LSESU AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Radmila Yarovaya

Throughout human history, invading powers have tried to use any excuse necessary in order to justify their aggression and prove that they are fighting a righteous war. The war in Afghanistan is no exception to this. The 20 year campaign had proven to be both costly and devastating. In order to help vindicate the initial intervention into Afghanistan and the continued allied presence for the next two decades, the rhetoric of feminism and female liberation – in particular, the liberation of Afghan women – was used. Not understanding the particularities of the culture from which they sought to save Afghan women from, the allied forces managed to inflict more harm than good in their intervention. By completely neglecting the need to build strong social institutions that would provide a pathway to sustainable and lasting change, they instead chose to focus on forcing a western idea of feminism on the Afghan population, thereby alienating not only the tribal leaders who already have a deep distrust of modernization and change but the Afghan women themselves. This essay will explore the destructive and prejudiced concept of orientalist and white feminism, the history of female liberation in Afghanistan, the rhetoric of the liberation of women as justification of invasion, allied missteps in their attempts to aid Afghan women, and the current state of women in Afghanistan in order to demonstrate the duplicitnous and insincerity of the feminist justification for war that only went on to deteriorate the plight of women in Afghanistan further.  

In order to examine feminism as justification for war, the theoretical framework of this feminism must first be examined. Not all feminism is made equal and only certain aspects of feminist philosophy would ever be suitable to be used in the justification for war. Orientalist feminism fits the bill perfectly as it utilizes the rhetoric of western feminist liberation and superimposes it onto “oriental” subjects – in this case, Afghan women, thereby infantilizing them and being blind to their actual concerns and needs. The roots of this ideology go back to the times of the British Empire, when it was used to help bring civilization to Indian women, “Drawing on orientalist notions of civilisation and barbarity, the colonial project put forward an image of victimised and subjugated women for whom the ‘civilising mission’ of colonialism would spell freedom and liberation. However, although British colonialists urged British women to support the liberation of their Indian ‘sisters’, colonialism actually undermined the feminist cause” (Khalid 18). However, since the whole idea of the colonialism, which was bringing this supposed liberation was in itself patriarchal and upheld the oppressive status quo needed to extract resources from the colonies, it was only paying lip service to the ideals of egalitarianism and worked to maintain the power structures that benefitted the powerful elite of the time. This duplicity and saviour rhetoric became ingrained in the western mindset when dealing with non-western and European subjects, contining well into the 21st century, and can be heard being echoed in the sentiments expressed by Laura Bush following the Afghan invasion, “Laura Bush conflated the two most explicitly, saying, ‘the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women’” (Ho 433). 

What is even more telling is that this message of liberation is coming from “neo-conservatives like George W. Bush, who are not known for their support for feminism. Yet feminism is ‘essential’ to the war on terror, Eisenstein writes, enabling Islamic societies to be condemned as ‘uniquely oppressive to women’” (Ho 433). This essentializes not only the plight of the Afghan women themselves, but the entire region itself, making it one dimensional, static, and easy to comprehend. Getting rid of any nuance, this makes the struggle simple – the civilized us versus the barbarous them – while placing a noble burden on the west and reifying one of the tenets of Orientalist feminism – namely that liberation must come from the outside (Ho 434). Not only does it paint Afghan women as victims, but it also casts Afghan men in the role of savages who are a threat not only to their women but to overall western ideals and security, “Constructing the Afghan/Muslim/Middle Eastern ‘everywoman’ as a victim in need of liberation, whose liberation is achieved by the US invasion (as lifting the veil is supposed to demonstrate) also serves the important purpose of marking out the deviant masculinity of the enemy ‘Other’ and linking it to security” (Khalid 23). In this way, not only can the western powers be noble in their liberation, but any savagery they commit is offset by the idea that they were fighting a much more vicious enemy capable of wreaking unheard of destruction, even though the rhetoric of civilization was used “to justify the destruction of a country’s infrastructure in order to protect women”  (Stabile and Kumar 771). Not only did this deteriorate the conditions of women in Afghanistan, but it also used them as political puppets, as prior to the need for invasion, the west largely neglected the plight of Afghan women, “life in Afghanistan was harsh beyond comprehension. Yet until Afghan women proved rhetorically useful, their tragic circumstances merited little coverage in the mainstream media” (Stabile and Kumar 771). Thus, the seemingly pure goal of female liberation was corrupted through the lens of Orientalist feminist and the desire to justify an invasion beyond the need for retaliation following the September 11th bombings. 

