Women's Place in Afghan Society After 14 Years of Western Occupation

Yesterday was International Women's Day. I celebrated it by going back and reading two long articles by Alissa Rubin that appeared early last week.

In the first story, "Afghan Policewomen Struggle Against Culture," which I found the more informative of the two, Rubin describes what can only be called a failed effort by occupying Western powers to establish a toehold for women in the tribal, misogynist Afghan criminal justice system. Remember, besides the hunt for the planners of 9/11, it was restoring the lost rights of Afghan women under the Taliban that was the main justification used by the Bush administration for its lengthy occupation of the country.

In one telling passage Rubin describes how Western-dictated quotas for police women have been turned into a system of prostitution:

. . . Nooria Sediqi, a second lieutenant who is about 50, displayed considerable knowledge of prostitution arrangements within the police. “The salaries are low,” she said of police pay. For a session of sex, a woman could earn $100 or even $200, she said. That is half a month’s salary for a junior policewoman, and a great deal even for a more senior one. 

Occasionally older policewomen have acted as madams, procuring younger ones either for men within the police force or outside it, according to two of the policewomen interviewed for this article as well as Western officials who work with the police. 

Interviews suggest that many policewomen, aware they have few useful skills and untrained in how to behave professionally, are vulnerable to sexual pressure. They are easy targets for more senior males who can withhold their pay or assign them to jobs far from home, and so policewomen are fearful of complaining.

One has to get to nearly the end of the story before Rubin provides a glimpse of success in the form of Zarif Shaan Naibi: "The first female warden of Kabul’s women’s prison, she stands out among the overwhelmingly male command structure of the Interior Ministry."

It is at this point, near the end, that Rubin finally allows for a little historical context to enter her piece:

Her success appears to be rooted partly in her training in the late 1970s and the 1980s, when Afghanistan’s government was imbued with Communist ideology. The period offered exceptional opportunity for women, especially in urban areas.

As ethnic Hazaras, a group that was persecuted by the Taliban and has now embraced education and the modern world, Ms. Naibi’s mother and brothers allowed her to join the police, and when she married, her husband allowed her to continue. He is now in the Defense Ministry.

Ms. Naibi recalls that in her day all her teachers at the police training center were women. Now they are almost all men.

Under the Communists, women’s education was valued and candidates for the police were vetted, she said. “If she wasn’t educated, they wouldn’t take her. If she had graduated from high school, they would send her to the police academy.”

But these Communist ideals encountered resistance from much of Afghan society. Then under the Taliban, most policewomen were banished, and Ms. Naibi’s family, as Hazaras, had to flee. When the police were reconstituted after the Taliban’s ouster in 2001, the Afghan leadership was desperate for women to serve, calling former policewomen back to work as well as recruiting new ones.

What Rubin leaves unmentioned is the U.S. role in bringing to end the period of Communist rule that "offered exceptional opportunity for women"; that role led to the blowback attacks of 9/11 and is currently responsible for reign of terror in the Middle East. (For a brilliant recapitulation of how the U.S. is presently both fighting and assisting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria read Tim Anderson's "The Relationship between Washington and ISIS: The Evidence.")

In other words, what the U.S. was responsible for destroying it is now halfheartedly and superficially trying to reconstruct, and so far with little success to show for its effort.

In the second of her two articles, "A Thin Line of Defense Against ‘Honor Killings’," Rubin describes Women for Afghan Women, "a fragile network of safe houses and the women who staff them" in 13 Afghan provinces. It is here that Rubin goes into the brutal nuts and bolts of Afghan patriarchy. This is ground that has been covered elsewhere earlier, such as in Ann Jones superb Kabul in Winter (2007), but it is good to see the Gray Lady devoting not insignificant column inches to it.

One wonders how long this network of women's shelters will last when the U.S. pulls out by the end of next year. There is currently a bipartisan movement underway ("No Cause to Delay the Afghan Pullout") to maintain U.S. military presence beyond 2016. Based on recent reports, it is clear that in the Afghan National Army we have another Iraq Army -- a paper army, a ghost army. The U.S. military is required to have a presence in country to obscure this.

