Women and the Future of Afghanistan

Tahmeena Faryal, a 26-year-old member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, has the makings of an Central Asian Victoria Woodhull.

Like the 19th-century feminist who ran for President of the United States in 1872, she speaks with blunt ferocity and sees the participation of women in politics as imperative. She also has devoted her life to improving the lot of the disenfranchised. And, like Woodhull, Faryal's mission is seen as far-fetched -- not because women are without political power today, but because in Afghanistan they are among the most oppressed people in the world.

Plus, as is now widely known, after two decades of civil war and the U.S.-led bombing campaign, Afghan politics are in complete disarray. A post-war coalition government that would include members of the country's 23 tribes is considered optimistic; one that also would include scores of women, given the extreme misogyny there, is deemed impossible.

I met Faryal at a pre-speech luncheon, on a U.S. speaking tour that was arranged before the Sept. 11 attacks. Previous to September few paid attention to women's rights abuses under the Taliban; now all eyes are on this bombed-out nation. So Faryal found ready ears for her story of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), the oldest feminist organization in the country, and for this she is darkly glad.

"The people of Afghanistan are paying the price for Sept. 11," she said to an audience of 500 organized by the human rights group Global Exchange. "Yet we're happy to have the attention. Amnesty International reports Afghanistan is the largest human rights tragedy in the world. I am here to tell you where that tragedy started and why there seems to be no resistance."

"Seems" is the operative word here. In reality, there is a resistance, and Faryal is part of it. She left Afghanistan at age 10 with her family, who fled the then-Soviet-occupied country for Pakistan. Her mother joined RAWA soon after it was formed in 1977 by an Afghan student activist named Meena, who became part of the anti-Soviet resistance, connected it to women's rights and was assassinated by fundamentalists and the KGB 10 years later. In Pakistan, Faryal went to RAWA schools and six years ago began teaching and organizing herself. She has come to the United States under a veil of secrecy and a false name, but given the publicity she has garnered since late October I wondered aloud what awaits her return in Pakistan.

"I am not sure," said Faryal. "But what could happen to me is typical of what happens to Afghan women and children every day. Women are raped, beaten, humiliated and robbed of their life. Children starve and the male ones are brainwashed into becoming fundamentalists who in turn hate and oppress women."

Faryal said that since the Soviet invasion of 1979, RAWA has been on the forefront of the women's and human rights movement in Afghanistan. The group now has 2,000 members in Afghanistan and Pakistan and runs secret, and illegal, schools and employment sites for women and girls in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, where the group is permitted to operate more openly, RAWA holds teach-ins and, until recently, operated a hospital. (It was closed because of financial constraints.)

But the group has critics. Western observers have called RAWA Maoist and some feminists in Central Asia have accused the group of pursuing an overly radical agenda.

"During the Soviet invasion, the rule of the Northern Alliance and then the Taliban, the goals of RAWA has remained the same," Faryal said in the group's defense. "We seek women's emancipation, freedom of speech and other human rights guarantees. But much of our work now is in reaction to the emergency situation, feeding people, tending to the sick and educating them to the extent we can."