Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective (35 page)

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Authors: Lawrence Kaplan

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Page 136
and who is unkind. In either case he is obliged to provide for her materially and, it is to be hoped, father her sons who will endow her with status in her new home. If the husband treats her unbearably, she does have the right to return to her own family or seek refuge with another family. This weapon is not used often, however, as her natal family has given up rights to her through the brideprice at the time of marriage (Howard-Merriam 1987: 106).
Since modernization began in the mid-nineteenth century, various governments and rulers have sought to discourage excessive expenditure not only on brideprice but also on marriage celebrations which add to the rural population's indebtedness. Gregorian (1969) treats this subject in the most detail for the period 18601940. Dupree (1980) describes a 1950 law banning "ostentatious life-crises ceremonies;" it prohibited many of the expensive aspects of birth, circumcision, marriage, and burial rituals, but was difficult to enforce. The Marriage Law of 1971 was a further attempt to curb the indebtedness that arises from the costs of marriage which "are a burden for Afghan society as a whole." Tapper (1984) agrees that the heaviest expenses any household has to bear are concerned with marriage. The choice of a bride, the agreed brideprice, and the time taken to complete a marriage may visibly confirm or increase a household's poverty.
An Afghan who devoted his 1976 doctoral dissertation to matrimonial problems described them thus (quoted in Tapper 1984):
Excessive expenditure in marriage undermines the human dignity of women as it tends to render them into a kind of property of the husband or his family. [It] weakens the financial status of the family and tends to bring or worsen poverty. [It] tends to render the adults highly dependent on family resources; this in turn weakens their position in regard to the exercise of their right of consent in marriage as well as their freedom of choice of a life partner.
The author continues:
Dependence of the youth on the family resources is enormous even without the stimulus of this additional factor. Marriage becomes largely dependent on the possession of financial means; this leads to intolerable discriminations against the poor. Excessive expenditure in marriage de-
 
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prives many of the right to marry (e.g., many women); it also leads to late marriages, and often brings about a wide disparity of age between the spouses. Excessive expenditure in marriage constitutes a source of embitterment and conflict during the course of marital life. . . . Costly marriages contribute to the continuance of the tradition-bound society and tend to slow down the process of reform. . . . The practice is self-perpetuating.
Such were the practices that concerned the reformers.
The Saur Revolution and Women's Rights
In April 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), having seized power in what has been called the Saur (April) Revolution, introduced rapid reforms to change the political and social structure of Afghan society, including patterns of land tenure and gender relations. The government of President Noor Mohammad Taraki enacted legislation to raise women's status through changes in family lawincluding practices and customs related to marriageand policies to encourage female education and employment. As in other modernizing and socialist experiments, "the woman question" constituted an essential part of the political project. The Afghan state was motivated by a modernizing outlook and socialist ideology which linked Afghan backwardness to feudalism, widespread female illiteracy, and the exchange of girls. The leadership resolved that women's rights to education, employment, mobility, and choice of spouse would be a major objective of the "national democratic revolution."
Along with land redistribution, the cancellation of peasants' debts and mortgages, and other measures to wrest power from traditional leaders in Afghan society, the government promulgated Decree No. 7 to fundamentally change the institution of marriage. A prime concern of the designers of the decree, which also motivated other reforms of the Taraki government, was to reduce material indebtedness throughout the country; it was further meant to ensure equal rights of women with men. In a speech on 4 November 1978, President Taraki declared: "Through the issuance of decrees no. 6 and 7,
 
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the hard-working peasants were freed from bonds of oppressors and money-lenders, ending the sale of girls for good as hereafter nobody would be entitled to sell any girl or woman in this country" (quoted in Tapper 1984).
The first two articles in Decree No. 7 forbade the exchange of a woman in marriage for cash or kind and the payment of other prestations customarily due from a bridegroom on festive occasions; the third article set an upper limit of 300 afghanis (the equivalent of $24) on the
mahr
. Articles 4 to 6 of the decree set the ages of first engagement and marriage at sixteen for women and eighteen for men; stipulated that no one, including widows, could be compelled to marry against his or her will; stated that no one could be prevented from marrying if she or he so desired (Griffiths 1981; Male 1982; Hammond 1984; Tapper 1984; N. H. Dupree 1984; Bradsher 1985; Anwar 1988). Along with the promulgation of Decree No. 7, the PDPA government embarked upon an aggressive literacy campaign. This was led by the Democratic Women's Organization of Afghanistan (DWOA), whose function was to educate women, bring them out of seclusion, and initiate social programs (Nyrop and Seekins 1986: 128). Throughout the countryside, PDPA cadre established literacy classes for men, women, and children in villages. And by August 1979, the government, had established 600 new schools. The PDPA's rationale for pursuing the rural literacy campaign with some zeal was that all previous reformers had made literacy a matter of choice. Because male guardians had chosen not to allow their females to be educated, 99 percent of all Afghan women were illiterate. It was therefore decided that literacy was no longer to remain a matter of (men's) choice, but rather a matter of principle and law.
This was, clearly, an audacious program for social change, one aimed at the rapid transformation of a patriarchal society and decentralized power structure based on tribal and landlord authority. Revolutionary change, state-building, and women's rights subsequently went hand-in-hand. The emphasis on women's rights on the part of the PDPA reflected: (
a
) their socialist/Marxist ideology, (
b
) their modernizing and egalitarian outlook, (
c
) their social base and originsurban, middle-class professionals, educated in the United
 
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States, the Soviet Union, and Western and Eastern Europe, and (
d
) the number and position of women within the PDPA. A brief digression about these women reformers is in order, as it also puts the PDPA project in its social and gender perspective.
Among the most remarkable and influential female reformer was Anahita Ratebzad. In the 1950s she studied nursing in the United States, and then returned to Kabul as director and instructor of nursing at the Women's Hospital. Nancy Dupree notes that when the Faculty for Women at Kabul University was established, Anahita entered the medical college and became a member of its teaching staff upon graduating in 1963. She joined the PDPA in 1965, and along with three other women ran as a candidate for parliament. This was the first time liberals and leftists had openly appeared in the political arena. They were up against the conservative members of parliament who, in 1968, proposed to enact a law prohibiting Afghan girls from studying abroad. Hundreds of girls demonstrated in opposition. In 1970 two reactionary mullahs protested public evidence of female liberationsuch as miniskirts, women teachers, and schoolgirlsby shooting at the legs of women in Western dress and splashing them with acid. Among those who joined in this action was Gulbeddin Hekmatyar (who went on to become a leading figure in the Mujahideen, one of the ''freedom fighters" hailed by President Reagan). This time there was a protest demonstration of 5,000 girls (N. H. Dupree 1984).
In 1976 Anahita was elected to the cental committee of the PDPA. Following the Saur Revolution, she was elected to the Revolutionary Council of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) and appointed minister of social affairs. Other influential PDPA women in the Taraki government (April 1978September 1979) were Sultana Umayd, director of Kabul Girls' School; Soraya, president of the DOAW; Ruhafza Kamyar, principal of the DOAW's Vocational High School; Firouza, director of the Afghan Red Crescent (Red Cross); Dilara Mahak, principal of the Amana Fidawa School; and Professor Mrs. R. S. Siddiqui (who was especially outspoken in her criticism of "feudalistic patriarchal relations"). In the Amin government (SeptemberDecember 1979), the following women headed schools and

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