www.glennjsacks.com
Tuesday, November 6, 2001
By Glenn J. Sacks
Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, after years of unconscionably
cruel treatment of women, persecution of Hindu "infidels" and
Christian foreign aid workers, destruction of ancient Buddhist
temples, and barbaric measures towards accused criminals, is
finally in the world's spotlight. Afghanistan was one of the key
battlegrounds of the Cold War but, sadly, what was once
unthinkable has now become quite clear: the U.S. was backing the
wrong side all along. The
Soviet army invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to save its allied
government, led by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA), from falling to the Mujahedin (Afghan rebels). In
response, President Carter instituted draft registration,
sharply increased military spending, and decreed a US boycott of
the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. The Mujahedin, Muslim
fundamentalist extremists who were later dubbed "freedom
fighters" by President Reagan, were showered with billions in
aid.
Before the reform-minded PDPA took power in the late 1970s,
Afghan women were forced to wear the stifling head to toe veil,
and had no right to own property, go to school, or divorce.
They were considered non-persons in the eyes of the law. The
female literacy rate was one percent and polygamy was common.
The
PDPA regime promoted education for girls, gave women the right
to divorce and own property, and reduced the bride price to a
nominal fee. It also distributed land to the impoverished
peasants and restrained the power of the mullahs, the Muslim
clergy. In
response, the mullahs told the peasants that Allah would hang
them upside down in the sky for all eternity if they accepted
the government land grants and allowed women to be unveiled and
to go to school. Soon rural Afghanistan had exploded in a
rebellion which threatened to topple the PDPA--perhaps the only
war in modern history begun largely over women's rights.
While unpopular in the countryside, the Soviet-backed regime had
many supporters in Afghanistan's cities. Urban Afghans had seen
that in the adjoining Muslim regions of the USSR--regions as
backward as Afghanistan until the Soviet era-- tremendous
progress had been made in eliminating illiteracy, reducing
infant mortality, and improving living standards. Women,
previously among the most down-trodden creatures on earth, had
come to make up half or more of the doctors, engineers, and
teachers in Soviet Central Asia. Many urban Afghans saw the
USSR, for all its flaws, as a model for progress for their
country.
According to Professor Val Moghaddam, director of Women's
Studies at Illinois State University, "human rights reports have
had to concede that women had higher status and more
opportunities under the reformist, left-wing government. For
example, one says ‘Under the Communist regime of the 1980s, a
growing number of women, particularly in urban areas, worked
outside the home in nontraditional roles. This trend was
reversed when the PDPA was ousted in 1992, and an Islamic
government was installed.' Indeed, in 1985, women accounted for
65% of the 7,000 students at Kabul University, and the
government sponsored literacy classes for the 90% of Afghan
women who were illiterate." According to the Los Angeles
Times, "women in Afghan cities probably enjoyed their
greatest freedom during the Soviet-backed regime that ruled in
Kabul from 1979 to 1992." I
met several pro-PDPA Afghan women when I was in Eastern Europe
in the mid-1980s. These women, who were in Eastern Europe
studying to be engineers and doctors, spoke movingly to me about
the many positive changes the PDPA had made for Afghan women.
All of them wanted to learn as much as they could and then go
back to their horribly backward country and try to help lift it
up. It is painful to think of those young women now and realize
that the ones who aren't already dead are probably shivering in
fear under a veil somewhere in Kabul, a Taliban soldier
patrolling the street nearby, ready to suppress any attempt by
them to live a normal life.
When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled Soviet troops out in
early 1989, it was widely predicted in the Western press that
the Afghan regime would collapse within months. It didn't
happen. At key battles like the bloody siege of Jalalabad,
Afghan Army men as well as women in volunteer militias fought
side by side and defeated the Mujahedin. The PDPA government
held out until 1992, when rebel groups finally seized the
capital, Kabul. Many of these rebel soldiers, along with Afghan
refugees from Pakistan, later came to form the Taliban, who took
over most of the country in 1996. What has followed has been a
nightmare worse than anything the PDPA ever could have brought
to Afghanistan. One
picture taken shortly after the Taliban takeover says it all: a
trembling woman covered in a head to toe veil, her face
completely obscured, sobs as she speaks with a Western reporter.
Who is she? An impoverished peasant? A homeless woman? No,
she's the recently removed chief surgeon at the country's
largest hospital! The
tragic depth of ignorance of the average Taliban soldier can be
captured in the following story: recently a Western journalist
spent time with groups of Taliban soldiers and reported that
their most common question for him was "Are the sun and the moon
the same thing?"
Many in the West now hope that Afghanistan's fractious
"Northern Alliance" opposition, perhaps with U.S. assistance,
can unseat the Taliban. However, they too are Muslim
fundamentalists and, while probably less noxious than the
Taliban, they leave little hope for Afghans, particularly Afghan
women. The
Soviet/Afghan war was a brutal conflict with atrocities on all
sides, but the Soviet-backed regime, for all its faults, was the
best opportunity Afghans ever had to form a modern,
comparatively humane society. Arms in hand, courageous Afghan
men and women who believed in progress and female equality
fought to stop the darkness of Islamic fundamentalism from
falling over their country. They needed the West's help, but we
were helping the other side.
U.S. Policy Has Betrayed
Afghan Women for 20 Years
email: glennjsacks@cs.com