LETTER TO THE WASHINGTON POST
April 7, 1999
The Style Section Editor
The Washington Post
Washington, D.C.
Re: The Style Section, A Cause Unveiled, March 30,
1999
Dear Sirs,
I am an Afghan American woman. I have lived
outside Afghanistan since 1965 and I have been an American citizen for
nearly 25 years.
I read with mounting dismay the article regarding
Mavis Leno's efforts for the Afghan women. In it the Feminist
Majority's point of view is shown somewhat. More clearly, we saw the
Taliban's view. What I found totally missing, however, was a vision of
the Afghan woman before the current impasse, a point of reference. I
also found a few inaccuracies. Even though the pain of the Afghan
tragedy strains everyone's objectivity, I feel we owe it to Post
readers to provide this third view so they could formulate a more
accurate vision. Below I have tried to describe and correct based on
my own understanding of the situation:
For the better part of this century until the
coming of the Taliban, the women of Afghanistan formed an undeniably
active segment of the Afghan society. Those in the villages and
countryside worked alongside their menfolk in the fields. The educated
ones fully participated in the building of the 20th century
Afghanistan.
The first girls' elementary school began in the
1920's. The first girls' high school opened in 1939 and granted its
first baccalaureate degree to 6 Afghan girls in 1947. Two years later
Kabul University started its female section. When the school first
began, in addition to the aristocracy, girls from very poor and modest
families also joined. Some even had head lice, wore no shoes and were
devoid of social skills. Within a short time of less than 20 years,
not only many other girls' schools had opened, but also, the graduates
were entirely engaged in building their society outside the home.
Among them were cabinet ministers, members of parliament, governmental
directors, university professors, businesswomen, writers, doctors,
lawyers, singers, diplomats, judges, poets, educators and such. The
professions were not stereotyped by gender and so the technocrat class
included a large number of women.
According to one estimate, in 1973, there were
about 104,000 school girls across the country and in the city of Kabul
alone there were 82 girls' schools, all run by the government. Female
education elsewhere in the country, while lagging behind the capital,
a norm almost everywhere in the world, soared. Some provincial schools
even surpassed those of Kabul in the quality of their education, such
as the schools of Herat. When I left Afghanistan in 1965, education
and working outside the home were a norm of my generation's thought
process in Kabul; so extensive and accepted was women's participation
in the society I could not picture myself any other way. As for the
provinces, school resources and work opportunities were replacing
social resistance as major educational issues.
The current situation around the women's human
rights issue in Afghanistan is purely political. True enough that the
previous regime, or more accurately, its militia tragically and
wrongfully committed atrocities against women. However, women still
enjoyed their human rights; by one count there were several thousand
women teachers in the boys' and girls' schools of Kabul alone. I do
not remember a single incident of women (or for that matter men)
demonstrating or petitioning the government asking it to reinstitute
the veil (chadari or burqa) or forbid them to work or go to school. To
claim that the current situation is for the good of women is like
putting under house arrest every office worker in the World Trade
Center and telling them that it is to protect them from terrorist
bombings instead of tracking the terrorists.
Also, the claim that the practices of the Taliban
mirror the traditional village and Islamic values of Afghanistan is
incorrect. As your article points out (implies) the traditional values
of the village and countryside are for women not to wear the
all-enveloping veil. They typically wear just a head scarf, at home,
in the market and in the field. Some women wear the chadari as a way
to show off their gentrification. And the authority to allow her to
wear either, rests solely with the men of her immediate family, not
the government. It is an insult to men and a means of subjugating
them, especially among the Pashtuns, to usurp this authority. This is
why when the women's emancipation of 1959 occurred, it was clearly
left up to the men of a family to decide on it. As for the claim that
these are Islamic traditions, today human rights are observed in most
Islamic countries, the way they were in Afghanistan before the coming
of the Taliban and certainly before the 20 years of war began. The
1964 and 1977 constitutions of Afghanistan provided for gender
equality. It is an affront to the populations of these countries to
imply that they are not good Moslems. It is an insult to all Moslem
Afghans, a decidedly pious people for 1300 years, to imply that our
fathers were not Moslem enough. The Taliban have thus far portrayed
these traditions as caricatures and a mockery of the ancient and
cultured heritage of the Afghan people. In fact, Afghanistan is a
traditional society where, helped by its Islamic traditions, the
dignity of human beings was paramount. In my 18 years there, I never
saw that dignity violated; I never saw a hand cut off or a woman
flayed.
I fully believe that the people of Afghanistan
including her women are capable of building once again, another
viable, vibrant and civilized society, if ever permitted to do so.
These people need Afghan and non-Afghan friends that will support them
in healing, educating and rebuilding their society, not in assigning
them degrees of humanity as the Taliban seem to be doing and as the
Feminist Majority tried to highlight. It is also this self-respecting,
educated and forward looking society that will prove to be the best
insurance of our American best interests in the region as it did so
well in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's and so valiantly in the 1980's.
Sincerely,
Nasrine Abou-Bakre Gross Compiler/editor of
Qassarikh-e Malalay: Memories of the First Girls High School in
Afghanistan, published in 1998, containing the personal narratives of
about 100 students, teachers and employees of the school who give in
their own words an account of life in Afghanistan (and outside it as
refugees) from the 1920's to 1998
Note: The above letter was sent to the Washington
Post addressed to Ms. Meg Greenfield. It was not published by the
Post. The author recently learned that at the time of writing of this
letter Ms. Greenfield was ill and has since passed away. May her soul
rest in peace!
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