Political Geography 28 (2009) 259–265
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Political Geography
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo
Geopolitics of gender and violence ‘from below’
Jennifer L. Fluri*
Department of Geography, Dartmouth College, 6017 Fairchild Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, United States
a b s t r a c t
Keywords:
Feminist political geography
Scale
Corporeal violence
Afghanistan
Gender
Politics
This article examines geopolitical violence, gender and political constructions of scale from the site of the
body to international discourse and politics. The political constructions of scale and body-politics
analyzed in this study draw on feminist and political geographic analysis and an empirical study of the
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). This study includes an examination of
state, military and paramilitary violence from below as articulated through the lens of RAWA’s documentation and political framing. RAWA clandestinely used photographic and video technologies to
document the corporeal results of state/military violence and politically constructed scale by way of
linking this violence to international discourses and political action. A number of opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls are identified as part of RAWA’s geopolitics of violence from below. The post 9-11-01
U.S.-led military invasion of Afghanistan demonstrates a significant shift in the management and
manipulation of RAWA’s documentation. Both the U.S. and RAWA politically constructed scale and drew
upon western-led ‘‘universal’’ moralities and human/women’s rights discourses for alternative purposes.
This paper also discusses the use of gender politics and its various manipulations to resist, criminalize, or
legitimize the use of violence in the name of human/women’s rights.
! 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This article examines the geopolitics of violence from below by
way of investigating gender politics and the political construction
of scale by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of
Afghanistan (RAWA). The political constructions of scale and bodypolitics addressed in this study include: surveillance and documentation, public representations of this documentation through
media and Internet technologies, and the political use of private
(and seemingly apolitical) spaces as key sites for developing war
victims into political subjects. This study also responds to feminist
political geographers’ call for scalar analyses of political geography,
which include local politics as part of rather than separate from
geopolitical analyses (Dowler & Sharp, 2001; Hyndman, 2004,
2007; Secor, 2001; Staeheli, 2001; Staeheli & Kofman 2004).
RAWA (a clandestine women’s political organization) envisions
a nationalist politics, while its mission focuses on local spaces for
political mobilization and sociopolitical reproduction. For the
purposes of this paper, I focus on RAWA’s political constructions of
scale through its use of visual technologies, media, and private
spaces (such as homes, schools and orphanages). RAWA’s use of
media technologies includes the development of a transnational
supporter network.
* Tel.: þ1 603 646 0886; fax: þ1 603 646 1601.
E-mail address: [email protected]
0962-6298/$ – see front matter ! 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2009.07.004
Studies of transnationalism ‘‘from below’’ identify common
ideological connections among groups that are marginalized or
disenfranchised by global economic and political structures, yet
remain situated and politically committed to the local (Porta,
Andretta, Mosca, & Reiter, 2006; Smith & Guarnizo, 1999). The term
‘‘from below’’ is used to articulate a political platform outside
overarching scales of power, domination and control. Politics from
below situates local sociopolitical and socio-cultural influences and
their impacts on central, peripheral and marginalized groups
within civil society (Graham, 2004; Snyder, 2008; Soja, 1983).
Changes to civil society are arguably more successful when situated
indigenously and from below rather than emulated or imported
from outside powers (Kamrava, 1993). For example, many feminist
scholars identify the import of ‘‘western’’ feminism onto third
world spaces as part of hegemonic and imperial projects under the
guise of ‘‘liberating’’ third world women (Abu-Lughod, 2002;
Alarcon, Kaplan, & Moallem, 1999; Blunt & Rose, 1994; Mills, 2005;
Mohanty, 2004).
Geographers also examine, question, and debate gender and the
political and social construction of geographic scale (Brenner, 2001;
Cox, 1998; Delany & Leitener, 1997; Herod & Wright, 2002; Marston,
2000; Marston & Smith, 2001; Silvern, 1999). Feminist political
geographers argue that social and political constructions of scale,
informal, and seemingly apolitical spaces are significant sites for
geopolitical analyses (Dowler & Sharp, 2001; Sharp, 2000; Staheli &
260
J.L. Fluri / Political Geography 28 (2009) 259–265
Kofman et al., 2004). Feminist researchers examine the personal,
private and everyday scales of resistance to existing power hierarchies and the role and power of reproduction as significant
geopolitical projects (Martin, 2004). Exploring politics within the
spaces and scales not generally considered political or powerful
remains central to feminist critiques of geopolitical research
(Hyndman, 2007). This includes examining informal as well as
formal forms of political action and mobilization (Secor, 2001).
The political use of violence discussed in this paper focuses on
the body and gender politics ‘‘from below’’ as part of a social
morphology of counter-violent politics to resist, produce and
reproduce political subjects. Political resistance and epistemologies
of violence as discussed in this study draw upon the theoretical
concept of ‘‘situated knowledges’’ as discussed by feminist political
geographers. Situated knowledge recognizes perspective and
position as significant factors in determining knowledge claims
(see Haraway, 1988). Examining disparate political situations and
motivations provide alternative understandings and experiences of
place and politics (Rose, 1997; Staeheli & Kofman, 2004). For
feminist geographers, situated knowledge includes corporeal and
lived experiences of place and space, which are integral for
reworking theoretical concepts of nation and nationalism, territoriality, and globalization (Hyndman, 2004; Mayer, 2004; Roberts,
2004; Wastl-Walter & Staeheli, 2004). Epistemologies of violence as
articulated by RAWA are situated based on location, scale, vision
and political motivation. The following sections examine RAWA’s
methods and epistemologies for constructing scale, gender politics
and geopolitics of violence from below.
Research methods
RAWA was chosen for this study because of the organization’s
political stance, interest in nonviolence as a method for political
change, and transnational links to donors and supporters
(including many within the United States). This study focuses on
RAWA’s use of still and video documentation of civilian injury and
death during the civil war (1992–1996) and Taliban (1996–2001)
eras, and the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan (2001).
