Afghanistan's women wary as Taliban creeps back into political life

Omar Sobhani / Reuters file

Abdul Rahman Hotak gestures as he speaks during an interview in Kabul on July 1, 2013.

 

 

By Sohel Uddin, Producer, NBC News

 

 

KABUL, Afghanistan -- As American and NATO forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of next year, some fear the Afghan government's efforts to bring the Taliban into the political fold may mean a step back in time for the country's women.
After the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom toppled the militant Taliban regime 12 years ago, girls' schools reopened, burqas were no longer compulsory and many women went back to work. So when the Afghan government last week appointed a former Taliban official as a commissioner on the newly established independent human rights commission, many were shocked.
Abdul Rahman Hotak, nominated for the post by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, was the editor of Taliban newspaper "Afghan Sunrise" and worked for the group's education directorate during its rule – an alarming choice, some say, for someone tasked with championing the rights of women who were denied so many freedoms under the Taliban.

 

Hotak also opposes Karzai's proposed Elimination of Violence Against Women law (EVAW), which would make domestic and public violation against women punishable by law. Criticized for being un-Islamic, it has been languishing in Afghanistan's parliament since 2009.
"I want to help the women… I want to try to tell people that they are our mothers, our sisters, our daughters," Hotak told NBC News, claiming that he actually championed women's rights during the Taliban regime and asked them to allow girls to go to school.
He said his ideas and politics were not in line with the Taliban's and that he was compelled to work for them because there was "no other option when there is a government like that."

Shah Marai / AFP - Getty Images file

Shukria Barakzai speaks in Kabul in a photo from 2010.

 

As for opposing EVAW, he said he believes that if most politicians are not in agreement about a piece of legislation then it must mean it is flawed.
Nonetheless, his appointment does not sit well with some.
"We need the human rights commissioner to be independent and we ask the president to rethink his choice … It is not a good choice for an ex-Taliban to be in this role," said Shukria Barakzai, a member of parliament who hopes to run for president in next year's election.
Barakzai, known as "the woman feared by both NATO and the Taliban" for her outspoken views, has been fighting for women's rights for years.
She believes promoting people like Hotak gives the Taliban and other conservative groups a "green light" to strike political deals that would hold women back further – deals designed to make peace more attractive to Taliban leaders. "They will not join forces but they will benefit from each other," she said.
"All these years it is not only the Taliban who have been problematic for women's rights but equally the government, members of parliament and the legislative committee," Barakzai said.
Just this past May, conservatives in parliament surreptitiously removed a law which stipulated there should be at least 25 percent female representation in the upper house. Female politicians fought to have the law reinstated when they discovered the move. A spokesman at the presidential palace would not comment but said the reinstatement was waiting to be approved by the upper house and the president.
Additionally, in 2012 Karzai endorsed a "code of conduct" law that protects men from being prosecuted for rape within a marriage, and allows husbands to beat their wives under certain circumstances.
"The government and the Taliban have a shared view when it comes to women," Barakzai said.
However, after facing years of hurdles, Barakzai now welcomes the Taliban in Afghan politics. "I just don't want to see any more violence – that is why I would rather have the Taliban in parliament. It is the only way to end the killing." She believes if the Taliban were part of the government, they would be forced to follow the law and adopt democracy. They would have to put an end to their violent principles, she says.
"The only difference between the Taliban then and the Taliban now is that they no longer wear turbans, but are dressed in smart suits. However the principles are the same as before," she said. "But we will civilize them."
For some, like student Halima Rashidi, it doesn't matter who is in charge – the outcome is all that matters.
"I don't think that only people who are in the government right now can change the future of women. A Taliban or mujahedeen can also do that, too. It is not important for me who is running the show but I need protection and my rights, peace and security and a better future."

This is a link to a study carried out by 'UN Women' on 'Ways and Methods to Eliminate Sexual Harrasment in Egypt'.  Sexual harrasment and attacks have become a major problem in the past few years. 

http://www.unwomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Sexual-Harassment-Study-Egypt-Final-EN.pdf


(The link is a PDF, by the way)

Extremist attack in Nigeria kills 42 at boarding school

Nigeria sufffered one of its bloodiest days as terrorists carried out a massacre on 42 children and teachers at a boarding school in the country’s insurgent-plagued north-east.

