Afghanistan's pioneering female MP seeks asylum as progress for women unravels
For years she was a symbol of a new country rising from the ashes of Taliban rule, as one of the women whose voices were finally being heard after a decade of brutal oppression in Afghanistan.
Noor Zia Atmar is currently
living in a shelter for battered
women
Noor Zia Atmar, a young activist and then one of the country’s first woman
MPs, travelled the world with her colleagues to show that things were changing.
That was three years ago. Now, she lives in a shelter for battered women, the
victim of an abusive husband - and a symbol of the way progress in women’s
rights is unravelling as the West withdraws and more traditional conservative
values return to the fore.
“Women are in a worse condition now. Every day they are being killed, having
their ears, noses cut,” said Ms Atmar, 40, speaking in a strong, clear voice,
her eye make-up hidden behind dark glasses. “It is not just women in villages -
it is also people like me.”
Progress in women’s rights is frequently hailed as one of the great successes
of Nato’s coalition, the International Security Assistance Force. But as it
marks its 10th anniversary on Sunday, campaigners say Ms Atmar’s case is one of
several examples that show how reforms are coming undone.
Not only are conservatives agitating to close women’s shelters, which they
describe as whore houses, the country’s parliament is considering a change in
the law to prevent relatives testifying against each other. That would
effectively make prosecutions for domestic violence all but impossible.
Human rights groups say this is the latest in a string of measures that will
weaken protection for women and raise fears of a return to the days when
Islamists all but erased women from public life.
Afghan refugee women buy household items from local market in Peshawar (AFP)
Under the Taliban, girls schools closed, women were banned from working outside the home and were forced to wear the burka.
It was a difficult time for Ms Atmar’s family. Her father, an engineer, had died when she was young, but her mother had fought hard so that she might receive an education. Those years, she said, helped her develop the mental toughness necessary to become a campaigner in a conservative country.
The family fled to Pakistan on the day the Taliban marched into Kabul - along with millions of Afghan refugees - returning only after they were ousted by the US-led invasion that followed al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks in 2001.
She first worked for community groups, travelling to remote villages to help women find education and health care.
Then came elections in 2005, under a new constitution that was drafted with American guidance and which guaranteed the rights of women and minorities. At the time, the polls were hailed as a decisive break with the Taliban’s medieval mindset.
More importantly, so far as Ms Atmar was concerned, it also guaranteed a quarter of the seats for women, offering her chance to take her local message of women’s empowerment to a much wider audience.
Her campaign was run on a tight budget. At one point she sold a gold necklace to keep things moving but managed to win a seat in the women’s section.
It was a heady time, filled with optimism, according to Ms Atmar. She helped push through landmark legislation banning 22 acts of violence against women and still has the visa stamps in her passport from her visits to the UK, India, Turkey and France where — along with other female legislators — she was welcomed as the embodiment of the new Afghanistan.
But things began to change for her and for Afghanistan, she said, at about the same time she got married, towards the end of her five-year term as an MP.
Unable to compete with her rivals’ war chests in what she said was an increasingly corrupt campaign, she lost her bid for re-election in 2010. And it gradually became clear that her husband, a businessman who she had hoped would support her career, did not share her ideals.
He refused to let her leave the house and at one point banned her from using the phone. “He would get drunk and demand I remove his shoes. Then he would shout at me to put them back on, over and over. If I refused he would beat me. It was torture,” she said.
“He would come to me the next day and apologise but then at night he would do it again. Finally I asked for a divorce.”
Afghan women during Ramadan, in Kabul, Afghanistan (EPA)
For most Afghan women, products of a conservative society where even without the Taliban they appear in public only beneath the billowing folds of a sky blue burqa, divorce is not even an option - and even in the more liberal atmosphere of the capital, Kabul, Ms Atmar’s family disapproved. They insisted she do anything but seek a divorce.
“They saw my face bruised, and scars from the knife, but they told me it was a traditional society, that I would bring shame on the family,” she said.
