by Rod Nordland
4.June 20, 2015, interview with Ahmad Zia Noori, human-rights specialist for the office of the president, who cited an as-yet-unpublished survey of Afghan lawyers in Kabul Province carried out by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. Kabul would have a generally much higher level of education than the country at large. The study found that 75 percent of all attorneys and prosecutors employed in the justice system—from whose ranks judges would be appointed—had neither a law-school degree nor even a degree from a shariah-law faculty.
5.Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, Dec. 2, 2012, p. A6, “With Help, Afghan Survivor of ‘Honor Killing’ Inches Back,” www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/world/asia/doctors-and-others-buck-tradition-in-afghan-honor-attack.html.
6.According to the United Nations Population Fund, five thousand girls and women are killed annually in what are deemed to be honor killings, most of them in this part of the world. See UNFPA, The State of World Population 2000, p. 5, www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/swp2000_eng.pdf.
7.Afghanistan’s public hospitals typically expect patients to pay for supplementary food and for the cost of medications due to budgetary constraints and systematic corruption. In theory that should not happen, since the public-health sector is almost entirely financed by international aid, but corruption and waste prevent much of that financing from reaching beneficiaries.
8.New York Times, Aug. 17, 2010, p. A1, “In Bold Display, Taliban Order Stoning Deaths,” www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/world/asia/17stoning.html.
9.New York Times, Jan. 31, 2011, p. A4, “Afghan Stoning Video Rekindles Outcry,” www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/world/asia/01stoning.html.
10.Police acted at all only because one of the videos of the stonings was aired on national television, and then arrested only four of the leaders of the executions. “We cannot arrest the whole village,” said police chief Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili. “Just a few people in the video were Taliban; the rest of them were there by force and had to obey the Taliban.” Their apparent enthusiasm for the stoning suggested otherwise. The fact is, stonings still happen, both in areas under Taliban control and in those under government control. The main difference is that the government goes to great lengths to suppress news about stonings when its people carry them out and is happy to publicize them when the Taliban do so. Around the same time as the stoning case in Dashte Archi District, the council of Muslim religious leaders in Afghanistan, a government-financed body called the Supreme Ulema Council, petitioned the government to allow more shariah-law punishments for social crimes, including the stoning and lashing of adulterers (stoning to death if one party is married, lashing if both are single). See also Human Rights Watch, Afghanistan: “Reject Proposal to Restore Stoning.” Nov. 25, 2013, www.hrw.org/news/2013/11/25/afghanistanreject-proposal-restore-stoning.
11.Another notorious stoning case carried out by the Taliban was in Parwan Province not far from the capital of Kabul, on July 8, 2012, of a woman named Najiba, who it turned out was accused of having an affair with the Taliban shadow governor of Parwan Province. He was not punished. A video of her murder was posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNsjgTv-u5o. Many of the participants can be easily identified in the video; none were ever prosecuted, although the stoning took place in an area normally under government control.
12.When I visited the Bamiyan primary court a few weeks after the attack on Zakia, Judge Tamkeen would not come out of his chambers when he heard he had a foreign visitor, but one of the younger judges, Judge Rahman, spoke in his stead. The judges, Judge Rahman said, were not trying to force an adult woman to return to a family against her will but instead were simply implementing shariah law and, under Islam, judges were encouraged to work out amicable family settlements, which is all they were doing in Zakia’s case. “Islamic law permits us to find a peaceful solution,” he said. He denied that the couple’s differing sects and ethnic backgrounds ever figured into the judges’deliberations. “Shariah law does not prevent two people from different sects marrying each other,” he said. “You can even marry a Jew or a Christian. There is no legal problem.”
He also denied that Zakia’s family had threatened to kill her in the February 3 melee in court, despite what numerous other witnesses said. “This is just propaganda,” he said. “It never happened.”
13.Different women’s officials in Baghlan gave different ages for the girl. She herself might not have known and, like most Afghan women and girls, would not have had her own identity papers, so the officials were giving their estimates of what they thought her age to be.
14.New York Times, May 4, 2010, p. A4, “In Spite of the Law, Afghan Honor Killings of Women Continue,” www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/world/asia/in-spite-of-the-law-afghan-honor-killings-of-women-continue.html.
