polling, 50 percent of the men and 45 percent of the women polled opposed women representing them at the national or provincial level.
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Similarly, while Afghans tend to be aware of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, its function often appears opaque to them, outside of providing patronage in Kabul by allocating resources received from foreign donors.

Gender relationships vary greatly between regions. The Hazaras, though in many ways the poorest and least developed of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups and still socially conservative, demonstrated by the controversy in the west over the 2009 Shia law affecting domestic relations that passed the Afghan parliament, have been the most accepting of women in the public sector. In 2008–10, the Hazara-majority Bamiyan province had Afghanistan’s only female governor and had active female participation in provincial government and councils. The predominantly Hazara Hezb-e-Wahdat party has seats reserved for women in its central council and a committee for women’s issues. The Hazara’s experience is a beacon for what could potentially be a reality for much of Afghanistan. Societal attitudes are often more important than modernization or development.

Women’s political participation is still part of a male-centric system. When a female member of parliament, Malalai Joya, gave a speech in May 2007 attacking many of the male members as no better than beasts and accusing many that had fought the Soviets and Taliban as war criminals, she gained support abroad but ended up being suspended from the parliament and deterring potential allies for women’s issues among the male majority.
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Women elected for set-aside seats in parliament and provincial councils (about ten percent of the 3,400 candidates running in 2009
were women) have tended to be those with links to the most significant patronage networks. They are as much a part of the system as they would otherwise be without Western involvement. This is why, in Afghanistan, gender issues cannot be presented as a woman-friendly center against a backward periphery. Women do better among the “backward” Hazaras or where they can join patronage networks due to local, kinship, or political links. Groups such as RAWA, whose patronage links are not with other Afghans but with the foreign groups that provide funding, have little impact inside Afghanistan. This is not surprising. Afghan institutions today tend to be weak, especially those that are amenable to incorporating women while cutting across ethnolinguistic divisions, political allegiance, and essentially a highly entrenched cultural norm in doing so. In a country where even political radicals can be social conservatives, the Western view of women’s rights literally is hard to translate into Afghan concepts. Acceptance of girls’ education and female healthcare suggests that even the conservative grassroots can be brought along with such policies if they see it as leading to a collective benefit. The same applies to women working outside the family. While more men than women remain opposed to this, the economic necessity is often irrefutable. In rural Afghanistan, without women’s work, no one eats.

Outsiders

In an Afghanistan context, “outsider” does not simply apply to foreigners. In many Pushtun areas, anyone from outside the immediate family, clan, or tribe is a potential “outsider.” Afghan hospitality and xenophobia exist in parallel; both are strong forces that have the potential to enact change, for better or worse.

Muslims are often considered outsiders in Afghanistan. Afghans often consider that non-Afghans are not “proper” Muslims. Non-Pushtun Pakistanis and Arabs are often unpopular and resented. Many of these showed scant respect for Afghan customs and religious practices. The influence Al Qaeda had over the pre-2001 Taliban undercut their support even among Pushtuns, one of the reason few Afghans would fight for them.

For the insurgents to be successful, they need to avoid the perception that they are outsiders, coming from Pakistan or from elsewhere in
Afghanistan. They have also effectively used the Al Qaeda-generated narrative that the foreign presence in Afghanistan is not to help Afghans but is part of the global war against Islam. Resentment of foreigners has only increased in Afghanistan since 2001. In 2008–09, polling showed that for the first time more Afghans had a negative view of foreigners than a positive one, although a majority of Afghans still saw the foreign presence as a way of assuring that the country will not again be plunged into a more-intense war. Afghans holding a favorable view of the US declined from 83 percent in 2005 to 47 percent in 2009, while those holding an unfavorable view increased from 14 percent to 47 percent.
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While the foreign presence is becoming less popular than it was, Afghans still recognize that without it, their economic and security situation would be even more dire. In 2009, some 70 percent of Afghans polled still saw the country as needing foreign support (not the same thing as
wanting
foreign support).
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Demographics

Afghanistan’s demographics pose both short- and long-term obstacles to development and reconstruction.
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In 2008–10, Afghanistan was estimated to have some 40–55 percent unemployment and that more than half the population was living below the poverty line. Finding meaningful jobs in Afghanistan for the estimated 66–80 percent of the population that is rural and depends on the agricultural sector remains a challenge. Polling in 2009 showed that Afghans identified the lack of jobs as what Afghans see as the most important problem facing their country and the cause of instability.
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Unemployment reflects demographic as well as economic factors. There is a high rate of Afghan population growth, starting in the refugee camps in Pakistan during the 1980s and continuing to the present. This growth has created a lop-sided age spread; the “youth bulge” is highly pronounced in Afghanistan. In the words of US Central Command combatant commander GEN David Petraeus, “a huge youth population faces a situation where there are inadequate opportunities.”
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Many Afghans today grew up under wartime conditions or in the refugee camps with no education, no skills, and no prospects for
an independent future. These Afghans often had no chance to learn traditional Afghan community standards. Additionally, the “brain drain” from Afghanistan in this period was extensive. The exile and limited return rate of the educated professional and intellectual classes removed the social constituency required for a secular state.

Post-2001, the rate of population growth continued to increase. Afghanistan is one of the few Asian countries where this has been the case, because it has not shared much of the increase in quality of life seen in other countries. The annual rate of growth is 2.629 percent, according to a 2009 estimate. The average Afghan woman is likely to have five or more children in her lifetime, reflecting prevalence of patriarchal societal attitudes (the number of sons is all-important both for status and as a labor force) and the lack of educational or economic opportunities. Improvements in access to basic health care mean that more of these children will survive infancy.

Even the successes of development created additional demographic challenges. Educational opportunities have increased. By 2008–10, there were some seven million Afghan children in primary school, which means that, in a few years, one million Afghans a year will graduate from the school system with limited prospects for jobs or entry into vocational or higher education.

The Afghan youth demographic influences many of Afghanistan’s current problems, including filling the ranks of insurgents and narcotics traffickers for lack of alternative direction and employment. The youth bulge has been touched by globalization, reflected in their embrace of cell phones throughout Afghanistan and the popularity of computer and English-language courses in Kabul. Yet what brought stability to pre-1978 Afghanistan—legitimate and effective tribal or local authorities and traditional Islamic practices—is likely to be history without relevance to the young. While to an older generation of Afghans of all ethnicities and classes there was a reflexive nostalgia for the Golden Age, the young know it not. They have no framework through which to imagine a prosperous Afghanistan, no shared vision to fight or work toward. A young population like that of Afghanistan is likely to be less prone to stability and more susceptible to revolution or violence.
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Despite high
rates of economic growth in recent years, the combination of the youth bulge and high unemployment means that many young men are unlikely to earn enough money to marry in the traditional Afghan way except through taking part in Afghanistan’s conflicts, either for the government or the insurgents and narcotics traffickers. They are thus unlikely to have a personal stake in peace and stability.