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Eight
years ago during the run-up to the invasion of Afghanistan, the mass media was alive
with graphic reports of the Taliban government’s crimes against women.
Not only was an invasion portrayed as an honorable act of vengeance for
9/11, but viewers were assured that the U.S. army had an additional
duty to liberate the women of Afghanistan from Taliban rule—to reopen
the schools to them, end the impunity for rapists, and lift the
state-imposed restrictions on their private and public lives.
But
Zoya, a spokeswoman for the Revolutionary
Association of the Women of Afghanistan, says that U.S. policy in
Afghanistan, if successful, will only ensure that fundamentalist rule
continues in that country. Zoya was invited
from Kabul to address the Oct. 17
antiwar rally in Boston. After her speech, Zoya gave the following interview to James Frickey of Socialist Action.
“The
Northern
Alliance is no different from the Taliban,” Zoya
said. “Today the U.S. is supporting one
fundamentalist group to defeat another.”
“The
Northern
Alliance came to power before the Taliban, from 1992-94. There was no
ideological difference between them and the Taliban. They are equally
fundamentalist. The Northern Alliance was responsible for child
rapes, civilian massacres, and looting of museums. They murdered 80,000
civilians in Kabul in two years. They were the
first to commit the kind of crimes that are now being associated
exclusively with the Taliban.
“The
U.S. is relying on a force that
is totally discredited in the eyes of the Afghan people. The Northern Alliance is the same as the Taliban,
only more hypocritical. They’ve shaved their beards and put on business
suits to play the democrats in this U.S.-sponsored charade.
“The
government of Afghanistan,” Zoya
asserted, “is a mafia of druglords.
Ninety-three percent of the world’s opium supply comes from Afghanistan. The Karzai
family is involved in the drug trade; it was in The New York Times.
Notorious war criminals right now are serving in the Afghan parliament
with the blessing of the U.S.
“Women
today—in the poor provinces as much as in Kabul—live in constant fear of
rape, kidnapping, and murder. There have been cases of acid thrown in
the faces of girls on their way to school, of schools burned to the
ground. So though the doors to the school may be legally open to girls,
most families won’t send their girls to school because the risk of violence
is too great and the government will not prosecute the
violators.”
Zoya says that the same disparity between law and social
practice applies to women wearing the burka.
“We’re not obligated to wear it, but it is the only proven protection
against rape and violence.” When asked if she wore the burka in Afghanistan, Zoya
nodded gravely.
She
said that RAWA advocates for a “democratic front against the occupation
and fundamentalism.” “We are caught between many enemies,” Zoya explained. “There is the U.S. and NATO, the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. The only
option for RAWA is for the democratic organizations to get united.”
When
asked to identify some of the democratic forces to which she was
referring, Zoya specified the Afghan Hambastagi Party (“Hambastagi”
means “Solidarity”). “Withdrawal of the troops should be the first step
in addressing the crisis in Afghanistan. We don’t think that
democracy will be dropped from airplanes. Waging war and occupying Afghanistan will not bring liberation
to its people.”
Zoya’s message is being absorbed by the antiwar movement
in the U.S., where the occupation’s
central claim of having bettered the lives of Afghan women is being
questioned as never before. “It’s not helping the women like the
government wants people to believe it is,” Joan Ecklein
of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom said at the Boston Oct. 17 rally. “The women
want us
out.”
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