Aliya Shakoor Khan
In an overall failed nation building venture of the West in Afghanistan, the project to save Afghan women is an even a flimsier failure ever to be analyzed in more wise and less prejudiced ways. The situation can be best quoted by flipping the line of T.S. Eliot: “to do the right deed for the wrong reason,” the whole world “did the wrong deeds, perhaps for the right reason.”
In an attempt to rescue Afghan women, their lives are becoming miserable. To ponder upon the picture painted on the rough canvas of reality in the rougher Afghan terrain, the tragedy taking a toll on the biggest portion of population called rural women. As the Afghan women are divided into four types by Cheryl Benard, a lifelong feminist and a supporter of Women particularly in Afghanistan.
Afghan Women Type One
The first type is the more populous group of women named as the ‘invisible real women of Afghanistan’ which are in reality the least privileged and the most ignored and crushed creatures of the country. The urban poor and the internally displaced women living in camps are included in this type.
From the very day of their birth to the end of their lives these doleful daughters of a male dominant culture suffer every day by the imposed so-called rules of society much derived from Pashtun culture and not by the real and enlightened obligations of Islam.
The sufferings of the poor women of Afghanistan range from considering the birth of a daughter as a curse for the mother and the child, preferring the sons over daughters in all matters major or minor, lack of medical facilities for all women, no education for girls, malnutrition, early and forced marriages lacking all love and sense of safety and companionship, and the list goes so on and so forth. In a nutshell, the lives of these women are sad and difficult.
Though apparently, the America did two trillion-dollar investment for this group of Afghan women to improve their standard of living, but resulting in nothing due to reasons such as:
- An overall corruption in the country.
- Ghost Schools for girls
- The aid mostly went to already privileged urban elite of professional feminists, who are totally ignorant about their poorer sisters.
- Despite of 15-plus years of Western projects and funding, according to UNICEF, half of all deaths of Afghan women were attributed to untreated complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
Afghan Women Type Two
This type surmise as a surprise as an Afghan girl playing soccer, a woman street artist, Afghan girl’s robotic team etc. Why these ordinary things seem so amazing if done by Afghan girls/women? Only for the reason that average Afghan girls are deprived of these ordinary opportunities in their homeland.
Though the American University of Afghanistan has an annual budget of 28 million dollars to educate 1700 students on almost full scholarships & among them half are the girls, but when these girls come out in the practical field, their priorities are pinpointed only on themselves & their personal promotion and prosperity, putting aside all their responsibilities to think about or do any favors to their fellow country women in dire deprivation of even the most basic facilities of life on the expense of this group of women grabbing all the luxuries of life who are mostly hailing from affluent families, having dual nationalities, are well travelled, with ready passports & visas. Having all this in mind, why to wonder how this type was well away even before the airlift in the chaos though so called & self-created by the wonderful West when Taliban once again stepped in, in the wake of a sudden and surprising withdrawal of self-declared super-power in August of 2021.
Afghan Women Type Three
But still some educated women stayed back in their own country despite all that was offered to them, just because of their own vested interests and not fully for the whole of the poverty-stricken women population. Though some of their placards and slogans seem well written but will their demands be met in the society stemmed from so-called Pashtun Code, a strongly patriarchal and hierarchal system? A society where the women facing seclusion, poverty, illiteracy, honor killing, persistent prejudices, forced and full veiling by their own feudal lords. That’s why it’s no surprise that in surveys, Afghan women vastly preferred Sharia Law over Pashtunwali, the Pashtun Honor Code. And the gist of the whole situation in the turmoil filled story being written on the soil of Afghanistan by mostly the outsiders & enriched by the insiders is glaring straight into the eyes of the whole world that Islam is the name taken by the West only to blame. Reality is deeper than this superficial surmising.
Afghan Women Type Four
And then comes the group of full black-burqa clad women supporting Taliban in their shouting slogans and producing placards showing all pro-Taliban preaching such as seen in many pictures printed & broadcasted sparingly in the rest of the world: “We don’t want co-education.”
These women did not suddenly appear on the horizon. They were being educated in madrassas since decades under the very noses of all the intruders and the insiders.
So, it’s not so strange to range so many reasons which are surprising Cheryl Benard to say: “Our twenty-year liberation experiment failed, to the tune of dizzying amount of dollars. We invested in exotic frivolities and threw money at those who needed it the least, and who have since proved all too ready to bite the hand that wrote the cheques.”
To conclude she says: “And so, as heartless as it sounds, it is probably best if we resist ‘last temptation’ and stay well away. And hope that one fine day, in her own time, in her own ecosystem, the nightingale will sing.”
(This article is inspired by and excerpted from the article “The Truth About Afghan Women by Cheryl Benrad which appeared in unheard.com)
