Old Dilemmas or New Challenges? The Politics of
Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
Deniz Kandiyoti
ABSTRACT
This article situates the politics of gender in Afghanistan in the nexus of
global and local influences that shape the policy agenda of post-Taliban
reconstruction. Three sets of factors that define the parameters of current
efforts at securing gender justice are analysed: a troubled history of state–
society relations; the profound social transformations brought about by years
of prolonged conflict; and the process of institution-building under way since
the Bonn Agreement in 2001. This evolving institutional framework opens
up a new field of contestation between the agenda of international donor
agencies, an aid-dependent government and diverse political factions, some
with conservative Islamist platforms. At the grassroots, the dynamics of gendered disadvantage, the erosion of local livelihoods, the criminalization of
the economy and insecurity at the hands of armed groups combine seamlessly
to produce extreme forms of female vulnerability. The ways in which these
contradictory influences play out in the context of a fluid process of political
settlement will be decisive in determining prospects for the future.
INTRODUCTION
Preoccupations with issues of gender justice and equity are seldom at the
forefront of international concerns in war and conflict situations. Indeed, a
UNDP report (2003) noted the marginalization of gender dimensions in conflicts and crises and a general failure to address women’s vulnerabilities and
concerns. Afghanistan would, on the face of it, appear to constitute an exception to this rule if we are to go by the centrality accorded by the international
community to women’s oppression under the Taliban. The plight of women
in Afghanistan was invoked, among other things, as a humanitarian crisis
justifying military intervention in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001
An earlier version of this article was published as UNRISD Occasional Paper No 4 (February
2005). I would like to express my thanks to Sippi Azarbaijani-Moghaddam for her thoughtful
comments on an earlier draft of the present article and to an anonymous referee.
C Institute of Social Studies 2007. Published
Development and Change 38(2): 169–199 (2007). by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St.,
Malden, MA 02148, USA
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attacks in the United States. 1 Reversing abuses of women’s rights became an
explicit item of policy, at least at the level of rhetoric.
However, debates among transnational feminist constituencies on an appropriate politics of solidarity with women in Afghanistan proved to be quite
divisive. These exchanges followed the familiar tropes of women’s rights as
universal human rights vs. ‘feminism-as-imperialism’, reflected in a spate
of articles both in the popular press and in academic journals, with evocative titles such as ‘Feminism as Imperialism’ (Viner, 2002), ‘Do Muslim
Women Really Need Saving?’ (Abu-Lughod, 2002), and ‘Imperial Wars or
Benevolent Interventions?’ (Arat-Koc, 2002). Charges of patronizing attitudes vis-à-vis the women of Afghanistan, voiced by various authors, clearly
originate from different types of concerns. For some, there is a clear continuity in colonial meddling ‘when Lord Cromer in British-ruled Egypt, French
ladies in Algeria and Laura Bush, all with military troops behind them, claim
to be saving or liberating Muslim women’ (Abu-Lughod, 2002: 3). For others,
delegitimizing the political choices of Afghan women who opted for ‘progressive’ policies under the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) as
somehow inappropriate to a Muslim society represents a form of political
collusion that condones all manner of patriarchal excess under the banner of
cultural difference (Moghadam, 2002a).
Whatever the merits of these arguments, it is at the national level, in
prospects for security and national consolidation and in struggles over constitutional and citizenship rights, that the most decisive outcomes are set to
materialize. Molyneux and Razavi state quite unambiguously that ‘The central instrument for the protection of rights has been, and must remain, the
state’ (2002: 24). How does this proposition sit in contexts where primary
state functions, such as the provision of basic social services, are offloaded
onto humanitarian and international aid organizations? Or, just as importantly, where the process of state building and peace consolidation is itself
subject to blueprints laid out by international players, with different degrees
of buy-in by internal political constituencies. Societies that emerge from
conflict with weakened or vestigial institutions of governance present specific challenges. These must be taken fully on board before contemplating
any meaningful discussion of how women’s rights may be promoted or safeguarded in the process of post-conflict reconstruction.
In this respect, contexts such as post-Taliban Afghanistan differ in significant ways from the moment of post-colonial state building in the aftermath
of the wave of decolonization following World War II. In Muslim majority
countries, as elsewhere in the South, the expansion of women’s citizenship
rights was framed as an integral part of national consolidation and development (Kandiyoti, 1991a, 1991b). Processes of political negotiation involved
1. One year after the US intervention in Afghanistan, a newspaper columnist expressed this
eloquently by stating that ‘The burka was the battle flag of last year’s brief war’ (Toynbee,
2002).
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
171
struggles between different internal constituencies against the more distant
backdrop of the influence of former colonial powers and international organizations (Kandiyoti, 2001). The ‘internationalization’ of state building
under new forms of tutelage in post-conflict contexts poses new dilemmas
of legitimacy and calls for the management of multiple tensions between
contradictory donor and local objectives (Donini et al., 2004; Ghani et al.,
2005; Rubin, 2006). This, in turn, means that the issue of gender justice and
women’s rights becomes politicized in new and complex ways.
The central objective of this article is to situate the politics of gender —
defined as a process of appropriation, contestation and reinterpretation of
discourses on socially sanctioned gender relations and women’s rights —
in the context of evolving institutional frameworks and the nexus of global
and local factors that shape the policy agenda in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Three major sets of influences that define the parameters of current efforts
at securing women’s rights are analysed: a troubled history of state–society
relations; the profound social transformations brought about by years of
prolonged conflict; and the process under way since the Bonn Agreement
in 2001 that includes the promotion of gender equality in its institutional
objectives. This configuration opens up a new field of contestation between
the agenda of international donor agencies, an aid-dependent government
and diverse political factions, some with conservative Islamist agendas. The
contradictory pressures emanating from these influences and the ways in
which these are accommodated in emerging political settlements will shape
the prospects for the future.
STATE-BUILDING AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN AFGHANISTAN:
A TROUBLED TRAJECTORY
‘Women had always been a major source of bloodshed in Afghanistan’ (Kakar, 1978: 202)
Women’s rights in Afghanistan are caught up in a turbulent history of state–
society relations, marked by two attempts at radical reform instigated from
above — the first during the reign of King Amanullah between 1924 and
1928, the second under the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)
between 1978 and 1979. Both episodes were followed by bloody uprisings
and a violent backlash targeting women’s attire, mobility and public presence,
albeit under very different circumstances.
Invoking the opposition between ‘modernists’ vs. ‘traditionalists’ to explain resistance to reforms in women’s status only partially captures the
factors driving the political process in Afghanistan. 2 Rubin (1995) explicitly
2. Barakat and Wardell (2002) make reference to these dualities to develop their argument
while Dupree (1988a) draws our attention to the role of an insulated Westernized elite that
was effectively cut off from the rural majority. Moghadam acknowledges the characteristics
of Afghanistan as a ‘weak’ state ruling over a patriarchal, tribal society and urges us to
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states that the ‘traditionalism’ and ‘localism’ attributed to the Afghan polity,
far from being survivals of ancient traditions, are instead the partial result
of the particular mode of integration of the country into the contemporary
state system. Afghanistan’s role in the colonial system was to block Russian
advance toward British India: hence the British supported the construction
of a state ‘with a preponderance of coercive resources’ (Rubin, 1995: 8).
During the decades between decolonization and the end of the Cold War,
Afghanistan exploited superpower rivalries to cash in on ‘locational rents’ to
finance the expansion of the state apparatus. Reliance on foreign subsidies
rather than internally derived revenue gave Afghanistan the hallmarks of a
rentier state with relatively weak engagement with society.
The characteristics of society were to also determine the nature of the state.
The origins of the modern Afghan state lay in the confederation of Pashtun
tribes, now known as the Durrani, which evolved into a dynastic state. Tapper
(1983) pointed out that the state had to maintain unity to uphold the hierarchy
required for indirect rule whilst also exploiting tribal cleavages to consolidate
central power. If Afghanistan did evolve into a centralizing nation-state, it
was as a buffer state that was able to impose its will on the tribes thanks to
the financial subsidies and arms provided by the British between 1880 and
1919. Shahrani (1998) further contends that not only was the establishment
of modern state apparatuses in Afghanistan the result of British colonial
policies but that the repressive Pashtunization policies of successive rulers,
redistributing resources in favour of the ruling group, instituted a form of
internal colonization.
