Afghanistan's iniquities are grotesque. At Kabul University
last week, zealots -- all men -- protested
a law that would abolish child marriage, forced marriage, marital rape, and the
odious practice, called ba'ad, of giving girls away to settle offenses
or debts. Meanwhile, in jails all over the country, 600 women, the highest
number since the fall of the Taliban, await
trial on charges of such moral transgressions as having been raped or
running away from abusive homes.
It is tempting to wring our hands at such obscene bigotry, to
pity Afghanistan's women and vilify its men. Instead, we must look squarely at
our own complicity in the shameful circumstances of Afghan women, billions of
international aid dollars and 12 years after U.S. warplanes first bombed their
ill-starred land.
I have been traveling to Afghanistan since 2001, mostly to
its hardscrabble hinterland, where the majority of Afghans live. Over the years,
I have cooked rice and traded jewelry with Afghan women, cradled their anemic
children, and fallen asleep under communal blankets in their cramped mud-brick
homes. I have seen firsthand that the aid we give ostensibly to improve their
lives almost never makes it to these women. Today, just as 12 years ago, most
of them still have no clean drinking water, sanitation, or electricity; the
nearest clinic is still often a half day's walk away, and the only readily
available palliative is opium. Afghan mothers still watch their infants die at
the highest
rate in the world, mostly of waterborne diseases such as bacterial and
protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis, and typhoid.
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Instead of fixing women's lives, our humanitarian aid
subsidizes Afghanistan's kleptocrats, erects miniature Versailles in Kabul and
Dubai for the families of the elite, and buys the loyalty of sectarian warlords-turned-politicians,
some of whom are implicated
in sectarian war crimes that include rape. Yet, for the most part, the U.S. taxpayers
look the other way as the country's amoral government steals or hands out as
political kickbacks the money that was meant to help Afghan women -- all in the
name of containing what we consider the greater evil, the Taliban insurgency.
In other words, we have made a trade-off. We have joined a kind of a collective
ba'ad, a political deal for which the Afghan women are the price.
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To be sure, a lot of well-meaning Westerners and courageous Afghans
have worked very hard to improve women's conditions, and there has been some
headway as far as women's rights are concerned. The number of girls signed up
for school rose
from just 5,000 before the U.S.-led invasion to 2.2 million. In Kabul and a
handful of other cities, some women have swapped their polyester burqas for headscarves. Some even have
taken jobs outside their homes. But here, too, progress has been uneven. A
fifth of the girls enrolled in school never attend classes, and most of the
rest drop
out after fourth grade. Few Afghan parents prioritize education for their
daughters because few Afghan women participate in the country's feudal economy,
and because Afghan society, by and large, does not welcome education for girls
or emancipation of women. To get an idea about what the general Afghan public
thinks of emancipation, consider this: the post-2001 neologism "khanum free" -- "free
woman," with the adjective transliterated from the English -- means "a loose
woman," "a prostitute." In villages, women almost never appear barefaced in
front of strangers.
Doffing their burqas is the least of these women's worry.
Their real problem is the intangible and seemingly irremovable shroud of
endless violence. It stunts infrastructure and perpetuates insecurity and fear.
It deprives women of the basic human rights we take for granted: to have enough
food and drinking water that doesn't fester with disease; to see all of their
children live past the age of five. The absence of basic necessities and the
violence that has concussed Afghanistan almost continuously since the beginning
of recorded history are the main reasons the country has the fifth-lowest life
expectancy in the world. The war Westerners often claim to be fighting in the
name of Afghan women instead helps prolong their hardship -- with little or no
compensation. And now, as the deadline for the international troop pullout
approaches, the country is spinning toward a full-blown civil war. A handful of
hardline men shouting slogans at Kabul University fades in comparison.
How to help Afghan women? The road to their wellbeing begins
with food security, health care that works, and a government that protects them
against sectarian violence. Right now, none of these exist. I wish I could offer
an adequate solution to the tragic circumstances of the women of Afghanistan's back-of-beyond.
There does not appear to be one. Hurling yet more aid dollars into a
intemperate funnel that will never reach their villages is not the answer:
there is little reason to believe that we can count that such funding would be
spent on creating enough mobile clinics to pay regular visits to remote
villages; build roads that would allow the women and their families easy access
to market; facilitate sanitation projects that would curb major waterborne
diseases. The impending troop withdrawal means that women's security will
likely go from bad to worse.
Is
it possible to ensure that some of the funding we now hand to Karzai and Co. --
an estimated $15.7 billion in 2010-2011, according to the CIA (and that's not
counting the infamous ghost
money) -- is distributed among the small non-profits that actually are
trying to make life in Afghanistan livable, organizations that create mobile
clinics to pay regular visits to remote villages, build roads that allow
villagers easier access to market, facilitate sanitation projects that curb major
waterborne diseases? This could be a start, but only if these organizations continue
to work in Afghanistan after NATO troops leave. That, too, is in question now: this
week an attack against the International Committee for Red Cross led the
organization to suspend its operations in the country for the first time in
almost 30 years. But wringing our hands at Afghan women's abysmal state and
shaky social status is not a way out. It is a navel-gazing conversation that
avoids looking squarely at our role in perpetuating the very dire condition we
condemn
