[The peace talks could return the Taliban to power, and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government so far has been excluded from the dialogue. But his wife, first lady Rula Ghani, has emerged as a powerful voice on the talks and women’s role in them. She is working to become, as she says, “the little stone you put under the urn so it will not fall. This is what I do for Afghan women.”]
By
Amie Ferris-Rotman and Sayed Salahuddin
 |
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Afghan
first lady Rula Ghani is pushing for women’s involvement in the peace process
between
the United States and the Taliban. (Kiana Hayeri/for The Washington Post)
|
KABUL
— For many women in Afghanistan, peace talks
between the United States and the Taliban are evoking the darkest days of their
lives, when the group stripped women of their most basic rights.
The Taliban regime banned girls from going to
school. Women were forbidden from working. They had to be covered head to toe
when venturing outside and accompanied by a male relative, even if that meant
their baby boy. Showing a wisp of hair would get them whipped by vigilantes.
The peace talks could return the Taliban to
power, and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government so far has been excluded
from the dialogue. But his wife, first lady Rula Ghani, has emerged as a
powerful voice on the talks and women’s role in them. She is working to become,
as she says, “the little stone you put under the urn so it will not fall. This
is what I do for Afghan women.”
Her involvement has bolstered grass-roots
movements around the country of women who insist, in the words of one popular
hashtag, that Afghan women will not go back.
“I realized, that as first lady, I do have
some privileges,” Rula Ghani said in an interview in her chambers within the
sprawling presidential palace in the center of Kabul, where security concerns
have largely confined the 70-year-old to its scented gardens and cherry
blossom-lined paths.
With women in government, women at
universities, thriving rights groups and a capital city abuzz with young men
and women in its cafes, the country has dramatically changed from the time of
the Taliban in the late 1990s.
The first lady wants women’s voices in the
peace process to be heard, pushing the dialogue beyond the unheeded calls by
the United States and NATO for women to be at the table.
“We were not seeing any kind of real work
being done to understand what women really want. What are their thoughts? What
are their priorities? What do they see as obstacles to peace?” Ghani asked with
a faint but recognizable French lilt, a nod to her upbringing in Lebanon and
studies in Paris.
Afghan women activists say the stated focus
of the U.S. peace talks — the withdrawal of foreign troops and efforts of
counterterrorism — sideline them by definition. U.S.-Taliban talks in Doha,
Qatar, have been marked by all-male photo sessions. Talks in Moscow between
Afghan power brokers and the Taliban recently included two Afghan women at a
42-seat table.
And when U.S. envoy for peace Zalmay
Khalilzad held a large high-level meeting in Kabul earlier this month with the
Afghan president and the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Scott Miller, not a
single woman was present.
Even the Taliban have said it now supports
women’s rights, including education — as long as the rights comply with Islamic
principles. Afghan women and men have chafed at this, saying that leaves much
to interpretation.
To address women’s concerns, the first lady’s
office and women’s organizations set out in August to survey15,000 women in
Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, including those contested or under Taliban control.
Each meeting was different. In southern
Helmand province, women said learning how to read and write was the only way to
achieve peace. In central Samangan, participants burst into song, demanding
their voices be heard by the international community. In Konar in the east,
where only a handful of those attending had their faces uncovered, women asked
to be included “because it is a woman who has raised the Talib and a woman who
has raised the soldier,” the women from the province wrote in a statement on
Twitter.
Not all have embraced Ghani’s efforts,
however. When her office distributed tens of thousands of dollars last month to
impoverished women in eastern Nangahar province, members of the Taliban seized
the money and set it on fire. Local officials also viewed the move with
suspicion, saying it was a political maneuver designed to benefit her husband,
who is seeking reelection this year.
The six-month project culminated in an
all-women conference in February in the Afghan capital, where 3,500 Afghan
women gathered under the massive tent used for the loya jirga, a traditional
gathering for debates and decision-making — and the conventional domain of men.
“It was a little bit overwhelming,” Ghani said
at the memory, a slight giggle lighting up her face.
There, alongside the first lady and the
president, the women demanded an immediate cease-fire and that their rights be
protected going forward. Attendees later described the mood in the tent’s air as
one of defiance.
But the event drew zero responses from the
U.S. government or the Taliban.
Now, as the next round of intra-Afghan talks
gets underway, still without government representation, a group of 40 women
belonging to the umbrella rights group Afghan Women’s Network are heading to
Doha — even though only around five were officially invited to attend.
“We wanted more women. We were not content,”
said Wazhma Frogh, a member of the Afghanistan High Peace Council, adding that
all 40 have received their Qatari visas. “There is no clarity yet if we are
going to be at the table, but we want to be physically there,” she said.
Women’s rights activists fear that U.S.
statements, including from Khalilzad, that women’s rights must be protected in
any peace agreement, could be no more than lip service.
“As we’ve seen, the Americans have their own
politics, agenda and plan. But we have told them, a peace deal without women is
not a deal at all,” said Mary Akrami, director of the Afghan Women Network.
When Khalilzad’s American wife, the scholar
Cheryl Benard, penned a recent op-ed about Afghan women, her views were widely
seen as representing the U.S. diplomat instead. Writing for the Center for the
National Interest, Benard said Afghan women should work hard for their rights,
just as Western women did, and stop relying on foreign money and pity to do their
bidding.
The Afghan backlash was indignant.
“We have been fighting for our rights long
before the American military arrived and will continue long after it has
withdrawn,” Palwasha Hassan, executive director of the Afghan Women’s
Educational Center, wrote in response in the same publication.
Afghan women could have their say at the
upcoming loya jirga that the president has called, requesting that 30 percent
of delegates be women, or in presidential elections slated for September.
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