When she sought out a lawyer anyway, they abandoned her, leaving her to fend for herself.
Home has been a shelter for the past two years. She said she was uncertain about what the future might hold. Informal approaches to the British embassy had ended with a curt message that asylum was not available for victims of domestic abuse.
“They said that would open the doors to too many women to come,” she said.
Ironically, the Nato effort to secure Afghanistan from the militants over the past 12 years, assisted by Western aid donors, has done much to open other doors, by helping girls into education and ensuring that women have a voice in society. Maternal mortality has been slashed.
However, campaigners say that this year there have been a string of reversals for hard-fought women’s rights. As the West scales down its involvement, a conservative society is gradually reasserting itself through parliament, overturning quotas and legal protections which many see as imposed by the US.
Earlier this month, another symbol of women’s emancipation was shot dead by gunmen. Lieutenant Islam Bibi had defied threats from her own family to rise through the ranks, becoming the most senior female police officer in Helmand Province.
Afghan police-women search voters during the security check at a polling station in Herat (AFP)
In May, the Wolesi Jirga — the House of the People, the lower chamber of Afghanistan’s national assembly - revised the country’s electoral law, as its conservative-minded legislators ditched the guarantee that at least a quarter of seats in each of 34 provincial councils be reserved for women.
And the parliament has never actually ratified the law, drafted by Ms Atmar and her fellow pioneers, setting penalties for rape, child marriage and baad - the giving of girls to resolve disputes. It was pushed through by presidential decree, but a recent attempt to make the law more enduring by securing parliamentary approval was abandoned after 15 minutes amid stiff opposition and accusations by male MPs that it was un-Islamic.
Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said new wording of the criminal procedure code would also prohibit relatives of a defendant being questioned against the accused. It would make it all but impossible to prosecute people who beat, forcibly marry or sell their female relatives, he added.
“While Afghan officials give lip service to women’s rights at the UN, the president, parliament and courts are actively undermining those rights,” he said. “Afghanistan’s foreign donors should be loud and clear that they won’t stand by while Afghan women’s hard-won rights are swept away.”
But the leverage that western donors have enjoyed over recent years is already waning, and as Afghanistan prepares for greater independence from foreign military and financial support it may fade completely away.
Many fear that an Afghan government that is focusing on its own survival is preparing the ground for a peace deal with the Taliban, and is more interested in shoring up support among conservatives than in pushing through reforms.
At the end of next year international combat troops will have completed their withdrawal. And Ms Atmar, and other Afghans like her, wonder whether that means the world will forget about Afghan women all together.
“It will be a huge tragedy if this happens,” she said, wrapped in a black overcoat, her head covered by a scarf. “We must remove fundamentalism from Afghanistan. The world should remember that the fire from here might not reach their country, but the smoke will.”
Afghan refugee women buy household items from local market in Peshawar (AFP)
Under the Taliban, girls schools closed, women were banned from working outside the home and were forced to wear the burka.
It was a difficult time for Ms Atmar’s family. Her father, an engineer, had died when she was young, but her mother had fought hard so that she might receive an education. Those years, she said, helped her develop the mental toughness necessary to become a campaigner in a conservative country.
The family fled to Pakistan on the day the Taliban marched into Kabul - along with millions of Afghan refugees - returning only after they were ousted by the US-led invasion that followed al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks in 2001.
She first worked for community groups, travelling to remote villages to help women find education and health care.
Then came elections in 2005, under a new constitution that was drafted with American guidance and which guaranteed the rights of women and minorities. At the time, the polls were hailed as a decisive break with the Taliban’s medieval mindset.
More importantly, so far as Ms Atmar was concerned, it also guaranteed a quarter of the seats for women, offering her chance to take her local message of women’s empowerment to a much wider audience.
Her campaign was run on a tight budget. At one point she sold a gold necklace to keep things moving but managed to win a seat in the women’s section.
It was a heady time, filled with optimism, according to Ms Atmar. She helped push through landmark legislation banning 22 acts of violence against women and still has the visa stamps in her passport from her visits to the UK, India, Turkey and France where — along with other female legislators — she was welcomed as the embodiment of the new Afghanistan.