The data for this article was collected from RAWA’s website
(www.rawa.org), political magazine (Payam-e-Zan, Women’s
Message), and still and video footage they provided to me during
two separate field visits to their operations in Pakistan (Peshawar,
Islamabad, Rawalpindi) during the summer of 2003 and winter of
2004/05. During these field visits I also conducted semi-structured
interviews with RAWA members, supporters, and children living in
RAWA-run orphanages. In the summer of 2006, I conducted followup interviews with RAWA members living in Kabul. This study also
includes data gathered from RAWA’s transnational supporter
network in the U.S.
Overview of RAWA
Meena, a 20-year-old student at Kabul University, founded
RAWA in 1977. The founder and early members of RAWA were part
of Afghanistan’s urban educated elite and experienced significantly
different opportunities for education and mobility compared to
women living outside Afghanistan’s major cities and from other
socioeconomic, ethnic, and education backgrounds. Meena’s social
and political ideas for improving the status of women in
Afghanistan focused on increasing women’s education and public
life. In general, Afghanistan’s social structure is a form of ‘‘classic
patriarchy’’, where the male head of household retains authority
over women and men in his kinship group (Kandiyoti, 1988;
Moghadam, 1999, 2002).
Women within this system gain power through their relationships with men, and as they age women have more authority and
respect within the family. Government led policies to modernize
through the emancipation of women have historically failed in
Afghanistan or remained available only to women in the capital
city, Kabul and among the urban educated elite (Moghadam, 1997;
Zulfacar, 2006). RAWA’s founding members sought to attend to
these gender imbalances in society as well as other social inequities. This included actively recruiting women from lower socioeconomic classes and a variety of ethnic groups. (Benard & in
cooperation with E. Schlaffer, 2001; Brodsky, 2003).
The rise of communist intellectualism in Kabul city during the
1970s and subsequent invasion by the Soviet Union (1979) significantly impacted RAWA’s organizational growth and political
standpoints. In 1978 The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA, later renamed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan DRA)
incited a coup and took control of the central government in Kabul
(Edwards, 2002; Rubin, 2002). The DRA’s platform included the
promise for women’s liberation; however, women did not play an
appreciably prominent role within the leadership. DRA rule in
Afghanistan was met with resistance in several provinces outside
Kabul particularly around issues of land tenure reform and women
(Edwards, 2002; Rubin, 2002). The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
was due in part to concern over the growing unrest and instability
of the new regime caused by rebellions in the provinces and
infighting among the DRA leadership.
Several resistance factions fought against the Soviets such as
royalists, democratic groups, socialists, and Islamists (both traditional and fundamentalistdsee Olesen, 1995). Islamic groups
(known as the Mujahidin) lead the fight against the Soviet Union,
receiving the bulk of international assistance. The Mujahidin
groups did not however form a cohesive nationalist struggle
against the Soviets; rather they competed with one another for
funds and weapons. Among the more extremist groups of the
Mujahidin, women were by in large excluded as active participants.1 The extremist factions emerged as the primary leaders of
the resistance due in part to the considerable amount of financial
assistance provided by the United States and Saudi Arabia, and the
distribution of weapons through Pakistan (Mamdani, 2004; Olesen,
1995; Rubin, 2002). Despite the Soviet Union’s ‘promise’ of women’s emancipation, RAWA members (defining themselves as
nationalists) did not support the foreign presence and occupation
of the USSR. Conversely, they initially supported the Mujahidin,
while this support waned as the insurgency became more
religiously extremist.
RAWA’s political actions included public demonstrations and
marches against the Soviet occupation, the formation of its political
magazine–Payam-e-Zan (Women’s Message), and the development
of social programs for displaced Afghans in refugee camps and
settlements in Pakistan. Social programs became the political
sustenance and strengthen of the organization. RAWA-run
orphanages and schools developed into central sites for articulating
its feminist nationalist politics and reproducing the organization
(Fluri, 2008a). For example, in RAWA’s orphanages, food, shelter,
clothing, and education are provided; while simultaneously
instructing the children in RAWA’s political ideologies (i.e. women’s
rights, democracy, secularism, and nonviolence).
After the death of Meena (1987) and as conditions worsened for
Afghans during the Mujahidin civil war (1992–1996) and the rule of
the Taliban (1996–2001), RAWA’s resistance methods became
increasingly covert. As part of their operations, RAWA members
clandestinely photographed and videotaped the corporeal results
of war such as physical injury to the body, poverty, lack of resources
and the destruction of homes and communities. These images were
used to discredit the legality and political legitimacy of violence
J.L. Fluri / Political Geography 28 (2009) 259–265
and fundamentalism during the civil war and Taliban eras. Documentation was also used to politically mobilize support for RAWA’s
sociopolitical projects.
RAWA’s political magazine and Internet website (starting in
1996) provided a political forum for publicizing this documentation
locally, regionally, and internationally. RAWA’s documentation of
civil war Mujahidin and Taliban violence was presented publicly in
order to convey ‘‘visual truth’’ statements that situated knowledge
about war’s spoils in order to voice opposition to political violence
in Afghanistan. RAWA simultaneously juxtaposed these images
with their own sociopolitical solutions (i.e. healthcare, schools, and
income generating projects). RAWA’s use of documentation politically constructed geographic scale, which effectively bypassed the
state and provided them with significant financial support from
sympathetic individuals and organizations. RAWA’s methods for
documenting political violence required a tactical form of surveillance as resistance.
Surveillance from below and the political construction of
scale
RAWA’s visual capture of state (and civil war military/paramilitary) violence integrated a mobile and clandestine use of
surveillance technologies (i.e. photography and video). The chadori2 (burqa) provided women with the corporeal-privacy and
public mobility required for this type of covert documentation
particularly during the civil war and Taliban eras. The use of
a burqa-clad body with hidden photographic and video technologies inverted panoptical surveillance and constructed an alternative epistemology of violence from below. RAWA’s surveillance of
the state included politically framing images (or video) with text to
situate the knowledge of war and violence at the site of the body
and through its own political lens. For example, in one of its
publications, RAWA includes photographs of Taliban soldiers
committing acts of violence with the following text:
Taliban are barely literate, consider photography, television,
cinema and an endless list of modern everyday needs and
practices as satanic, but love to flog and humiliate, and own
expensive latest model vehicles. RAWA has pledged to fight
fundamentalist terror and tyranny perpetrated in the name of
religion (RAWA c. 1998).
