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Abstract
In this paper I argue that feminist (inspired) writings have largely obfuscated the history of gender, violence, and subjectivity in Afghanistan. I contend that western and non-western feminisms – while having served important roles in keeping discussions on Afghanistan alive – fail to adequately relate to war and western imperialism, and therefore fall short of tracing the formations of subjectivity of women in contemporary Afghanistan. In building on a preliminary discussion of my ongoing ethnographic work with widows, I argue that the feminist project needs to more critically engage with notions such as agency and freedom in order to broaden a perspective that is often focusing too narrowly on (and thus perpetuating) under-studied notions of ‘gender’ and ‘culture’ in Afghanistan.
Notes
1 My plea for acknowledging the suffering of Afghans derives from the importance I see (a) to study the subjectivities of contemporary Afghans, and (b) to recognize the severe impact that more than two decades of war, drought, and earthquakes have had in combination with the almost complete neglect of Afghanistan's hardships by the international community. I do not wish to imply that the only subjectivity Afghans can inhabit is one marked by suffering, and even less do I intend to suggest that Afghans are merely traumatized victims. However, the direly needed ethnographic study of contemporary Afghanistan will necessarily have to account for the impact of violence on the experiences and the social worlds of Afghans. Acknowledging their suffering therefore means nothing else than lending an ear to their pain, and thus retrieving their subjectivities from the discursive violence enabled by the existing analytical limitations.
2 Leila Abu-Lughod, ‘Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others’, American Anthropologist 104(3) (2002), pp. 783–790.
3 Charles Hirschkind and Saba Mahmood, ‘Feminism, the Taliban and Politics of Counter-Insurgency’, Anthropological Quarterly 75(2) (2002), pp. 339–354.
4 See Daulatzai, ‘Acknowledging Afghanistan: Notes and Queries on an Occupation’, Cultural Dynamics 18(3) (2006), 293–311.
8 See Zillah Eisenstein, ‘Feminisms in the Aftermath of September 11’, Social Text, 20(3) (2002)., p. 80.
7 See Zillah Eisenstein, ‘Feminisms in the Aftermath of September 11’, Social Text, 20(3) (2002), pp. 79–98.
9 Eisenstein, See Zillah Eisenstein, ‘Feminisms in the Aftermath of September 11’, Social Text, 20(3) (2002)ibid., p. 84 (emphasis added).
10 See Zillah Eisenstein, ‘Feminisms in the Aftermath of September 11’, Social Text, 20(3) (2002)., p. 95.
11 Ninety-five percent of the 40 Afghan women interviewed for the study reported a decline in their physical health between 1996 and 1998, 77% indicated poor access to health care services in Kabul, while 20% reported no access at all; 97% of respondents met the diagnostic criteria for major depression and 86% demonstrated significant symptoms of anxiety (Rasekh et al. 1998). Zohra Rasekh et al., ‘Women's Health and Human Rights in Afghanistan’, The Journal of the American Medical Association, 280(5) (1998), pp. 449–455.
12 Zohra Rasekh et al., ‘Women's Health and Human Rights in Afghanistan’, The Journal of the American Medical Association, 280(5) (1998)., p. 449.
14 Afghanistan has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world, with 1700–2200 deaths per 100,000 live births (UNFPA, 2002; Abouzahr et al. 1996; Burnham and Smith 2005). The United Nations Population Fund reported in 2002 that ‘most medical facilities are run down and in dire need of trained personnel’. The physician to citizen ratio in Afghanistan was 1 per 1700 in Kabul and other urban areas, and 1 per 434,000 in rural areas. The Afghan Ministry of Health estimated a national average of one doctor per 15,000 persons. In 2002, less than 12% of all Afghans had access to any health care, meaning a clinic within five miles, and two-thirds of the country had no access to reproductive health services at all. It was estimated that a woman died in childbirth every thirty minutes in Afghanistan and the life expectancy for an Afghan woman was 44 years (UNICEF 2002). Another major obstacle to extending reproductive health services to Afghans is the severe shortage of trained female doctors and midwives. ‘Afghanistan inherited a health system from the eighties, which was geared to curative care and not for public health problems. This system has suffered not just from the fighting, but also from the succession of different regimes and consequently a high turnover of senior staff as well as constant changes in policy-making’ says a report of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA 2003).
