by Fawzia Koofi
We organized a big day of events in Faizabad and it was there in 1999 that I made my first ever public speech. I talked about how women were treated and how the civilians were treated in Kabul during the civil war. I spoke freely, angrily about the strength and power of Afghan women, how during all the atrocities of the civil war, when they had seen husbands and sons murdered and suffered rape and torture themselves, they didn’t lose their strength or their pride. I called them the unstoppable Afghan women.
Although the Taliban controlled the rest of the country, they didn’t control Badakhshan. Rabbani’s government was still very much in control. Rabbani was a former mujahideen and many people thought my speech went too far in blaming the mujahideen for torture. In those days people didn’t want to criticize the mujahideen, something that’s true even today. These were the men who saved us from the Russians, so to criticize them for anything is seen as unpatriotic, almost treasonous. I admire and am proud of what the mujahideen did in defeating the Russian invaders, but there is also no denying that in the civil war years that followed they were responsible for many barbaric acts committed against innocent civilians, including my own family.
There were a few pursed lips and shocked silences among disapproving government officials when I spoke of this. But afterward many ordinary people, teachers and doctors and community volunteers, came up to me and told me what a good speech it was. I was finding my voice. And I was finding my rightful place.
Hamid was getting weaker and weaker and in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable I spent most of my wages trying to source new medical treatments to help him. My sisters were harsh with me, they told me not to bother wasting my money and to face the fact that he was dying. But this was the man I loved. Just as I could not sit back and wait when he was in prison, I could not now sit back and calmly wait for him to die. And this man was so supportive to me in those days, so happy to see his wife succeeding that I felt I owed it to him to keep him alive. After Shuhra’s birth our physical relationship died, but in some ways our love came back. I think he felt guilty for his treatment of me for giving him a second daughter and so he worked even harder to prove to me that he was completely behind my work. When I came home in the evenings he always made a point of asking me about my day, persuading me to share my problems and work worries with him. I felt for him, he was in so much emotional pain. After all those years of waiting for me, of persuading my brothers to allow us to marry, the result was a slow descent into death. With sorrow in his eyes he once held my hand and told me it was like having a dish that you’d wanted to taste for so many years. A dish you’d dreamt of eating every day, a dish you could taste and smell in your imagination. When this dish was finally served to you, you had nothing to eat it with, no spoon or fork, so all you could do was look at it.
Part of my job involved traveling to Islamabad in Pakistan for conferences. I would fly to Jalalabad in Southern Afghanistan and then across the Torkham border pass, the same drive Hamid and I had taken with my brother for that brief happy week we had spent in Lahore before he was arrested for the final, third and fatal time. I loved the trips to Pakistan and they gave me a chance to buy Hamid more medicine. But arriving in Jalalabad, which was in Taliban control, was horrible. I hated seeing them and hated the way they snarled at me when I showed them my United Nations identification.
I was scared of them even though I knew I was under UN protection and they couldn’t do anything to me. I would walk off the plane and straight into a waiting UN vehicle. But I felt their stares as I walked past them. I used to repeat a little mantra to myself to calm myself down: “You’re UN now. You can work. You can deliver. They can’t stop you.”
One day I was about to board the plane to Jalalabad when I was stopped by Afghan security officials. They told me that Rabbani government officials had told them my husband was a suspected Taliban and I was a security threat. I was incredulous and enraged. I said: “Thank you so much. My husband was in prison for three months just because he met Rabbani in Pakistan and now you are telling me he’s a traitor?”
Later on I discovered that someone, I don’t know who, had given the intelligence services false information about us deliberately. It was another reminder that your enemies can be hidden everywhere and that in Afghanistan gossip can be deadly.
Badakhshan was the only place in Afghanistan not under Taliban control where women could work, and I was the only Afghan woman in all of Afghanistan working for the United Nations. It was high profile and of course that came with certain dangers. Pretty much all of Faizabad now knew who I was and what I did. Many people were pleased for me and pleased to have the UN presence. For others I was a constant source of scandal and gossip. Even my direct boss couldn’t get his head around having a female deputy and used to tell me to close the door so I couldn’t be seen if he had male visitors to the office.
There was a mosque close to our house and one Friday afternoon the mullah started preaching about women working for international organizations. He was preaching about it being haram (forbidden) and said no husband should allow his wife to do this. His view was that women should not work alongside non-believers and that any salary was also haram.
On this day poor Hamid was sitting in the yard playing with Shaharzad. He says he managed to laugh as he sat there listening to this. His wife was the only woman in the entire province working for an international organization so it had to be me the mullah was referring to. There was Hamid babysitting his daughter while I worked. Of course, our roles are much more common today. Not only in the West but also in Afghanistan many younger men of the modern generation take a much larger role in sharing childcare duties, and in many households both husbands and wives work. But back then we were almost unique.
