US troops pull out, Afghan women fear oppression

Kabul: No one ever claimed responsibility after a suicide bomber rammed into the vehicle of celebrated female parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai. She walked away from the wreckage after the November 16 blast that killed three civilians and wounded 20.

The Taliban often takes responsibility for suicide bombings - it did so for one against the British embassy that killed six people days later. Barakzai, 42, said Afghanistan's spy agency had warned her before about threats to her life from the insurgent group. But an investigation into the attack on the outspoken women’s rights activist has led nowhere.

Barakzai, a tireless campaigner for women's rights, has no shortage of potential enemies, including powerful warlords, as Afghanistan's regional chieftains are known. “Our Parliament is a collection of lords," Barakzai once famously said. "Warlords, drug lords, crime lords.”

Barakzai was only a few hundred metres from the Parliament building, her destination, when the suicide bomber rammed into her armoured car.

A strong supporter of new President Ashraf Ghani, Barakzai had been widely talked about as a candidate to join his government, perhaps as education minister or the next women’s affairs minister. Ghani has promised he will appoint four women in his cabinet.

Barakzai, who rose to prominence when she ran underground schools for girls when the Taliban ruled the country, says both the previous Afghan government and its Western benefactors have failed to defend the hard-won rights of women.

"For me, what they do to support women’s rights is just lip service, nothing more than that,” says Barakzai, interviewed in hospital where she is recovering from burns to the left side of her face and her left hand from the attack.

QUOTAS FOR WOMEN

The US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban and stayed on, in part, to build a western-style democracy, including legal safeguards for women. A quota was mandated for women in public offices, such as parliament and provincial councils. Earlier this year, however, conservative lawmakers rolled back the quota reserved for women in provincial councils to 20 per cent from 25 per cent.

Last Sunday marked the formal end to the international combat mission in Afghanistan. And while huge progress has been made getting millions of girls in school and putting women in positions of formal authority, it has had "frustratingly little impact on these power dynamics," the UN-backed Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit said in a recent report.

"Today, women’s rights are ... one of the feared losses shared by Afghans and the world as international troops prepare to withdraw completely.”

World Bank data shows Afghanistan still lags far behind even its impoverished neighbours in South Asia. Only 16 percent of Afghan females above the age of 15 were active in the labour force compared with 57 percent in Bangladesh and 27 percent in India. The fertility rate in Afghanistan is 7.2 births per woman versus 3.1 for all of South Asia. Only 14 percent of births in Afghanistan are attended by a skilled health worker compared with 36 percent in South Asia. The literacy rate for 15-24 year-old women was 32 percent compared with 63 percent in neighbouring Pakistan.

UNIVERSITY FOR GIRLS

Barakzai, a parliamentarian the past decade, has campaigned against the practice of Afghan men marrying multiple wives - her husband, who runs an oil company, took a second wife without consulting her. She stresses the need for long-term investment in education to compete seriously for jobs instead of aid programmes for "workshops or seminars".

"We need a university for girls," she says, explaining many families won't send girls to mixed institutions. Barakzai was scornful about aid programmes that teach women about rights or try to give them job skills.

"If you see their projects, they are always the same. Empowering women by a seminar or workshop. Or embroidery, tailoring," she laughs. "I am tired of these things.

Women's activists have been lukewarm about a new $216 million United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programme to support women's advancement. The five-year program aims to help thousands of women "gain business and management skills, supporting women’s rights groups and increasing the number of women in decision-making positions," according to a U.S. embassy statement.

Noor Safi Gululai, one of the few women in Afghanistan's High Peace Council, which is in charge of the so-far fruitless effort to convince the Taliban to join peace talks, was critical of such capacity-building efforts.

"I am afraid this money will also go in the pockets of a few people," Gululai told Reuters. "Rights will never be taught at conferences. I hope the President will talk to USAID and have them use the money to establish good schools and universities."

The US Embassy in Kabul declined to comment.