Whether the nation-state had any purchase in Afghanistan is a hotly contested issue that goes to the heart of current debates on post-conflict governance and understandings of citizenship. The Afghanistan National Development Report asserts that ‘Contrary to many assumptions, the various ethnic
groups . . . have evolved into a mix of Afghans with fairly common culture,
psychology and ethos’ (UNDP, 2004: 101.) These sentiments are echoed by
authors who claim that, at least in urban centres and before the dislocation
occasioned by years of protracted conflict, the bonds of citizenship were
strengthened through education, inter-marriage and service in the national
army at the expense of ethnic/tribal affiliation (Kakar, 1978; Wardak, 2004).
In contrast, Edwards sees the nation-state framework as a fabrication that
sits ill with the realities of Afghan society. He notes ‘the absence of a moral
discourse of statehood shared by the majority of its citizens’ (Edwards, 1996:
4). Since attempts at modernization, including reforms affecting the status of
women, always emanated from an urban-based state elite trying to consolidate its control over a fractious periphery, repeated failures must be placed in
the context of state–society relations in Afghanistan. When the state is seen
move beyond ideologically charged formulations to consider ‘the very real conflicts between modernizers and traditionalists and between women’s emancipation and patriarchy’
(Moghadam, 1993: 248).
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
173
as external and predatory, as a coercive apparatus that oppresses local communities through its corrupt bureaucracy, the safeguard of local autonomy
against these predations becomes axiomatic. Indeed, Roy contended that the
uprisings against the communist regime which broke out from 1978 were
directed ‘as much against the state itself as against the Marxist government’
(Roy, 1986: 10). Furthermore, if, as Edwards asserts, autonomy is articulated
in the language of honour and around gendered ideals of personal integrity,
patrolling the boundaries of relevant spheres of autonomy becomes absolutely crucial: ‘When those in power overstep the bounds of their legitimate
authority, it is often narrativized in terms of violation and emasculation. That
is one reason why female education and veiling have perennially been such
powerful and explosive issues in Afghanistan’(Edwards, 2002: 172–3).
The history of women’s rights in Afghanistan has often been likened to
a tug-of-war between centralizing state elites, Islamic ulama 3 resisting the
encroachments of the state into their rightful territory, and a rural and tribal
periphery intent on safeguarding its autonomy (Azarbaijani-Mohgaddam,
2004; Dupree, 1994, 1998a; Moghadam, 1993). However, the terms of these
contestations were substantially transformed through time, as were the nature
of political actors and the types of discursive resources they drew upon to
establish legitimacy (Barfield, 2004).
Under Amir Abdurrahman Khan (1880–1901), who is considered the
founder of the modern Afghan state, the enforcement of shar’ia law represented a modernizing and centralist impulse in a context where customary
tribal law prevailed. Abdurrahman’s recourse to the shar’ia was accompanied by an attempt to integrate the clergy with the secular institutions of
the state through control of the madrassas (religious schools) and the waqf
(pious charitable foundations). The centralization and bureaucratization of
the shar’ia gave the state a new role as arbitrator and opened the way to the
enforcement of women’s claims as disputants in Islamic qadi courts (Ghani,
1983). The monarch’s claims to legitimacy rested on his status as protector of
the faithful and as leader of jihad (holy war) against infidels — an enduring
trope of claims to legitimate rule in Afghanistan.
It was only at the turn of the twentieth century that a new modernist
discourse grounded in transnational Islamic reformism and inspired by nationalist anti-colonial movements was imported into Afghanistan by ‘Young
Afghan’ intellectuals such as Mahmud Tarzi (Gregorian, 1969). King Amanullah, who ruled between 1919 and 1929, was deeply influenced by ‘Young
Afghan’ ideology and by the example of Kemalist reforms in Turkey. 4
3. The direct translation for ulama is ‘the ones possessing knowledge’; it is generally used for
the group of men with religious education and religiously related professions, the ‘learned
men’.
4. By the late 1920s, Afghanistan had one of the most progressive bodies of legislation in
the Muslim world, including a family law passed in 1921 banning child marriage, freeing
widows from the domination of their husband’s family, mandating judicial permission before
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Attributing the demise of Amanullah Khan, overthrown in a tribal insurrection backed by religious leaders in 1928, to misguided modernization
policies, however, overlooks the consequences of both his foreign policy
choices (making a bid for national independence and distancing himself
from the British) and his domestic policies of curtailing the power of the
ulama and imposing high taxation to meet the costs of ambitious projects
(Poullada, 1973). 5
By contrast, during Zahir Shah’s reign (1933–73), the state did not attempt
to encroach on the ulama’s realm of personal law. During this period, the
ulama moved closer to the state and endorsed its policies as Islamic (Etling,
2004). Nonetheless, modernization policies were put back on track in the
realms of education and public life. The government led by Prime Minister
Daoud (1953–63) announced its support for the voluntary removal of the
veil in 1959 and an end to enforced seclusion. The 1964 constitution made
the shari’a authoritative only in areas where no statutory laws existed and
where the principles of Hanafi jurisprudence continued to apply. Women were
granted the right to vote and to be elected. It was also in the more liberal
atmosphere of the constitutional period that the People’s Democratic Party
of Afghanistan (PDPA), which attracted a membership among urban middleclasses, intellectuals and students, was founded, while the sympathizers of
the Muslim Brotherhood consolidated their networks at the Kabul Shar’ia
Faculty.
The short-lived episode of constitutional rule was superseded by the seizure
of power by Daud in 1973 and his removal by means of a military coup
staged by the PDPA in April 1978 (the Saur Revolution). The PDPA pushed
through a number of radical measures such as land reform and a complete
overhaul of family legislation. 6 Their policies included a drive to eradicate
female illiteracy and measures to promote women’s participation in political
and economic life that increased their public visibility. Moghadam (1993)
stressed the continuity of PDPA policies with earlier modernizing reforms,
arguing they were similarly thwarted as a result of unfavourable internal
and external circumstances. However, whereas Amanullah Khan attempted
to disengage from British tutelage, the PDPA was transparently beholden to
the Soviet Union. The would-be appropriators of modernity were aligned
with a foreign power that would become an occupying power. This tarnished
their claims to legitimacy, as did their factional in-fighting and the repressive
a man could take multiple wives and removing some family law questions from mullahs’
jurisdiction.
5. Although initially well respected by the clerical establishment for his use of pan-Islamism
to free Afghanistan from British influence, Amanullah’s legal reforms encroached on the
power and jurisdiction of the ulama by creating a new hierarchy of courts and bringing
in secularly-trained judges alongside the ulama, a bifurcation that would have long-term
effects (Etling, 2004).
6. The limitations of these measures and their reception in Afghan society are chronicled in
Hyman (1984). On family reform see Tapper (1984).
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
175
policies that targeted dissenting women and men. 7 While some women became PDPA activists and emerged as influential party cadres, others joined
resistance movements, 8 both secular and religious, especially after the Soviet
occupation (Emadi, 2002).
After the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan became an active theatre of
civil war between government forces and the mujahidin which was backed by
the United States and its allies. The period of factional fighting that followed
the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 was marked by gross abuses of human rights
as various commanders killed, pillaged and raped with impunity and without
attracting much attention from the international community (Moghadam,
2002b; Niland, 2004). The Taliban’s claim to be restoring law and order
through the imposition of a strict variant of Islamic law was welcomed in
some quarters because it rode on the back of excesses committed during the
period of mujahidin in-fighting.