This publication also illustrates poverty, displacement, and
corporeal violence as visual examples of Taliban rule. RAWA offers
a vision of its sociopolitical programs as an effective counter to
violence and a opportunity for alternative governance. RAWA’s use
of image and text illustrate public (civil war and state) violence in
stark contrast to images of its own sociopolitical programs.
Visual mediums (such as photography and video) became
essential components of RAWA’s resistance tactics and methods
for communicating and circulating its political message. RAWA
sought to situate knowledge through its ‘‘visual truth’’ statements
about the spoils of political violence and Afghan politics and
conversely illustrate viable alternatives such as its own sociopolitical projects. The structure of RAWA and its collection of visual
data typify a tactical ‘‘below the radar’’ resistance (as defined by
De Certeau, 1984). These resistance tactics include the use of
public media beyond RAWA’s magazine to increase the spatial
distribution of its message. Local, regional, and international
medias also publish articles and other documentation issued
directly by RAWA or in some cases appropriated from its website
(RAWA, 2002a).
RAWA’s inverted panoptical surveillance framed violence
through place-based destruction at the scale of homes, businesses
and bodies. RAWA’s surveillance of state violence politically
261
constructed geographic scale by way of linking its resistance to
international human/women’s3 rights discourses. RAWA identified
Taliban (and civil war Mujahidin) violence as human rights abuses,
which was also articulated by internationally respected watchdog
groups (i.e. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch).
Additionally, RAWA recognized and highlighted the links between
Afghan Mujahidin and Taliban with political influence and weapons
from outside powers. For example, in RAWA publications, the
Taliban and extremist factions of the Mujahidin4 are continually
identified as politically linked to or manipulated by foreign countries, most notably the United States, Pakistan, Iran and Saudi
Arabia (see RAWA, 1997: 52–66). Thus, RAWA’s inverted panoptical
surveillance of violent governance, sought to de-legitimize these
powers by politically scaling their use of violence to internationally
defined human rights abuses and international intrusion on
Afghanistan politics (RAWA, 1997, 2000, 2002b, 2002c).
RAWA’s inverted panoptical surveillance provided a corporeal
place from which to criticize the Taliban (and civil war Mujahidin) as
legitimate state leaders. This tactical use of place and scale incorporated RAWA’s situated knowledge of violence from below. These
tactics also provided RAWA with transnational support (both political
and financial) because its visual data of Taliban violence and corresponding use of internationally recognized human/women’s rights
discourses resonated with individuals in various locations both in and
outside Afghanistan. RAWA’s political construction of scale enacted
western defined ‘‘universal’’ standards for human rights as a valuable
tactic for developing international political support and increasing
financial donations from individuals (most notably from North
America, Europe, Australia and Japan).
RAWA’s documentation of Taliban-dominated Afghanistan
illustrated a form of state violence that was beyond the limits of
acceptability or legitimacy–as defined internationally. RAWA
attempted to rescale justice and bypass the Taliban (as the de facto
state government) through the use of the Internet and its correspondences with human rights organizations and transnational
supporters. However, RAWA’s political message filtered through
media, and Internet technologies came in tandem with a distinct
loss of control over the use, meaning, and the situated knowledge
or ‘‘visual truths’’ RAWA sought to communicate.
Multiple truths: re-situating and re-scaling political
knowledge
The public use of RAWA’s documentation, which is available
through their website (http://www.rawa.org) allowed for multiple
truths, knowledges, and solutions to be drawn from images of civil
war and Taliban violence. Most notably, the spatial shift in U.S.-led
international attention toward Afghanistan after 9-11-01, was
a pivotal turning point both for RAWA’s immediate increase in
recognition internationally and the subsequent loss of control over
its political framing of state/military violence.
Prior to 9-11-01 RAWA’s documentation was sent to various
international media outlets with the expectation that the images
would ‘‘shock’’ the international community and discredit the
Taliban as a legitimate government. The now infamous image of
a burqa-clad woman shot in the football (soccer) stadium in Kabul
was filmed by RAWA. This video was taken well before 9-11-01 but
not shown on global media networks (i.e. CNN, BBC) until after 911-01.
The video of Zarmeen’s execution was documented well before
11th September, but no one from the BBC or CNN would show
our footage. They said it was too graphic for viewers. Then
after 11th September it is on all these stations and more,
repeated again and again. In the beginning they gave RAWA
262
J.L. Fluri / Political Geography 28 (2009) 259–265
credit and wanted to hear our opinions, but now they use it
without our permission, and they do not include out ideas for
change in Afghanistan (RAWA member 2004).
U.S.-led international political and military interventions in
Afghanistan (post 9-11-01) distinctly re-politicized gender politics
and Taliban corporeal violence, by way of linking the ‘‘savior’’ of
Afghan women to U.S. military action. Geographic critique of the
use of violence and justifications for America’s ‘‘new war’’, highlight
the discourse of a ‘‘universally’’ held morality, security, and fear
based urgency as central components of the U.S. war-on-terror
strategies. (Dalby, 2003; Flint & Falah, 2004; Hannah, 2006). Moral
uses of violence and essentialist dichotomies of masculinity and
femininity are also identified as hallmarks of gender politics during
war or political conflict (Enloe, 2000; Giles & Hyndman, 2004).
Feminist scholars have also critiqued the gendering of U.S. military
violence in Afghanistan, which relied upon the use of women’s
rights discourses through masculine-defined security and the
‘‘saving women’’ trope (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Hunt, 2002; Tickner,
2002; Young, 2003).
