Ministry created to right wrongs has upped awareness, but achieved little else
By Kim Barker
Chicago Tribune, 16 January 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Sharifa Hamrah does not go to work much anymore. Her job is just too dangerous, considering the rocket attacks, the threats on her life and the would-be suicide bomber who disguised himself as a woman in an attempt to get to her office.
She is no soldier. She carries no gun. Yet Hamrah, 48, a short woman with a sly smile and a head scarf, has become an unwilling participant in a war, a potential target like the other women who work for the Women's Affairs Ministry in Afghanistan.
"Our problem is we cannot go out," said Hamrah, who is head of women's affairs in troubled southern Paktika province but spends much of her time in Kabul. "We cannot go to the districts. We cannot go to the villages. We cannot talk to village elders. We cannot even talk to women."
The Women's Affairs Ministry, charged with defending women's rights in a country where they have few, cannot cite many accomplishments. It has no executive power. It cannot enforce any laws. But it has increased awareness of the problems women face, with anti-violence campaigns on radio and billboards. And it is now known as a place where women can vent their complaints, which is more than they could do during the harsh regime of the Taliban.
But the ministry, created by the post-Taliban government, is in trouble. The head of women's affairs in Kandahar province, who had criticized the Taliban's treatment of women, was gunned down in front of her home in September. Some women working for the department started staying home. And the Taliban, which claimed responsibility for that attack, is hardly the only threat.
Parliament backlash
In its last session, the fledgling Afghan parliament discussed dismantling or downgrading the Women's Affairs Ministry, saying it was not effective. The move to get rid of the ministry, along with others deemed unnecessary, failed late last year. But several members of parliament are threatening again to abolish the ministry in the upcoming session.
"It's not a good idea to have a ministry with a gender in the name," said Mohammed Khan, one of the parliament members who voted to get rid of it. "The Women's Affairs Ministry has not done anything so far. It's just for the name. It's nothing else."
After the Taliban regime fell in late 2001, Afghanistan's new government vowed to improve the lives of women. The Taliban forced women to quit their jobs and made them wear all-encompassing burqas when they left home.
But the Taliban was only the harshest embodiment of the oppression of women in Afghanistan. Under earlier regimes, women were considered subservient to men. Girls were forced to marry old men; outside of major cities, women did not work away from home.
Now, women have more freedom, more jobs. In the streets of Kabul, many women have stopped wearing burqas, favoring business jackets, long skirts and head scarves. They work in government offices. More than 25 percent of the parliamentary seats are reserved for women.
But one outspoken female lawmaker sleeps in a different house every night or two, to make sure her enemies cannot find her. Only one out of 25 Cabinet ministers is a woman--and she runs the Ministry of Women's Affairs. Of the 4,600 teachers in Afghan colleges, only 600 are women. The head of women's affairs in the troubled southern province of Zabul won a chance to go to India for training; her husband, a doctor, forbade it.
Hamrah, in charge of women's affairs in Paktika, used to hold seminars. But last March 8, at an event marking International Women's Day in Paktika, eight rockets were fired nearby.
In the last two months, insurgents have left two leaflets threatening Hamrah. She said police have warned her four times of potential suicide bombers. In December, a man, hidden under a burqa, tried to get in to see Hamrah. Police searched him because his high-pitched voice sounded fake, Hamrah said. The man was strapped with explosives. He was arrested and the bombs were defused.
"They've said they can easily kill me," Hamrah said. "Why should I doubt them? They killed the secretary of the governor. They killed the provincial judge. They killed many people."
A report last fall by Womankind Worldwide, an international women's advocacy group, said millions of Afghan women and girls face discrimination and violence, and many are victims of human trafficking.
The Ministry of Women's Affairs has pushed back against efforts to close it, but it is difficult to prove that it is effective when it has little power. Officials want to promote a new bill to prevent violence against women.
The new women's affairs minister, Hosn Banu Ghazanfar, said she is trying to work with the Health Ministry to develop more services for women, and with the Higher Education Ministry to persuade colleges to hire more female teachers. She also wants to educate Afghanistan about why child marriages are bad and why it's important for girls to go to school.
With the help of a foreign relief agency, the ministry in late November put up fancy billboards in Kabul trying to educate people about violence against women. One shows a woman with a tear trailing down her face. Another shows women in head scarves, pounding their fists into the air. "May the hand of aggression against women shorten," it says.
"We know some of our suggestions have not been accepted," Ghazanfar said. "We are not receiving good signals. We've lost some people. Women have been warned. Offices have been closed. There are some conservative forces, who do not want things to change."
Every morning at the ministry is a litany of abuse tales, a line of sad women crouching in burqas in the cold corridor, and pockets of men, who insist that their women be returned to them. Judge Fawzia Aminiy, the head of the legal department, hears almost 30 cases a week, but she has limited power.
Safra, who did not want her last name used, pulled back a dirty blue burqa, revealing a bruise below her left eye. Bruises lined her arms. Her unemployed husband of 13 years had beat her for hours, stopping to rest several times, because she refused to work as a prostitute to pay the bills. Safra had walked out, leaving her four children behind. She wanted to leave him unless he promised to never again ask her to sell her body.
`I have no one'
"I cannot complain to anyone," said Safra, who did not know her age but is likely in her late 20s. "I have no one. I cannot find my way. I cannot go anywhere in Kabul. I wish I was a city girl, but I'm a country girl."
"You need to go to the Kabul courts," Aminiy told her. "Your husband needs to be asked questions. And if he is guilty, he should be punished."
So Safra left, bewildered, clutching a letter in a plastic bag, unsure of how to take a bus, unable to afford a taxi.
She was not the worst case Aminiy would see that week, nothing compared with the pregnant woman who survived being stabbed 28 times. But she was a typical example, and in all likelihood, she would eventually end up back home, like most of the other women who come here, resigned to their fate, unable to figure out how to leave.
"It's just not our job to find her a shelter," said Aminiy, rubbing her forehead. "And we don't have one, anyway."
----------------------------
Citation: Kim Barker. "Afghanistan's efforts to boost women falter," Chicago Tribune, 16 January 2007.
Original URL: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0701160180jan16,1,1921178.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true
----------------------------