When I got home Hamid told me he chose to laugh at the mullah’s sermon and then went inside, so he didn’t have to hear it all. But I was desperately upset at what had been said. Perhaps it was easier for the mullah to try to turn an entire community against one family, rather than speak to my husband man to man about what he perceived to be an errant wife’s behavior?
Ironically, when I became a member of parliament (MP) a few years later this very same mullah came to ask for my help. He was also a religious teacher and had been kicked out of his job and he wanted me to intervene with the Ministry of Education. Back at the time when he preached against me he would never have come to me for help, but years later even a man like that could accept that women now played a role in government and society. That is why it is so important to have women in public and governmental roles, because by doing so people’s views can slowly change.
The United Nations was a wonderful organization to work for and were very helpful to me at that difficult time. Sometimes I was able to take the kids and Hamid with me to Pakistan. One time I took him to the Shafa Hospital, which is one of the most famous hospitals in Islamabad. He received a different type of new medicine there but the prescription was $500 a month—$3,000 for six months. I managed it for six months but after that my salary just couldn’t cover the expense.
I suppose I was still in denial about him dying. He was so young. It was early 2001 and he was only 35 years old.
By now the fighting between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban had almost stopped and there were rumors the UN Security Council was about to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. That was something that many Afghans found terrible to accept. It seemed that the world couldn’t see what we saw, nor could it see the danger the Taliban presented. In the spring of 2001 Ahmed Shah Massoud went on a political trip to Europe on behalf of the Rabbani government. He was invited by then European president Nicole Fontaine to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg. He used his speech to warn of the emerging threat of the Taliban, and the imminent large-scale threat of an Al Qaida strike on Western targets. During his brief visit to Europe he also traveled to Paris and Brussels, where he held talks with European Union Security Chief Javie
r Solana and Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel.
He carried with him the hopes of many Afghans. And we were pleased to hear via BBC radio that he was well received. His message was simple and clear. The Taliban, and the Al Qaida fighters they were sheltering, were a growing threat—not only to Afghanistan but to the world.
In a personalized message to then US President George Bush, Massoud warned: “If you don’t help us, these terrorists will damage the US and Europe very soon.”
But the West’s political leaders did not heed his warnings in time.
There was very much an air of sad resignation among my friends in those days. It really felt like the Taliban was here to stay forever. For 14 years we fought the Soviets and now we had to fight this new and strange form of Islam. And if the United Nations did recognize them as the government that meant the Rabbani government that ruled in Badakhshan would become the illegal government. On a personal level I would have almost certainly lost my job.
At the same time that General Massoud was in Europe, a lot of foreign delegations came to Badakhshan to meet Rabbani. He had since returned from Pakistan and was based out of Faizabad. It was clear the United Nations was now actively trying to broker peace and some kind of agreement between the Taliban and the government.
It was September 9, 2001, a sunny autumn day. I had just got in the UN car and was on my way to a displaced persons (IDP) camp. I was supposed to be monitoring the children’s play activities. When I got there everyone was crying. The lives of these IDPs was truly awful—they lived in tents with no sanitation but they never lost their spirit and would always smile and joke. But now they were all in floods of tears. A young man told me why. Ahmed Shah Massoud had reportedly been killed. My head spun and my knees buckled underneath me. It was just like the sensation I had when my mother died when I thought I was falling out of the sky. The hero of our nation could not be dead, he couldn’t be.
Later on that night we got more details of the story on the BBC. The situation was still very confused as to whether he was dead or just badly injured, and certainly on the ground there were wild rumors. But over the course of the coming weeks and months the picture became clearer. Two Arab extremists posing as television journalists detonated a bomb that was hidden inside their camera as they interviewed the famously cautious Massoud. One died in the explosion, and the other was gunned down by Massoud’s men as he tried to escape. Massoud was badly injured in the blast and died while being flown by helicopter to a hospital. Police in France and Belgium later made a string of arrests and convicted a number of Al Qaida–linked North African men for providing the killers with forged documents and cover stories. It seems Osama Bin Laden had correctly judged that following his network’s now infamous terrorist attacks on the United States two days later, Washington would naturally turn to Massoud’s Northern Alliance to capture or kill him. Indeed, they did. But the Northern Alliance would have to go into that battle without their great commander.
I can only liken it to the day in America when President Kennedy died. Americans of that generation always say they remember exactly where they were when they heard the news. It was the same for us Afghans when Massoud died. Even Shaharzad, who was just a tiny girl of three, remembers that day.