RAWA’s documentation of Taliban violence when used by the
U.S. in a post 9-11-01 context re-politicized women’s rights in order
to identify a new ‘‘visual truth’’ of U.S.-led coalition violence as
a force of benevolence. Situated knowledge of violence from below
was re- scaled from above both discursively and militarily through
bombing. The ‘‘new’’ visual truth of 12 Taliban violence gendered
the victims as female through the repetition of images that focused
on women rather than men as primary victims of Taliban violence
(Whitlock, 2007). However, on closer inspection of RAWA’s cadre of
images, men rather than women represent the primary recipients
of corporeal violence (such as amputations and public executions),
with a ratio of 5:1 (men: women). Representations of male victims
did not meet the re-situation of knowledge or ‘‘visual truth’’
articulated in the U.S. (i.e. male-Taliban perpetrator/female-Afghan
victim). Male victims distracted from the gendered assumptions
and geographic framings of Afghanistan that included ‘‘saving and
liberating’’ Afghan women.
RAWA’s political scaling of its documentation through its links
to U.S.-based feminists also focused on the Taliban’s compulsory
requirement that all Afghan women wear the burqa (chadori) as
visual testimony of state-sponsored misogyny. The image of the
burqa-clad suffering Afghan woman proved effective for rallying
public support in the U.S. against the Taliban, which was also criticized for further essentializing Afghan women (see AzarbaijaniMoghaddam, 2004; Fluri, 2008b). RAWA’s feminist politics when
scaled internationally simplified Taliban violence and inscribed it
onto women’s bodies, rather than illustrate the complexities of the
Taliban’s gendered violence, which is more pronounced in RAWA’s
politics locally.
As argued by feminist scholars, the burqa’s symbolism of
women’s oppression, effectively garnered U.S. and international
support for the local victims of ‘‘terrorism’’ in Afghanistan, namely
women. The violence and suffering of Afghan women under the
Taliban provided the visual empathy necessary for enacting the
‘‘saving women’’ trope to further legitimize the U.S.-led invasion
and occupation of Afghanistan.
Corporeal violence first captured and politically scaled by RAWA
was re-politicized in the U.S. by similarly linking Taliban violence to
women’s rights abuses by way of a ‘‘universally’’ held morality. The
solutions to state violence sought by RAWA included nonviolent
international assistance and support for its own sociopolitical
projects. Conversely, the re-politicization of RAWA’s documentation in the U.S. post 9-11-01 subsequently constructed Afghan-men
as barbaric in stark contrast to the civilizing mission of U.S.-led
coalitions forces.
The expectation that military invasion and sociopolitical occupation through foreign aid/investment would save and liberate
Afghan women discounted existing gender relations and the social
and political aspects of Afghanistan’s diverse communities. The
social fabric of Afghanistan’s ethnic and tribal groups, the power of
local Mullahs (religious leaders), Maliks (local tribal leaders),
a weak central government, and strong reverence for private space
and family decision making have continually prevented central
governments and international influences from effectively altering
gender norms in Afghanistan beyond the capital city, Kabul
(Kandiyoti, 2005; Moghadam, 1997, 1999, 2002; Zulfacar, 2006). For
example, RAWA (despite its transnational politics) insists that
women’s rights can only come from women and men within
Afghanistan; otherwise these rights would be subject to seizure
and violation. RAWA also remains suspect of international intervention within its own organizational structure and therefore only
indigenous Afghan women (who live in Afghanistan or in refugee
areas in Pakistan) can become members.5 Although men are also
barred from membership, RAWA retains a large network of male
supporters both locally (through kinship, friendship, and education) and transnationally.
Rights based agendas and moral uses of violent technologies
when articulated in the U.S. exemplify civilized or moral violence in
contrast to existing spaces of irrational violence (Dalby, 2003;
Gregory, 2004). Similar to stripping the burqa form it spatial,
contextual and cultural histories in order to rally support for
women through their symbolic unveiling; images of corporeal
public violence documented by RAWA were re-politicized. This
enacted a politics of violence from above by way of bombing and
discursively invoking the saving women trope.
RAWA’s loss of control over the use and manipulation of its own
documentation also presented the organization with significant
challenges. RAWA’s long-term censure of U.S. foreign policy in
Afghanistan fueled its 2001 criticisms of the U.S. bombing of
Afghanistan and the U.S. led political and military cooperation with
former Mujahidin groups (most notably the Northern Alliance).
RAWA’s documentation of the corporeal affects of aerial bombing
similar to that of the Taliban, included their politically charged ‘‘visual
truth’’ statements of violence from below. Civilian deaths were the
platform from which RAWA critiqued the military methods used by the
U.S. to fight the Taliban (RAWA, 2001). By documenting images of
civilian deaths as a result of bombing, RAWA sought to articulate
a similar inverted panoptical surveillance of state-military violence.
(RAWA, 2001) RAWA’s existing network of supporters in the United
States were also instrumental in RAWA’s formal presentation to the
U.S. Congress:
Bombing would really not root out terrorism. It might get rid of
Osama bin Laden or the Taliban or terrorist camps in Afghanistan,
but still that does not mean that is has done the job. We believe
that there should be stoppage of financial, military, and political
. or any other kind of support for the Taliban as well as to other
groups who are involved in war in Afghanistan. And that is the
only way to eradicate terrorism and bring a peaceful and prosperous society for our country. (Faryal, 2002).
This presentation was largely symbolic and did not have
a significant impact on congressional or military decision making
toward Afghanistan. RAWA’s politics and popularity in the U.S.
presented a political enigma to the representations of Afghan
women as burqa-clad victims in need of savior. RAWA’s post
9-11-01 political critiques of U.S. foreign policy disrupted existing
gendered dichotomies namely; male-Taliban violence against
female-Afghan victims. Subsequently, RAWA moved from the
spotlight as radical women resistors who dared to face the Taliban,
to marginalized victims in need of U.S. led-international savior.
