Kabul’s Tragedy Unveiled Women Suffer Under Islamic Rebels
For the women of Kabul, it has been a week of fear and virtual imprisonment.
Under the strict Islamic regime that the Taliban militia imposed after it captured the capital nine days ago, women cannot go to work and girls cannot go to school.
If women do leave their homes, they are ordered to wear flowing garments that cover their bodies completely and conceal their eyes behind cloth mesh. The required garment, called a “burqa,” costs the equivalent of a government worker’s monthly salary.
Many women chose not to go anywhere after zealous militiamen assaulted several who had appeared on the streets in attire deemed immodest. Two apparently were punished for wearing scarves that left their eyes exposed.
“I’m very afraid to go out on the street. It’s terrible for a woman to be hit by a strange man,” a female surgeon said. “Even when there was fighting, I was not so afraid as I am now.”
“It was a tough week for most of the women,” said another physician who did not make her first foray on Taliban-ruled streets until Friday.
But the immediate impact of what may be the world’s most stringent Islamic regime extends beyond women and girls. Schools do not have enough male teachers to operate, and without women, hospitals are short-staffed. Social services and employment provided by private aid groups and the government also have been disrupted, causing more hardship for needy families in one of the world’s poorest countries. Eighteen years of armed conflict here - a hard-won guerrilla war against a Soviet-installed communist regime, followed by bloody fighting among the victors - have left many large families dependent on the income of war widows.
The relatively large presence of women in the professions and civil service means that their absence from the work place has broad social effects. Women make up an estimated 70 percent of teachers, half of all civilian government workers and 40 percent of physicians. A large percentage of Afghans employed by private aid groups and U.N. organizations are women.
“It’s going to be very hard for the agencies to move forward without working out this problem, because a lot of females (are employed) in their offices,” said Jay Zimmerman, program director of the Save the Children aid group in Kabul. “I don’t even know how the government will be able to operate without female staff.”
Sunday, acting Foreign Minister Mohammed Ghaus dismissed concerns about women’s employment by private aid groups as “small questions” that will be resolved in the future. The aid groups “should not relate their work to particular persons,” he said.
The Taliban ordered girls’ schools shut down, but virtually all schools closed anyway because there were not enough male teachers to go around. Kabul University is also closed. At one high school, girls started crying when their female teacher announced on the first day of Taliban rule that classes would be halted.
Confronted with international condemnation of what critics regard as sex discrimination and a human rights issue, Taliban leaders have made contradictory statements about whether education for females will resume.
Girls’ schools in other parts of Afghanistan under the militia’s control have been closed since last year, but acting Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Stanakzai said girls’ schools in Kabul would reopen after regulations are issued to ensure that they operate in accord with the Taliban’s version of Islamic principle.
“Nobody is going to stop them from education,” Stanakzai told foreign reporters last week. “We are not against women in education. The right is given to them in our religion. … We will then make arrangements for them so they can get education in their fields.” But Amir Khan Muttaqi, the acting information minister, said Monday that girls would be educated only until age 8 and only in religious schools overseen by mosques.
“Just now, we’ll let the girls go to school for (their first) eight years,” Muttaqi said in an interview.
Asked why other Islamic nations have not imposed similar bans on work and education, Muttaqi replied that the Taliban aims to establish a “100 percent Islamic government.”
This is not a new issue for Afghanistan; one reason that Islamic militiamen of various factions waged a holy war against the Soviets and their puppet Afghan government in the 1980s was the communist regime’s policy of educating females.
Stanakzai said that girls’ schools were closed because they were being run under the old communist system, while Muttaqi blamed the security situation and the damage a four-year civil war has done to school buildings.
At hospitals and clinics, some female doctors and nurses did return to their jobs under what Stanakzai said was an exemption for health workers. At one hospital, half the female nurses were on the job at midweek, according to the male head nurse. Patients at overburdened health facilities faced slow or inattentive care while female health professionals stayed home.
“We’re like prisoners here,” said the surgeon, who like the other female physician interviewed was fearful of being named. “It’s not a life, just being home cooking and looking after the kids.”
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