The Taliban came to power with the backing of Pakistan and were originally the product of a generation of Pashtun refugee boys trained in exile in
madrassas schooling them in the conservative Deobandi tradition. The Taliban’s policies were made manifest through the activities of the Ministry for
the Enforcement of Islamic Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (modelled on its
Saudi counterpart) which imposed a virtual state of curfew on women and enforced mandatory covering under the burqah, subject to severe punishments
for infractions (Dupree, 1998b; Marsden, 1999; Rashid, 2000). The damage inflicted by Taliban decrees was extensive; whereas before 70 per cent
of teachers, almost half of civil servants and 40 per cent of doctors were
women, strict restrictions were now placed on their mobility and they
were banned from leaving their homes without a mahram (an immediate
male relative). There is some evidence, nonetheless, that the Taliban — who
were at their most punitive in urban areas they considered as ‘sinful’ — had
to reach pragmatic compromises with many communities and with aid agencies operating at the local level (Johnson and Leslie, 2004). By the time the
Taliban were ousted in the aftermath of the attacks on the US of September
11, 2001, the plight of Afghan women had become widely publicized as one
of the humanitarian tragedies justifying intervention.
Although this brief overview suggests that the battle lines around the politics of gender have deep historical roots, these are neither static nor do they
give us direct insights into the dynamics of gender relations in everyday
7. In its early secular phase, the PDPA made no appeal to local idioms of legitimacy. However,
they resorted to the symbols of obeisance to Islam to bolster their flagging legitimacy
and enlisted clerics to condemn attacks against the government, using the term jihad to
characterize the struggle against reaction (Hyman, 1984; Olesen, 1995). Barfield (2004:
288) claims that the Taliban later became the mirror image of the PDPA in that they were
‘intent on imposing radical doctrines of foreign origin (this time religious) on a population
that was strongly opposed to them’.
8. The best known among these is the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan
(RAWA), a radical secular group headquartered in Pakistan.
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life. Attempting to read off gender relations from state policies and legal
frameworks remains a limited exercise in contexts where central governance
apparatuses have restricted reach and the vast majority of women have little
contact with state, markets and civil society organizations. 9 Women’s life
options are primarily conditioned by the fortunes of the communities and
households in which their livelihoods and everyday lives are embedded. It is,
therefore, to these contexts that one must turn for a more realistic appraisal
of the opportunities and constraints they face.
It has become commonplace to acknowledge that women and men experience conflict and war differently; 10 they may be exposed to different types
of hazard and vulnerability and have different stakes in peace building and
stability (Cockburn, 1998; Jacobs et al., 2000; Moser and Clark, 2001; Rehn
and Sirleaf, 2002). Although the dislocations experienced over two decades
of civil war, compounded by a severe drought, have been the focus of studies
of the political economy of conflict and livelihoods in Afghanistan (Bhatia
et al., 2003; Cramer and Goodhand, 2002; Goodhand, 2002; Grace and Pain,
2004; Pain and Goodhand, 2002; Pain and Lautze, 2002; Rubin, 2000), the
contradictory effects of war and displacement on age and gender hierarchies
in households and communities have yet to receive the attention they deserve. It is against the background of these new challenges, rather than with
reference to some pristine notion of indigenous culture or Islam, that the
politics of gender is being played out.
THE LEGACIES OF CONFLICT: IS THERE A GENDER SUB-TEXT?
There are striking differences in the tone and content of writings on the political economy of conflict in Afghanistan and those dealing with gender relations and the status of women. The former demonstrate that the war economy
has brought about a profound transformation in social relations, changing a
country with a predominantly rural economy based on subsistence agriculture and pastoralism into the world’s largest producer of opium, a centre of
arms dealing and smuggling whose criminalized economy has funded local
warlords, including the Taliban. In discussions of women’s rights, however,
we often revert to a world of unchanging tradition and cultural stasis. Even
the excesses of the Taliban have, at times, been explained away with reference to some static cultural tradition, briefly and aberrantly interrupted by
the attempted reforms of an urban-dwelling elite. Some have argued that
9. Even the Taliban, who had the explicitly stated aim of transforming society, had limited
impact on the lives of rural and nomadic (kuchi) women, except when they became direct
targets of violence as was the case during the capture of the Central Highlands.
10. This acknowledgement is enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on ‘Women,
Peace and Security’ whose provisions are geared to mainstreaming gender into conflict
prevention and resolution, peace-building and reconstruction efforts.
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
177
Taliban policy was simply ‘the continuation of institutionalised structural
and personal violence against women in Afghanistan’ (Bill, 2002: 98). It
is, therefore, worth rehearsing the main thrust of the socio-economic transformations that took place between the Soviet invasion and the fall of the
Taliban, with a view to teasing out some of their implications for social
relations in general and gender relations in particular.
Rubin (2000) offers a useful periodization of the stages of the development
of a war economy in Afghanistan that helps to shed some light on changing
gender regimes. The pre-war economy of the 1970s was split between a rural,
largely subsistence sector and an urban economy dependent on a state which
received most of its revenue from foreign aid (which in the 1960s accounted
for over 40 per cent of the budget). Changes in the role of women, such as
access to education and professional employment, had been entirely urban
phenomena, dependent on an expanding state sector. The eventual loss of
legitimacy and collapse of the state eroded the already weak institutional
support for women’s public roles. The period of upheaval and insecurity that
followed not only reversed formal gains in women’s rights which, in any case,
had little purchase in the vast rural hinterland, but also produced profound
changes in social relations.
During the Soviet occupation (1979–89), growing dependence on politically motivated humanitarian aid, the destruction of the rural economy
through counterinsurgency, the forced displacement of rural populations to
Afghan cities and refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran, the creation of refugeewarrior communities in the diaspora and a rapid monetization of the economy
constituted significant landmarks in the transformation of society. Between
1979 and 1992 an estimated six million people — more than one-fifth of
the population — fled their places of origin to become refugees or internally displaced people (IDPs). Some of the social changes brought about by
the Afghan resistance included the decline of the political power of khans
(landowners), the growing influence of the ulama, the rise of Islamist parties and local commanders as key players (Roy, 1986). The infrastructure of
support for the resistance fed into new social networks that skimmed off the
profits invested into smuggling and other businesses while the transport infrastructure available for smuggling activities was also deployed for the arms
and drugs trade. This led to the growth of new strata controlling the profits
from these activities. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the reduction of
external aid and the destruction of agriculture produced unprecedented incentives for cash-producing activities, mainly smuggling of consumer goods
and opium growing. Opium became the principal expanding source of cash
incomes, providing casual work for the landless and opportunities for credit
and cash advances for smallholders and sharecroppers.
Much of the evidence on the condition of women during this period is
derived from studies carried out in refugee camps (Christensen, 1984, 1988,
1990; Howard-Merriam, 1987) or on returnees (Azarbaijani-Moghaddam,
2001). These studies point to contradictory trends. On the one hand, there
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was evidence of the reinforcement of patriarchal controls over women resulting partly from the insecurities of life in exile (Boesen, 1990) and partly as a
response to the ideology of the various jihadi parties that acted as gatekeepers for the distribution of international aid. On the other hand, for many, this
was their first exposure to health, education and other social welfare services
that were largely absent in the rural areas from which they originated. Many
women in these uprooted communities experienced new forms of service
provision as recipients of humanitarian aid and income-generation projects
run by NGOs in refugee camps. Meanwhile, the urban and literate women
of the diaspora started forming women’s NGOs during their years of exile.
The numbers of Afghan women’s NGOs operating in the diaspora increased,
establishing women as civil society actors. The relatively muted mobilization of women during the periods of state-led modernization in Afghanistan
received new impetus through the experiences of displacement and exile.
The fall of the Najibullah government in 1992 swept the mainly nonPashtun mujahidin into power. Led by President Rabbani, the Islamic State
of Afghanistan failed to establish control of most of the country’s territory
beyond the capital and its non-Pashtun ethnic base in the northeast. In the
power struggles that followed, regional warlords acted with impunity and
perpetrated forms of predation and extortion that disrupted trade and the
national market. Increasingly, the regions became disarticulated from the
national economy and integrated with neighbouring foreign markets, creating
a ‘regionalized’ war economy (Cramer and Goodhand, 2002). This period of
lawlessness was witness to some of the worst human rights abuses, including
crimes against women.
