The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. Zoya risks her life as an advocate of RAWA.
Bush removed the Taliban from power, captured or killed the lunatics and, for the next seven years, about the only news we heard out of Afghanistan were occasional announcements of parliamentary elections, new schools, water and electricity plants.” I feel strange saying this, but Ann Coulter, quoted here in a recent column on the war in Afghanistan, is right. Under normal circumstances, it would pain me to admit this, but in this case I have no problem agreeing with Coulter.In a short sentence, she just about covers all that we’ve heard from mainstream news sources about the state of affairs in post-invasion Afghanistan.
My problem is with Coulter’s avowal of the mainstreammedia’s portrayal of life in Afghanistan, which ignores the treacherous conditions in favor of a rosy revisionist depiction. It discounts the lives of ordinary Afghanis like Zoya, an Afghani woman and member of RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan) who recently came to Dartmouth to give her account of the state of her country. She had little to say about new schools and electricity plants.
Zoya spent a little over an hour in the basement of Silsby on a cold October night passionately painting a picture of the war-torn Afghanistan she calls home, one that contrasts sharply with the Afghanistan many Americans believe exists. The stark contrast between the Afghanistan we know through media representations and political rhetoric and the one Zoya experiences every day clearly demonstrates that the “fourth branch of government” is failing us, and the results are catastrophic-especially if you’re Afghani.
The audience got a telling glimpse into Zoya’s precarious status as a member of the pro-democracy, secular women’s right group RAWA before she even began her presentation. When a student in the front row started taking pictures of her at the podium, she turned to Professor Jennifer Fluri and reminded her that no pictures could be taken for fear of retaliation against her for her involvement in RAWA. Unfortunately, her fears have merit. Meena Keshwar Kamal, RAWA’s founder, was assassinated in February of 1987 and Afghanistan remains a dangerous place for outspoken pro-democracy and secular women’s rights activists. But Zora persists in her dangerous peace mongering, and she came to Dartmouth with a simple message: The war is not working…for anyone.
I know it’s unfair to use Ann Coulter’s words as a representation of American sentiment, but there is this idea that Afghanistan is the one we got right. Even Obama, who was (mis)branded as an anti-war candidate by his supporters and opponents, called it “a war of necessity” as opposed to a “war of choice” in Iraq. The mentality that large-scale military action in Afghanistan is our only viable option to maintain our national security still persists. As the utopian story goes, our military presence will eventually free the people of Afghanistan from extremist tyranny, ameliorate the oppression of women, and help us “win” the war on terror.
Many point to the same media coverage Coulter cites to show that our military action has already made progress to each of these ends, but this “censored, unreal image” of Afghanistan misses the mark, says Zoya. The real Afghanistan “has been ‘liberated.’” Zoya continues, “Afghanistan is a ‘free’ country for the rapists to rape our children…for the warlords to commit any kind of crime without the least concern. Afghanistan is ‘free’ for the drug lords, the mafia to produce two-third of the opium for the world, and Afghanistan is ‘free’ for the foreign troops to kill our civilians, to kill our children, to kill our women on a daily basis … In this sense, Afghanistanis free.” Zoya focused on this “real picture” of Afghanistan, a country where the stated objectives of American military intervention—spreading democracy, promoting women’s and human rights, and fighting extremist Islamic terrorism—appear unattainable by brute force.
Zoya rhetorically asked, “Are [U.S.] troops liberators or invaders?” and in her answer, she considered the stated objectives used to justify the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan. “After eight years, what happened to these justifications? [Do] we have democracy, [are] women being liberated, [have] we defeated terrorism?” According to Zoya, none of these objectives have been reached and more troops would only make things worse. The recent elections in Afghanistan were “a very dirty game played with the destiny of [the Afghan people].” There will be no democracy to speak of as long as the “warlords and fundamentalists that control everything here” also control the ballot box. Zoya further criticized the U.S. government’s role in helping corrupt government officials gain and hold on to power. “From the one side they are killing our women and children in the name of the so-called war on terror, but from the other side they are negotiating with the leaders of [the] Taliban, they are giving them opportunities, and they try to give them shares in the government.”
Zoya also rejected the notion that legally integrated schools and the election of female members of parliament translated into freedom for the women of Afghanistan. Outside of Kabul, “in the provinces, women are suffering.” She cited instances of unpunished gang rapes (thanks to a pardon from President Karzai) to show that many women justifiably live in fear. And although the schools are integrated, parents are reluctant to send their daughters to school when the possibilities of rape, kidnapping and forced marriage, or acid throwing are very real. As for the female members of parliament, “the majority of [them] belong to fundamentalists parties and do not represent the interests of Afghani women,” said Zoya. And after eight years of war, the viciously misogynistic and anti-American Taliban still controls much of the country. “Instead of [the] elimination of terrorism, it’s increasing in number and getting more powerful,”claimed Zoya. It turns out that bombing civilians doesn’t eradicate extremism or target terrorists—rather, it has the unfortunate effect of turning civilians whose families end up as “collateral damage” into anti-U.S. jihadists.
After eight years of war in Afghanistan, there’s no “winning” in sight. Now this isn’t really about what Obama should do in Afghanistan (although to quote Cornel West, “It’s gonna be hard to be a war president with a peace prize”). This is about us. It’s about what we know and what that knowledge compels us to do. If Zoya’s perspective was given the attention it deserves in the media, who wouldn’t think we need a drastic policy change in Afghanistan? If Zoya’s perspective was even heard at all, beyond the 20 or so people who sat in the basement of Carpenter last Tuesday, would it not have a profound effect on public opinion towards the war in Afghanistan? Zoya’s perspective is certainly legitimate, but it’s conspicuously absent from popular discourse on the Afghan war.
Zoya urged Americans to pressure our government to change its militaristic policies toward Afghanistan. But how could Americans even think to do so when the mainstream media only tells of how our involvement is helping Afghanis build new coed schools, elect female members of parliament, and defeat global terrorism (with civilian and American troop casualties included as a side note, or omitted altogether)? If you spend your time watching the news, this whole war thing seems like a win-win: dead terrorists for us and a shiny new progressive democracy for them! Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, and I doubt CNN or FOX will have Zoya on to explain why.
