Afghan Women Still Shrouded in Anxiety

Neither the police nor the local hospital has any record of an unveiled woman being splashed in the face with acid, but the truth of the story is probably unimportant.

It is the rumor’s terrifying message--that women risk their safety and virtue by abandoning the burka--that has left an indelible mark on the psyche and self-confidence of Afghan women emerging from Taliban repression.

Six months after the medieval conditions that the radical Islamic regime imposed on women were theoretically lifted, women are still grappling with the question of how much individuality they can safely assert.

“Women are not being forced to wear burkas. They are doing so out of habit and a sense that it is safer, at least in the rural areas,” said Soraya Rahim, an advisor to the deputy prime minister in charge of women’s affairs, returned exile and fellow physician Sima Samar. “Five years of Taliban rule has affected the minds of our people, and it’s going to take time to reverse that process.”

Like many women who have come back from Western lifestyles, Rahim, who wore trousers and had free-flowing hair during the 20 years she lived in Germany, has resumed wearing the modest ankle-length black coat and chiffon veil known as the hejab in deference to what she calls Islamic modesty and tradition.

“I don’t want to be a stranger among my own people,” she said. “I would feel at risk if I went about as I did when I lived in Germany.”

By moving slowly and respectfully toward equality and independence, Rahim argues, women can avoid provoking angry or violent reactions where they are expected to be subservient to men.

Most women’s organizations are taking that as sound advice. They’re eager to avoid the brutal backlash of the early 1990s, when warring factions of Islamic fundamentalists committed rapes and atrocities against women they saw as morally compromised by the sexual equality allowed during the country’s Soviet occupation.

“With the presence of ISAF and the many countries helping Afghanistan, we are hopeful that the tragedies of the past won’t be repeated,” Rahim said, referring to the 4,500-strong International Security Assistance Force.

Mazuri Rostam, a 39-year-old receptionist for an aid organization, is one of many women here in the capital who believe the acid story.

“It’s a minority of men who feel this way and might endanger women, but even a small number can present a risk,” Rostam said. She still wears the head-to-toe burka even though she finds it suffocating in the heat and an impediment to mobility and vision.

Even members of the Revolutionary Assn. of the Women of Afghanistan, a Pakistan-based feminist group that campaigned aggressively for the liberation of abused Afghan women during the Taliban era, say they need to be patient if they want women’s newfound rights to be lasting.

“There are still factions within the interim government that don’t support equal rights for women,” said gynecologist Shamsila Anwari, a RAWA activist who stayed in Afghanistan despite the past decade’s repression. She is referring to the hard-line Northern Alliance commanders now in charge of the police and armed forces, whose moujahedeen predecessors inflicted their own brutal strictures on women in the early 1990s.

“I’ve not heard of women being physically attacked for going in public without a burka, but there is a lot of primitive behavior in our society, and some men feel entitled to throw stones at women whose demeanor they consider offensive,” Anwari said.

“We’re not eager to see the kind of liberty that existed here 30 years ago. That’s not appropriate in our country,” she added. “We want freedom and equality for Afghan women, but within the context of Islam.”

Not all activists agree with that approach, though.

Nasrine Gross--a leader of the aid group NEGAR, which is working for better education and employment opportunities for Afghan women--insists that they are safer showing their faces than cloaking themselves in obscurity.

“The instances of assaults and rapes that we know about have involved women wearing burkas,” said the Afghan native, who returned to her homeland this spring after a 37-year U.S. exile. “Women who are covered are concealing their individuality and making it easier for the kind of men who would abuse them to do so. There is a protection in making yourself an identifiable human being and not an anonymous victim.”

In her stylish red blazer and black slacks, Gross argues that Westernized Afghan women owe it to their compatriots to set an example of independence. She is highly critical of women returning from exile and donning veils.

At the Afghan Institute of Learning, which provides health education for 50,000 Afghan women, counselors advise confused women to dress modestly but eschew the burka.

“Women are in more danger of attack when they are under a burka because they often aren’t wearing suitable clothing underneath and men know that,” instructor Adila Kausi said.

Those at the vanguard of asserting newfound feminist rights share the majority opinion that there is a clear line of propriety that women shouldn’t cross.

“A rapist cannot attack an Afghan woman if she doesn’t provide the opportunity,” Kausi said. “If she goes out in a T-shirt or skimpy clothes among men who are used to seeing women covered, they will think she’s immoral. If something were to happen to her, it would be seen as her own fault.”

Some women object to that sentiment but admit its prevalence.

“Women aren’t really free yet. They are returning to the workplace, and it is accepted that you can’t get your job done if you’re wearing a burka. But outside on the street, most women still wear them because they think it’s safer,” said a woman named Storay, who has just relocated her Women-Unity-Reconstruction organization here from its origins in Pakistan.

Many women were sexually assaulted during the chaotic power struggles after the Soviet withdrawal more than a decade ago, Storay recalled, and with society judging that their honor and that of their families was thereby defiled, most committed suicide or were killed by male relatives.

Storay said with sadness: “There is a lot of tragedy in our past, and not all of it is over. It will take a lot more time and patience before we have real freedom and justice.”