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You know those email petitions that go around? One about women in Afghanistan drops into my inbox every now and then. Hang on, let me see if I can find a copy... ah, there it is. It's about how badly the Taliban treat women. Here's a sample:
> > > the government of Afghanistan, is waging a war upon women
> > > Women live in fear of their lives for the slightest misbehavior
> > > relief workers are estimating that the suicide rate among women must be extraordinarily high
And what's wrong with stuff like this? Well, the main problem is it's mostly sentimental bollocks. I find it hard to believe that many of the writers have set foot east of Staten Island. If they have, they show no sign of having profited by it. They have judged the Taliban previous to meeting them. Call me an etymologist if you must, but I think that scores them (like most bien-pensant commentators on Afghanistan) as prejudiced.
Don't get me wrong. I think that what the Taliban are doing to women is evil. It is true that Afghanistan has almost the lowest ratio of female to male life-expectancy in the world. Women can't work in any but a narrowly circumscribed range of professions and trades. Outside the home they have to wear what amounts to a bag-with-a-letterbox on their heads. They sit at the back of the bus and in a special section in the restaurant. And many are driven to despair. It's like being black in Alabama circa 1930, and it's not right. But three or four other things are also true:- it's not as bad as it sounds- it's nothing new- the alternative is much worse
There's a fecund memepool of Afghanistan horror stories. I dismiss with the contempt it deserves the preposterous fifth hand report that "relief workers are estimating that the suicide rate among women must be extraordinarily high". But even the assertion that "women live in fear of their lives for the slightest misbehavior" is shaky. A woman is indeed at risk of her life if she flirts with a man she's not married to, and that's evil. And showing your face outdoors will get you a wallop with a hosepipe from a zealous officer of the Ministry for Prevention of Vice and Protection of Virtue if you are unlucky enough to be seen: this is also evil. But it is widely different from being at risk of your life for the slightest misbehaviour. If you think it's just as bad then I suggest you hire a hitman to sit in the back of your car and shoot you next time you break the speed limit.
Even the most responsible sources tell us as much about themselves as about Afghanistan. In this survey PHR asked Afghan women "have official policies toward women changed your life for better or worse?" and almost all of them said "yes".
Well isn't THAT a surprise. Of COURSE they have. The official policies towards women are crap. But the Taliban is not simply or mainly an agency for oppressing women. It's mainly the first stable government Afghanistan has had in twenty years.
They've disarmed the country. I've been served venison that was killed with a shotgun because no Kalashnikov was available. And my hosts were retired Mujaheddin. You can bet your boots it took some doing to get them to give up their rifles - look what a horlicks the British government has made of this in Ulster. You used not to be able to drive through Sarobi (on the main road from Pakistan to Kabul) without being held up and "taxed". Now you stop to buy pomegranates and fish.
I worked and travelled, often carrying large sums of money, for the best part of a year, and never faced any threat of violence or robbery. Aid agencies operate, cross-border trade thrives, people rebuild houses. Everyone has some beef about the Taliban, but they always end up saying "but at least now we have peace".
Of course, by everyone I mean "all men" - because I am not allowed to meet women. And it is true that women now risk being beaten for showing their faces in public, and this is evil. On the other hand they run much less risk of being robbed and raped. It's not a great menu of alternatives: but which would YOU prefer?
In any event, the condition of women in Afghanistan has been pretty grim for time immemorial. It's a common error to think that the Taliban are a religious movement. No. They're a cultural movement. Their aim is to restore and re-enforce their rather narrow conception of the Afghan (for which read Pashtun, the majority ethnic group) way of life, which in most places has never gone away. I once asked my host what he thought of the Taliban. He was the leader of his village, which he governed under licence, as it were, from the Taliban district chief. He said
"Shall I tell you the truth? I don't like them."
Aha, I thought, now we'll hear something.
"For example. It used to be when we gave our daughters in marriage it was a matter between the father and the husband, how much the husband should pay, they discussed it and they agreed. But now the Taliban say the maximum price must be two hundred rupees."
Yes, great, thanks. Don't apply for that job on Cosmo just yet.
And this isn't just about the men. Afghan women, like people in many other cultures, construct their identity by telling stories. One of the most deeply felt goes like this:
Sher Alam had two wives, Ajiba who bore no children and Memuney who was fertile and beloved. He went away on a journey leaving them in charge of his shop. Whilst he was away a stranger came to the shop. Memuney took elaborate precautions to protect her virtue whilst serving him in the shop, making sure he saw no more than her hand, but still, Ajiba in a jealous rage, spread the rumour that Memuney had been adulterous. When Sher Alam returned, although he knew for certain that the rumours about Memuney were untrue, it was still impossible for them to live with the shame and, at Memuney's insistence, he killed her.
Afghan women aren't soft, you see. It's not an option. Afghanistan is a hard country. Hard as in rocky, and hard as in Millwall fan. They fought our battles for us in the eighties. If the Afghans hadn't been such tough nuts, we'd still be paying for the British Army of the Rhine and expecting to get blown up with H bombs momentarily. But in that fighting they fractured the last remnants of civil order. The Taliban are the only grouping that can give Afghanistan anything close to peace, because they are united around a set of ideas, rather than loyalty to a winning leader. These are to some extent wicked ideas: but they hold the Taliban together where the winning leader loses his following when he breaks the winning streak.
Where I come out is that the Taliban are like chemo-therapy: lousy, but better than dying. And the patient, though ravaged with disease, has a strong constitution. If we want to help the patient get well (as we should, if not out of compassion then out of gratitude) we can start by understanding the medicine.