J.L. Fluri / Political Geography 28 (2009) 259–265
This political use of gender attempted to displace the agency of
these Afghan women by scaling their victim-hood to the local
spaces of Taliban control, and conversely rescaling their savior by
way of U.S.-led coalition forces. The political construction of scale,
from the body-as- victim to international intervention, provided
a space for rearticulating a message of military invasion and
occupation as morally just. Conversely, Afghan men became the
displaced victims of Taliban violence and subsequently (re)scaled
as a dualistic agent of either international terrorism or a localnationalist ally to the U.S. led coalition.
RAWA members’ lived experiences of war and violence in
addition to the organization’s documentation of violence from
below was ineffectual for changing the course of U.S. military policy
in Afghanistan. RAWA (post 9-11-01) gained significant media,
supporter, and some government attention, while loosing the
ability to manage and control the meaning or ‘‘truth’’ they desired
to communicate with their documentation.6 The use of human/
women’s rights discourses by both RAWA and the U.S. exemplify
the power of this discourse and gender tropes to shape public
understanding and political action. It also illustrates the difficulties
of content control and the ability of visual data to convey any
absolute truth (also see Crang, 1994; Rose, 2001). RAWA’s transnational successes through the use of the Internet and other
technologies include clear weaknesses associated with the
management and maintenance of constructing geographic scale
and gender politics.
However, RAWA’s politics resonated beyond the Afghan and U.S.
states respectively. RAWA continues to influence the political
information disseminated electronically (and in print) in the U.S.
through its supporter network.7 RAWA’s critiques of U.S. foreign
policy have influenced its supporters living in the U.S. Similarly,
many RAWA supporters found RAWA through their critical
approach to U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan. The U.S. citizenry
critical of U.S. foreign policy and influenced by RAWA’s political
standpoints are also the individuals from whom RAWA draws some
of its largest financial support. These transnational linkages
between RAWA and their supporters in the U.S. by in large remain
within the sphere of informal political action and fund raising.
Transnational support also includes the publication of articles and
books about RAWA and Afghanistan, which 1) mirror RAWA’s
political framework, 2) are published and sold outside Afghanistan,
and 3) are written by current and former RAWA supporters (see
Brodsky, 2003; Herold, 2001, 2004; Kolhatkar & Ingalls, 2006; Zoya,
Follain, & Cristofari, 2002). This transnational network exemplifies
RAWA’s political scaling and transnationalism from below.
As stated earlier, despite RAWA’s international networks and
attempts to politically scale their documentation internationally,
this organization remains local and nationalist in its political goals
and ambitions. RAWA’s organizational strength and sustenance
remain spatially focused on local and national issues, which
manifest in seemingly apolitical sites such as homes, schools, and
orphanages (which it continues to operate below the radar of the
state). These places are central to the production and reproduction
of its political ideologies.
Collateral bodies and political subjects
RAWA members, local-Afghan supporters, and children living in
RAWA run orphanages have all experienced loss and displacement
due to political conflict. Descriptions of violence whether perpetrated by Taliban or U.S. bombings are expressed with similar anger
and frustration. For example, fear and animosity toward the Taliban
by children and their adult caregivers, were discussed in tandem
with the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan as irrational, brutal, and an
increase rather than decrease in physical and emotional pain.
263
These emotive responses to violence are an important component of RAWA’s articulation of nonviolence and the development of
war victims into political subjects. RAWA members and supporters
define and describe violence as ineffectual despite the political
intentions of states. For example, in RAWA influenced places, such
as schools and orphanages, young men and women express politically charged comparisons between the U.S. and the Taliban.
They bomb us to find Bin Laden and Omar (leader of the Taliban)
and now they are still free. We know where Bin Laden is – he is with
Bush as they are brothers. Bin Laden brings terrorism to our country
and Bush acts as his brother by bombing us (Female-Afghan
Student in a RAWA school, 2005).
This quote and similar statements made by other students (and
graduates of RAWA orphanages who are now members or male
supporters) exemplify the political subjectivity developed and
reproduced in these sociopolitical places. These sites are central for
developing RAWA’s geopolitics of (non)violence from below. The
survivors of political violence are the subjects from whom RAWA
draws local support. Although it is evident from various political
frameworks that violence perpetrated by the Taliban, U.S., or other
groups may be classified as politically distinct. For the victims of
violence living in a politically charged site (such as a RAWA
orphanage) civil deaths are defined and described as explicitly
similar, and politically linked.
These connections help to foster RAWA’s political criticism of
U.S. intervention in Afghanistan both in historic and contemporary
contexts. RAWA members also continue to express fear, anger and
frustration with fundamentalist groups, coupled with both a desire
for international assistance and critiques of its shortcomings and
failures. For example:
We understand the need for and we want international help. That
is why we documented these human rights abuses by the Jehadis8
and the Taliban. We thought that if the world saw how we were
suffering they would provide more assistance to Afghanistan. But
the use of bombs and the increase in violence is the same as when
the U.S. supported the Taliban [before 9-11-01]. Now after 11th
September, to get rid of the Taliban they used bombs, the Northern
Alliance and other warlords (RAWA member, 2003).
Three years after this interview RAWA members articulated
similar frustrations with the role of international and U.S. military
forces in Afghanistan:
There is a need for military because there is a fear of civil war. The
military knows that they are needed and they take advantage of
this need; this empowers them. They are powerful and they are
free to do anything .[If we were in power] RAWA would first
stop international countries from supportingdPuppet regimes,
jehadists, and fundamentalistsdsome seem to be democratic
but they are not. Countries continue to give money and power to
these people. These countries need to support [only] the people
of Afghanistan (RAWA member, 2006).
RAWA recognizes ‘‘the need’’ for and shortcomings associated
with international military and other ‘‘assistance’’ in Afghanistan.