15.This is a reference to Article 398 of the Afghan Penal Code; for more on this article, see p. 90.
16.Mr. Faisal, the provincial councilman who brokered the agreement to return the girl, now denies he did so. He did not even know the family, he said, and was merely making a courtesy call for a militia commander from the girl’s village, who phoned and asked him for a favor, to call the women’s ministry and ask them to talk to the family.
“I wouldn’t do such a thing. I’m not even from that district,” Mr. Faisal said. “They never should have sent the girl home with the family under such circumstances.”
They never would have done so had Mr. Faisal not loaned the prestige of his name and reputation to vouch for Amina’s family, Ms. Atifi said.
“I don’t know about that,” Mr. Faisal said. “I’m really not in the picture very much.”
17.No charges had been brought against anyone for the murder of Amina as of July 2015, according to women’s-ministry officials in Baghlan Province, although an investigation was said to be still ongoing more than a year after her murder. Authorities said they were hampered due to insurgent activity in the area where Amina’s family lived.
18.Guards at the Bamiyan Women’s Shelter are actually civilian employees of the institution, men outside and women inside, not police officers.
4: A RABBI AMONG THE MULLAHS
1.New York Times, Mar. 10, 2014, p. A1, www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/world/asia/2-star-crossed-afghans-cling-to-love-even-at-risk-of-death.html.
2.New York Times, Sept. 24, 2014, p. A8, “In Farewell Speech, Karzai Calls American Mission in Afghanistan a Betrayal,” www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/world/asia/hamid-karzai-afghanistan.html.
3.Fatima Kazimi’s emailed note, which was written in English, is reproduced verbatim.
4.National Geographic, June 1985. A discussion of that cover’s influence is in the magazine’s online edition, Oct. 2013, at http://ngm.nationalgeo graphic.com/2013/10/power-of-photography/draper-text.
Sharbat Gula’s haunting image became iconic, and in Afghanistan it was often borrowed by artists and knockoffs of it are painted and sold in galleries.
Steve McCurry later found Sharbat Gula in adulthood, hard-used by life in Afghanistan. Cathy Newman, National Geographic, Apr. 2002, “A Life Revealed,” http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=2015012_in vitation_ro_all#.
5.“In Afghanistan I could barely look at people,” writes the photographer, Lynsey Addario, in her memoir. “I had to constantly remind myself not to look men in the eye.” Lynsey Addario, It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War, page 40. New York: Penguin Press, 2015.
6.Mauricio Lima’s portrait of Zakia is in the photo insert.
7.
8.New York Times, Mar. 31, 2014, p. A6, www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/world/asia/afghan-couple-finally-together-but-a-storybook-ending-is-far-from-assured.html.
9.Slate, Mar. 29, 2001, “Who Is Shmuley Boteach?” www.slate.com/ar ticles/arts/culturebox/2001/03/who_is_shmuley_boteach.html.
10.Formerly the Jewish Values Network. See the organization’s website at https://worldvalues.us/about.
11.Shmuley Boteach, Guardian, July 5, 2011, “I Saw What Tabloid
Life Did to Michael Jackson,” www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jul/05/michael-jackson-rabbi-tabloid-life.
12.Shmuley Boteach, Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy (New York: Three Rivers Press/Crown, 2000); and Kosher Lust: Love Is Not the Answer (Jerusalem/New York: Gefen Publishing House, 2013).
13.Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, June 27, 2012, p. A4, “Afghan Rape Case Turns Focus on Local Police,” www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/world/asia/afghan-rape-case-turns-focus-on-local-police.html.
14.Jawad Sukhanyar and Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, Nov. 27, 2012, p. A10, “4 Members of Afghan Police Are Found Guilty in Rape,” www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/world/asia/afghan-militia-members-found-guilty-in-rape.html.
5: A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO HIDE
1.A million afghanis, about eighteen thousand dollars.
2.Women for Afghan Women’s website is at www.womenforafghanwomen.org.
3.
4.Article 398 reads, “If a person sees his wife or any of his female relatives in the state of committing adultery, or sharing a bed with another person, and in defense of his honor abruptly kills or injures one or both of them, he is exempted from the punishments of death or lashings, and will be given the punishment of imprisonment for not more than two years.”
5.Online video about the lovers by the New York Times: “On the Run in the Hindu Kush,” http://t.co/9tJ29wsUqe; “Video Notebook,” http://nyti.ms/1nbHO4q; “Searching for Zakia and Mohammad Ali,” http://nyti.ms/1jIRjRx.
6.Several NGOs, including the Aga Khan Development Network (www.akdn.org/afghanistan), have been pouring money into developing skiing in Bamiyan, including programs to train Afghan women in a sport that even Afghan men have never participated in (“female empowerment” programs of almost any nature are guaranteed generous Western funding). It also requires learning how to ski or snowshoe uphill, since there are no real lifts; Afghanistan’s mountains are far too craggy and often too dry, even in winter, to have ever fostered any sort of alpine or snow sports. In the winter of 2014–15, commercial flights by East Horizon Airlines into Bamiyan were canceled for aircraft repairs, though a few foolhardy Western skiers still came along a highway from Kabul that was periodically threatened by Taliban roadblocks.
7.The Mountain to Mountain organization’s website is at http://mountain 2mountain.com. See also Molly Hurford, Bicycling, Feb. 12, 2015, “Afghan Cycles, Mountain to Mountain, and Pedaling a Revolution,” www.bicycling.com/culture/afghan-cycles-mountain-mountain-and-pedaling-revolution.
8.Habiba Sarobi, governor of Bamiyan Province, was at the time the only woman governor in Afghanistan; she stepped down to run unsuccessfully for vice president in 2014.
9.That year Ben Solomon would go on to share in the paper’s Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Ebola epidemic.
10.Amina’s case is discussed in detail in chapter 3, beginning on p. 65.
11.New York Times, Aug. 5, 2010, p. A6, “Portrait of Pain Ignites Debate Over Afghan War,” www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/world/asia/05afghan.html. See also Time, Aug. 9, 2010, “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan,” http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20100809,00.html.
12.More on Soheila’s case can be found in chapter 14.
13.John F. Burns, New York Times, Feb. 14, 1996, “Cold War Afghans Inherit a Brutal New Age,” www.nytimes.com/1996/02/14/world/fiercely-faithful-special-report-cold-war-afghans-inherit-brutal-new-age.html.
14.
15.“On the Run in the Hindu Kush,” http://t.co/9tJ29wsUqe.
16.Diego Ibarra Sánchez’s photos of Zakia and Ali are in the photo insert. His sunbeam-lit portrait of them is on the book jacket.
17.New York Times, Apr. 22, 2014, p. A4, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/world/asia/afghan-couple-find-idyllic-hideout-in-mountains-but-not-for-long.html.
6: MYSTERY BENEFACTOR
1.For example: The lowest-paid employee at the New York Times bureau, a cleaner, makes five hundred dollars a month, the pay of a colonel in the national police. The bureau lost a two-thousand-dollar-a-month Afghan journalist to the Ministry of Interior, where salary supplements underwritten by foreign donors brought his pay as a public-relations adviser to five thousand a month—more than the usual starting salary for that profession in America, but a fortune in Afghanistan, where two hundred dollars a month is considered a livable wage.
2.Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Quarterly Report to Congress, Jan. 30, 2015, www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterly reports/2015-01-30qr.pdf.
3.SIGAR Quarterly Report, Apr. 30, 2014, www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterly reports/2014-04-30qr.pdf.
4.BBC News online, Mar. 8, 2013, “Zinat Karzai, Afghanistan’s ‘Invisible’ First Lady,” www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-21699353.
5.WAW has offices in the United States and in Afghanistan, where it runs an extensive network of shelters and other facilities dedicated to helping Afghan women. See www.womenforafghanwomen.org.
6.Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, Mar. 3, 2014, p. A1, “A Thin Line of Defense against Honor Killings,” www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/world/asia/afghanistan-a-thin-line-of-defense-against-honor-killings.html.
7.United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees website, “2015 UNHCR country operations profile, Islamic Republic of Iran,” at www.unhcr.org/pages/49e486f96.html.
8.Bakhtar News Agency, www.bakhtarnews.com.af/eng/politics/item/241-deadline-forafghan-refugees-in-iran-will-remain-open.html.
9.Human Rights Watch, “Unwelcome Guests: Iran’s Violation of Afghan Refugee and Migrant Rights,” Nov. 2013, www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iran1113_forUpload_0.pdf.