After they emerged in 1994, at the height of the civil war, the Taliban gradually took over the country until by 1998 they controlled most of Afghanistan.
They were backed by a variety of constituencies with an interest in the cessation of predation, from foreign oil companies wanting to secure Afghanistan
as a pipeline route, to Afghan and Pakistani cross-border traders whose activities and profits were hit by growing insecurity (Rashid, 2000). The Taliban
promised to restore the rule of law, albeit through a particularly harsh application of shar’ia. 11
However brutal, the gender regime imposed by the Taliban represented
a major break with ‘traditional’ forms of social control in various ethnic
communities across Afghanistan. Decisions relating to the dress and mobility
of women and to relations between the sexes that were previously monitored
by households, kinship groups and community elders could now be mandated
by decree and enforced by groups of armed young men, sometimes with little
11. The pious image the Taliban tried to project was soon tainted by the atrocities they committed
during the capture of Mazar and in the Central Highlands. The abduction and forced marriage
of women by Taliban forces and the recruitment of young men as fighters, or pain of having
to pay heavy levies to avoid being drafted, were among the various abuses visited on local
communities.
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
179
regard for local hierarchies. This not only oppressed women but potentially
disempowered non-Taliban men by robbing them of their prerogatives. In
some senses, the Taliban victory created a social revolution with a dramatic
reversal of previous patterns whereby the countryside started to rule the
capital and sons of poor tribes and clans were able to unsettle an established
tribal aristocracy.
Roy (2004) claims that the Taliban undermined the legitimacy of traditional tribal elders and of established ulama and explicitly rejected customary
tribal law (pashtunwali). Whereas tradition maintains a space of ambiguity
between norms and actual practices, the policing of a univocal system of
explicit norms reduces the autonomy of social actors. The important distinction Bourdieu (1977) makes between ‘doxa’ as the unquestioned, self-evident
premises that regulate social life and ‘orthodoxy’ as an ideologized and therefore transformed reworking of these premises, requiring heavy-handed and
violent forms of enforcement, would appear to apply to the rule of the Taliban.
A number of consequences flow from the observations above. First, the
use of blanket terms such as ‘patriarchy’ tells us relatively little about the
intersections of gender and violence in Afghanistan. It is necessary to problematize the different uses of gender-based violence deployed by diverse
social actors. 12 The ‘privatized’ violence exercised by kin groups and families in the service of honour and reputation must be distinguished from
sexual violence (against women, girls and boys) used as a systematic tool
of war to intimidate, despoil and establish positional superiority, and from
the public performances of Islamic retribution (featuring spectacular events
such as lashings and executions) deployed by the Taliban as a means of social control. 13 The Taliban were not merely affirming their piety or their
implementation of Islamic law, Cole suggests, but ‘were engaged in “staged
publicity” that ritually affirmed their power and legitimacy’ (Cole, 2003:
782). Although their most frequent targets and victims are women and girls,
the underlying normative frameworks and objectives of these forms of violence are not interchangeable nor are they part of some singular cultural
script.
Second, attributing some courses of action adopted by ordinary people as
they try to grapple with the uncertainties of everyday life to the workings of
patriarchy can be misleading. Misrecognizing or misinterpreting what are,
in effect, reactive behaviours by treating them as mere extensions of local
custom hides from view the corrosive effects of insecurity and poverty. To
take but one example, the marriage of underage girls against the payment of
brideprice is often invoked as a common and continuing violation of their
12. I would like to thank Sippi Azarbaijani-Mohgaddam for drawing my attention to this crucial
point and to Marc Theuss for sharing some confirmatory evidence on this question.
13. This makes comparative judgements regarding the relative ‘safety’ of women under the
mujahidin versus the Taliban (Hirschkind and Mahmood, 2002: 346) largely irrelevant and
may inadvertently set up perverse choices.
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rights. The ethnographic record suggests, however, that this type of exchange
brings no honour to the bride-givers (Tapper, 1991). Recent studies on asset
depletion and poverty show that the marriages of girls as young as seven or
eight years old to older men sometimes represent ‘distress’ sales to secure
food or cash (Lautze et al., 2002). Likewise, households sending young
daughters away to marry a kinsman in another region because of fear of
possible abduction or forced marriage by the Taliban, reported adopting this
course of action as a protective strategy against the predations of young armed
men who were forcibly taking brides. 14 In some contexts, heavy veiling by
women may itself be a defensive response to predatory parties exercising
droit de seigneur rather than an expression of religion or culture (Wood,
2003).
Finally, assumptions concerning the nature of normative frameworks informing gender relations, which are regionally and ethnically diverse (Grima,
1992; Shalinsky, 1994; Tapper, 1991), need to be continually tested against
rapidly changing realities. A common assumption is that, despite years of
conflict, support networks based on family and kinship have remained robust and the existence of this social capital has avoided even higher levels of
poverty (World Bank, 2005). Gender relations, although asymmetrical, are
treated as relations of complementarity that endow men and women with mutually recognized rights and obligations and where honour (namus) is vested
in women’s virtuous conduct and men’s ability to control their female kin.
These assumptions leave unaddressed the question of growing discrepancies between normative expectations and material realities — a crucial
issue in war-torn and post-conflict societies. 15 When men are no longer able
or willing to honour their obligations, yet continue to use male privilege to
convert the vulnerability of their dependents into material assets, we may
witness novel forms of abuse. There is mounting evidence that new patterns
of ‘commodification’ of women arise in contexts where indebtedness and
dependence on local strongmen and drug traffickers lead to loss of community autonomy and enmesh clients in dependency relationships. Several
studies suggest that local militia commanders and drug traffickers who keep
cultivators in debt bondage, stimulate the resort to ‘giving’ their daughters
to traffickers as wives (Rubin, 2004; USAID, 2004).
A study of indebted drug traffickers in Badakhshan province shows that
women rank next to land in the choice of disposable assets used to settle
debts: 16 32 per cent of the traffickers interviewed reported selling a female
14. Interview by author with a family in Kandahar, September 2002.
15. I have argued elsewhere (Kandiyoti, 1988) that challenges to normative orders endorsed
by men and women elicit anxiety and resentment on the part of both. A woman in Parwan
(interviewed in September 2002) commented bitterly: ‘Nowadays, a man will throw out his
widowed sister-in-law to beg in the streets and get himself another young wife. Where is
the honour in this?’.
16. I am grateful to Marc Theuss for sharing the findings of a study he carried out in two
districts of Badakhshan. The data are drawn from a chapter for a forthcoming volume on
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
181
relative (78 per cent reported selling daughters and 22 per cent sisters).
The market prices of women ranged from US$ 1,000 to US$ 4,000 and
the purchasers were drawn from all ethnic groups. Unlike the marriage exchanges analysed in pre-conflict ethnographies, where the maintenance of
group boundaries and status was paramount (Tapper, 1981), women appear,
in these contexts, to act as saleable commodities in more impersonal markets
where the ‘losers’ are stripped of their assets — which include women and
girls. This is not to suggest that poverty and greed did not, in the past, lead
to abuses of paternal privilege. 17 It is merely to acknowledge that changing
social relations can introduce new patterns of vulnerability that expose those
least able to fend for themselves to varied forms of exploitation, ranging from
debt peonage to human trafficking. A study by the International Organisation
for Migration (IOM, 2003) confirms that there is a growing human trafficking problem in Afghanistan, with victims drawn from among the destitute, the
displaced and the indebted. Young rural women (and children) are subjected
to forced prostitution, forced labour and practices akin to slavery (abduction
and forced marriage, exchange of women to settle disputes, or marriage in
exchange for debt repayment).
Routine violations of women’s human rights in Afghanistan are overdetermined by independent but partially overlapping and mutually reinforcing sets of influences. The gender biases inherent in the kinship practices
of various ethnic communities are aggravated by the loss of the cushioning
effects of family ties and obligations which may be eroded through poverty,
displacement and the drug economy. The dynamics of gendered disadvantage, the erosion of local livelihoods, the criminalization of the economy and
insecurity at the hands of armed groups and factions are analytically distinct phenomena. Yet, their effects combine seamlessly to produce extreme
forms of female vulnerability. Attempts at addressing issues of gender justice through institutional and legal reform cannot afford to overlook these
corrosive interactions that risk undercutting and undermining them.