13 Medecins Sans Frontiers was, apart from the International Red Cross, the only international NGO that remained in Afghanistan throughout the conflict since 1979.
15 In a unique twist on the oppressive aspects of Afghan customs of veiling, the investigators of the 1998 PHR study also found that the burqa was a health hazard. One physician is quoted saying ‘that the garment may cause eye problems and poor vision, poor hearing, skin rash, headaches, increased cardiac problems and asthma, itching of the scalp, alopecia (hair loss), and depression’. This particular finding of 1998 PHR study was later disputed by Lynn Amowitz, the principal investigator of the 2001 PHR study. She found that many women outside Kabul did not object to wearing the burqa and that approximately 90% of the women no longer living under Taliban control still chose to wear the burqa (Brown 2001). It is interesting to note that the 2001 PHR report (Amowitz and Iacopino 2001), which refuted many of the findings of the 1998 study (Rasekh et al. 1998) received very little attention. The 1998 PHR study was widely received, and its problematic findings were discussed in popular media, including on Oprah (Brown 2001).
Janelle Brown: http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature/2001/10/9/amowitz/index.html Accessed September 25, 2008.Lynn Amowitz and Vincent Iacopino, ‘Women's Health and Human Rights in Afghanistan: A Population-Based Assessment’, Physicians for Human Rights Study, December 2001.
16 It is unfortunate that the PHR study tried to ascertain suffering purely by quantitative means in the form of a survey instrument. I acknowledge the need for methodological compromises due to cost, limited time, and security concerns for research under circumstances of war and political unrest, however, the findings based on such constrained research are not sufficient to support the claims made in the PHR study.
17 These examples include the RAWA footage of the public execution of a woman, and accounts of beatings of females for not being properly veiled (cf. Dupree 1998 and Azarbaijani-Moghaddam 2004 for a discussion of the effects these representations had in the West).
18 See for example: Larry Goodson, ‘Perverting Islam: Taliban Social Policy Toward Women’, Central Asian Survey, 20(4) (2001), pp. 415–426; Ivy Schweitzer, ‘Women: Canary in the Mine’, Gender and Cultural Memory 28(1) (2002), pp. 466–468; Anne E. Brodsky, With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (New York: Routledge, 2003).
19 Valentine M. Moghadam, ‘Revolution, the State, Islam, and Women: Gender Politics in Iran and Afghanistan’, Social Text, 22 (1989), pp. 40–61. Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 1993). Gender and National Identity: Women and Politics in Muslim Societies (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1994). ‘Revolution, Religion, and Gender Politics: Iran and Afghanistan Compared’, Journal of Women's History, 10(4) (1999), pp. 172–204. ‘Patriarchy, the Taliban, and Politics of Public Space in Afghanistan’, Women's Studies International Forum, 25(1) (2002), pp. 19–31. Global Feminism and Women's Citizenship in the Muslim World: The Cases of Iran, Algeria and Afghanistan. Citizenship, Borders, and Gender: Mobility and Immobility (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2003).
20 See, for example: Rosemary Skaine, The Women of Afghanistan Under the Taliban (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2002). Judith Lorber, ‘Heroes, warriors, and ‘burqas’: A Feminist Sociologist's Reflections on Sept 11’, Sociological Forum, 17(3) (2002), pp. 377–396. Brodsky, With All Our Strength. Carol J. Riphenburg, ‘Gender Relations and Development in a Weak State: The Rebuilding of Afghanistan’, Central Asian Survey, 22(2/3) (2003), pp. 187–207, and ‘Post-Taliban Afghanistan: Changed Outlook for Women’, Central Asian Survey, 44(3) (2004), pp. 401–421. Elaheh Rostami Povey, ‘Women in Afghanistan: Passive victims of the borga or active Social participants?’ Development in Practice, 11(2/3) (2003), pp. 266–277. Saba Gul Khattak, ‘Adversarial Discourses, Analogous Objectives: Afghan's Women's Control’, Cultural Dynamics, 16(2/3) (2004), pp. 213–236.
