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Abstract
Although the US and NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was ideologically justified under the banner of democracy and women’s rights, the latter issue has been completely forgotten within the public sphere since then. As the war has officially ended in Afghanistan, new forms of misogyny and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) have arisen. The ‘post-war’ Afghan context presents an institutional normalization of violence, favouring a culture of rape and impunity. The changing frames of violence against women are widely related to the political situation of the country: while public attention is focused on peace agreements, women’s issues are relegated to banalities and depicted as ‘everyday’ news. Meanwhile, new frames of SGBV appear as body part mutilation within marriage, forced prostitution, and increasing domestic violence, partly due to the growing consumption of opium but also to the perpetuation of powerful warlords in state structures. This article draws on gender studies to analyse the current misogynist culture in ‘post-war’ Afghanistan, framing the new forms of violence induced by successive armed conflicts. It relies on interviews conducted in 2013 in Afghanistan; and on secondary sources, mostly taken from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan and Human Rights Watch reports.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all the women who have shared their life experiences during the interviews in 2013. Equally, a special thanks to all the women of Afghanistan, to their resilience and strength. We would also like to give our acknowledgments to the different women’s organisations and to our reviewer for her hard work, Marissa Pothen.
Notes
1. We are conscious that Afghan women are not a homogeneous group as their experiences ‘differ depending on geography, ethnicity and social class’ (Ayub, Kouvo, & Sooka, Citation2009, p. 19). However, we refer to ‘Afghan women’ as the representation of female population but we want to insist on the diversity that composes this expression understanding that our analysis focuses on the institutional imposition of body control and gender divisions within the country.
2. By gunmen, we mean all the people who possess guns; they can belong to illegal or legal groups, but they use the power of the gun to assert their influence in society and in our case of study, to control women’s bodies. They can be related to the Afghan National Army, Afghan police, paramilitaries, illegal groups’ commanders or officers, drug lords or warlords, insurgent militant groups, etc.
3. The interviews were conducted for the obtainment of her MA degree in Peace, Conflict and Development Studies at Jaume I University, Spain.
4. It is important to point out the many debates with regards to the multiple feminisms in Afghanistan. Since our goal in this article is to show how institutionalized misogyny is affecting women’s lives, we chose RAWA over other organisations because fieldwork showed the complexity of gender relations in the country: in practice, there are few women’s organisations committed to the fulfilment of women’s demands in the country even though their original discourses are coherent with women’s rights.
5. For security reasons, almost all the names of the interviewees are abbreviated; however some of the victims use their full names as their cases have already been told to the public or media.
6. The historical period understood as ‘civil war’ in Afghanistan is used to describe the war between Islamic parties (Mujahideen) from 1992 to 1996.
7. The ‘post-war’ period in the original thesis of Ahmad was understood as the ‘post-Taliban’ era as it is analysed as such in most of the documents on the question. This was related to the collective imaginary of Afghan from 2002; it was thought that the conflict was over and democracy would be instituted. We understand the polemic on this regard as some authors have chosen to use the word ‘aftermath’ to cover the post-2001 period (Abirafeh, Citation2009). In this work, we understand the ‘post-war’ setting as the post-Taliban era, and further, the end of the occupation that has been officially announced as President Ghani was elected as the new president in 2014. We however wish to nuance this idea of a ‘post-war’ scenario in Afghanistan: the overall situation has not gotten better for civilians. Instead, it has gotten worse as insecurities increased, bombings never ended, groups have fragmented and the changing frames of SGBV have worsened the lives of many women.
8. Ittihad-e Islami (Islamic Association) was commanded by Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, a fundamentalist who was supported by Saudi Arabia. He controlled the West and Northwest of Kabul during the civil war. Sayyaf has been and still is a powerful figure in Afghan politics.
9. Jamiat-e Islami-yi Afghanistan (Islamic Association of Afghanistan) was primarily composed of Tajiks. Burhanuddin Rabbani was their leader and he was also named President for 4 years during the civil war.
10. Shura-e Nazar is a faction of Jamiat party led by Ahmad Shah Massoud.
11. Safe houses in Kabul are run by local NGOs that are working on SGBV: they are safe places to accommodate women victims of SGBV. Women and girls, who have faced various types of violence including sexual violence, are housed in these locations.
12. PDPA was established in 1965 and its ideals were close to the ones of the Soviet Union. They were also maintaining constant political relations.