Prospects for gender justice will be conditioned by all the facets of the
multiple transitions Afghanistan must undergo in the process of reconstruction: a security transition (from war to peace), a political transition (to the
formation of a legitimate and effective state) and a socio-economic transition
(from a ‘conflict’ economy to sustainable economic growth). Currently, human development indicators, such as health and education, place the women
of Afghanistan among the most underprivileged in the world; only 14 per
cent of women are literate and maternal mortality rates are extremely high,
with 1,600 maternal deaths out of 100,000 births (UNDP, 2004). In what
follows, I attempt to evaluate the efforts made to address these issues in the
state building and local governance in Central Asia and the Caucasus compiled under the
auspices of the Centre for East Europe and Central Asia at the Free University of Berlin.
17. See, for instance Emadi (2002: 40) for an example of litigation involving a man who sold
his daughter twice (to different suitors) and pocketed the brideprice.
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Deniz Kandiyoti
context of institution-building efforts initiated after the Bonn Agreement in
2001.
EVOLVING INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS:
POTENTIALS AND LIMITATIONS
After the fall of the Taliban, the international community and the United
Nations acted rapidly to bring mujahidin factions and the political leadership in the Afghan diaspora together to agree to an interim powersharing arrangement leading to the Bonn Agreement in December 2001 (see
Government of Afghanistan, 2001). This was not a conventional peace agreement, however, since all the warring parties were not represented and it lacked
specific and actionable clauses on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR). Instead, it was an externally mediated power-sharing arrangement between the Northern Alliance and the international community. The
Agreement endorsed the establishment of ‘a broad-based, gender sensitive,
multi-ethnic and fully representative government’. 18 This commitment was
reiterated in the National Development Framework (NDF) and in Securing
Afghanistan’s Future (Government of Afghanistan/International Agencies,
2004). The Afghanistan Compact, agreed at the London conference held
on 31 January to 1 February 2006, also committed the government to implementing the National Action Plan for Women in line with Afghanistan’s
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the end of 2010. 19
However, the post-Bonn policy agenda has been unfolding in a turbulent
field of forces, involving global and local players that seek diverse and not always mutually compatible goals. The UN system and the international donor
community have been inviting the government of Afghanistan to comply
with international standard-setting instruments, including those that safeguard the rights of women. These demands are made in a context where
the internal political process necessitates numerous compromises between
contending political factions, where domestic legal frameworks and the judiciary system are not geared to enforcing the standards set by international
human rights instruments, and where national frameworks have relatively
little purchase on communities at the local level.
Despite the currently limited reach of the institutional framework created by the Bonn Agreement, there have nevertheless been some successful attempts to put the issue of women’s rights on the policy agenda. The
constitutional process and the political representation of women have been
particularly high profile areas for advocacy and mobilization.
18. The Bonn Agreement Preamble.
19. The MDG targets are to achieve universal primary education for girls and boys (girls’
current enrolment rates stand at 21 per cent), reduce maternal mortality to 400 per 100,000
(currently 1,600 per 100,000) and reduce infant mortality rates to 55 per 1000 (from 165
per 1000).
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
183
The New Constitution and Women’s Rights: A Step Forward?
An area of notable success in which the international community, government
bodies and women’s civil society organizations have acted with some degree
of synergy was evident in the process leading to the Constitutional Loya
Jirga (CLJ) and the ratification of the new Constitution. On 4 January 2004,
a 502-member Loya Jirga approved the new constitution, following three
weeks of heated debate. 20 Afghanistan emerged from this process with a
new state structure based on a presidential democracy and supported by a
bicameral national assembly comprising a lower house (Wolesi Jirga) and an
upper house (Meshrano Jirga) where the political representation of women
has been enshrined in law.
In the period leading up to the CLJ, a women’s lobby — the Gender and
Law Working Group (GLWG) 21 — was able to push through some amendments to the draft constitution released in November 2003 which lacked
any specific guarantees concerning women’s rights. These amendments included an explicit reference to the equality of men and women before the
law (Article 22 on ‘Basic Rights and Non-discrimination’) and increasing the
participation of women in the Wolesi Jirga from one to two female delegates
from each province (Article 83). In addition, Article 7 of the Constitution
requires that the state of Afghanistan ‘abide by the UN Charter, international
treaties, international conventions that Afghanistan has signed, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. These conventions include CEDAW
(the Convention for all forms of Discrimination Against Women) which was
ratified without reservations in March 2003.
On the other hand, Article 3 on ‘Islam and Constitutionality’ states that ‘no
law can be contrary to the beliefs and the provisions of the sacred religion
of Islam’. This article, along with its affiliate which declares Afghanistan
20. Women were eligible to participate in the CLJ as delegates through both regular and special
category elections, where women electors gathered to vote for delegate seats. Women delegates were also able to achieve a degree of voice, despite some unfortunate incidents during
the proceedings. The major incident centred around the furore created by Malalai Juya, a
young woman delegate from Farah province, who made a speech accusing the mujahidin of
human rights abuses and inviting them to take their share of responsibility in the destruction
of the country. This resulted in a threat of expulsion from the Loya Jirga by the Chairman
and furious outbursts by mujahidin representatives. Some gathered outside the women’s
dormitory at the Kabul Polytechnic Institute chanting ‘Death to Communists’. Accusations
flew in the Mujahid press organs that she was an agent provocateur. There were protests in
the liberal press over her treatment and expressions of support. The UN stepped in to offer
Malalai Juya protection and the threat of expulsion was stalled.
21. The GLWG consisted of representatives from the Judicial Reform Commission, the Afghan
Independent Human Rights Commission, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the
University Faculties of Law and Shari’a, and national and international women’s legal and
professional non-governmental organizations. It was convened by the State Minister for
Women and the Minister of Women’s Affairs with technical assistance from UN agencies.
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an Islamic state, is not subject to amendment. 22 The Constitution gives the
Supreme Court the authority to determine whether laws and treaties made by
the government are in accordance with the Constitution, giving it the power
to reject any law or treaty deemed un-Islamic. During the deliberations, jihadi groups proposed major changes that would have made the Supreme
Court’s interpretation of Islam override most of the provisions of the constitution. Although these were largely defeated, a Supreme Court dominated
by religious hard-liners could become an unaccountable body controlling
the legislature, the executive branch and electoral system on the pretext of
protecting Islam. 23
These struggles have partial roots in the history of legal reforms in
Afghanistan that created separate legal elites (Islamic law specialists trained
in madrassas and the Shari’a School, and experts in statutory law trained at
the Kabul Law School) and a dual court system dealing with statutory and
shar’ia law (Etling, 2004). Graduates of the Shari’a School uphold the prerogatives of the ulama and endeavour to appoint their loyalists to positions
in the judiciary and court system, which they currently dominate. 24
Contests over the ‘Islamic’ nature of the state were overshadowed by a
central dilemma that threatened to cause stalemate at the proceedings of the
CLJ; the choice between a strong presidential system versus a parliamentary
system. The draft presented by the government proposed a pure presidential
system, while the opposition, from jihadi groups and non-Pashtun areas of the
country, favoured a parliamentary system. The CLJ saw the Pashtuns rally
around a presidential system with a strong central government. This was
countered by a power bloc of non-Pashtuns in northern and north-eastern
Afghanistan (Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmens and Hazaras) who found common
ground around demands for more provincial autonomy and greater checks on
presidential powers. The articles pertaining to official languages (Article 16)
and to presidential powers (Article 64) reflect these compromises. Granting
broader language and cultural rights to the various ethnic groups composing
22. About 100 delegates close to the Jam’iyat-e-Eslami (Islamic League) threatened that should
the form of government not be specified before the ten specialist committees commenced
their work on the draft Constitution, they would refrain from taking part in the meetings.
Almost half of this group abstained from attending the meetings when deliberations on the
Constitution began. It is therefore clear that the potential for dissent was enormous on this
issue.
