When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the situation for women was dire. Successive conflicts from the 1970s onwards – coups, the Soviet occupation, civil conflict between Mujahideen groups and government forces – had gradually rolled back women’s rights, even before the Taliban came to power in 1996. When the extremist group took over, women were removed from public life entirely: banned from school and work, restricted to their houses, forced to wear full body burqas, subjected to floggings and worse for minor infractions.
After the attack on the World Trade Center that precipitated the invasion, world leaders cited the position of women’s rights as a justification for intervention. “The recovery of Afghanistan must entail a restoration of the rights of Afghan women,” said then US Secretary of State Colin Powell. “Indeed, it will not be possible without them.” The UN secretary general Kofi Annan agreed: “There cannot be true peace and recovery in Afghanistan without a restoration of the rights of women.”
But 13 years later, as the deadline for US withdrawal from the country approaches, has the situation for women really improved? A draft bill tabled earlier this year appeared to confirm the worst fears of those who believe that the international pull out will result in a deterioration of women’s rights.
The new criminal prosecution code proposed banning relatives from testifying against each other. Forensic evidence in Afghanistan is undeveloped, so this would mean that most cases of violence against women – domestic violence, forced marriage, and child abuse – would be impossible to prosecute. Amid an international and domestic outcry, the Afghan president Hamid Karzai has said that he will amend the law, although it has not been confirmed what form these changes will take.
While campaigners have cautiously welcomed Karzai’s intervention, this may not be the end of the road for the law. The same bloc of conservatives in parliament who were behind the legislation could continue to oppose changes. They have already quashed an earlier attempt to water down the law. Human rights groups have pointed out that Karzai’s proposed amendment does not tackle the whole problem: even if the ban on relatives testifying against each other is lifted, the law still states that courts cannot force relatives to testify. Given complex and large family networks, this could mean that hundreds of potential witnesses can decide not to testify – a mechanism that does not exist in most other countries.
This is not the first legal threat to women’s rights by the Afghan government. In 2009, a law was passed removing the need for a husband to gain consent from his wife for sex. Karzai later amended the law, saying he hadn’t read it before signing it. Last year, Human Rights Watch called for the release of 400 girls and women imprisoned for “moral crimes”, including running away from home and sex outside marriage.
Since Taliban’s overthrow, there have been some positive steps for women. The 2003 constitution enshrined women’s rights; many have returned to school and work. But this has yet to trickle down – and not just in the areas still controlled by Taliban insurgents or other conservative groups. Day to day, women are still routinely abused, persecuted and discriminated against.
One of the most shocking recent examples of the perilous situation for women is Noor Zia Atmar. She became one of the country’s first female MPs in 2005, helping to push through legislation banning violence against women. Last year, it was reported that she had been living in a shelter for battered women for two years, after separating from her abusive husband. Her family disowned her when she sought a divorce. The same conservatives pushing for legal amendments are agitating to close these shelters, which they describe as whorehouses. It is little surprise that in 2011, Thomson Reuters Foundation ranked Afghanistan the world’s most dangerous country for women, citing high levels of violence and poor access to healthcare.
Over the course of decades, different groups in Afghanistan have played politics with women’s rights – including the western powers that intervened in 2001. It is difficult to see their position becoming more secure any time soon.