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Heaping indignities on Afghan women

Rasheeda Bhagat

IN MARCH 2000, while the Taliban was mouthing Islamic edicts and forcing women to give up jobs, even denying them basic rights to health care and hiding them behind the veil, a UN report accused the radical Islamic regime of violating women's rights with ``unabated severity''. Included in this investigation was the charge of mass abductions of women and forced prostitution.

In this context the report cited testimony from refugees about the large-scale abduction of women and girls by the militia of the ruling Taliban in the fighting that went on the previous year in northern and central Afghanistan.

The UN rapporteur, Mr Kamal Hossain, provided testimony about ethnic Hazara and Tajik women being rounded up in trucks and taken to either the Taliban stronghold Kandahar, or Pakistan. An AFP report quoted him as saying, ``Many suspect that women and gir ls end up forced into prostitution,'' adding that there were instances of women having been killed and maimed trying to escape.

Women from the Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Shamali regions also gave accounts of forced marriages to Taliban members, it said. ``When families refuse, they take the women and girls away by force,'' it said, adding that many families in Shamali had sent the ir daughters away to avoid such a fate. The UN report said that the regime continued to deny women access to education, health and employment and quoted refugees relating stories ``of the abduction of women, rape, infliction of the punishment of stoning, lashing and other forms of inhuman punishment.''

Mr Hossain's report was based on several visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he interviewed refugees who fled between 1998 and 1999.

What was even more shocking was the UN rapporteur's evidence that non-Afghans, including Pakistanis and Arabs, fighting alongside the Taliban, were involved in abusing women.

A few days after the UN made the report public, the Taliban rejected it. The Pakistani English daily The News quoted the Taliban Foreign Minister, Mulla Wakil Ahmad Mutawwakil, as not only questioning the methodology of the research but also described Mr Hossain as ``an ignorant and incompetent man who is working solely for money''.

The Taliban minister added grandly that the human rights issue had been ``turned into a business'' by people such as Mr Hossein. ``Where is the proof that Taliban have abducted women or forced them into prostitution?''

On June 22, a Deutsche Presse Agentur report said that the misery caused by drought and conflict had brought the bride price down in northern Afghanistan. Families in provinces such as Balkh and Baghlan were having a hard time finding enough to eat and a re ``giving away their daughters at greatly reduced bride prices and at a young age,'' according to a statement from the UN Coordinator for Afghanistan's office. ``Some of these families have coped as long as they can. Now, they are simply at the end of their rope,'' it added.

On February 22, the Taliban hanged two prostitutes at its Kandahar headquarters before a gathering of 1,000 people. The two were charged with ``corrupting society'', and were doled out the Taliban's brand of justice with their faces hidden behind the all -encompassing burqa.

The Taliban's radio network, proudly announced the announcing the execution and that two other women were publicly lashed for adultery. While one was sentenced to a 10-year term in prison, the other got two years.

If all this is not enough, here is the latest evidence collected by a Los Angeles film-maker, Ms Meena Nanji, whose report has been circulating on the e-mail circuit following the terror attacks in the US. It relates the story of Shazia, a refugee in a P akistani camp, who was forced to become a prostitute thanks to the Taliban's un-Islamic that forced Afghan women to lead sub-human lives.

Titled The Taliban pay just 25 US cents for prostitutes, it tells how the Taliban's edict of prohibiting women from working forced most of them first into begging and later into prostitution -- when there were too many female beggars and too little food to go around.

``Thousands of widows had to resort to begging on the streets, hitherto virtually unknown in Kabul, and considered to be deeply shameful. For the first time it became common to see rows of burqa-clad women sitting on the streets, young children clustered around them, anxious for anything that might fall their way.

``I learned this while I was in Peshawar recently, researching a documentary on Afghan refugees. Many of the women I interviewed, told me about the desperate conditions that existed in Kabul, and about the unfathomably deep psychological and physical abu ses that the Taliban inflicted upon the population, especially women. Eventually they also told me about how widespread prostitution had become in Kabul. Because begging brought in little, if any income, I was not surprised to hear this.

``For many women, prostitution was their only option other than suicide, which thousands of women have chosen, rather than live under present conditions in Afghanistan. I was surprised to hear, however, assertions that the Taliban themselves were frequen t customers of prostitutes, this being highly contradictory to the Islamic principles that they claim to represent: Islam expressly forbids any trade in humans whether it is slavery or prostitution,'' runs the account.

After great difficulty Ms Nanji managed to find a woman who gave her a first-hand account, which was videotaped, of how the Taliban were the most frequent customers of women who were forced into prostitution.

Dressed in a green burqa, which covered her from head to toe, Shazia (a pseudonym) was about 37 and from Kabul. She had been in Pakistan for about 18 months with her three children, for whose sake she had decided against committing suicide and yielded to prostitution. A graduate and a teacher, she lost her husband in a rocket attack when she was not at home.

The attack left her a widow and homeless -- her home was razed to the ground.

With people refusing to give her even household chores because they were afraid of the Taliban, she had no other option but to beg. But as more women turned to begging because of the worsening economic condition, it was not long before begging proved a f utile exercise. She resisted entering prostitution until her son became seriously ill with malaria.

Amidst uncontrollable sobbing, she said: ``Most of the customers were Taliban. They paid between 10,000-20,000 Afghan (the equivalent of about 25-50 US cents). For younger or very beautiful women they paid more. Sometimes they (the customers) would get w hat they wanted and not pay. If any woman dared complain, the men would threaten her with exposure, saying that they would tell everyone that she was an adulterer, and thereafter she would be subjected to death by stoning. We could do nothing against the m.''

The rest of the account narrates the methodology and the devious ways the Taliban customers employed in slipping into their houses. These `houses' operated in great secrecy, and moved frequently.

When the film-maker expressed surprise that the Taliban should patronise prostitution, Shazia said, ``They only pretend to be Muslim. If they were really interested in Islam they would have stopped us. It would be impossible for us to operate without the ir knowledge.''

While this liaison was extremely dangerous for the woman, Shazia said that for the Taliban customer the encounter was very safe. ``Even if he did not pay, there was nothing the woman could do. Who could she complain to? Even if he beat her or raped her, she could do nothing. Beatings were common, and in the case of rape, a woman was never believed. It was believed that if she was raped she must have done something to provoke it. I have heard of many stories of rape and beatings by the Taliban.''

With so many different accounts of the Taliban's atrocities against Afghan women, the one conclusion one can safely make is that Islam certainly does not need the Taliban's brand of jehadis.

Responses can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in