Burqa No Longer Law, but Women Remain Oppressed in Afghanistan

posted by NYC on Friday March 07, @12:19PM

The State

Mar. 07, 2003

By MALCOLM GARCIA

KABUL - KRT NEWSFEATURES

(KRT) - More than a year after their liberation from the radical Islamic government of the Taliban, Afghan women are struggling to be free.

Afghan women can work, attend school and hold political office - all banned under the Taliban's harsh rule.

They no longer have to wear the burqa - the head-to-toe garment required by the Taliban that became a symbol of women's subjugation.

Yet on the eve of International Women's Day on Saturday, some teachers are receiving death threats for allowing girls into their classrooms. Employment opportunities for women remain scarce. And thousands of women die each year because they lack basic health care.

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"The biggest misconception today in Afghanistan is that with the Taliban gone, women are completely liberated," said Lina Abirafeh, country director for the Kabul office of Women for Women International, an aid organization. "Many men have shaved their beards but continue to hold the same sentiments that women are not their equals and therefore do not deserve the same opportunities."

Lida, 20, an Afghan woman and staff member of Women for Women International, helps women find jobs. After work, she meets her fiance, a conservative Muslim. Their parents arranged the match. Lida said her fiance made her leave a previous job at another aid organization because all of her colleagues were men. He would prefer she not work at all.

"I don't know why he is like this," said Lida, who like many Afghan women, does not have a last name. "I know we will have a difficult time living together. He wants me to wear a burqa when I leave the house. I can't see my future."

International women's rights advocates have long been focused on the burqa as the symbol of oppression for Afghan women, a simplistic association, argued Soraya Rahim, deputy minister in the Ministry of Women.

"The West equates removal of the burqa with progress for women," she said. "Burqas are not the issue. Why women wear them is. Their husbands make them. Some are afraid the Taliban will come back. Others don't have jobs and wear burqas to conceal their tattered clothes. Others are sick and use the burqa to conceal their pain. Real issues lie beneath the burqa."

In particular, health care remains a significant hurdle for Afghan women.

For every 100,000 pregnancies in Afghanistan, about 1,700 Afghan women die in childbirth compared to nine deaths for every 100,000 pregnant women in the United States, said Abdullah Sherzaz, general director of policy and planning for the Ministry of Public Health.

"We're talking no health care, no clinics," Sherzaz said. "These women during pregnancy live the last few days of their lives in the worst pain you can imagine and die in that pain."

Even if the baby survives the pregnancy, the death of the mother virtually guarantees the eventual death of the child, he said.

"The importance of mothers is immense in Afghanistan," Sherzaz said. "Fathers work. They don't have a clue about child rearing. The child dies from neglect. Not malicious neglect but ignorance."

Because of cultural traditions, many sick women won't see male doctors.

"Many Afghan women haven't changed culturally," Sherzaz said. "That kind of change takes time. We need to give them that time to grow and assist them while they are doing it. We should start with encouraging women to go to school."

Resistance to expanding educational opportunities for women persists, however, especially in rural areas.

Mobrak Shah, the principal of The Women's Center in Laghmani Province, a farming belt an hour north of Kabul, said he has received numerous death threats for teaching girls. About 300 girls between the ages of 10 and 16 attend classes there. The center opened last year.

"Some in our culture don't accept that girls should go to school," Shah said. "They don't think girls should leave the home. They are afraid of losing their children to Western ideas. They are afraid of losing the next generation of their families if girls leave the home instead of marrying and having children in their villages."

These concerns don't filter through the steady hum of sewing machines on a north Kabul street where Mohammad Ashraf and his four brothers make 12 to 15 burqas a day for merchants in the downtown bazaar.

"Women can do anything," Ashraf said. He blocked the door when his mother looked in the workroom at foreigners purchasing burqas. She covered her face and withdrew. "Some people wear the burqa. Their families don't want them to show their face. Some don't wear it. In the West, many women wear pants. Some don't. No one makes them. It is the same now in Afghanistan."

Ashraf says this without a trace of irony, as though women were free to do as they please. Yet no women work in his own shop nor are they allowed in his workroom.,P. http://www.afgha.com/?af=article&sid;=31010

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