A car burns at the scene of a bomb explosion at St. Theresa Catholic Church at Madalla, Suleja, just outside Nigeria's capital Abuja, December 25, 2011 Photo: Reuters

Gunmen thought to be loyal to the al-Qaeda-linked Boko Haram fundamentalist movement descended on the Government Secondary School in Mamudo, spraying it with bullets and using jerry cans of petrol to burn some pupils alive.

At the regional morgue, Musa Hassan, 15, recalled the horror of listening to the death cries of his fellow pupils.

“We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. When I woke up, someone was pointing a gun at me,” said 15-year-old Musa. He put his arm up in instinctive self-defence, and suffered a gunshot that blew off all four fingers on his right hand.

He said the gunmen came armed with jerry cans of fuel that they used to set light to the school’s administrative block and one of the hostels.

“They burned the children alive,” he said, horror showing in his wide eyes.
 

Survivors were taken to a clinic three miles away where they were under guard by the Nigerian army, which has been deployed across three northern states under an emergency offensive against Boko Haram launched in May.
Hundreds more children from the 1,200-student school were unaccounted for, having escaped into the bush.
Malam Abdullahi, a farmer and father of two victims, declared that he was determined to withdraw his three remaining sons from a nearby school.
He complained that there was no additional security protection put in place for students despite the deployment of thousands of troops since May.
One of Mr Abdullahi’s sons, a 10-year-old was shot in the back as he apparently tried to run away, while a 12-year-old brother was shot in the chest.
“It’s not safe,” he said. “The gunmen are attacking schools and there is no protection for students despite all the soldiers.”
Mamudo lies just a few miles from Maiduguri, the town known as the birthplace of Boko Haram, often referred to as the Nigerian Taliban. The name of the group, which was established there 11 years ago and has flourished ever since, translates as a call to ban Western education.
As a regional insurgency waged by Boko Haram has spread, the group has sought to retaliate against government offensives by attacking government schools.
It maintains that Western-style education is at the root of corruption and criminality in Nigeria, having lured people away from following Islamic teaching as a way of life. In traditional Koranic schools, pupils receive no formal education but spend their days memorising the Koran. Such schools are common in the Boko Haram stronghold.
Abu Qaqa, a spokesman for Boko Haram, declared the attacks on schools would escalate as long as the government soldiers involved in the assault targeted Koranic schools.
In one incident last month Nigerian soldiers had beaten pupils with canes. “When you attack Koran schools, you totally destroy Western schools,” his message said.
President Jonathan has declared Boko Haram a threat to Nigeria’s integrity and sought Western support for an offensive to crush the group.
He imposed a state of emergency in the states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa, saying Boko Haram had captured towns and territory, turning swathes into no-go zones for the security forces. Dozens of schools have been burnt and unknown scores of students killed among more than 1,600 victims slain by extremists since 2010.
An estimated 10,000 pupils have been forced out of state schooling by the groups’ hit-and-run attacks, which have intensified since the start of the seven-week-old military offensive.
Suspected Islamist militants opened fire on a school in Maiduguri last month, killing nine students, and a similar attack on a school in the city of Damaturu killed seven just days earlier.

 

 

Top Afghanistan female police officer killed 

A top female police officer has been shot dead in Afghanistan's Helmand province, officials say.

Lt Islam Bibi was ambushed by unknown attackers as she left her home in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, a spokesman for Helmand police said.

The commander of 32 female police officers, Lt Bibi, 37, was known as a role model for other women in the conservative province.

Her death came as four girls were also killed in a roadside blast in Helmand.

Lt Bibi was on a motorbike alongside her son-in-law when she was wounded in the gun attack. She later died in hospital, officials say.

Like most Afghan women in rural areas of Afghanistan, Lt Bibi had struggled to work outside the home, says the BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.

Meanwhile, the four girls, said to be aged between seven and 12, were attending a wedding in Lashkar Gah and had gone to collect water from a stream when the explosives detonated.

Last month Afghan forces assumed security responsibility for the whole country ahead of Nato's departure. Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are one of their biggest challenges.

Helmand is one of Afghanistan's most volatile provinces.

Correspondents say that civilian casualties in the south have increased recently, and many of those are due to the use of improvised explosives by the militants.

Pierre Borghi: How I gave the Taliban the slip

French aid worker and amateur photographer Pierre Borghi spent four months in shackles, imprisoned by the Taliban in a hole in the ground. But an opportunity to escape eventually came his way, thanks in part to the weight he had lost on the "Taliban diet".