Armed with Orientalist feminist rhetoric, the Bush administration sought to justify its invasion of Afghanistan in a way that would cast the U.S. in the best possible light and garner as much public support as possible. In order to warm up the public for the potential invasion, much more attention was given to the circumstances of Afghan women when it came to news coverage. As Carol Stabile and Deepa Kumar write, “After 11 September 2001, coverage of Afghan women increased as part of the lead-up to the war. Much of the initial coverage combined the protection scenario with an Orientalist version of Afghan history, suggesting that women’s oppression began with the Taliban” (Stabile and Kumar 772). This was of course reductive and far from the complex truth surrounding the oppression of Afghan women that had began and lasted long before the Taliban came to power, but it does show that simply claiming that the Taliban was evil and corrupt was not enough to garner enough public sentiment, what was needed was a sympathetic victim that the public could relate to and become outraged over. Given the patronizing treatment of non-European women throughout colonial history, as well as their lack of agency or voice on the world stage, the women in Afghanistan were chosen as the perfect conduit. 

Not only was this patronizing but also hypocritical, as before nobody cared about the conditions that Afghan women were facing, “The extent of female oppression in Afghanistan, for the most part, fell on deaf Western ears, with little attention in Europe and North America. Emma Bonino, who was a European Commissioner at the time, was shocked at the status and condition of women in Afghanistan after her first visit to Kabul in 1997 when she and her companions were arrested as they were taking photos of a female hospital” (Samar). Thus, the west only started to pay attention when it benefited their own war-mongering agenda. Even while trying to garner sympathy for Afghan women, the U.S. did little to support local feminist efforts on the ground in Afghanistan, “Critics decried this interest in women’s human rights as a cynical public relations ploy, pointing to the U.S. government’s prior neglect of women’s issues in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the lack of Bush administration support for activist organizations such as the Revolutionary Afghan Women’s Alliance (RAWA)” (Kozol 67). This points back to the orientalist idea that saving must come from the outside and wanting to keep up the image that Afghanistan was backward and only through western intervention could anything change. Despite the insincerity, the public relations campaign seemed to work as many U.S. women, including those prominent in the social and political American sphere expressed support for the war, “because it will “liberate Afghan women from abuse and oppression.” The National Organization of Women (NOW) put out statements in support of the war and its allegedly “feminist” objectives. Everyone in the mainstream American and British establishment, including white feminist heroines like eventual Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, signed on wholeheartedly to the cause of fighting the War on Terror via any means that the military, the CIA, or the president thought necessary” (Zakaria 84). With a significant amount of support generated, the stage was set for an invasion under both the auspices of retaliation for the 9/11 attacks as well as the more noble goal of bringing modernity and enlightenment to the oppressed and downtrodden women of Afghanistan who were in dire need of western help.

Afghan women were not always as oppressed and downtrodden as the invading allied forces would have wanted their citizens to believe. Throughout the 20th century, various reformers within the country sought to bring more rights to Afghan women and provide them with access to education and participation in the public sphere. Everything began at the beginning of the last century with the reign of Emir Adbur Rahman. By no means a traditional feminist – believing in the inherent subordination of women to men – he nonetheless sought improve the predicament of women within his country by changing some of the laws that were “detrimental to women’s status. For instance, he abolished the custom forcing a woman to marry her deceased husband’s next of kin, raised the age of marriage, and gave women rights to divorce under specific circumstances. In accordance with Islamic tenets, women were given rights to their father’s and husband’s property” (Ahmed-Gosh). However these reforms, along with those made by his son after him, were faced with opposition – especially from remote tribal areas whose inhabitants saw the push for modernization as deprivation of their traditional rights. The loss of control over the lives of women was necessarily seen as a loss of social status in general, and “What broke the proverbial camel’s back for the traditionalists and rural population was the institution in 1924 of the freedom of women to choose their own partners and attempts to abolish bride price. Fathers of young women saw such progressive laws as a loss of social status, familial control and financial security” (Ahmed-Gosh). The opposition of the rural population when it comes to modernization and imposition of western ideals is a theme that continued into the U.S. and allied invasion of Afghanistan. 

