Most Afghan women would favor an Islamic constitution in Afghanistan as long as it specifies rights for women, guarantees equality for women and provides compulsory education for girls, according to Sadiqa Basiri, Deputy Director and communications chief of the Afghan Women's Network, an advocacy organization that works on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Ms. Basiri left Afghanistan in 1984 and returned in 1994. She spoke to the Georgetown human rights forum on November 20, 2003, at the end of a 2-month internship with Women's Edge, an advocacy and lobbying group in Washington. Ms. Basiri was accompanied by Andrea Greenblatt-Harrison, a senior policy coordinator from Women's Edge.
Ms. Basiri's talk came at a time when Afghans are hotly debating the latest draft of a new constitution, which was unveiled on November 3 after extensive consultations at the community level. The AWN's members participated actively in the process, in Afghanistan and in the refugee camps of Pakistan. The final constitution will be adopted by a special session of the Loya Jirga - Afghanistan's tribal council - which starts meeting on December 10.
The process has revealed a tension that could have major implications for the future of Afghanistan, and for women's rights. While the current draft is a major advance on the existing constitution, which was adopted in 1964, it appears to place Islamic law above international human rights law, and makes no specific reference to women's rights, referring more vaguely to the rights of citizens.
This appears to reflect the growing power of the Islamic clergy, and raises fears among some Afghan women's advocates and their Western allies that the constitution will open the way to the adoption of the Islamic sha'aria law. Sha'aria has been used as a blunt legal instrument against women by fundamentalists in several neighboring countries, most recently the North West Frontier province of Pakistan.
Hamid Karzai, the Western-educated president of Afghanistan, is said to be aware of the concern, and has appointed a national committee of 9 eminent Afghan women to advise him on the constitution. The nine include Afifa Aziz, Executive Director of the AWN, and they are consulting with 32 women from each of the Afghan provinces, who have been elected to the forthcoming Loya Jirga. Once this process is complete, the committee will be asked to make recommendations to the Loya Jirga. Some say this could even include an alternative draft if they find the existing draft unacceptable.
Once the constitution is adopted, the struggle for women's rights will then move to next year's elections for the new Loya Jirga. These were scheduled for December 2003 but have been postponed until June 2004. All agree, however, that the next few weeks could prove decisive.
Ms. Basiri put this into context with a brief description of Afghanistan's grim history since the Soviet invasion of 1978. The Taliban took over in 1996 and were routed in 2002, by which time Afghanistan had been at war for 23 years. 55% of its population (22.7 million) are women, but only 1.2% of Afghan women are literate. Their life expectancy is 44 years.
During the rule of the Taliban, said Ms. Basiri, women were denied education, sacked from professions, and forced to wear the burka. "Women were supposed to be in the kitchen. That's it."
In 1995, following the Beijing conference, 21 prominent Afghan women formed the AWN in an attempt to lobby for women's rights from exile in Pakistan. The AWN network currently comprises 24 NGOs, and over 1,000 individual members.
Its current work on both sides of the border is somewhat different. Most of the 1.7 million Afghan refugees who remain in Pakistan are women. Although they have been told to return by 2005 by the Pakistan government, Ms. Basiri pointed out that many are widows. They have no homes, schools, jobs or basic services to return to. Worst of all, security remains very poor in Afghanistan. This makes them reluctant return - yet there is pressure, and danger, in Pakistan.
In Afghanistan, women have faced many challenges since the overthrow of the Taliban. While groups like the AWN have emerged as strong advocates, the future is far from assured, as is clear from the AWN's own agenda.
One AWN campaign, on legal rights, has exposed the vulnerability of women in modern Afghanistan. AWN is currently seeking to secure the release of 27 women who have been jailed after being falsely accused of bigamy by their husbands. Ms. Basiri herself located 7 of the women, and sees their plight as typical of the lack of protection afforded Afghan women.
Islamic law allows women to remarry after divorce, and many Afghan women have divorced their Afghan husbands, remarried Pakistani husbands, and returned to Afghanistan. But before the new marriage can be accepted in Afghanistan, the women have to get their former husbands to accept the divorce documents. Very often they refuse, leaving their former wives liable to arrest and imprisonment.
One woman was jailed for 17 months, and some of the women have been forced to keep young children. The AWN found one 3-day old child with her mother in jail. The AWN has freed several women with help from its lawyers, but it is hampered by lack of accurate data on the whereabouts of the other detainees.
The question is whether a return to Islamic law would protect women against such day-to-day harassment, and this will partly clarified by the constitution. Ms. Basiri said that the new constitution must refer specifically to the rights of women, instead of the current vague reference to "citizens." She also insisted that the government provide compulsory education for women and girls. The current draft simply proposes to "provide education." Third, she said, the draft promises health care. But most women lack any form of health insurance. Fourth, the constitution calls for two national languages - Dari and Pashto. Many feel that one language would be more unifying.
But the larger question is whether the constitution could - if Islamic law is to be the supreme arbiter - be manipulated and used to repress women by fundamentalists.
While acknowledging the risk, Ms. Basiri said that polls have found that 75% of all Afghan women would favor some sort of Islamic state, as long as it provides specific protection for women. She also pointed out that there is widespread support for Islamic culture in the communities. For example, she herself willingly wears a burka (scarf), which was widely seen as symbol of oppression against women under the Taliban. The problem was not the burka itself, but coercion by the Taliban. Today, many women view the burka as a symbol of being Afghan, as long as they are not forced to wear it.
While the content of the constitution is critical, Ms. Basiri also argued that the real challenge will come in its implementation. For example, the new draft will follow the 1964 constitution in not allowing marriage under the age of 16. But girls as young as 5 are routinely married off by their parents, and such violations are almost never referred to family courts.
There is, said Ms. Basiri, an urgent need for specific laws on such issues as divorce, marriage, and women's health. But these, too, will need to be complemented by traditional practice, which is accepted and used in the communities. For example, Islamic law requires that a women be asked three times whether she is ready for marriage. This should be respected.
Sometimes these traditions appear old-fashioned and backward to Western feminists, who place their trust in the protection of laws. But, said Ms. Basiri, laws alone will not provide protection. "We should listen to the communities."
For Ms. Basiri, the best guarantee that traditional practice and modern law will find the right balance is education. Although the Taliban used Islamic law to deny education to women and girls, Ms. Basiri pointed out that the Koran calls for girls' education, and that the first word in the Korean is "read." According to the prophet Muhammed, the first thing made by God was a pen, and the second a book. The problem, said Ms. Basiri, was that extremists like the Taliban have manipulated and distorted the meaning of the Koran for their own purposes.
Looking ahead, the AWN is now building alliances to ensure that the pressure on the Loya Jirga and government is maintained once the constitution is adopted. Ms. Greenblatt-Harrison, from Women's Edge, said that energetic lobbying in the US has helped to raise $75 million for women's issues in Afghanistan. Together with the Women's Commission for refugee Women and Children, the Advocacy Project (AP) has also supported the AWN's advocacy and information throughout 2003. As part of this program, AP arranged for an information consultant, Ms. Moore, to work with the AWN.
* For a copy of the draft Afghan constitution visit: http://www.advocacynet.org/resource_view/link_388.html
* Visit the AWN website at: www.afghanwomensnetwork.org