23. The test case for this type of concern came ten days after the ratification of the Constitution
when the performance of a pop singer on Kabul television was deemed un-Islamic and
therefore illegal by the Supreme Court. Both the Minister of Culture and Minister of Women’s
Affairs (MoWA) have been quoted as pointing out that the actions of the Supreme Court
were not in conformity with its legal mandate and state television flouted this injunction.
24. These cadres also have ties with conservative Islamic political parties such as the Islamic
Society led by former president Rabbani; the Islamic Union (now renamed Organization
for Invitation to Islam), led by Sayyaf; the Party of Islam formerly led by Hekmetyar and
currently by Farooqi.
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
185
the nation and declaring Afghanistan an Islamic republic have been among the
means of defusing the fundamental conundrum of politics in Afghanistan —
the relations between the political centre and an ethnically diverse periphery
resisting the control of Pashtun state elites. Shah (2005) notes that, in any case,
the successive Constitutions of Afghanistan (including the 1987 constitution
framed by the communist government under Najibullah) endorsed the tenets
of ‘the sacred religion of Islam’ and the principle that no law can contravene
these tenets.
The political stakes around Islam and the fact that different ethnic and
political constituencies are locked in struggles of representation in defence
of their collective rights highlight the significant potential for women’s rights
to be divisive. Furthermore, women themselves may adopt diverse strategies
and priorities rather than converging around a common agenda (AhmedGhosh, 2006). Given the fractious nature of politics in Afghanistan, there
is little a priori ground for making simplistic assumptions about women’s
primary commitment to subscribing to a joint platform. Indeed, a report by
Rights and Democracy claimed that ‘a majority of the female delegates at
the CLJ were affiliated with violent, conservative factions and voted in line
with their demands, dividing women in accordance with ethnic, religious and
factional identities, rather than under their shared identity as women’ (Oates
and Solon Helal, 2004: 28).
Nonetheless, the experience of the CLJ also indicates that there is some
potential for the emergence of civil society actors among women (such as professional associations and NGOs), alongside government cadres, that would
actively uphold principles of equality within both secularist and Islamic
frameworks. Optimism is expressed in some quarters that the participation
of women could act to counterbalance religious extremism and encourage
greater pluralism (Sultan et al., 2005). Such engagement can, however, exact
high costs. A Human Rights Watch report (2004) noted that several women
participants in the CLJ subsequently faced retaliation in the form of harassment, intimidation, dismissal from their jobs and transfers to less desirable
positions. Methods of intimidation included night letters (shabname), threatening phone calls, death threats, slander and attacks.
Clearly, any formal gains resulting from the new Constitution will have
to be safeguarded against the continuing onslaughts of political factions
whose demands draw on the most conservative interpretation of Muslim law.
A great deal hinges on the willingness and ability of the judiciary system
to undertake a rights-based analysis of Islamic jurisprudence and to find
ways of harmonizing the different sources of legislation referred to in the
Constitution. Furthermore, the gains achieved in women’s formal rights are
condemned to remain dead letters in the absence of security and the rule of
law.
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Security and the Rule of Law: The Missing Pillars of Substantive Rights
Most commentators concur that in contrast to political reforms, security
sector reforms in Afghanistan have moved at a frustratingly slow pace, partly
due to the contradictory objectives and lack of co-ordination of different
donors. In the immediate aftermath of the Bonn summit in 2001, the Coalition
continued to distribute arms and money to militia armies to assist them in the
ongoing battle against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This influenced the pace
of disarmament of factional militia and the creation of a national army. The
issue of accountability for past abuses also remains unresolved, with many
perpetrators continuing to hold positions of influence and power under the
new regime (Human Rights Watch, 2005).
Expanding the government’s authority beyond the capital constitutes a
continuing challenge (Sedra and Middlebrook, 2004). The threat presented
by non-statutory armed forces under the leadership of local commanders,
armed political groups and militia acts to inhibit legitimate and accountable
governance. The lack of capacity of the Afghan national police force and national army (ANA) to take over the provision of security is an acknowledged
fact. The police forces, sometimes recruited from among the militia of local
commanders, are allegedly involved in arbitrary arrest, rape, sexual assault,
kidnappings and ransom for the release of prisoners. Attempts to attract new
women recruits into the police force have, so far, met with limited success,
despite new incentives for training, special transport and leniency over attire
(IRIN News, 2004).
It is against this background of halting and limited progress in security
sector reforms that Afghanistan became a signatory of several international
conventions and treaties, including the United Nations Convention on the
Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) ratified on 5 March 2003. 25 The limitations placed on such undertakings by the
lack of security on the rule of law are self-evident. The weakness of the judiciary system and a legal reality marked by impunity present major obstacles
to the tasks of either implementing domestic law or meeting international
legal obligations.
Besides the institutional erosion of the formal legal and judicial system,
various consequences flow from the fact that Afghanistan does not have a
uniform legal system. Many authors (including Barfield, 2003; Kamali, 1985;
Lau, 2003; Wardak, 2004) draw attention to three competing components of
the legal system: the state legal codes, Islamic religious law (shar’ia) and
local customary law. The relative weights of these components have waxed
and waned through time, with the Taliban’s rejection of statutory laws in
25. Given the sensitivity of issues relating to women’s rights, which were quite evident in the
proceedings of the CLJ, the process through which CEDAW was ratified without reservations
is unclear. Further, CEDAW contains no provision to withdraw and it is no longer possible
to enter reservations since these are only permissible at the point of ratification.
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
187
favour of the shar’ia marking a violent swing of the pendulum in favour of
Islamic clerical influence.
Both the ulama and secular legal practitioners generally distance themselves from customary laws, despite the fact that, in practice, these have a
more direct bearing on women’s rights through the daily practices of various tribal and rural communities. There are genuine dilemmas with respect
to tribal laws. On the one hand, some of the most discriminatory practices
against women, such as the custom of bad (offering women as brides as reparation to an aggrieved party in cases of criminal offences) would be given an
indefinite lease of life without reforms at the national level (AzarbaijaniMoghaddam, 2003). On the other hand, overlooking tribal law and informal
dispute resolution mechanisms may threaten the very legitimacy of the legal
reform process in the rural hinterland and appear top-down and undemocratic
at a critical political juncture. Indeed, Wardak (2004) argues that the formal
justice system has always been elitist and corrupt and that the majority of
Afghans resorted to institutions of informal justice that must be recognized
and incorporated in a post-war justice system.
Resolving issues pertaining to the respective roles of statutory, Islamic and
customary laws and the place of informal law and dispute resolution mechanisms is likely to continue to engage the energies of women’s rights advocates. A strategy adopted by women activists is to distinguish tribal customs
from Islamic laws, arguing that most discriminatory practices originate from
customary laws giving themselves a (false) veneer of Islam. For instance,
a conference organized by women, the Islamic Awareness Programme, invited male religious scholars to consider rethinking the issue of women’s
rights within an Islamic framework. This divided the religious scholars, with
some supporting the spirit of the women’s demands while others argued
that women were not qualified to pass judgement on such issues (UNIFEM,
2004). 26 Women legal experts will, no doubt, continue to endeavour to forge
alliances with more progressive sections of the clergy.
Meanwhile, the legal rights of women continue to represent an area of
great uncertainty. Lau (2003) notes, for instance, that most women detainees
in Kabul prison seem to be there not on criminal offences but offences related
to family law: refusing to marry husbands chosen by parents, refusing to live
with abusive husbands, or running away from the parental or matrimonial
home — offences that have no basis in formal law. Human rights abuses
against women continue to occur with the ‘active support or passive complicity of state agencies, armed groups, families and communities’ (Amnesty
International, 2003). Decisions taken by informal institutions such as the
household or the community that might, in other contexts, be attenuated or
contested with recourse to state laws are, more often than not, underwritten
and endorsed by formal institutions, such as the judiciary in Afghanistan.