13. Between 1978 and 1980 with the support of the CIA and ISI seven Afghan Islamic fundamentalist parties were constituted in Pakistan mostly from the Sunni sect, including Pashtun and Tajik, while Shi’a fundamentalists were born in Iran. All planned to defeat the ‘Communist enemy’ (Ahmad, Citation2013, p. 72).
14. In early 1980 US President Jimmy Carter objected to the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, so he dedicated about $30 million to Islamic parties (Wahab & Youngerman, Citation2007, p. 179). Ronald Reagan came into the White House in November 1980 and increased the aid and support to the Afghan Mujahidee, calling them ‘Freedom Fighters’ (Runion, Citation2007, p. 112). An estimate shows that Islamic parties got about $40 billion in cash and weapons from the US and its allies such as Saudi Arabia in the ten-year war against the Soviet Union. The money provided by the US, Saudi Arabia and individual wealthy Arab sheikhs went towards purchasing weapons from China, Egypt, Israel, America and Britain through the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Then, ISI distributed them among the Mujahideen. In addition, the major European countries responded to the US’s call for supporting Afghan jihad, and thousands of Arabs and non-Arab Muslim fighters answered and joined the jihad. The CIA and ISI trained militants; Brigadier Yousaf, the ISI general, estimated that over 80,000 militants were trained in Pakistan training camps (Wogan, Citation2006, pp. 61–65). This was all arranged by Saudi Arabia, a major ally of the US, wanting to temper its conservative movement that wanted more power, called Wahhabism.
15. The Taliban group was created in Pakistan by a CIA funded agreement with ISI. The Taliban had straight and tough laws and regulations for all citizens, particularly for women.
16. The baad tradition consist of organizing a wedding between a girl or a woman with the family of the aggressor to settle disputes or conflicts that are existing between two families or ethnic groups (WCLRF, Citation2008).
17. The practice of baedal refers to an exchange marriage. Some families marry their daughter with a man while their son gets married with the sister of that man. In this case, girls are exchanged because of their brothers and it further exposes them to potential violence; if one of the couples is not happy, it can have direct effects on the others.
18. What is understood as ‘civil society’ in Afghanistan emerges just after the US-led occupation. Most of the NGOs, working with human rights, women rights and justice etc., are funded by the US and other Western countries. Some of the circumstances that we mention in this article are the result of their work, which are sometimes wrongly oriented. Most of the time, these organisations are not taking a strong stand against warlords. Here we want to insist on the resilience and hard work by some organisations and individuals such as RAWA, Solidarity Party, Malalai Joya, HAWCA, etc. These small groups have a very strong commitment to fight for democracy and women’s rights but unfortunately, they rarely get funding and most of the time, they fear reprisal from warlords.
19. In Afghanistan, if a girl is raped and then loses her virginity, her reputation is tainted and it is difficult for her to get married as her honour has been symbolically destroyed.
20. Interview with SJ, June 2nd, 2013.
21. Interview with HM, June 4th, 2013, a woman from Sher-e-Kona.
22. Karima was raped by Junbish miliants; the founder and leader of the group is Abudul Rashed Dostum and now, he is the Vice-President of Ghani’s government, reinforcing our argument that the perpetuation of SGBV is sustained through misogynist institutions.
23. Interview with Karima, June 12th, 2013.
24. His Vice-President, Rashed Dostum, leads a paramilitary group, the Junbish Islami and Sarwar Danish, second Vice-President, is an active member of the Wahdat Islamic Party. Both armed groups have been committing serious violations of human rights, especially SGBV against women.
25. Interview with Lal Bibi in Kabul, June 10th, 2013.
26. Zina is a criminal offence according to Afghan law, and both men and women are to be punished if they have a sexual relationship outside of marriage.
27. Local bodies are the Jirga and Shura. It is estimated that these mechanisms control 70% of the justice system (Ahmed-Ghosh, Citation2006, p. 5).
28. It is not uncommon to observe this ‘classification’ over SGBV in Afghanistan: non-legitimized forms of sexual violence are understood as rape, gang-rape and forced prostitution while legitimized forms would be interpreted as forced marriage or child marriage for example.
29. Meena was a student at the University of Kabul. She is the founder of RAWA and she was assassinated in 1987 by Islamic fundamentalists in Quetta, Pakistan.
30. Zarmina is an Afghan woman who was publicly executed in 1997 in Kabul, by Taliban.
31. Interview with Manizha Naderi, Kabul, June 19th, 2013.
32. We understand ‘safe houses’ as safe places to accommodate women victims of SGBV. Women and girls, who have faced various types of violence including sexual violence, are housed in these locations.
33. Interview with Malalai Joya, June 19th, 2013 in Kabul.