Between the Bomb and the Burqa
   
Sunday 08 August 2010
     
Yana Kunichoff and Mike Ludwig, t r u t h o u t  | News Analysis

http://www.truth-out.org/between-bomb-and-burqa62110
   
Her voice was thick with passion as she argued for ending violence against
fellow Afghan women, but the men didn't listen. Instead they hurled insults
at her; they called her a prostitute and a traitor to her religion. The
stubborn men's insults were abusive and frustrating, but it had been worse
for other women in her position. They were threatened and hunted down. Some
of them were killed.

Like many recent reports in the media, this story conjures up images of a
brave Afghan villager struggling against the tyrannical rule of a Taliban
court or insurgent militia, but that's not case: the woman in this story is
an unnamed member of the Afghan Parliament supported by the United States.
The verbal abuse is recounted by another female Afghan official in a recent
Human Rights Watch
<http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2010/07/13/ten-dollar-talib-and-women-s-right
s-0>  (HRW) report. The men who called her a prostitute were her colleagues
and fellow legislators, the supposed enemies of the religious fanatics
fighting for control of Afghanistan.

Such accounts shed doubts on the narrative of female liberation following
the initial toppling of the Taliban, as the reinvigorated debate over the
occupation has renewed the media's interest in the abuses suffered by Afghan
women at the hands of America's enemies. Human rights advocates may be
pleased, but media critics say the plight of Afghan woman is being used to
rally support for the war, and as a recent military leak reveals, the
government secretly considered such a media strategy as recently as this
spring.

Time magazine became the poster child for this trend last week with a cover
story <http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20100809,00.html>  featuring
the disfigured face of a young Afghan girl named Aisha with the ominous
headline: "This is What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan."

"They are the people that did this to me," Aisha told the Time reporter as
she touched her damaged face, disfigured as part of Taliban punishment for
running away from her abusive in-laws. "How can we reconcile with them?"

Aisha's heartbreaking plea reveals the harsh reality of living in a war-torn
and ultra-religious society. She puts a face on the Afghan dilemma, but
critics contend that the Time article on Aisha oversimplifies a complicated
issue.

"Feminists have long argued that invoking the condition of women to justify
occupation is a cynical ploy and the Time cover already stands accused of
it," wrote
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/03/burkas-bikinis-reality-
afghan-lives>  Priyamvada Gopal, an English professor at Cambridge
University, in The Guardian UK. "Misogynist violence is unacceptable, but we
must also be concerned by the continued insistence that the complexities of
war, occupation and reality itself can be reduced to bedtime stories."

A careful editorial
<http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007238,00.html>  by Time
editor Rick Stengel insists that the magazine is not "either in support of
the US war effort or in opposition to it," but its intention is also an
attempt to counterbalance the recent WikiLeaks release of more than 90,000
documents detailing the military actions in Afghanistan.

According to Stengel, the leaked documents cannot provide "emotional truth
and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land," but a
different WikiLeaks release does provide some insight on using Afghan women
to promote war.

The Red Cell CIA Leak

An internal Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) document
<http://www.wikileaks.org>  released by WikiLeaks in March reveals a secret
plan to use the plight of Afghan women and refugees in developing media
strategies to "leverage French (and other European) guilt" during an
especially bloody summer of military escalation. The confidential document
was prepared by the Red Cell, a secretive group that consults the US
intelligence community.

In response to the news that Dutch forces would soon withdraw from
Afghanistan, the Red Cell outlined a plan to use Afghan women and refugees
in developing media strategies to ensure that more NATO allies would not
succumb to public pressure and follow suit. The memo claimed that a "not our
problem" sentiment toward the Afghan conflict allowed European leaders to
ignore voter's vast disapproval of the occupation, but "forecasts of a
bloody summer" could provoke a public backlash.

The forecast was correct: June and July were the deadliest months for NATO
and US forces to date. The record number of body bags coupled with the
firing of former US Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the bloody revelations
provided by the massive WikiLeaks release has pushed international support
for the war to a new low.

Bloomberg reported
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-30/support-for-afghan-mission-may-cru
mble-over-war-leaks-cdu-lawmaker-says.html>  last week that, in the wake of
the WikiLeaks release, approximately 70 percent of Germans want their troops
to leave "as soon as possible." Germany has the third largest military
presence in Afghanistan.

The number of Americans who believe it was a mistake to invade Afghanistan
in 2001 reached an all-time high of 43 percent, according to a USA
Today/Gallup poll
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-08-02-afghan-poll_N.htm>
released this week.

It's unclear if the CIA anticipated such a perfect storm of public
controversy, but the Red Cell memo reveals a startling strategy for dealing
with it, especially in regards to women.

