A love letter to Afghan women
It’s easy to love Afghan women.
It’s hard to look them in the eye.
Be that in person.
Or on a screen.
Incomplete, not even half-truth answers to so many simplistic questions
what went wrong… whose fault was it… who did what… who didn’t do what… why didn’t we learn from the Brits 160 years ago… or the Soviet occupation 40 years ago… or American funding of the mujaheddin 30 years ago… how much treasure was spent… why wasn’t more treasure spent… how many killed in action… I mean how many of ours killed in action… nothing should have happened… more should have happened…. different stuff should have happened… was the sequencing wrong… was it the poppies what did it… no, it was the PRTs … no it wasn’t… yes, it was… no, it wasn’t… it was the security forces… which security forces… what does POC mean anyway... are you with us or against us…. wasn’t this about CT… no, it was about nation building… or state building… or peace building... or democracy building… or some building project… or saving Afghan women… is more less… or less more… what was the point of it… etc…..
I find it hard to look Afghan women in the eye.
I feel so many different emotions when I look at an Afghan woman.
I go to many different and, at times, new places.
Join me as I career around my journey of emotions. Buckle up.
My first stop is compassion for what she and her family and her community are going through, most especially the women and girls in her life.
I restart the engine.
Quickly I pull over, feeling incomprehension in not experiencing the visceral feeling of living her daily life.
I rev the engine, feeling awe at her extraordinary courage and ingenuity to study or work however she can. I make a sudden gear change fearing for her every time she steps out of her home.
I slam down the accelerator, inspired by the women who have had to flee Afghanistan. They are making new lives — sometimes half-lived lives — often in hostile environments with stingy support from “host” states, whilst continuing to provide for their extended families and communities in Afghanistan and using their prodigious creativity and vast talent to lobby for international action.
There’s no more road.
I feel anger. Anger at so many losses: the loss of Afghan women’s lives, freedoms, and rights since the Taliban retook control of Kabul on 15 August 2021.
I feel rage at the attempted erasure by the Taliban of women’s intrinsic dignity. Where has their humanity gone?
For the first time in my life, I am struck by grief at the defeat of hope of some Afghan women: hope they will return to build a country with some measure of justice, equity, and peace.
As a fellow traveller, I feel responsible for Afghan women.
And, immediately, I feel guilt for not doing enough to care for and support Afghan women.
Screeching tyres.
I look behind me.
Another car’s coming straight at me.
I feel wounded in my inner core: the world quietly allows Afghan women to be killed, disappeared, tortured, silenced, broken in this space of gender apartheid. The world is loudly telling me — albeit without voicing it — that the lives, rights, hopes, and dreams of the majority don’t count. Well, that they don’t count enough.
And that is why it is so hard for me to look into the eyes of an Afghan woman: her eyes tell me that the world doesn’t think she — we — count. That we matter. That we are of value.
The driver gets out the car and comes towards me.
Running.
And takes my hand.
I feel lifted, by an inner knowing that the unbowed spirit and untamed imagination of Afghan women, their ferocious tenacity and gentle persuasion, and sheer hard graft of building and extending relationships and constituencies inside and outside Afghanistan will forge a bridge above this sodden mire of muck sunk by so many, many men — Afghan and non-Afghan alike — to the next chapter of Afghanistan’s story.
I look directly into the eyes of the Afghan woman.
Tashakur jan.
I say to her.