26. Note that such divisions among the clergy are not uncommon and have received a great deal
of attention in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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The weakness of the judiciary system is compounded by the gender bias
within it. Women are severely under-represented as plaintiffs seeking redress
and largely absent as employees. The Special Family Court in Kabul is the
only one that contains a small number of female judges, serving mainly
in clerical duties. Moreover, the legitimacy of the Afghan courts and the
independence of the judiciary will continue to be undermined in areas of
the country where the de facto rule of local commanders and armed groups
persists.
A security environment that fails to guarantee the most basic rights to
physical safety puts phenomenal obstacles in the way of women’s mobility
and access to basic services, such as health and education (Human Rights
Watch, 2002, 2003). Expanding women’s civic participation in this context
presents an even greater challenge.
Women’s Civic and Political Participation: Bottom-up or Donor-led?
Women’s community participation and leadership roles frequently escape
detection in Afghanistan since they do not take place in public arenas commonly associated with modern civil society. The politics of alliances and
reputation play a central role in tribal and village societies and women participate in decision making through important roles in matchmaking, gift
exchange and participation in life cycle rituals. Advancing age, religious
learning and membership in powerful lineages may confer considerable authority on women.
Women are, however, excluded from customary bodies of local governance, dispute settlement and arbitration such as tribal jirgas or village shuras
that tend to be all-male assemblies. Women’s grievances are generally addressed through male representation, and the loss of male protectors and
mediators (fathers, husbands or brothers) may leave them without recourse.
Women’s citizenship status also remains linked to their male relatives. In a
sample of refugee and returnee women, it was found that proof of citizenship
could only be obtained through a male relative, as most women were unclear
as to whether they possessed any official documents to identify themselves as
individuals with citizenship rights (UNHCR, 2002). The significant discrepancies between women’s formal and substantive rights signal deep-rooted
obstacles to women’s civic and political participation.
Alongside the creation of a national machinery for the advancement of
women, 27 the response of the international donor community has been
27. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) is tasked with the advancement of women. Its
intended goal is to co-ordinate inter-ministerial gender policy and strategy development
through Gender Focal Points and deputing members from its Advisory Group on Gender
(AGG) — a rather unwieldy group with representations from donors, UN agencies and
civil society organizations — to the national programme of Consultative Groups (CGs)
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
189
to include a women’s participation component into their programmes and
projects. In terms of community-level participation, one of the most complicated and high-stake social experiments in Afghanistan is the National
Solidarity Programme (NSP). 28 The NSP is based on a participatory approach to local level development through democratic and representative
Community Development Committees (CDCs) at village level. Elections to
CDCs are meant to be inclusive and representative, a feature that presents a
potential challenge to existing social hierarchies. The creation of new local
level institutions as a conduit for aid and as a channel for local participation inevitably presents threats to existing power structures and raises a host
of questions concerning the management of tensions created by these new
requirements for inclusiveness (Kakar, 2005).
A study carried out in six districts of three provinces (Kabul, Baghlan
and Jawzjan) provides important insights into the types of accommodation
made by local communities to comply with donor requirements for women’s
inclusion (Boesen, 2004). Voting for CDCs was based on the following principles: one person one vote; vote by secret ballot; eligibility of both men
and women; electioneering prohibited; and at least 40 per cent of eligible
voters having to vote for the election to be valid. This last rule creates space
for elections of CDCs that only include men. The political cost of excluding conservative communities which would not allow women to participate
in the election was considered more critical than the potential exclusion of
women that this rule provides for ‘since mandatory registration of and participation of women in the electoral process could provide ammunition for
radical Islamic opposition to the central government’ (ibid.: 8).
In a majority of cases, separate elections were held for men and women,
leading to parallel men’s and women’s CDCs or shuras. It must be noted that
there was no previous evidence of women’s shuras; these were clearly created
to accommodate donor requirements. Findings indicate that few concessions
were made, in practice, to modifying existing age, status and gender hierarchies. In some districts the apparently high numbers of female members
in CDCs did not reflect actual participation in joint decision making with
regard to project proposals and prioritization. In the case of mixed committees, elected female members were often marginalized and not invited to
participate in CDC meetings by the men. A study based on interviews with
Facilitating Partners (NGOs tasked with the implementation of the NSP) also
suggests that local staff are themselves biased and do not consider women’s
participation as a priority (Kakar, 2005). Other studies indicate that the strong
which co-ordinate planning and strategy. Assessments of the capacity of MoWA to fulfil its
mandate are quite mixed (World Bank, 2005; Sultan et al., 2005).
28. This programme is financed by the World Bank, managed by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) and implemented by UN Habitat, international and
national NGOs. NSP funds block grants of up to US$ 60,000 per community based on
funding of US$ 200 per family. The target is to reach 20,000 villages over a four year
period.
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belief that women lack the necessary ‘knowledge’ to participate in decision making (except in daily matters concerning their household) provides
a powerful justification for their exclusion (Wakefield, 2004). More encouragingly, however, attitudes towards women’s participation were not homogeneous, with different levels of acceptance in different districts and variations
based on levels of formal education, degrees of exposure to the outside world
through experiences of displacement and membership in different ethnic and
confessional groups.
The dilemmas posed by participatory approaches for gender-aware interventions are by no means unique to Afghanistan (Cornwall, 2003; Kandiyoti,
1998; Mosse, 1994). Practitioners seem everywhere to be caught between
the dangers of inadvertently colluding with and consolidating existing power
structures, on the one hand, or importing categories and methods that either have little resonance or elicit resistance at the local level, on the other.
What makes the case of Afghanistan stand out is a heightened perception
of the political risks involved and the concern that pressures for the inclusion of women may backfire and produce a hardening of attitudes, given
both the current political conjuncture and the past history of state-led interventions. 29 What is also sometimes conveniently overlooked is that women,
however marginalized, more often than not share the same political culture
as the men of their communities (including views about women’s appropriate
place and conduct).
According to some, one of the major weaknesses of donor-led state building and reconstruction efforts is a lack of emphasis on Afghan ‘ownership’
— hence the need to increase popular participation in order to ‘ease the gap
between perceptions of a “modern” state with its corresponding elite and
a “traditional” tribal people’ (Zakhilwal, 2005: 1). Leaving aside the issue
of whether the social forces represented in the state apparatus are necessarily ‘modern’, the central conundrum, according to this perspective, is that
traditional rural populations equate Western-driven modernization with secularization and reject it as anti-Islamic. It follows, therefore, that populist
compromise must go through accommodating what are deemed to be Islamic sensibilities. Since the main prescriptions of the institutional reform
package — economic and political liberalization, private-sector led growth
and democratic governance — are taken as given, the ‘hyper-politicization’
of women’s rights, as the main plank of populist consensus concerning the
maintenance of an ‘Islamic’ polity, almost emerges as a foregone conclusion.
These observations on women’s community-level participation also have
implications for local and national electoral processes. In the period leading
29. It is worth noting that some Facilitating Partners (FPs) reported that the requirement to
include women led to the rejection of NSP in some communities on the grounds that it was
a ‘Communist’ programme. Some FPs took deliberate steps to seek religious legitimacy
for the NSP through a committee of ulama that was tasked with sending imams/mullahs to
communities to explain the goals of the NSP (Kakar, 2005).
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
191
up to the presidential elections of 9 October 2004, there were signs that
women were being marginalized from democracy-promotion projects both
because of the logistics of reaching them and fears in some quarters that
involving rural women could upset conservative sensibilities in the provinces
and stall the process (ACSF/swisspeace, 2003). Nonetheless, Reynolds and
Wilder (2004) noted that the percentage of women voters registered (41.3 per
cent) was impressive despite significant regional disparities (with the lowest
registration levels in the south).
We know relatively little about the actual dynamics of women’s access
to the polls and their opportunities to stand as candidates. These appear to
be routinely mediated by male gate-keepers who allow or disallow access.
Women’s chances of establishing an electoral base as candidates may also
depend on the degree of patronage they receive from powerful political factions or male patrons and on their own membership in powerful lineages. 30
Training and civic education, sponsored by various donor agencies, can only
act as an adjunct to a more thorough understanding of the types of patronage networks that operate among men, between men and women and among
women themselves, acting to create new political spaces.
