RAWA in Olympia: Afghan Women can Speak for Themselves, thank you very much

The SEM II lecture room was packed with students, faculty, and Evergreen community members. Every seat was taken; people stood against the walls and sat in the aisles. Everyone waited with excited apprehension for a speaker whose name they did not know.

Zoya is her assumed name. She doesn’t reveal her true identity because she is wanted by fundamentalist warlords and others who have a stake in keeping power out of the hands of the people in Afghanistan. She is a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (rawa), and she travels the world speaking out against the US occupation of her country. On October 27, she came to Evergreen.

She didn’t speak much about her personal life, though she has written a book about it (Zoya’s Story: An Afghan Woman’s Struggle for Freedom). Her parents were both members of rawa. They were disappeared when Zoya was young, but rawa adopted her, and she has worked with them ever since. The history of the organization is as incredible as the story of Zoya’s life. Founded in 1977 by an Afghani woman named Meena, rawa has provided critical services to the women and children of Afghanistan with the goal of advancing women’s rights and democracy.

In Pakistan, where many Afghans live in refugee camps, rawa has established a free hospital, mobile medical teams that provide free treatment, nine orphanages, fifteen primary schools, many literacy classes for women, and financial services that help women generate income by making crafts, raising fish or chickens, and cooking.

rawa also provides these services in Afghanistan, which is much more dangerous. In Afghanistan the schools are all home-based and classes are held in secret. They have mobile health teams operating in eight provinces where they treat women and children who can’t afford healthcare, as well as wounded men. They make loans and help women start small businesses. They distribute food to the many families who have been impoverished by the violence and destruction of the occupation, and they evacuate families from battlefields to relocate them in safer areas.

On top of directly serving the needs of the people of Afghanistan, rawa provides human rights organizations with reports, news outlets with press releases, and produces a bilingual women’s magazine, CDs of political songs, and pamphlets and brochures. They organize demonstrations and speaking tours to spread their message. They do all of this in secret, using the names of other organizations, with no funding from governments or NGOs.

The members of rawa do this incredible work despite the risk it poses to their own personal safety. Zoya’s parents were not the only activists who have been killed; Meena, rawa’s founder was murdered in 1987 by KGB operatives in collaboration with a Pakistani drug lord, and other rawa members have disappeared over the years. Still, rawa has persevered, through the Soviet War of the ’80s, the civil wars and rule of the Taliban in the ’90s, and now under the US occupation. This latest chapter was Zoya’s focus when she spoke at Evergreen, dispelling some of the predominant misconceptions about the occupation of Afghanistan.

The War in Afghanistan, as it is more commonly called, has always had more American public support than the War in Iraq. This is due to two widely held beliefs: 1) War may not be a great option for the people of Afghanistan, but it’s better than the Taliban, and 2) Eradicating the Taliban has liberated Afghan women. Zoya began by partially agreeing with these ideas. “Afghanistan is free,” she said, “free for drug lords, rapists, and warlords.” She then explained why Afghanistan is not free for everyone else.

When the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan ended in 1989, the country fell into a state of civil war, with various warlords vying for power. In 1996 the Taliban formed and created a government that took control of Afghanistan. Warlords who had previously been fighting each other joined forces, creating the Northern Alliance in an effort to oust the Taliban. The people of Afghanistan suffered, both under the warlords that ruled parts of the country between 1989 and 1996, as well as under the Taliban’s oppressive government.
But in the US war against the Taliban, the Northern Alliance has been made an ally, even though the Alliance is made up of drug lords and warlords who are responsible for the same human rights violations—rapes, killings, torture—that the Taliban perpetrated.

Members of the Northern Alliance constitute the new government, and under their watch, criminals are free to do as they please. Zoya told of a girl who was gang-raped by eight men. Three of them were police officers, so none of them were tried. Another girl was gang-raped by thirteen men. They were members of the Northern Alliance, so the president pardoned them. Even men who do not hold such positions do not fear retribution from the US-backed government, so domestic violence has been steadily increasing.

The US government calls it a victory that girls are now allowed to go to school. The problem is that no one sends their daughters to school because they risk being abducted or raped. The US government celebrates that women are no longer legally required to wear the burqa, but 90% of Afghani women still do, fearing the violent consequences of showing their face in public. Zoya’s message is that the laws have only changed in name, and that’s not enough: “In a country where there is no law, and no implementation of law, how can we expect a drastic change in the well-being of women?”

During the Q&A session, Zoya was asked what would happen if the occupying troops were simply to leave. Don’t they offer some protection? Wouldn’t things fall into chaos? She answered that the troops protect only 10% of the people in Afghanistan—government officials, UN workers, and rich businessmen. Those people would no longer have protection from the Taliban if the troops left. For the other 90% of the people in Afghanistan, things can’t get worse. There is no protection as it is.

As long as foreign troops are in Afghanistan, Zoya stated, their mission should be to “disarm the Northern Alliance and disempower war criminals.” She emphasized that the US should instead be supporting grassroots democratic movements. “Americans don’t know about the democratic organizations. They are very small and weak and under pressure from Taliban and other fundamentalists.” But they do exist. There have been demonstrations in the University of Kabul, and the work that rawa does with funding only from individual donors is evidence of how much could be accomplished with support from the US and other governments.

But ultimately, Zoya thinks the troops should just leave. She echoed the sentiment that rawa’s website eloquently presents: “rawa believes that freedom and democracy can’t be donated; it is the duty of the people of a country to fight and achieve these values. Under the US-supported government, the sworn enemies of human rights, democracy and secularism have gripped their claws over our country and attempt to restore their religious fascism on our people.

“Whenever fundamentalists exist as a military and political force in our injured land, the problem of Afghanistan will not be solved. Today rawa’s mission for women’s rights is far from over and we have to work hard for establishment of an independent, free, democratic and secular Afghanistan. We need the solidarity and support of all people around the world.”

This statement and Zoya’s words affirm that solidarity, not military aggression, is the way to truly support people in their struggle for freedom. Unfortunately, since Zoya’s visit to Evergreen, President Obama is considering an increase of up to 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan. Now, more than ever, those Americans who have insight into the reality of the situation in Afghanistan also have a responsibility to disseminate that information, to talk to relatives and friends in an effort to correct the misconception that Afghanistan is “The Good War.”

You can make a difference when the winter holidays come around by asking a family member to make a donation to rawa as a gift to you. The Afghan Women’s Mission is rawa’s California-based sister organization. The money you donate to the Afghan Women’s Mission will go straight to rawa. You can find them online at http://afghanwomensmission.org/index.php

If you are interested in getting involved on campus, the Mideast Solidarity Project meets in the Student Activities Office area every Wednesday at 3pm. MSP brought Zoya here to speak, and is continually working on projects to raise consciousness and educate our community about the Middle East.