RAWA also highlights the increase in civilian deaths, the rise of the
Taliban in the south, the growing power of warlords, continued
abuses of women in public space, lack of security, and declining
power of the central government as visual and textual data for its
current political critiques. Civilian deaths are the geographic nodal
points for RAWA’s political construction of scale, geopolitics of
violence from below, and the production/reproduction of political
subjects. Civilian lives and deaths also shape transnational
supporters’ political epistemologies of Afghanistan and U.S. foreign
policy. RAWA’s inability to influence macro-level political changes
at national and international scales, despite their attempts identifies
264
J.L. Fluri / Political Geography 28 (2009) 259–265
some of the limitations of this type of political action. Conversely,
RAWA’s ability to produce and reproduce political subjects locally
and influence political epistemologies internationally illustrates the
crucial significance of human/women’s rights discourses and the
central role of civilian lives and deaths in asymmetric or insurgent
warfare (Ewans, 2005; Johnson & Leslie, 2004).
Summary and conclusion
RAWA’s political construction of scale, situated knowledge, and
documentation framed corporeal state violence as both local and
international. The end-results and corporeal affects of violence
documented by RAWA focused on the site of place and body. Funds
and munitions for this violence were subsequently linked to the
manipulative power of international forces (i.e. U.S., Pakistan, Iran,
and Saudi Arabia). Simultaneously, RAWA linked corporeal violence
to ‘‘universally’’ recognized human/women rights abuses. This
scalar construction of human/women’s rights was linked locally
through RAWA’s portrayal of its social programs.
U.S. led military and social/aid intervention in Afghanistan both
re-politicized and re- constructed the scale of women’s rights from
local to international. Thus, rather than locate women’s rights with
grass roots efforts, gender politics was rescaled as part of U.S.-led
international military and aid/development intervention. Taliban
violence was also constructed by the U.S. as local and located in
Afghanistan, while simultaneously defined as an international
threat based on the use of Afghanistan by Al Qaeda. Solutions to the
violence and totalitarian rule of the Taliban were politically scaled
by both RAWA and the U.S. through the purview of international
intervention with decidedly different critical stances and methodological solutions.
RAWA’s political construction of scale morphologized conflict and
rights, thereby identifying local/state/international violence within
a linguistic and acceptable framework of international rights-based
discourse. Criticism of international intervention in Afghanistan
similarly linked local violence to international intrusion, manipulation and the invasion on Afghan politics by outside powers. RAWA’s
transnationalism from below also provided the organization with
increases in international recognition and financial support. Their
transnationalism from below appealed to western feminists, while
their political solutions and goals were shaped locally to address the
needs and concerns of Afghan supporters (both existing and potential). On the one hand RAWA ‘‘went public’’ internationally by scaling
its surveillance of the state to ‘‘universal’’ human rights discourse. On
the other hand its sociopolitical solutions remain fixed to the local,
and critical of international political intervention. This is exemplified
by its strict membership requirements,9 the refusal of funds or
assistance that request or demand social or political influence on the
organization or its programs, and its continued insistence on clandestine operations.
Corporeal and place-based scales of political analysis provide an
alternative lens through which to examine the spatial and social
outcomes of formal and informal politics. Informal politics, resistance, and the situated knowledge of violence exemplified by local
geographies were politically scaled from the site of the body to the
international in order to reach beyond the control of the state.
Locally, RAWA also actively develops political subjects from war’s
collateral damage and human displacements. Civilian bodies are
increasingly more pronounced on the battleground of asymmetric,
insurgent and counter-insurgent warfare, as well as resistance to
this use of violence such as articulated by RAWA. Therefore this
article has sought to complicate the existing visible scenes of
political violence from below. The political construction of scale for
both RAWA and the U.S. relied on western-led ‘‘universal’’ moralities and human/women’s rights discourses. The resistance methods
and political ideologies of RAWA, and the tactics of civilian survival
provide a significant counter-politics to state and inter-state
conflict. This case study also highlights the power of gender politics
and its various manipulations to criminalize, resist, and legitimize
the use military/paramilitary violence.
As argued by feminist political geographers, political movements such as RAWA are indeed relevant for geopolitical analysis
because they operate outside the macro and formal political spaces
and scales of geopolitics. Critical scholarship on political violence
should include examinations of gender and the geopolitics of
violence from below. It is within these informal places and sites
below macro-scale political frameworks that require additional and
further study in order to increase a nuanced understanding of the
spatial, social and far reaching impacts of and resistance to local,
state, and inter-state conflict.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the Feminist Inquiry Seminar at Dartmouth
College for reviews and suggestions on a earlier version of this
paper. Thank you to John O’Loughlin’s editorial assistance and to the
anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestion.
Endnotes
1
However, women were prominent in resistance factions outside the pan-Islamic
extremist movements, which were subsidized by the United States and Saudi
Arabia, and also influenced by Pakistan (2003; Rubin 2002). Also, Edwards (2002)
argues that power brokers on various sides of the Soviet-Afghan war sought local
influence through the control of women’s lives.
2
The chadori, also known as burqa is a full-body cover, that is worn over clothes
when a woman exits her home, the woman’s face is also covered with a mesh
screen over the eyes. The fabric of the burqa is pleated and worn loosely to conceal
the shape of a woman’s body. Usage of the chadori/burqa in Afghanistan varies by
ethnic group, location, and family belief structures.
3
Human/women’s rights are linked in this paper as they are used interchangeably
by RAWA and in the U.S. At times women’s rights are identified as separate or
unique from human rights as part of gender politics. This is signaled in the paper by
using the term women’s rights rather than human/women’s rights.
4
See Olesen (1995) for more detailed information about Mujahidin resistance
factions and international influences.
5
High profile RAWA members also do not allow their faces to be photographed or
shown in video-taped interviews as part of their own security and clandestine
politics.
6
RAWA’s political strengthen remains outside formal systems of governance and
political power Internationally and in Afghanistan. RAWA also employs historical
data to bolster its arguments against the use of force and violence; most notably,
RAWA’s public denouncement of the U.S.’s support of extremist factions of the
Mujahidin resistance throughout the 1980s. RAWA also highlights the U.S. support
of the Taliban in the early years of its formation in Afghanistan and eventual control
of Kabul City (also see Rubin 2002; Rashid 2001). However, one of RAWA’s largest
networks of financial supporters is located in the United States.