I was abducted by the Taliban on the evening of Tuesday 27 November.

It had been an ordinary, relaxed day in Kabul - no bombs or gunfire or stress. I had been to the supermarket, bought Chinese noodles for dinner and planned a quiet night in watching a zombie movie.

This was my second week in Afghanistan on my second visit to the country. I was looking for work in the humanitarian or urban planning sectors while I tried to make it as a photographer.

I was walking back from a bar, where I had been debating with other freelancers and friends the safest way was to get around Kabul. Security was on my mind, but the bar was in pretty much the safest area in the city and I was staying a mere 500m away. I didn't think being outside for five or 10 minutes would be such a risk.

That was a miscalculation.

A white Toyota Corolla stopped just a few metres ahead of me. Four guys got out, bearded, dressed in salwar kameez - the traditional Afghan dress - and headed straight for me.

They tried to grab me and take me to the car. When I fought back, one of them took out a gun and told me to stop resisting. I did.

They shoved me into the middle of the back seat, squashing me between their knees, and started driving. We went through all the supposed safety checkpoints. After a while they pulled over, blindfolded me, bound my hands behind my back and put me in the boot of the car, along with one of the kidnappers.

They made it clear that any attempt to make a noise or move would be severely repressed.

Scared as I was, I was switching to a strange survival mode. It's a very conscious process. You start thinking "Oh no - this is actually happening." And then you begin to detach yourself from everything and you try not to panic and to be as rational as possible.

After another few hours of driving, they put me in the first of the two holes in the ground I was to be kept in. It turned out to be the nicer of the two - I had a bit of space and light.

They said they were al-Qaeda, they were Taliban. They told me that they had no problem with me personally, they had a problem with my country. They said they had taken me because I was a Westerner and my country was at war with Afghanistan.

I was given a piece of paper to write down information about myself, to be passed onto a Taliban "cabinet" for background checking. They needed to check I wasn't a member of the special forces or a spy or a diplomat - all of which would have meant my immediate execution. After the background checks, this piece of paper was to be passed to the French authorities as proof I was alive.

Afterwards, I managed to hang on to one sheet of paper and the pen. I used it to write down a wish list for my life after I was freed, which I kept throughout my detention.

• Pierre wrote the list in English because he had been working for some time in the language - he was also worried that if the list was discovered the "cryptic" French words would worry his captors
• Search hard and you will find the word ukulele in the list - Pierre had bought one recently but had yet to learn how to play it properly

I also made a paper chessboard, and killed time constructing chess problems.

After about 10 days, they said they were going to take me to Kabul and give me back my life.

They got me out of the hole, bound my hands behind my back and blindfolded me again. I was put on a motorbike. But instead of taking me back to the city, I was taken down bumpy trails, over rivers and into the mountains. I've had some interesting rides on motorbikes before but never one like that.

They were taking me to my next hole.

But before that, I had 10 very strange days living with an Afghan family, assisted by two Taliban fighters who kept guard over me (these were new guards - I changed hands a number of times throughout my incarceration).

It was surreal - we ate together, slept together, watched videos on their cellphone together. I even taught them some card games that we played for hours and hours. It's utterly frustrating to play cards with a guy that could put a bullet in your head at any moment, especially when he is cheating.

But the fighters either got tired of watching over me, or had to go and fight in the mountains, or a trade agreement had been made and they had to leave.

So I was moved to a more convenient place for them to keep me - a very small hole under a trapdoor in the floor of a barn, in which I couldn't lay flat or sit up. I had one three-litre bucket to use as a toilet. There was no light, none at all. I was kept there for the next three-and-a-half months. I was only allowed out three or four times, to shoot ransom videos. My hands and my feet were chained together. The only sense of time passing came from the occasional noise outside. A farmer chopping wood, a helicopter flying overhead. But the Afghan winter is horribly silent.

I was really bored. So what did I do?

I mentally drafted thesis projects, books and the blueprints for houses and towns (I was trained as an urban planner).

When I was hungry, I thought about food. I prepared dream recipes that I am still planning to try out when I have some friends over.

I also started talking to myself and singing songs. I thought to myself: "Don't worry, you're talking aloud, but you need it and are conscious of it."

I also talked to the people I loved - or imagined I talked to them - and prayed a bit.

You could say that I remained as French as I could - humour and self-deprecation were key tools in keeping me sane.