Despite all this, moderate strides towards equality managed to be made and girls were allowed to attend schools starting in the 1950s, enter elected politics and vote following the third Constitution in 1964, and participate more widely in the public sphere as “Half of university students were women, and women made up 40 percent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent of its civil servants. A small number of women even held important political posts as members of Parliament and judges. Most women did not wear the burqa. Even many devout Muslim women wore headscarves and long dresses, but not the burqa” (Ahmed-Gosh, Stabile and Kumar 768). Of course, not all these results were achieved smoothly, with the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) that came to power following the Saur Revolution, using force in order to implement its programs, “For example, the regime required women to attend a literacy program. When government officials met with resistance in Kuner Province, they slaughtered hundreds of people in one night” (Samar). Soon all the strides made towards equality would disappear as the Taliban came to power and forced women back into the subservient position. Even though, as previously demonstrated, the U.S. did not showcase the violations of human rights that Afghan women were experiencing prior to 2001, they nonetheless knew about them and despite them “supported the Taliban, support that grew out of US efforts to secure a contract for an oil pipeline through Afghanistan that would enable a US-based oil corporation, Unocal, to gain access to Caspian Sea oil (Rashid, 2000: 171–82). Because of these economic interests and the desire not to antagonize the Taliban, the US remained silent when the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 and began its assault on women” (Stabile and Kumar 769). Only when it benefitted their own interests, did the U.S. start feigning concern for the fate of Afghan women. Even so, their underlying disregard for their wellbeing was showcased through the misunderstanding of what would actually benefit women in Afghanistan as well as the perpetuation of violence which only served to harm the women they were supposedly trying to help. 

One of the main ways in which the allied invasion went astray regarding its surface goal of liberating Afghan women was its fundamental misunderstanding of what was needed by Afghan women and how to bring it about. In December of 2001, a group of Afghan women met in Brussels in order to draft the Brussels Declaration that identified ways in which they could restore women’s rights and dignity in Afghanistan. As Kim Berry details, “The demands centered around four primary themes: Health; Education, Media, and Culture; Human Rights and Constitution; and Refugees and Internally Displaced Women. The demands covered basic survival issues such as rebuilding water and sanitation systems, restarting food programs, and reestablishing of medical facilities and health centers” (Berry 146). Instead of taking the lead from the Afghan women on the ground, in 2001, the U.S. Aid and International Development Agency (USAID) poured nearly $280 million into a program that they claimed would promote female empowerment, teaching women how to conduct advocacy and encourage them to set up civil organizations (Zakaria 71). Not only were the metrics of evaluation constantly adjusted to make the program seem like a success, but it also fell woefully short of its intended targets, “In the end, the SIGAR report noted, only 55 women could have been said to have benefited from the program, a far cry from the 75,000 target” (Zakaria 72). One cannot help but think how much more all this money could have done if instead it focused on helping rebuild sanitation systems or build medical centres – both recommendations set out in the Brussels Declaration and both being much more pertinent to the lives of rural women who previous empowerment campaigns had always left behind due to the patriarchal and tribal hold in the regions. It goes without saying that of course, one of the things that made Afghan women’s lives so much harder was the violence that the invasion brought and the threat to their families and their security, “Ironically, conflict proliferation is more likely to harm Afghan women than help them because it destabilises the state. The best way to alleviate women’s suffering during the intervention in Afghanistan would have been through political dialogue, not asymmetric warfare” (Connah 76). This only goes to show that the invading allied forces were never truly interested in helping Afghan women in any meaningful capacity, but were instead using them as a way to justify their colonial agenda. 

Violence breeds violence, and with the force used to combat Taliban insurgents, the U.S. forces also brought with them the endangerment of female bodies. Women in Afghanistan had little rights and protections outside of the ones given to them by their male family members, not only did, women lose their support structures as the men in their family were maimed and killed in the conflict,  “violence against women in general was increased by the American presence, and the breakdown of family and tribal support structures” but they themselves were subject to brutality which made their bodies even more disposable in the eyes of the invaders (Zakaria 92-3). More than half of the casualties of the U.S. military offensives were women (Berry 145). 4653 people died as a result of terrorist attacks between 2016 and 2017 in Afghanistan (Connah 78). If the military intervention was truly a success and endeavored to help the people of Afghanistan, casualty numbers would be going down instead of seeing a gradual climb all the way until the eventual victory of the Taliban.  As the article by Alvi Hayat notes, the international community at large is also implicated in this tragedy, as “had countries not invaded Afghanistan and triggered conflicts and wars, and would that consumers worldwide stem their appetites for drugs, prostitution, arms, and other such dark desires, some of the primary sources of power and wealth of the Afghan militias, politicians, warlords, and power brokers would be cut off” (Alvi 10). Thereby, the security and development of women in Afghanistan were once again sacrificed on the altar of expansion and geopolitical machinations. 

One of the main reasons why the allied approach failed to capture the hearts and minds of Afghan women is because of their inability to comprehend that the women did not want to be saved, at least not by foreign powers. As Rafia Zakaria points out, “Afghan women were inextricably connected to Afghan men, and that bombing the men directly affected the women” hence, when violence continued to be either directly or indirectly inflicted on the male population, it inherently made women wary of siding with the allied forces (Zakaria 83). As Anand Gopal noted after conversations with Afghan women, they “described their lives under the Taliban as identical to their lives under Dado and the mujahideen—minus the strangers barging through the doors at night, the deadly checkpoints (Gopal)”. Not only do they share a kinship with the Taliban fighters, but many Afghan women also see the values that western feminism brings and view western women as “corrupt, licentious, and anti-family” preferring their own lives and the kinship ties that ensure their economic stability that they had before and are wary of those who would seek to damage them by introducing gender equality and unfamiliar family dynamics (Ahmed-Gosh). The hard truth is that even if the women in Afghanistan needed to be saved, they certainly did not want to be by the end of the campaign.  Especially not by the allied forces who they saw as invaders and disturbers of their traditional way of life.