21 Abu-Lughod (2002), pp. 784.
22 In personal communication with the author, the well-respected archaeologist and Afghanistan researcher Nancy Dupree pointed out that it was only a small percentage of western-oriented, upper-class women in Kabul who were impacted by the Taliban dress code policies. She agrees that it was unfortunate that the choice to remain unveiled was taken away from these women, but is also astounded by the attention this issue has received, considering the small number of women affected (the sensibilities of the vast majority of women in Afghanistan are in line with veiling).
23 Abu-Lughod, pp. 783–790.
24 Hirschkind and Mahmood (2002), p. 345.
26 Kamala Visweswaran, ‘Gendered States: Rethinking Culture as a Site of South Asian Human Rights Work’, Human Rights Quarterly, 26 (2004)., p. 509.
25 Kamala Visweswaran, ‘Gendered States: Rethinking Culture as a Site of South Asian Human Rights Work’, Human Rights Quarterly, 26 (2004), pp. 483–511.
27 Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Feminist Reverberations’, difference: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 13(3) (2002), p. 6.
28 ‘Tradition’ and ‘culture’ are problematic concepts under any circumstances (cf. Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Trouillot 2001).
29 Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The powers of mourning and violence (London and New York, 2004).
30 Quoted in Judith Butler, Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The powers of mourning and violence (London and New York, 2004)ibid., p. 138.
31 Judith Butler, Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The powers of mourning and violence (London and New York, 2004)ibid., p. 142.
32 Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The powers of mourning and violence (London and New York, 2004)., p. 143.
33 David Chaffetz, A Journey through Afghanistan: A Memorial (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001). David B. Edwards, Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002). M. Nazif Mohib Shahrani, The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan: adaptation to closed frontiers and war (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2002).
34 A version of Hila's story has been published in Cultural Dynamics. Please see Anila Daulatzai, ‘Acknowledging Afghanistan: Notes and Queries on Occupation’, Cultural Dynamics, 18(3) (2006), pp. 293–311.
35 Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: health, human rights, and the new war on the poor, 2nd edn (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2005), p. 41.
36 John Galtung, ‘Violence, Peace and Peace Research’, Journal of Peace Research, 6(3) (1969), pp. 167–191. Paul Farmer, ‘On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below’, in Arthur Kleiman, Veena Das and Margaret Lock (eds.), Social Suffering (London and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 283.
37 Paul Farmer, ‘On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below’ and Pathologies of Power.
38 Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power, p. 42.
39 Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power., pp. 29–50.
40 Sarparast comes from the word parastar, which means guardian or head of the family. In colloquial Dari, therefore, zaneh beh sarparast refers to a woman without a male head of household.
42 Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 246–247.
41 Abu-Lughod, p. 787. Similarly, I would like to raise a cautionary note about the way in which feminists have endorsed a particular form of ‘indigenous’ women's activism in Afghanistan. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) claims to work for democracy and secularism in the interest of Afghan women. While I have criticized the discrepancy between their commitment to secularism and the sensibilities of the great majority of women in Afghanistan elsewhere (Daulatzai 2004), others noted the disconnect between the organization's fetishization and its commitment to values which are representative of only a small elite (Puar and Rai 2002; Spivak 2004), or the legitimacy and motivations of their work more generally (Azarbaijani-Moghaddam 2004).
43 cf. McKee-Ryan (2005).
44 The presence of the ISAF forces and the international aid community has drastically skyrocketed the cost of living in Kabul. The dependence on a steady income has thus increased dramatically, which further exacerbates the pressure of making a livelihood in an already stressful environment.
47 Mahmood (2005), pp. 197–198.
45 Asad (2003).
46 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005).
48 Das (1995a; 1995b; 1997; 2000), Kleinman et al. (1998).
49 Veena Das, Violence and Subjectivity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), p. 210.
50 Hila's story, however, should not be seen as concluded – her quest for the ordinary is not over, and neither is my interaction with her.