The memo suggests that Afghan women "could serve as ideal messengers for
humanizing" the coalition's role in Afghanistan, citing polls showing that
fewer French and German women support the war compared to males in both
countries.

"Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to
share their stories with French, German and other European women could help
overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe. Media events
that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective
if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female
audiences."

The Red Cell memo encouraged creating media opportunities for Afghan women
because of their "ability to speak personally and credibly about their
experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their
fears of a Taliban victory."

The Role of the Media

Jennifer Pozner, the director of Women in Media and News
<http://www.wimnonline.org/> , a media analysis and advocacy group, told
Truthout that the similarity between the Red Cell memo and Time magazine's
push for militarism as the answer to the abuse of women is not a new
phenomenon.

Pozner said that, following 9/11, the Bush administration used "the supposed
humanitarian aspect of the war [to sell it to] those few who weren't
convinced by rah-rah patriotism." Support of the corporate press was
essential.

Pozner, who had followed the coverage of Afghan women in the media before
the 9/11 terrorist attacks, said she saw this cynical trend continue under
the Obama administration. The women's rights issue became a convenient
propaganda tool for corporate media to sell the war.

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"Once Afghan women and girls' suffering was no longer needed as a propaganda
device, we quickly lost sight of their stories again in the U.S. media,"
Pozner said.

Nahid Aziz, an Afghan woman and professor of clinical psychology at Argosy
University in Washington, DC, who now works with Afghans at home and
immigrants in the United States, also derided the American media's
concentration on the plight of Afghan women as a "political tactic ... that
unfortunately is very true and representative of the American media."

"There are phases of talking about Afghan women, but there is no continued
kind of attention," Aziz said. "It is all dependant on the politics."

Peter Hart, activism director at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
<http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=100>  , a media watchdog group, said
that Afghanistan had always been the "good war" in the media.

"There was very little built-in criticism of the Afghanistan war, and I
think that has attributed to the general lack of criticism of the war nine
years later," Hart said. "Focusing on this feminist issue as a way to
maintain public support is the first and last refuge of people trying to
rationalize the Afghan war."

He noted the similarities between last week's Time cover and the one in the
first week of December, 2001, just as the invasion was getting underway.

"We were going into Afghanistan to rescue the women from the brutality of
the Taliban, but in 2010 the women of Afghanistan are still being
brutalized," Hart said. "This makes no logical sense."

Pozner said the corporate media's addiction to access forces it to forgo
truly critical reporting for the latest scoop from the White House.

The portrayal of women in Afghanistan was particularly one-dimensional,
Pozner noted. Looking "at pictures of women in burqas should offend western
sensibilities" was the message of the media as the invasion took off,
allowing the running of "a few pictures of Afghan women in more urban
centers removing their burqas" to equate in American minds with "victory,
mission accomplished."

These reports never really considered the vast depths of oppression, Pozner
said, such as the abuse Aisha suffered. Aisha's case is an example of some
of the most entrenched excesses of the Taliban and particularly of Pashtun
tribal society in remote areas. At the age of 12, Aisha and her younger
sister were used to settle a dispute. Under a tribal custom known as "baad,"
the two girls were given to the family of a Taliban fighter to settle a
blood debt incurred by their uncle.

Aisha was married to the Taliban fighter and, because he was constantly in
hiding, was housed with her sister with her in-laws' livestock. Aisha and
her sister were used as slaves and frequently beaten, a situation Aisha
eventually fled.

A year ago, Aisha's husband tracked her down in Kandahar, took her back to
his remote village and, on a deserted mountainside, cut off her nose, both
her ears and left her bleeding. To this day, Aisha does not remember how she
managed to walk to help.

The Obama administration's increased focus
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/us/politics/28policy.html>  on civil
society and female literacy has helped move Afghan civil society away from
the worst gender-based oppression of the Taliban years. Thousands of girls'
schools have opened since the fall of the Taliban, and an estimated half a
billion dollars in international assistance is now destined for
gender-equality programs.

The Debate on the Ground

Women for Afghan Women
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/us/politics/28policy.html>  (WAW), a
community and advocacy group based in New York, but working on the ground in
Afghanistan, and the Feminist Majority Foundation <http://feminist.org/>
have been at the forefront
<http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-07-21/news/21991344_1_afghan-women-women-s-
rights-troop-withdrawal>  of the discussion as progressive groups in favor
of the US troop presence in Afghanistan.

"If the coalition forces leave, the Taliban or other conservative factions
will be much stronger," said Manizha Naderi, the Afghan-born executive
director of WAW. "Women's mobility and participation in everyday life will
be limited again."