For many, Massoud was the hero of the mujahideen, the man who had led the battle against the Soviets. He was a skillful tactician and a brutally efficient soldier. His victories earned him the title “Lion of the Panjshir.” But for many of the younger generation, like me, who had been damaged by that war, his real heroism began when he started to fight against the Taliban. He was so often the lone voice speaking out and warning against the extremism they carried with them. He warned the world about the terrorists and he paid for that with his life.
To this day I struggle to understand how the West ignored his message that Islamic terrorism was a threat to the world. He told them that if we don’t stop it now, stop it today in Afghanistan, tomorrow it will come to their borders. He tried to explain that he was a Muslim—a strong Muslim—but the Islam the Taliban propagated was not one he agreed with nor one that represented the culture or history of the Afghan nation. He had five children, four daughters and a son. All of his daughters were educated and he often spoke about that. He tried to educate people that Islamic values do not prevent a woman from being educated or working. He knew the Taliban was creating a negative image of Islam around the world and he tried to counter this.
He was such an inspiration to me. He taught me that freedom is not a gift from God. It is something men must earn.
When he died I felt Afghanistan had lost all hope.
Just 48 hours later Massoud’s warnings about Islamic terrorism came horrifically true. The twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were attacked, along with the Pentagon in Virginia, while a fourth airliner crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing 40 passengers and crew along with four hijackers, taking the total number of Al Qaida victims that day to 2,977 people. Innocent people.
The world had woken up to the warnings too late to save these poor people.
And many more innocent lives, mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq, would be lost in the so-called war on terror that now followed.
Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,
It saddens me so much that many people in the world have a negative view of our country and our culture. The reality is there are many people who think all Afghans are terrorists or fundamentalists.
They think this because our country has so often been at the heart of the world’s strategic battles—wars over oil, the cold war, the war on terror.
But beneath this is a country of great history, of enlightenment, of culture. This was a land where our own warriors built great minarets and monuments. It was even a land where early Islamic kings allowed other faiths to build their own monuments, such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan. It is a land of mountains and skies that never end, of emerald forests and azure lakes. It is a place where the people show hospitality and warmth like no others. It is also a nation where honor, faith, tradition, and duty know no bounds. This, my dear girls, is a land to be proud of.
Never deny your heritage. And never apologize for it. You are Afghans. Take pride in this. And make it your duty to restore our true Afghan pride to the world.
This is a big duty I ask of you. But it is one your grandchildren will thank you for.
With love,
Your mother
SEVENTEEN
THE DARKNESS LIFTS
On September 11, 2001, I was sitting at my desk when a colleague ran in clutching a radio. We listened in shock at the news that the twin towers had been attacked.
I had tears running down my face as I thought about all those people trapped inside that building. We had no skyscrapers in Afghanistan and I had never seen a building so high it touched the sky, so I could only imagine the terror of being unable to get out of a burning building.
For the first time I felt a strong connection between what was happening in Afghanistan and what was happening on the other side of the world. For me the whole story was like one big jigsaw puzzle. It was a puzzle that had been coming together for years. Now someone somewhere had placed the final piece on the board. And the world was shaking with shock.
Bitterly I thought that at least world leaders would now finally recognize that Ahmed Shah Massoud’s warnings had been right when he said terrorism would come to their borders.
What I didn’t expect was such a quick response from the world. Many Afghans would disagree with me on this, but I personally believe very strongly that the United States was right to send troops into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban.
At work, a barrage of emails started to come in, warning international UN staff to leave Afghanistan and all local staff to stay in their main office and not travel within the country. My boss was from another province and went to be with his family, so I was left to manage the office alone.
It was a very difficult time because we had been setti
ng up a back-toschool campaign in which thousands of boys and girls who were past school age but who had missed an education because of the war or the Taliban were invited back to finish their studies.
UNICEF, in cooperation with other organizations, provided the children with temporary school tents, stationery, and books. It was exhausting but hugely rewarding to know that I was helping to ensure that these young people an education.
We had also been planning a big polio immunization campaign all over the province. For two months, alone, we managed to implement the immunization campaign for children and we managed to keep the schools open. I was still the only Afghan female UNICEF staff member inside Afghanistan, and now I was also the only one managing the office.
In America the investigation into who carried out the 9/11 attacks quickly identified the hijackers, and then traced their activities back to Al Qaida sources. Washington demanded that the Taliban government hand over Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban refused.
On October 7, 2001, less than a month after the attack on the World Trade Center, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom. American and British warplanes and cruise missiles struck Taliban and Al Qaida targets across Afghanistan. At the same time Massoud’s Northern Alliance soldiers began to push south toward Kabul with the aid of their new-found air superiority, but sadly without their key general.