7
RAWA sends updates to their transnational supports via email list serves and
publications. These include critiques of Afghanistan politics, religious fundamentalist and extremist groups, and U.S.-led international interventions. For example in
a 2003 publication sent to its international supporters, RAWA included images of
Taliban violence along with civilian injuries and deaths caused by the U.S. bombing
in its section entitled: Documentation of Human Rights Abuses (RAWA, 2003).
8
RAWA uses the term Jehadis to refer to extremist factions of the Mujahidin.
9
RAWA members must be Afghan women that live in Afghanistan or refugee spaces
in Pakistan, rather than part of the extensive Afghan diaspora. International
supporters (both male and female) cannot become members. Local male supporters
participate actively within the organization but cannot become members or hold
leadership positions. RAWA does not allow financial donors to participate in or
influence the management and political trajectory of the organization. However,
they do provide reports on the use of funds for their social programs and allow
major donors to visit and review their operations.
References
Abu-Lughod, L. (2002). Do Muslim women really need saving? Anthropological
reflections on cultural relativism and its others. American Anthropologist, 104(3),
783–790.
J.L. Fluri / Political Geography 28 (2009) 259–265
Alarcon, N., Kaplan, C., & Moallem, M. (1999). Introduction: between woman and
nation. In C. .Kaplan, N. Alarcon, & M. Moallem (Eds.), Between woman and
nation: Nationalisms, transnational feminisms, and the state (pp. 1–16). Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, S. (2004). Afghan women on the margins of the twentyfirst century. In A. Donini, N. Niland, & K. Wermester (Eds.), Nation-building
unraveled? Aid peace and justice in Afghanistan (pp. 95–116). Sterling, VA:
Kumarian Press.
Benard, C., & , (in cooperation with E. Schlaffer). (2001). Veiled courage: Inside the
Afghan women’s resistance. New York: Broadway Books.
Blunt, A., & Rose, G. (1994). Writing women and space: Colonial and postcolonial
geographies. New York: Guilford Press.
Brenner, N. (2001). The limits to scale? Methodological reflection on scale structuration. Progress in Human Geography, 25(4), 591–614.
Brodsky, A. (2003). With all our strength: The revolutionary association of the women
of Afghanistan. New York: Routledge.
Cox, K. R. (1998). Spaces of dependence, spaces of engagement and the politics of
scale, or looking for local politics. Political Geography, 17(1), 1–23.
Crang, M. (1994). Rethinking the observer: film, mobility, and the construction of
the subject. In T. Cresswell, & D. Dixon (Eds.), Engaging film: Geographies of
mobility and identity (pp. 13–31). Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield.
Dalby, S. (2003). Calling 911: geopolitics, security and America’s new war. Geopolitics, 8(3), 61–86.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Delaney, D., & Leitner, H. (1997). The political construction of scale. Political Geography, 16(2), 93–97.
Dowler, L., & Sharp, J. (2001). A feminist geopolitcs? Space and Polity, 5(3), 165–176.
Edwards, D. (2002). Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan jihad. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Enloe, C. (2000). Maneuvers: The international politics of militarizing women’s lives.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ewans, M. (2005). Conflict in Afghanistan: Studies in asymmetric warfare. New York:
Routledge.
Faryal, T. (2002). Testimony before the sub-committee of the US house of representatives on international operations and Human Rights 31 October 2001. In
S. Hawthorne, & B. Winter (Eds.), September 11, 2001: Feminist perspectives (pp.
132–135). North Melbourne, Australia: Spinfex Press.
Flint, C., & Falah, G. W. (2004). How the United States justified its war on terrorism:
prime morality and the construction of a ‘‘just war’’. Third World Quarterly,
25(8), 1379–1399.
Fluri, J. (2008a). Feminist-nation building in Afghanistan: an examination of the
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). Feminist
Review, 89, 34–54.
Fluri, J. (2008b). ‘Rallying public opiion’ and other misuses of feminism. In R. Riley,
C. T. Mohanty, & M. B. Pratt (Eds.), Feminism and war: Confronting U.S. imperialism (pp. 143–160). London: Zed Books.
Giles, W., & Hyndman, J. (2004). Introduction: gender and conflict in a global
context. In W. Giles, & J. Hyndman (Eds.), Sites of violence: Gender and conflict
zones (pp. 3–23). Berkley: University of California Press.
Graham, B. (2004). The past in the present: the shaping of identity in Loyalist Ulster.
Terrorism and Political Violence, 16(3), 483–500.
Gregory, D. (2004). The colonial present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. London:
Blackwell Publishing.
Hannah, M. (2006). Torture and the ticking bomb: the war on terrorism as
a geographical imagination of power/knowledge. Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 96(3), 622–640.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the
privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14, 545–599.
Herod, A., & Wright, M. W. (Eds.). (2002). Geographies of power: Placing scale.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Herold, M. W. (2001). A dossier on civilian victims of United States’ aerial bombing of
Afghanistan: A comprehensive accounting. Report. Durham: University of New
Hampshire.
Herold, M. W. (2004). Urban dimension of the punishment of Afghanistan by U.S.
bombs. In S. Graham (Ed.), Cities, war, and terrorism: Towards and urban
geopolitics (pp. 312–329). Oxford: Blackwell.
Hunt, K. (2002). The strategic co-optation of women’s rights. International Feminist
Journal of Politics, 4(1), 116–121.
Hyndman, J. (2004). Mind the gap: bridging feminist and political geography
through geopolitics. Political Geography, 23, 302–322.
Hyndman, J. (2007). Feminist geopolitics revisited: body counts in Iraq. The
Professional Geographer, 59, 35–46.
Johnson, C., & Leslie, J. (2004). Afghanistan the mirage of peace. London: Zed Books.
Kamrava, M. (1993). Conceptualizing third world politics: the state-society see-saw.