But things began to change for her and for Afghanistan, she said, at about the same time she got married, towards the end of her five-year term as an MP.
Unable to compete with her rivals’ war chests in what she said was an increasingly corrupt campaign, she lost her bid for re-election in 2010. And it gradually became clear that her husband, a businessman who she had hoped would support her career, did not share her ideals.
He refused to let her leave the house and at one point banned her from using the phone. “He would get drunk and demand I remove his shoes. Then he would shout at me to put them back on, over and over. If I refused he would beat me. It was torture,” she said.
“He would come to me the next day and apologise but then at night he would do it again. Finally I asked for a divorce.”
Afghan women during Ramadan, in Kabul, Afghanistan (EPA)
For most Afghan women, products of a conservative society where even without the Taliban they appear in public only beneath the billowing folds of a sky blue burqa, divorce is not even an option - and even in the more liberal atmosphere of the capital, Kabul, Ms Atmar’s family disapproved. They insisted she do anything but seek a divorce.
“They saw my face bruised, and scars from the knife, but they told me it was a traditional society, that I would bring shame on the family,” she said.
When she sought out a lawyer anyway, they abandoned her, leaving her to fend for herself.
Home has been a shelter for the past two years. She said she was uncertain about what the future might hold. Informal approaches to the British embassy had ended with a curt message that asylum was not available for victims of domestic abuse.
“They said that would open the doors to too many women to come,” she said.
Ironically, the Nato effort to secure Afghanistan from the militants over the past 12 years, assisted by Western aid donors, has done much to open other doors, by helping girls into education and ensuring that women have a voice in society. Maternal mortality has been slashed.
However, campaigners say that this year there have been a string of reversals for hard-fought women’s rights. As the West scales down its involvement, a conservative society is gradually reasserting itself through parliament, overturning quotas and legal protections which many see as imposed by the US.
Earlier this month, another symbol of women’s emancipation was shot dead by gunmen. Lieutenant Islam Bibi had defied threats from her own family to rise through the ranks, becoming the most senior female police officer in Helmand Province.
Afghan police-women search voters during the security check at a polling station in Herat (AFP)
In May, the Wolesi Jirga — the House of the People, the lower chamber of Afghanistan’s national assembly - revised the country’s electoral law, as its conservative-minded legislators ditched the guarantee that at least a quarter of seats in each of 34 provincial councils be reserved for women.
And the parliament has never actually ratified the law, drafted by Ms Atmar and her fellow pioneers, setting penalties for rape, child marriage and baad - the giving of girls to resolve disputes. It was pushed through by presidential decree, but a recent attempt to make the law more enduring by securing parliamentary approval was abandoned after 15 minutes amid stiff opposition and accusations by male MPs that it was un-Islamic.
Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said new wording of the criminal procedure code would also prohibit relatives of a defendant being questioned against the accused. It would make it all but impossible to prosecute people who beat, forcibly marry or sell their female relatives, he added.
“While Afghan officials give lip service to women’s rights at the UN, the president, parliament and courts are actively undermining those rights,” he said. “Afghanistan’s foreign donors should be loud and clear that they won’t stand by while Afghan women’s hard-won rights are swept away.”
But the leverage that western donors have enjoyed over recent years is already waning, and as Afghanistan prepares for greater independence from foreign military and financial support it may fade completely away.
Many fear that an Afghan government that is focusing on its own survival is preparing the ground for a peace deal with the Taliban, and is more interested in shoring up support among conservatives than in pushing through reforms.
At the end of next year international combat troops will have completed their withdrawal. And Ms Atmar, and other Afghans like her, wonder whether that means the world will forget about Afghan women all together.
“It will be a huge tragedy if this happens,” she said, wrapped in a black overcoat, her head covered by a scarf. “We must remove fundamentalism from Afghanistan. The world should remember that the fire from here might not reach their country, but the smoke will.”