Afghanistan: This is the End

I'm heading out of town for the holidays. The page will be dormant for a day or two. Before I go I want to draw attention, once again, to the situation in Afghanistan, which is perilous for the Western-installed government of Ashraf Ghani. A story this morning by Rod Nordland describes the situation in Taliban stomping ground Helmand Province, "Taliban Push Into Afghan Districts That U.S. Had Secured":

Nationwide, Afghanistan has lost more than 5,000 police and soldiers in the fighting this year, more than any previous year, according to official Afghan data that has not been formally released, but that was obtained by The New York Times and confirmed by Western officials familiar with the data. 

The year has also hit a new high for civilian deaths in the fighting, which the United Nations estimates will exceed 10,000 by the end of 2014. 

Helmand has been a particular rough spot — not just according to casualty figures, but also taking into account overall views of the government’s performance.

A recent report commissioned by the international community and carried out by an independent consultant, Coffey International Development, found that by almost every measure Afghans in Helmand saw a worsening in corruption, security, government services and delivery of justice since the departure of foreign forces.

If you go to The New York Times home page and you search "Rod Nordland" and sort by "Newest" and then you repeat the process for "Azam Ahmed" you'll see what I mean. These are the Gray Lady's two principal reporters for Afghanistan. Their reporting over the last several months documents an increasingly dire situation; meaning, the Afghan powering-sharing government of Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah has a short half-life. As Azam Ahmed's interview ("Misgivings by U.S. General as Afghan Mission Ends") with outgoing U.S. combat commander Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson made clear, the number of casualties currently being sustained by Afghan security forces cannot be maintained:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Shortly after the speeches concluded, the flags were folded and the band silenced, the last American general to lead combat operations in Afghanistan offered his candid assessment of the war. 

“I don’t know if I’m pessimistic or optimistic,” said Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, the departing commander, considering the United States military’s reduced role next year. “The fact that we are in less places, the fact that there are less of us as a coalition, is obviously concerning.” 

In an interview Monday in his office after the lowering of the flag that signaled the official end of the coalition’s war-fighting mission, General Anderson offered a nuanced take on the final year of America’s longest war. 

The record casualties of Afghan forces are not sustainable, and neither are their astounding desertion rates, he said. Political meddling, not intelligence, drives Afghan military missions. The police and the army do not work together.

It was a reflection on the mission that was in stark contrast to the unbridled renditions of success offered during the ceremony by commanders, including General Anderson.

Nordland's article in today's paper:

Wounded police officers at Emergency expressed concern at the increased scale of the fighting. “Only the asphalt road is under the control of the government in Sangin. Everything else is Taliban,” said Samiullah, a policeman in Sangin for the past four years who goes by just one name. He was shot in the leg during an ambush in a village near the district center. 

Like many of the wounded, he complained about both the Afghan National Army and his own commanders. “Our own commanders sell our bullets to the Taliban instead of giving them to us, and then they buy a nice house in Lashkar Gah and stay there, leaving the little guys out there to do the fighting,” Samiullah said. 

Now that the Americans are gone, the army rarely conducts joint operations with the police, leaving them to do most of the fighting, said Mohammad Saleh, a five-year veteran of the Afghan Local Police in Sangin, who was badly wounded in both legs when his checkpoint was overrun by the insurgents. 

Mr. Saleh remains patriotic and wants to return to the fight, but he conceded that corruption was as big an enemy as the Taliban. “Our commanders all buy their positions, so they have to make money to pay for them,” he said. “The Taliban do not do this with their commanders.”

This is the kind of security force the U.S. leaves in the wake of its occupations -- a venal one. Like Iraq's "ghost army" that disappeared, or, rather, was never really there to begin with, when ISIS captured Mosul this past summer, the numbers of Afghan security forces are fluffed up considerably by phantom conscripts who exist only on paper in order for some official to collect extra paychecks.

Then there is the issue of the Afghan National Army Vs. Afghan Local Police. They fight one another. So already there is a civil war within the Ghani government.

We need to start asking what the fall of Afghanistan portends. Afghanistan's descent into civil war, prompting the Soviet invasion, is an event that heralded the coming neoliberal age. The collapse of the Western occupation of Afghanistan augurs ill for the dominant neoliberal paradigm. I believe the war is coming home to the Western core.