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When Rahima Jami heard that the Americans and the Taliban were close to a peace deal, she thought about her feet.
Jami is now a lawmaker in the Afghan Parliament, but in 1996, when Taliban insurgents took power, she was a headmistress — until she was forced out of her job and told she could leave her home only in an ankle-length burqa.
One hot day at the market, her feet were showing, so the religious police beat them with a horse whip until she could barely stand.
Horror stories at the hands of enforcers from the Taliban’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice are a staple for any educated Afghan woman older than 25 or so. Now those women have a new horror story: the possibility that U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan as part of a peace deal with the Taliban.
Six days of talks ended Saturday with a promise they would soon resume, bringing the parties closer to a deal than at any time in the 17 years since the Taliban were ousted from power. The mere possibility of concrete progress on peace inspired a wave of enthusiasm and hope among many Afghans on all sides that four decades of nearly continuous war could actually end.
Among many women, though, the hopes raised by a possible end to the fighting are mixed with an undeniable feeling of dread.
“We don’t want a peace that will make the situation worse for women’s rights compared to now,” Robina Hamdard, head of the legal department for the Afghan Women’s Network, said. The organization is a foreign-funded coalition of prominent women’s organizations.
No one needs to sell Afghan women on the need to bring an end to the bloodshed. They have buried far too many husbands and sons and brothers. But they fear that a peace that empowers the Taliban may herald a new war on women, and they want negotiators not to forget them.
Afghan women praying at the Shah do Shamshera Shrine, known as the Shrine of the King of Two Swords, where female islamic scholar Farkhunda was beaten to death. Source: The New York Times
“Afghan women want peace too,” Jami said. “But not at any cost.”
When she thinks of that time she was beaten, she said, “I remember it and I actually feel faint.”
And like many women, Jami is convinced that any peace deal that gives the Taliban a share of power will come at the expense of freedom for Afghan women. “Come that time, they will complete their incomplete dreams and they will be crueler than in the past,” Jami said.
Compounding that concern is a fear among women that they have been sidelined in the peace process, and that when Afghans finally sit down at a peace table together, there will be no women present.
“We don’t want to be the victims of the peace process with the Taliban,” said Laila Haidari, a businesswoman who also works with drug addicts.
Haidari’s work would not have been allowed under the Taliban regime, when she lived in exile in Iran. “But the Afghan government totally ignores Afghan women on the peace process,” she said.
Shukria Paykan, another female member of Parliament, recalls spending the Taliban years “forced to be inside a dark cage when out of our houses — I mean the burqa.”
Paykan was forced from her university professorship and her daughter’s school was closed, like all girls’ schools under the Taliban. She opened a clandestine school at home, pretending to teach girls the Quran and dressmaking, among the only subjects allowed for them. The only women allowed to work then were doctors, and even they had to have a close male relative as a chaperone at work.
Paykan, who is from Kundiz, said she felt shut out of the Afghan peace process.
“I have been an MP twice and a university professor, but no one has ever asked me about peace talks with the Taliban, or even told me that my rights will be secure,” she said. “We have had 40 years of war and everybody is tired of fighting, but that peace should not be at the price of losing our rights and freedom as women.”
It is still early days in this stage of the peace process, and last week’s talks in Doha, Qatar, did not include any Afghan government officials, men or women.
U.S. officials hope to persuade the Taliban at a later stage to sit down with Afghan officials, which they have refused to do, and issues like the constitution, which guarantees women’s rights, would be on the table then.
The United States and the Taliban are closing in on a deal to end America's longest war after six days of some of the most serious Afghan peace negotiations. Source: The New York Times
Some women in government expressed satisfaction that talks had at least begun.
“Women need to raise their voices so they are not forgotten,” said Habiba Sarabi, deputy of the High Peace Council in Kabul, and one of 15 women on the 75-member council, which is appointed by the government. “Without women it will be a broken peace. But we are optimistic about the peace talks.”
Saira Sharif, an Afghan poet and politician from Khost, said previous efforts at talks between the government and the Taliban had excluded women.
“The Afghan government has assured women many times that women’s rights will not be affected negatively after a peace deal with the Taliban,” she said, “but women were not involved in the previous talks with the Taliban, and we need a place in future ones. We came a long way to achieve the rights we have now, just to lose them after a peace deal.”
Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was a key diplomat in Kabul in January 2002 and helped establish the first post-Taliban government. “We put a big premium on women right from the beginning,” he said. “One of the very first things we did was to get girls schools up and running.”
Crocker said he was worried that the withdrawal of U.S. troops would have consequences beyond whatever future role the Taliban have.
“What really bothers me is, what is going to happen to Afghan women and girls?” he said. “Acute misogyny in Afghanistan goes way beyond the Taliban. Without a strong U.S. hand there, it is not looking very good for Afghan women. They can do as they like to them after we leave.”