Third World Quarterly, 14(4), 703–716.
Kandiyoti, D. (1988). Bargaining with patriarchy. Gender and Society, 2(3), 274–290.
Kandiyoti, D. (2005). The politics of gender and reconstruction in Afghanistan. The
United National Research Institute for Social Development.
Kolhatkar, S., & Ingalls, J. (2006). Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, warlords, and the
propaganda of silence. New York: Seven Stories Press.
Mamdani, Mahmood (2004). Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and
the Roots of Terror. New York: Pantheon Books.
265
Marston, S. (2000). The social construction of scale. Progress in Human Geography,
24(2), 219–242.
Marston, S., & Smith. (2001). States, scales and households: limits to scale thinking?
A response to Brenner. Progress in Human Geography, 25(4), 615–619.
Martin, P. M. (2004). Contextualizing feminist political theory. In L. Staeheli,
E. Kofman, & L. Peake (Eds.), Mapping women, making politics: Feminist
perspectives on political geography (pp. 15–30). New York: Routledge.
Mayer, T. (2004). Embodied nationalisms. In L. Staeheli, E. Kofman, & L. Peake (Eds.),
Mapping women, making politics: Feminist perspective on political geography (pp.
153–168). New York: Routledge.
Mills, S. (2005). Gender and colonial space. Manchester University Press.
Moghadam, V. M. (1997). Afghanistan: nationalist agenda and women’s Rights:
conflicts in Afghanistan in the 20th century. In L. West (Ed.), Feminist nationalism (pp. 75–100). New York: Routledge.
Moghadam, V. M. (1999). Revolution, religion, and gender politics: Iran and
Afghanistan compared. Journal of Women’s History, 10(4), 172–184.
Moghadam, V. M. (2002). Violence and terrorism: feminist observations on Islamist
movements, state, and the international system. Comparative Studies of South
Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 21(1–2), 125–131.
Mohanty, C. T. (2004). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing
solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Olesen, A. (1995). Islam and politics in Afghanistan. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
Porta, D., Andretta, M., Mosca, L., & Reiter, H. (2006). Globalization from below: Transnational activists and protest networks. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rashid, A. (2001). Taliban: Militant Islam, oil and fundamentalism in Central Asia. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
RAWA (1997). The burst of the ‘Islamic Government’ bubble in Afghanistan, A
publication of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
(RAWA). January 2, 1997.
RAWA (2000). Afghan women challenge the fundamentalists. Special bulletin of
RAWA demonstrations on international human rights day. 10th December,
2000 – Islamabad.
RAWA (2001). Taliban should be overthrown by the uprising of Afghan Nation.
RAWA statement on the U.S. strikes on Afghanistan. October 11, 2001.
RAWA. (2002a). RAWA in the world media. Quetta, Pakistan: RAWA.
RAWA. (2002b). Let us struggle against war and fundamentalism and for peace and
democracy!. RAWA statement on international women’s day, 08.03.02. http://
www.rawa.org.
RAWA. (2002c). Without rejection of the fundamentalist, the human rights observance is nothing but an illusion and a dream!. RAWA State on the international
human rights day, 10.12.02. http://www.rawa.org.
RAWA. (2003). The voice of the voiceless. Quetta, Pakistan: Publication for International Supporters.
Roberts, S. (2004). Gendered globalization. In L. Staeheli, E. Kofman, & L. Peake
(Eds.), Mapping women, making politics: Feminist perspective on political geography (pp. 127–140). New York: Routledge.
Rose, G. (1997). Situated knowledges: positionalities, reflextivities and other tactics.
Progress in Human Geography, 21(3), 305–320.
Rose, G. (2001). Visual methodologies: An introduction to the interpretation of visual
materials. London: Sage Publications.
Rubin, B. (2002). The fragmentation of Afghanistan: State formation and collapse in the
international system (2nd ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Secor, A. (2001). Toward a feminist counter-geopolitics: gender, space and Islamist
politics in Istanbul. Space and Polity, 5(3), 191–211.
Sharp, J. (2000). Remasculinising geo-politics? Comments on Geroid O’Tuathail’s
critical geopolitics. Political Geography, 19(3), 61–64.
Silvern, S. E. (1999). Scales of justice: law, American Indian treaty rights and the
political construction of scale. Political Geography, 18, 639–668.
Smith, M. P., & Guarnizo, L. E. (1999). The locations of transnationalism. In
M. P. Smith, & L. E. Guarnizo (Eds.), Transnationalism from below (pp. 3–34). New
Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Snyder, K. A. (2008). Building democracy from below: a case from rural Tanzania.
Journal of Modern African Studies, 46, 287–304.
Soja, E. W. (1983). Spatiality, politics and the role of the state. City and Region, 6, 55–76.
Staeheli, L., & Kofman, E. (2004). Mapping gender, making politics: towards feminist
political geographies. In L. Staeheli, E. Kofman, & L. Peake (Eds.), Mapping
women, making politics: Feminist perspective on political geography (pp. 1–14).
New York: Routledge.
Staeheli, Lynn (2001). Of possibilities, probabilities and political Geography. Space &
Polity, 5(3), 177–189.
Tickner, J. A. (2002). Feminist perspectives on 9/11. International Studies Perspectives,
3, 333–350.
Wastl-Walter, D., & Staeheli, L. (2004). Territory, territoriality, and boundaries. In
L. Staeheli, E. Kofman, & L. Peake (Eds.), Mapping women, making politics:
Feminist perspective on political geography (pp. 141–152). New York: Routledge.
Whitlock, G. (2007). Soft weapons: Autobiography in transit. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Young, I. M. (2003). The logic of masculinist protection: reflections on the current
security state. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 29, 1–25.
Zoya, Follain, J., & Cristofari, R. (2002). Zoya’s story an Afghan woman’s struggle for
freedom. New York: Morrow and Imprint of Harper Collins.
Zulfacar, M. (2006). The pendulum of gender politics in Afghanistan. Central Asian
Survey, 25(1–2), 27–59.