The chains restraining me were loose enough for me to get a foot and a hand free. The trapdoor was not locked and I began to explore the barn, sometimes spending whole hours - at night - out of the hole. I started to nurture a hope that I might escape.

But the Afghan winter is not only silent, it's also very cold. My experience of the country told me that if I broke free at night wearing the sandals and summer clothes I had been allowed to keep, I would end up a frosted corpse.

So I waited.

An image from Borghi's 2012 trip to the central highlands of Afghanistan

I had to do the videos, to prove I was alive. They told me what to say. "Tell your country that you're sick, you're tired, you want to go home. Tell them to give us what we want. Say hello and pass on a message to your family and country and religion."

For your family's sake, you try to keep yourself together, to be positive, to be kind with your words, so they don't freak out.

On the morning of 28 March, I was taken out of my hole, to shoot another of these videos.

In the space of 10 minutes, I was told I would be killed in the next few days as France was not meeting the Taliban's demands. I was given some letters my family had written and sent through the secret services, and then put back in the hole.

This was my very lowest point.

In an attempt to remain rational, I calculated how long it would take for this last video to be passed to the French authorities, and for them to make a decision about the ransom demands. I spent 10 days in torment, trying to weigh the risk of staying against that of escaping.

Then I made up my mind. I thought I couldn't afford to wait one more day - that at any moment, some executioner would show up to cut away what was becoming an embarrassing loose end for the Taliban.

There was a tiny window in the barn, about 3m above the ground.

On the night of 7 April, I wrapped my chains - still attached to one arm and one leg - in some rags to keep them quiet. Then I got out of my hole and climbed up to the window on some discarded furniture.

Outside, I saw lights shimmering away on the right-hand side, in the far distance. There's not much street lighting in Afghanistan, so I figured this was a military base of some sort.

I dropped some food, sugar and tea that I had saved over the last few days through the window, and then tried to squeeze through.

When I reached my hips, I got stuck. I freaked out. But after a few twists I fell in a heap on the outside. I would never have been able to do that without the 25lb (11kg) I'd lost over the last four months. You might call it the Taliban diet.

I started walking towards the lights, stumbling and falling in the freshly ploughed fields. I was talking to myself: "Ha, so you like coming home stumbling at night? It's your time man, make this the walk of your life!"

I passed near some checkpoints on a nearby road. There was no way of knowing if they were run by the army or the Taliban. So I went down to a crawl, hiding behind rocks and pressing myself against the hillside.

Later on that night I found myself enmeshed in razor wire, and I had to change direction when some dogs started to bark at me.

I walked all night - eight, nine, 10 hours. By the early hours, as the morning prayers echoed all around, my aching legs struggled to keep moving, but I was getting closer to what seemed to be a large city.

Pierre Borghi shortly after his escape

 

I reached a medium-height building, with an enclosed courtyard and watchtowers. I went to the gate, and as I was looking puzzled at the signs by the entrance, the military policeman on watch shouted to me.

"Kudja meri?" - Where are you going?

"Inshallah be Kabul merim" - If God allows, I'm going to Kabul.

He pointed his AK-47 at me, not really knowing what to do with this insane-looking guy in a salwar kameez with a huge beard, who was pretending to be French and making wild claims about being locked up by the Taliban in very sketchy Dari. So he called the commandant, who called the general, who called interpreters, who asked me questions. Another background check.

A few hours later, I was taken to Kabul in a military convoy with the general. While I was sitting in the car I thought about how, at that very moment, my keepers would be coming to check on me. I couldn't help smiling to myself as I thought of their faces as they lifted the trap-door to my hole, which I had been so careful to close again after I got out.

It wasn't till the end of that day that I was handed over to the French authorities in Kabul. They took me to the military hospital, where the chief surgeon welcomed me with a nice big pair of bolt cutters.

My legs ached from the night-time walk that had followed such a long period of inactivity, but physically and mentally I was in a pretty good way. Everyone was surprised, including me.

I took my first shower in 131 days and I was finally able to call home.

"Hi mum," I said. She said it was the happiest day of her life. Very rarely had I cried during my time with the Taliban, but I did cry when I made that call.

Pierre Borghi

• Pierre Borghi has degrees in sociology and urban planning
• Before being abducted, he had worked on projects in Senegal, Bangladesh, South Sudan and Afghanistan
• He spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service