Feb 13, 2012
Women’s Rights and the Rush for the Exit in Afghanistan | The Huffington Post
Photo by Advocacy Project used under a Creative Commons license. As U.S. and NATO forces look for a way out of Afghanistan, negotiations with the Taliban have become a more appealing option. The fear, reinforced by Pakistan’s failed experiment in Swat, is that making accommodations to the Taliban may not contain the more radical elements of their ideology. Women, and the few rights they have gained since the overthrow of the Taliban, have not factored into negotiations in a meaningful way, and stand the most to loose from a policy of appeasement to the Taliban. Journalist Gayle Tzemach addresses this issue in her latest piece, Women’s Rights and the Rush for the Exit in Afghanistan. Tzemach points out the reactionary social values of the Taliban, commonly associated with Afghanistan, are not universal. Violence against women is not part of Afghan culture and there is no reason concessions should be made to the Taliban that reinforce or allow violence against women.
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The internal backlash
The internal backlash against the law restricting rights of Shi'a women gives me some hope on the rights of women in Afghanistan, although the violence they met with is quite worrisome. I think we're far more used to think about how to deal with ethnic groups at risk than about genders at risk.
One often hears about large numbers of people from an oppressed minority migrating, sometimes at the point of a gun, to an area they hope will be safer. However, I don't think I've heard any stories about women evacuating the Swat valley or the like. The obvious explanation for that is that is that whole families often share one ethnicity but, obviously, are less likely to be entirely of one gender.
I think this will ultimately require strategy. What sort of concessions will in the short and long term have the worst impact on women? How can we best empower (arm?) Afghan women to defend their own rights?
Ultimately, to the degree that concessions are necessary, I think the best answer is to guarantee that Afghan women have a seat at the negotiating table. They are ultimately the ones best positioned to make these horrid trade offs because it is their interests that are at stake. I fear it is not practically in the power of the U.S. to achieve peace without some concessions, but I think it is in our power to ensure that female power-brokers are direct participants in the outcome and not just protesters stuck on the outside.