But Aziz, who herself fled Afghanistan in 1982 at the age of 15, said the
view on the ground is not so simple. Aziz said that women in the urban city
of Kabul or female parliamentarians may have a positive assessment of
Western occupation, but women living in remote areas may have a much
different perspective.

In addition, women are disproportionately affected by military conflict or
disaster. According to the United Nations
<http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/women/women96.htm> , about 80 percent
of the world's refugees are women and children.

Sonali Kolhatkar, founder of the Afghan Women's Mission (AWM) and Mariam
Rawi of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) wrote
<http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/141165/why_is_a_leading_feminis
t_organization_lending_its_name_to_support_escalation_in_afghanistan/>  last
month on AlterNet, "Coalition troops are combat forces and are there to
fight a war, not to preserve peace ... Women always disproportionately
suffer the effects of war, and to think that women's rights can be won with
bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naiveté."

The American military itself has come under attack for their treatment of
women, both within the civilian population of Afghanistan and in its own
ranks. The highly publicized rape and murder of a young Afghan woman
<http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/07/09/soldiers.charged/index.html>  ended only
in the honorable discharge of the accused soldier, and rape among women in
the military is nearly twice as common as it is in the civilian population -
nearly one out of three women <http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3848/> .

Malalai Joya, a former parliamentarian and outspoken critic of the Taliban
as well as Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said
<http://blog.peaceactionwest.org/2010/08/02/this-is-not-a-war-for-womens-rig
hts/>  Afghan women "are sandwiched between three powerful enemies: the
occupation forces of the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban and the corrupt
government of Hamid Karzai."

Karzai was once seen as a champion of women's causes and a welcome change to
Taliban rule until he failed to deliver on promises to appoint women to
cabinet posts. In 2009, he angered international allies by signing onto the
so-called "rape" law, containing clauses making it illegal for woman to
refuse to have sex with their husbands, and women can only seek work,
education or visit the doctor with the permission of their husband. It was
dropped under international pressure
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/05/afghanistan-shia-rape-law-scrap
> .

In addition, the Karzai government, with tacit approval from the Obama
administration, has moved toward discreet negotiations
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/19/obama-afghanistan-strategy-tali
ban-negotiate>  with senior level Taliban commanders and the men who made
decisions that left women all over Afghanistan shrouded and house bound
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/leave-your-job-or-we-will-cut-
your-head-off-your-body-2028706.html> .
Reports from international observers further reveal the current situation of
Afghan women on the ground nine years into the US invasion.

The Human Rights Watch report released last month revealed that Afghan women
continue to suffer horrific abuses in Taliban-controlled areas and continue
to be ignored - and even violently attacked - while attempting to
participate in the US-backed Afghan government. The report warns that abuse
will flourish if women are left out of upcoming negotiations to end the
conflict.

"The Afghan government is already undermined by the entrenched power of
former warlords and gangster oligarchs," according to the report. "This
situation reflects years of deal making made in the name of stability and
security for which both the government and its international supporters bear
responsibility."

A 2009 report
<http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWFiles2009.nsf/FilesByRWDocUnidFilename/PSLG-7
TRHRC-full_report.pdf/$File/full_report.pdf>  by the UN Assistance Mission
in Afghanistan found that, although underreported and concealed, rape "is an
everyday occurrence in all parts of the country" and is most often carried
out by individuals who are immune to the law due to tribal or political
affiliations.

Crucially, Aziz notes, it must be recognized that the brutal disfiguring of
Aisha occurred during the US presence in Afghanistan.

"If there was really this protection provided by the US, that would not have
happened," Aziz said.

The discussion over the contentious Time magazine cover has highlighted a
rift in the progressive, between those advocating a complete withdrawal and
those arguing for a continued presence to mitigate the violence of the
Taliban against women.

But Aziz notes that media reports leave out a crucial third option for
Afghan society.

"The military is not the only solution," Aziz said, arguing that a genuine
commitment to Afghanistan must go beyond troop surges. "We have to use
diplomacy to make sure that there is civil society and comprehensive
education, issues that were not taken very seriously in the past nine
years."

According to Pozner, the continual uncritical coverage of American war
efforts in Afghanistan by the corporate media does a disservice to Afghan
women and everyone involved in the conflict.

"Afghan women deserve far more than to be used as pawns in US war games, and
journalists need to do their jobs," said Pozner, decrying a media that "is
far more willing to act as stenographers than watch dogs."

There is no question that the struggles and abuses faced by Afghan women are
real. But experts affirm that only fundamental reforms in Afghan society can
change this. Afghan women are trapped somewhere between the truth and the
spin, the bomb and burqa.