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Afghan women:
knowledge and revolt
Photographs
by Antoinette de Jong, text by Chekeba Hachemi, Antoinette de Jong is a Dutch photographer;
Chekeba Hachemi is president of the NGO Afghanistan libre* |
| The
only university open to Afghan women is located in Faizabad in northern Afghanistan,
an area not under Taliban control. Antoinette de Jong photographed students there
in April 2001. In this first-hand account, NGO director Chekeba Hachemi speaks of
the suffering of her people, but also of their spirit of resistance. She appeals
to the world community not to let Afghanistan become “an inconsolable country.” |
It took the international
community a long time, a very long time, to grasp what a tremendous danger the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan posed. Dangerous for Afghans–their freedoms, their hopes for
peace and their ancient culture–and for all the world’s peoples. The hallucinating
pictures of the September 11 events ended up convincing us that Evil was at work
in Kabul. Yet, we had been warned. A few months earlier, other pictures had sparked
indignation around the world: women trapped in fabric dungeons, peering at us from
behind narrow bars: Afghans in chadris. And from behind those bars, inside those
moving, ghostly dungeons, frail, angry voices spoke to us. For Afghan women are like
Afghan men: courageous. Bravery is an ancestral virtue in Afghanistan. They spoke
to journalists about the hell in which they were imprisoned, their dark solitude
and the dark future of their people, their children and their betrothed.
We
trivialized the agony of Afghan women by likening it to comparable pain that others
have suffered. That was a huge mistake.
They
resisted. True to their reputation of pride and dignity, women living in areas under
Taliban control set up underground schools, held secret press conferences and organized
mutual assistance networks to defend themselves against ignorance hunger and terror.
Women who had managed to take refuge in free areas begged Western journalists to
tell the whole world that Kabul had turned into a prison that would some day become
a cemetery.
Why didn’t we pay more attention to these women? We believed they were the latest
in an endless string of misogyny’s victims, one that has plagued so many places for
so long. In a way, we trivialized their agony by likening it to comparable pain that
others have suffered. That was a huge mistake, for the Taliban regime resembles nothing
that we have ever seen, and the women of Afghanistan have been at the heart of an
incomparable tragedy. Aware, concerned, empathetic women on the five continents listened,
mobilized and demanded that their governments do something. But their appeals fell
on deaf ears.
Yes, the officials said, Afghan women are suffering, but it’s not our fault and besides,
what can we do about it? Yet everything was still possible at the time. Governments
could have put pressure on the Taliban and heeded General Massoud, who so feared
the day when they would carry the fires of war to our own countries. That day is
here. We have reacted too late, when violence is the only possible response. And
we have added a new burden to the already crushed silhouette of Afghan women.
This
time, if we fail to hear this brilliant, exhausted nation’s appeal, nothing will
be left of it. The Afghans’ legendary laughter will die out. And tears that no one
sees will flow beneath the chadris.
Now
they are wandering through the streets to the sounds of explosions beneath a sky
that is raining bombs. I believe the time has come to ask Afghan women for forgiveness.
Why do I say “we,” when I myself was born in Afghanistan and head a humanitarian
organization that has been campaigning for years to free Afghan women? Because there
are two kinds of women: those condemned to wear the chadri–under pain of death–and
those who are free not to.
I fall into the latter category. And I want to say it again: we have not done enough.
The time has come. Afghanistan is on the brink of an abyss. This time, if we fail
to hear this brilliant, exhausted nation’s appeal, nothing will be left of it. The
Afghans’ legendary laughter will die out. And tears that no one sees will flow beneath
the chadris. Let’s make our own the destiny of these people whom blind History seems
determined to abolish, to annihilate. Let’s not turn Afghanistan into an inconsolable
country.
* Afghanistan
Libre (“For a free Afghanistan”) is an organization that was created to help Afghans
living outside Taliban-controlled areas to start rebuilding the country. The group
focuses on education, training and micro-economic projects. It is currently building
a high school for 1,000 girls in the Panshir Valley, and has opened a workshop for
300 women, who attend classes in the morning and work in the afternoon.
For more
information on the plight of Afghan women, please refer to the UNESCO Courier
issues dated October
1998
and March
2001. |
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