Even before the final takeover of the Taliban, due to the destabilization of the country’s security, many women who had entered the public sphere were feeling like their safety was under threat,  “A lot of them are not coming out of the house. A lot of them are fearful. They said that at least during the Taliban’s time we were not being killed left and right, for no reason. When women were killed or beaten, there was a reason behind it. Right now, you don’t need any reason to be killed or to be abused or to be abducted. … So women are saying, ‘Forget it.’ ” (Leeder). In this way, the allied forces destabilized Afghanistan under the auspices of female liberation and empowerment without a proper structure in place in order to ensure the continued safety of women and Afghanis who were implicated by their association with the U.S. and other allied forces. Even those who were involved in feminist movements long before the allied intervention have now pushed their advocacy to the side as they focus mainly on their own security, with one of these activists saying, “To be honest, right now, even though I’m a very hard-core feminist … right now for Kandahar, women’s rights … is my last priority. Right now my Number 1 priority is security – safety and security,” she said” (Leeder). Therefore, without a clear plan of action that addressed the real concerns of women, the allied forces left those they were trying to help in even worst condition then they found them and fearing for their lives once the allies left. Additionally, what this did was make Afghan women further sympathize with the Taliban as opposed to their so-called liberators, “after the killing of thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Afghan women are hardly better off than they were before; they regard the U.S. war as akin to the Taliban regime” (Cloud 297). Moreover, not only have conditions deteriorated for women socially, but also medically, with life expectancy declining from 44 years in 2002 to 43.3 years in 2006 and perinatal conditions being the number health-related cause of death (Alvi 3). Therefore, the only thing that U.S. military action accomplished in Afghanistan with regards to the situation of its women, is to deteriorate their lives and make them distrustful of the west, pushing them further under the influence of the Taliban. 

Even though aiding Afghan women in their liberation was nothing but a pretext that further orientalized Afghanistan and its people, making them seem both like victims in need of saving and savages that must be tamed, more could have been done in order to ameliorate the conditions that women were living under the Taliban regime and ensure lasting stability. One of the things that could have been done was focus on structural instead of cosmetic change that would change Afghani’s attitudes towards women instead of offering ultimately vapid fixes that did nothing to address the underlying issues. For example, “women may now venture out in certain regions without a male escort, but they still do not enjoy basic human rights. And while 1.5 million Afghan children now attend schools – one third of them girls – more than 3 million children do not go to schools because no infrastructure exists” (Stabile and Kumar 775). A proper allocation of funds would have greatly helped rebuild the destroyed infrastructure that would have served communities for years to come as well as help build the foundation for an educated citizenry. By 2014,  “the USA had spent more than $54 billion on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (ASFF) to train and equip the Afghan military (Monten & Gisselquist, 2014: 185). This training did not prevent increased troop casualties” (Connah 79). As discussed in class, the Afghanistan Security Forces were rife with corruption and ineffective. Once again, if the U.S. forces were as interested in both helping the citizens of Afghanistan as defeating the Taliban, then they should have focused more and spent more money on effective development programs which would have addressed the eminent concerns of the people. This in turn, would make them more willing to cooperate and susceptible to adoption of western values when they realized that the allied forces were truly there to help them instead of to cause more violence and death through their involvement. As Leoni Connah points out, “Civilian deaths also counter the US objective to alleviate the suffering of women, given the consistently high number of female casualties in ground engagements, aerial operations and suicide attacks (UNAMA, 2018)” (Connah 79). 

In order to justify its invasion of Afghanistan and prolonged engagement in the region, the United States of America, along with their allies, needed to garner public support for the campaign. They did so by positioning the liberation of the women of Afghanistan from the repressive Taliban regime as one of the causes for intervention. However, employing the paternalistic and colonial mindset of Orientalist feminism, the allied forces failed to identify the actual needs of the women they sought to liberate. Through ineffective development work and continued spread of violence, which only worsened the conditions of Afghan women, the allies painted themselves in a negative light and pushed the population – including women – to sympathize with the Taliban, who they saw as more familiar as opposed to the allies who were disrupting their way of life and bringing nothing but instability and violence in return.