Before the parliamentary elections of September 2005, concerns were
being expressed that the combination of the Single Non Transferable Vote
(SNTV) system, where ballots are cast for individuals rather than political
parties, with provisions for seat reservations for women, may result in female candidates being elected to office even if they rank very low overall and
lack a majority of the votes. This could carry the potential risk of breeding
resentment against the election of female candidates who receive dramatically fewer votes than their male counterparts (ICG, 2005; Reynolds and
Wilder, 2004). In the event, a surprising number of women won their seats
in their own right and did not need the quota provisions of the Constitution
and election law. 31
However, a sizable proportion of the lower house (Wolesi Jirga) now belongs to parties that could be classified as conservative or Islamist. These
groups are expected to be the best organized legislative force in parliament.
It is quite likely that the National Assembly will push a more conservative social agenda than the government which, since the Bonn Agreement in 2001,
was influenced by western donor agendas. Female members, who hold 27
per cent of the seats, are not necessarily expected to function as a coherent
30. The victory of Fauzia Gailani, a young and attractive woman from Herat, over 161 candidates,
some with powerful financial backing from the ex-governor Ismail Khan, has been partially
attributed to the fact that she could use her membership in an important lineage of Sayeds
(descendents of the Prophet) as political capital — a fact advertised on her election posters.
31. Nineteen (28 per cent) female candidates across the country were successful in securing
votes to win seats in parliament without the benefit of the affirmative action provision
in the constitution. The remaining forty-nine successful female candidates (72 per cent)
did depend on reserved seats. For twenty-two provinces, no women candidates would be
entering parliament if it were not for this reservation.
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political group since they are affiliated with parties across the political spectrum (Wilder, 2005). It is also significant that the number of women holding
ministerial posts has been reduced to a single appointment in the new parliament. It is an open question whether effective alliances can be forged to
safeguard the legal and institutional commitments to gender equality made
so far.
Moreover, in a context where the majority of women are unable to read
or write, risk their lives in childbirth, have no access to roads, safe water
supplies, schools or medical facilities, capabilities and rights are severely
restricted. 32 The most pressing task will be securing access to these basic
entitlements that constitute the bedrock of any amelioration in women’s lives
and their capacity for participation. The critical shortage of social provision
in health and education will require a massive expansion of female personnel
in these areas even as public sector job cuts are being anticipated as part of the
institutional reform package backed by international financial institutions. 33
How the challenges of providing public goods such as health, education and
the rule of law will be met remains to be seen.
Both the National Development Framework (NDF) and the policy document on Securing Afghanistan’s Future (Government of
Afghanistan/International Agencies, 2004) express their commitment to private sector-led growth as the main engine of development. The specific
challenges posed by market-led development to gender equitable growth
have, so far, not been explicitly addressed. Markets are currently rooted in
existing power relations favouring the mutual interests of big business, military power holders and informal and illicit players. Women, whose labour
is crucial in the production and processing of a number of commodities for
export such as carpets, opium poppy and dried fruits and nuts, occupy the
lowest rungs of these commodity chains, working as unskilled, unpaid or
low paid labour (Lister and Pain, 2004). The low skill composition and low
demand for female labour locks women into a limited range of income generation activities, mainly in agriculture and handicrafts production. Women
generally lack ownership, control and access to productive assets and their
inheritance rights are often bypassed (Grace, 2004; Wily, 2003). Any change
in these unfavourable parameters would require massive investment in human capital and the creation of enterprises that increase demand for skilled
and semi-skilled female labour, an unlikely short-term development in the
current security and political environment.
32. Comparisons of gender indicators — literacy rates, gross and net primary school enrolment, life expectancy, total fertility rate and maternal mortality rates — across Muslim
countries (Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia) show that women
in Afghanistan fare worst on almost all indicators of female well-being (World Bank, 2005).
33. There are currently some 360,000 individuals in public employment. Fewer than 10 per cent
of these posts will be formally retained under the Priority Reform and Restructuring (PRR)
Programme to form a core civil service by 2007 (UNDP, 2004).
The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
193
Given the wide chasm that exists between a small urban, literate population
and a much larger rural and tribal hinterland fractured along religious and
ethnic lines, an expansion of women’s formal rights will have limited shortterm impact on their entitlements in practice. There is, at present, a disabling
lag between the legal and governance reforms that support the civic and
political participation of women and the adverse security and socio-economic
conditions that act to aggravate female vulnerability. As popular expectations
for rapid betterment occasioned by donor involvement in the reconstruction
process give way to disillusionment, the disjuncture between the agendas of
donor-driven attempts to promote gender equality and the realities on the
ground may seem even starker.
CONCLUSION
The politics of gender in Afghanistan is being played out against the background of a complex layering of influences. Among these, a troubled history
of state-building, the legacies of prolonged conflict and the diverse and often
contradictory agendas of global and local actors since the Bonn Agreement
of 2001 occupy a central role. The divergent pressures produced by these
factors create a fluid and uncertain landscape, featuring both old dilemmas
and new challenges.
Some of the political battle lines around women’s rights have deep historical roots in Afghanistan. Tensions between the centralizing state elites,
Islamic ulama resisting encroachments of the state into what they consider
to be their own territory, and a rural and tribal periphery practising customary law are not new. Continuing contestations over the harmonization
of Islamic jurisprudence, Afghan customary law and the stipulations of international human rights instruments provide fertile ground for negotiations
between protagonists with different visions of the Afghan polity. The novelty now lies in the fact that these negotiations are partially mediated by
donor-assisted efforts at institution-building and reform, against the background of a protracted process of political settlement and uncertain peace
consolidation.
The effects of these mediations are complex and contradictory. In the process leading to the new Afghan constitution, alliances between donors, government bodies and women’s civil society organizations were instrumental
in pushing through amendments that expanded legal guarantees for women’s
citizenship rights. However, gender conditionalities may be readily dismissed
(or subverted) as donor-imposed and therefore alien. Processes of accommodation to donor demands at the local level produce a range of unintended
outcomes, including a heightened politicization of gender relations. Mindful
of the perils of top-down interventions, international donors themselves often
adopt a defensive tone, invoking the economic and developmental dividends
of greater gender equality in the context of respect for cultural difference.
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Deniz Kandiyoti
This inadvertently encourages an implicit endorsement of a reified model
of gender based on frequently untested assumptions concerning timeless
normative frameworks regulating gender relations in Afghanistan.
There is ample evidence, however, that lack of security and the criminalized networks of narcotics production and trade are having profound effects
on social relations. The implications of these transformations have not been
fully absorbed into analyses of gender relations. Although the dynamics of
gendered disadvantage, the erosion of local livelihoods, the criminalization
of the economy and insecurity at the hands of armed groups are analytically
distinct phenomena, their effects combine to produce extreme forms of female vulnerability. Attempts at institutional and legal reform cannot afford
to disregard the corrosive interactions between poverty, insecurity and loss
of autonomy of local communities as a result of predation. These have the
effect of undercutting and negating any basis for women’s — and, indeed,
men’s — substantive rights.
Finally, in a context where the main prescriptions of the institutional reform
package — economic and political liberalization, private sector-led growth
and democratic governance — are not in contention, populist consensus concerning the maintenance of an ‘Islamic’ polity will inevitably target women’s
rights as its exclusive focus. Democratic elections have entrenched and legitimized social forces that are likely to pursue a conservative social agenda. It
remains to be seen whether the constituencies that have mobilized around a
platform for greater gender equality will be robust enough to withstand a new
period of challenge and contestation. In the struggles for voice and resources
that are likely to mark this transition period, the ability of organized women’s
constituencies, in civil society and government, to form broad, cross-gender
political alliances and to reach out to more varied female publics may prove
crucial to averting a populist consensus around a narrow definition of their
rights and entitlements.
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Deniz Kandiyoti is Reader in the Department of Development Studies,
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh
St., Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK; e-mail [email protected]. Her
publications include books and numerous articles on gender, Islam, development and state policies. Her current work is on post-Soviet transitions in
Central Asia and gender and post-conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan.