by Rod Nordland
76.See also Wazhma Frogh, Towards the Light, her blog, at http://wazhma frogh.blogspot.com.
77.Associated Press, Daily Mail, Mar. 8, 2014, “Frustration in Afghan women’s rights struggle,” www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2576176/Frustration-Afghan-womens-rights-struggle.html.
78.New York Times, Feb. 8, 2014, p. A5, “Taliban and Government Imperil Gains for Afghan Women, Advocates Say,” www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/world/asia/womens-rights-seen-as-vulnerable-to-reversal-in-afghanistan.html.
79.Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, Sept. 17, 2013, p. A4, “Afghan Policewomen Say Sexual Harassment Is Rife,” www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/world/asia/womens-rights-seen-as-vulnerable-to-reversal-in-afghanistan.html.
80.See the website of the United States Department of State, “2010 International Women of Courage Award,” www.state.gov/s/gwi/programs/iwoc/2010/index.htm. Brigadier General Quraishi’s exile was confirmed to me in confidence by officials at the Afghan Ministry of Interior.
81.New York Times, Feb. 8, 2014, p. A5, “Taliban and Government Imperil Gains,” http://goo.gl/eUfVij. “I’m sure our international friends will not abandon us,” then-Colonel Bayaz said. The diplomats shared the information about her asylum request in confidence.
82.Breshna’s case is discussed in detail beginning on p. 287.
83.As there would be no way of verifying the identity of the person writing the e-mails in response to my questions, I declined to carry out such an interview.
84.Glyn Strong, Telegraph, Sept. 29, 2007, “Malalai Joya: Courage Under Fire,” www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3668254/MalalaiJoya-courage-under-fire.html.
85.According to three senior European Union diplomats whom I interviewed in confidence. Many Western embassies in Kabul have actually closed their consular visa operations in Afghanistan, obliging Afghans who want visas to go to their embassies in Islamabad, Pakistan; among those are the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
86.According to other U.S. embassy officials whom I interviewed in confidence.
87.New York Times, July 21, 2013, p. A1, “Despite Education Advances, a Host of Afghan School Woes,” www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/world/asia/despite-education-advances-a-host-of-afghan-school-woes.html.
88.UN Women, Country Summaries, Afghanistan, http://asiapacific.un women.org/countries/afghanistan#_ednref2.
89.United Nations Development Program, Human Development Index, 2014, http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi.
90.United Nations Development Program, Human Development Reports, Gender Inequality Index, 2014, http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/table-4-gender-inequality-index.
91.Central Intelligence Agency, CIA World Factbook, Afghanistan, 2010, www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223 rank.html.
92.Geoffrey Chamberlain, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Nov. 2006, vol. 99, no. 11, pp. 559–63, “British Maternal Mortality in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries,” www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559.
93.UN Women, Country Reports, Afghanistan, http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/countries/afghanistan#_ednref2.
94.For nearly every country in Western Europe, aside from the United Kingdom, this nation of only 30 million people is the biggest recipient of its foreign aid and would continue to be so through at least 2016. See Emla Fitzsimons, Daniel Rogger, and George Stoye, Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2012, p. 142, “UK development aid,” www.ifs.org.uk/budgets/gb2012/12chap7.pdf.
95.Geoff Dyer and Chloe Sorvino, Financial Times, Dec. 15, 2014, “$1tn cost of longest US war hastens retreat from military intervention,” www.cnbc.com/id/102267930.
96.For instance, his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2011, cited in Chris Good, Atlantic online, Mar. 15, 2011, “Petraeus: Gains in Afghanistan ‘Fragile and Reversible,’” www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/03/petraeus-gains-in-afghanistan-fragile-and-reversible-afghans-will-take-over-in-select-provinces/72507.
97.Fawzia Koofi with Nadene Ghouri, The Favored Daughter: One Woman’s Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan Trade, 2012).
98.Case studies of other abused women are found beginning on p. 287.
99.Her name has been changed for her protection.
100.Sharif Kanaana, a professor of anthropology at Birzeit University in the Palestinian Territory, contends that honor killings in Arab culture stem from the Arabs’ view of tribal necessities. “Women for the tribe were considered a factory for making men. The honor killing is not a means to control sexual power or behavior. What’s behind it is the issue of fertility, or reproductive power.” See also Department of Justice, “Preliminary Examination of So-called ‘Honour Killings’ in Canada,” p. 380, fn. 9. See also United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Harmful Traditional Practices and Implementation of the Law on Elimination of Violence against Women in Afghanistan,” Dec. 9, 2010, www.afghan-web.com/woman/harmful_traditions.pdf.
OTHER BATTLES IN THE AFGHAN WAR OF THE SEXES
1.Early news accounts about this case suppressed Breshna’s name, as I did in stories written for the New York Times at the time. Subsequently, however, Afghan news media began regularly using her name, and even statements from the office of the Afghan president mentioned her by name, in both cases in apparent disregard of an EVAW-law prohibition on the publication of the names of female victims of sexual abuse.
2.Almost the first thing the Taliban did after taking control of Kunduz was to head to the WAW shelter and hunt down the women there, but Hassina Sarwari had already fled, taking with her all the women in the shelter to the safety of a neighboring province. See Joseph Goldstein, New York Times, Oct. 2, 2015, p. A10, “Taking Hold in Kunduz, Afghanistan, New Taliban Echoed the Old,” http://goo.gl/G0Oqq5.
3.New York Times, July 20, 2014, p. A4, “Struggling to Keep Afghan Girl Safe After a Mullah Is Accused of Rape,” www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/world/asia/struggling-to-keep-afghan-girl-safe-after-a-mullah-is-accused-of-rape.html.
4.International Crisis Group, Asia Report No. 268, June 4, 2015, “The Future of the Afghan Local Police,” www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/268-the-future-of-the-afghan-local-police.aspx.
5.Technically there is no age of consent in Afghan law, since all sex outside wedlock is considered a crime, but sixteen is the minimum legal age for marriage.
6.The case of Gulnaz is discussed in more detail in chapter 7.
7.CURE International was the same hospital where, only a month before, three American doctors had been killed by an Afghan policeman named Ainuddin who had just been assigned to guard the facility and who shot down the doctors on sight as they entered their hospital. Despite that outrage, which like so many others in Afghanistan was never explained or resolved, CURE continued to bring foreign doctors there to work on behalf of Afghan women.
8.The Women for Afghan Women shelter in Kunduz runs a separate facility, known as a Child Support Center, which cares for fifty children of all ages. It is in a sense an orphanage, but most of these children do have mothers, many of them in prison. Others have mothers who have been killed in an honor crime, and the children are there to be protected from fathers who may or may not want them. The Child Support Center is a deeply affecting place. “This one is two and a half years old,” said Dr. Hassina Sarwari, who is in charge of it, pointing to a lively little girl who kept ducking behind the skirts of one of the matrons. She indicated another. “Her mother was burned alive in front of her children after the husband raped his daughter and she caught him,” Dr. Sarwari said, speaking in a low voice so the kids could not hear her. She pointed to a boy in a yellow shirt, about ten. “His father tried to sell him to someone after his wife’s death.” She pointed out two sisters, aged nine and ten. Their father raped both of them. “Every single one of them has such a story. What if the funding stops? What if the mullahs shut us down? What will happen to them?”
9.Kim Motley is also on the board of Women for Afghan Women. See
also Kimberley Motley, TedGlobal 2014, Oct. 2014, “How I Defend the Rule of Law,” www.ted.com/talks/kimberley_motley_how_i_defend_ the_rule_of_law?language=en.
10.Ms. Geyah had exposed a madrassa for girls that had been indoctrinating them in extremist, pro-Taliban ideology, right under government noses and with government funding.
11.The girls Ms. Sarwari was referring to were those in Women for Afghan Women’s Child Support Center, described in more detail in note 8 on p. 343.
12.Kim Motley is one of very few American lawyers practicing law in Afghanistan, and while she is not admitted to the Afghan bar, she works through Afghan colleagues who are, and she uses her high profile—and somewhat exotic background—to the utmost. A former Miss Wisconsin, the daughter of a North Korean refugee mother and an African-American father, she is a black woman in a country that has rarely seen any black Americans other than in uniform and has a hard time getting used to the idea of female lawyers of any color. Kim Motley causes a minor sensation wherever she goes and often uses that to her clients’ benefit. She is one of few women in the country, even among foreigners, who drives her own car and refuses to wear a head scarf.
13.United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, “A Way to Go: An Update on Implementation of the Law on Elimination of Violence against Women in Afghanistan,” Kabul, Dec. 2013, http://goo.gl/nmdz3x.
14.New York Times, Oct. 26, 2014, p. A12, “Afghan Mullah Who Raped Girl in His Mosque Receives 20-year Prison Sentence,” www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/world/asia/afghan-mullah-who-raped-girl-in-his-mosque-receives-20-year-prison-sentence.html.
15.During the Paghman rape-case lineup, one of the victims initially picked out a police detective and then a police cook, before choosing the actual suspect, after police detectives helpfully pointed him out to her. See also New York Times, Sept. 8, 2014, p. A9, “Afghan Court Wastes No Time Sentencing 7 to Death in Rape Case,” www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/world/asia/afghan-court-sentences-7-men-to-death-in-rape-case.html.
16.Ibid.
17.The full, verbatim text of the press release, as issued in English by President Ghani’s press office on November 19, 2014:
Breshna the girl who was victim of rape, is not posed to any danger by her family.
Based on the order of President Ashraf Ghani, a meeting was held at the palace this afternoon with presence of ten-year-old girl’s family who was raped by a mullah in Kunduz province. In this meeting Breshna’s family, representatives of ministries of foreign affairs, head of International Amnesty for Afghanistan [sic; apparently they meant to describe the AIHRC, as Amnesty International was not involved] had participated. Abdul Ali Mohammadi the Legal Advisor to President Ghani demanded explanation from Breshna the little girl’s family her father and her uncle about the threats posed to her life. Breshna’s father and uncle rejected any kind of threats posed to her from her family side, they said the little girl who was victim of rape her self [sic], she is not posed to any risk by her family. They said the rumors of any threats posed to her was made up by some opportunists who try to exploit this case for their personal gains in the name of advocacy. In this meeting the family of the rape victim asked for the severest punishment to be given to the rapist. They also assured, that “not only Breshna is safe with us but we also protect her from the reach of any exploiters.”
18.According to Manizha Naderi, the Women for Afghan Women’s executive director. Manizha had the following reaction when she heard about the statement on Breshna from the presidential palace: “I wish the palace would look at the big picture. Rape of children is a big problem right now. We have a three-year-old in the hospital in Kabul who was raped in Takhar. She just came out of surgery. There was another twelve-year-old who was gang-raped over six days in Takhar, a twelve-year-old boy was gang-raped over a month-long period in Ghazni, a five-year-old boy was brutally raped and died in Kandahar, another five-year-old died because of a brutal rape in Herat. These are just a few cases that I know of. I am sure there are many, many others. The palace needs to look at this whole problem and make a strong statement about it.”
19.Dr. Sarwari did not leave her post and, supported by her colleagues at WAW, remained at her job through 2015, although in late September she was obliged to flee Kunduz, along with the women and children in her shelter, after the Taliban overran the city.
20.Farangis Najibullah, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Afghanistan: Marriage Practice Victimizes Young Girls, Society,” Jan. 4, 2008, www.rferl.org/content/article/1079316.html. UNICEF figures are that 15 percent of Afghan women are fifteen or younger when married; see note 14, chapter 2.
21.Karim Amini, Tolo News, online news service, Aug. 30, 2014, “8 Year Old Girl Married Off to 12 Year Old Boy,” www.tolonews.com/en/afghanistan/16174-8-year-old-girl-married-off-to-12-year-old-boy. See also Sayed Arif Musavi, Tolo News, online news service, Feb. 15, 2015, “10-year-old Girl Victim of Baad in Balkh,” www.tolonews.com/en/afghanistan/18222-10-year-old-girl-victim-of-qbaadq-in-balkh, for another case of a young girl being sold as a child bride to resolve adult disputes.
22.Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, Apr. 1, 2013, p. A1, “Painful Payment for Afghan Debt: a Daughter, 6,” www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/world/asia/afghan-debts-painful-payment-a-daughter-6.html.
23.New York Times, Dec. 30, 2012, p. A12, “Winter’s Deadly Bite Returns to Refugee Camps of Kabul,” www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/world/asia/deadly-bite-of-winter-returns-to-ill-prepared-refugee-camps-of-kabul.html.
24.In an interview in May 2015.
25.Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, “Violence Against Women 1390,” 2012, http://goo.gl/SnuXBZ. Shakila’s case is discussed on p. 29.
26.AIHRC, “Violence Against Women 1391,” 2013, www.aihrc.org.af/home/research_report/1319.
27.Many arbakai units later go on to become ALP formations, after training by American Special Forces.
28.See the website of the Development and Support of Afghan Women and Children at http://dsawco.org/eng.
29.Zarghona Salehi, Pajhwok Afghan News, online news agency, Sept. 24, 2012, “Kabul rally condemns lashing of Ghazni girl,” www.pajhwok.com/en/2012/09/24/kabul-rally-condemns-lashing-ghazni-girl, is a contemporary account of the attack on Sabira.
INDEX
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Abaya, 25, 327n
Abbasi, Shazia, 259–61
Abdul Rahman Mosque, 211
Abida, 8–10
Adelson, Miriam, 136–37
Adelson, Sheldon, 136
Adultery (zina)
Ali and Zakia’s case, 162, 175
Breshna’s case, 292, 298–99
EVAW law and, 57, 58, 268–69, 275
Safoora’s case, 74
Afghan Border Police (ABP), 212, 227
Afghan constitution, 56–57, 59, 262, 266–67, 318n
Afghan flute, 27
Afghanistan
agriculture practices, 23, 334–35n
birthrate, 243, 284, 333n
family networks, 160–61, 256
life expectancy, 246, 284, 333n
map of lover’s escapes, xiv–xv
patriarchal culture, 57–58, 124–25, 266
presidential election fiasco of 2014, 149–50, 174–75
public hospitals, 7, 319n
Soviet invasion and occupation, 23, 192–93, 253–58
U.S. consequences of enterprise, 120–21, 131–32, 238
U.S.-led NATO invasion, 126–27, 265, 284
U.S. rule-of-law development in, 106–7, 111
women’s-rights issues in, 5–6, 56–57, 125–28, 176, 257–58. See also Women, status of
Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), 211–12, 268, 278, 308
Afghan judges, 59, 320n
Afghan Local Police (ALP)
Breshna case, 288, 294
human-rights abuses of
, 81–82, 259–60, 279, 341n
Lal Bib case, 81–82, 154
Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 212, 302
Afghan Ministry of Interior, 85, 142, 165, 166, 171, 172, 212, 280, 281, 323n
Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA), 70, 118, 174–75, 263, 268, 271
Afghan National Army
Ali’s desertion, 129, 150–51, 153
Ali’s service in, 29–30, 33–34, 129–30, 149–52
desertion problem, 317n
Sabira and, 310–11
Shah Hussein’s service in, 158–59
Afghan National Institute of Music, 31, 257, 305
Afghan National Police (ANP), 67, 77, 120. See also Bamiyan police
Amina case, 65, 66, 96
arrest of Ali, 157–60, 164–67, 172
districts, 328n
drug use, 317n
literacy among, 120, 325n
Siddiqa and Khayyam stoning, 61
Afghan Penal Code, 66, 90
Article 398, 90, 322n
Afghan refugees, 108–9
in Canada, 199–200, 239, 282
in Iran, 108–9, 197, 329n
in Pakistan, 197–98
in United States, 199–200
Afghan Women and Children Development Organization (AWCDO), 310
Afghan Women Skills Development Center, 133
Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), 59, 66, 270, 276
Aga Khan Development Network, 322n
Age of brides, 41–42, 56, 303–4, 317–18n
Age of consent, 74, 292, 333n
Agriculture, 23, 334–35n
Ahmadi, Aziza, 54, 64
Ahmadi, Najeeba, 54–55, 62, 67, 86, 119, 207
Ahmadis, the. See Gula Khan; Sabza; Zakia; Zaman
Ahmed, Azam, 175, 329n
Ahmed-Ghosh, Huma, 325–26n
Aisha, 208–10
Aisha, Bibi, 96–97, 118, 154, 182, 270–71
Akhlaqi, Sayed, 16, 17