10.Joseph Goldstein, New York Times, Dec. 11, 2014, p. A1, “For Afghans, Name and Birthdate Census Questions Are Not So Simple,” www.ny times.com/2014/12/11/world/asia/forafghans-name-and-birthdate-census-questions-are-not-so-simple.html.
11.Western Union also requires a last name; the field cannot be blank. Afghan banks accept the father’s tribal name in that field if it shows up on the person’s tazkera, so in Ali’s case he was first name Mohammad Ali, last name Sarwari.
12.New York Times, Apr. 22, 2014, p. A4, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/world/asia/afghan-couple-find-idyllic-hideout-in-mountains-but-not-for-long.html.
13.New York Times, Mar. 31, 2014, p. A6, www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/world/asia/afghan-couple-finally-together-but-a-storybook-ending-is-far-from-assured.html.
14.According to a source in the Bamiyan women’s ministry who preferred not to be identified.
15.May 4, 2014. p. A10, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/world/asia/in-spite-of-the-law-afghan-honor-killings-of-women-continue.html.
16.Time, Aug. 9, 2010, “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan,” http://con tent.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20100809,00.html.
17.UN Dispatch, 2011, “Afghan Government Cracks Down on Women’s Shelters,” www.undispatch.com/afghan-government-cracks-down-on-womens-shelters.
18.Maria Abi-Habib, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 3, 2010, “TV Host Targets Afghan Women’s Shelters,” www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704875004575374984291866528.
19.New York Times, Feb. 15, 2011, “Afghan Official Says Women’s Shelters Are Corrupt,” www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/world/asia/16afghanistan.html.
20.At the time the contractor was known as DPK Consulting, but is now Tetra Tech DPK. It is one of a host of private aid contractors, most of them moneymaking entities whether or not they are officially nonprofits; none of them are considered by the United Nations and the NGO community to be independent, charitable aid organizations. They often act as the implementing agencies for government bodies, particularly for the biggest donor in Afghanistan, USAID. See www.tetratechdpk.com/en/countries/11-asia/72-afghanistan.html.
21.Literacy among recruits to the Afghan National Police is 10 percent, even lower than the Afghan population’s literacy rate of 15 percent (38 percent among those over age fifteen). See New York Times, Feb. 2, 2010, “With Raw Recruits, Afghan Police Buildup Falters,” www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/world/asia
/03afghan.html. Literacy data can be found in the CIA World Factbook, “Afghanistan,” online at www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html.
22.New York Times, Sept. 25, 2010, p. A4, “Afghan Equality and Law, with Strings Attached,” www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/world/asia/25kite.html.
23.New York Times, May 26, 2013, p. A10, “Foreign Projects Give Afghans Fashion, Skate Park and Now 10,000 Balloons,” www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/world/asia/western-aid-finances-afghan-projects-from-silly-to-sublime.html.
24.Ibid. A trenchant correction was appended to this piece: “An earlier version of this article misidentified the ‘Sesame Street’ character with whom Ryan C. Crocker, the former United States ambassador, was photographed in Kabul. It was Grover, not Cookie Monster.”
25.A typical press conference in Kabul, such as a presentation by the minister for counter-narcotics or the governor of Khost Province, would feature more than twenty television crews, with at most one or two of those from foreign outlets.
26.
7: HONOR HUNTERS
1.There is a further discussion of this topic in The Jihad Against Women, particularly on pp. 271–73.
2.Huma Ahmed-Ghosh, Journal of International Women’s Studies, vol. 4, issue 3, p. 2, “A History of Women in Afghanistan: Lessons Learnt for the Future.” The author blamed Afghanistan’s lack of gender equality on “the patriarchal nature of gender and social relations deeply embedded in traditional communities” and “the existence of a weak central state, that has been unable to implement modernizing programs and goals in the face of tribal feudalism.”
3.Ibid., p. 14.
4.Ibid., p. 7. “Thus the two so-called progressive eras of the 1920s and 1970s, while attempting to improve women’s status were not only unsuccessful but also led to violent, fundamentalist backlashes by subsequent governments. In both periods, tribal leaders who objected to the redefining of women by the state and the diminution of their general authority initiated the disruption of the modernization process.”