29 November 2001

Sara Amiryar: The Women of Afghanistan Can Make a Difference

Washington -- Afghan women must be part of the peace process and the reconstruction of Afghanistan at all levels, said Sara Amiryar, an Afghan-American activist and Georgetown University administrator. Born and educated in Afghanistan and now a U.S. citizen, Amiryar has conducted an energetic grassroots campaign among political leaders in Washington, D.C., to ensure that Afghan women are not left out of the peace process. Women, she said, must have a place at the table when decisions are made about the rebuilding of their ravaged country, and their presence must be more than merely symbolic.

"Afghan women should not be underestimated," Amiryar said. "Despite the fact that Afghan women were the primary victims of two decades of conflict and atrocities, they were the ones who kept Afghan culture alive," she said. "Their knowledge, their strength, they are really resilient."

Speaking to the Washington File on November 28, Amiryar says it is important to remember that prior to the Soviet invasion and the decades of conflict that followed, Afghan women had the opportunity to be educated and to hold influential positions at all levels of national and local government. Women participated in earlier Loya Jirgas (traditional decision-making assemblies) and in drafting the Constitution of Afghanistan in the mid-1960s, Amiryar pointed out. There were women cabinet members, judges, legislators, teachers, doctors, journalists, lawyers, and technicians, she added.

"The Constitution of Afghanistan gave equal rights to men and women," Amiryar noted, but women were almost left out of the meetings currently taking place in Bonn. "In the beginning they did not even want to include women at all," she said. "I said women should be included from the beginning, from this initial meeting. If not, they will forget about including women in anything."

Afghan women, said Amiryar, "should be included in the political process, in security, in humanitarian aid, and in the future reconstruction of Afghanistan, and at all levels. There shouldn't be a glass ceiling for women to say, OK, traditionally women were involved [only] in teaching and nursing, and they should go back to that. No, traditionally, they were involved in all kinds of positions, and in high-level positions."

"Afghanistan needs everything today," she said. And women can give "hope for the future of Afghanistan."

Amiryar said Afghan women need to know that their contributions are valued, as Afghanistan struggles to recover from decades of conflict. She hopes Afghan women will come to see that "your contribution is really needed here. You are counted again, and respected, as a mother, as a sister, as a wife, as a daughter. And your place is again in Afghanistan, as a citizen of Afghanistan. And you are equally important to the country."

Amiryar, who wrote her Master's Thesis at Georgetown University on "Women, Islam and the Taliban," said, "For these Taliban to impose [severe restrictions] on women, not to seek healthcare, not to be educated, and be virtually prisoners in their own homes, they invented something, they invented their own religion that I really don't understand."

The Taliban restrictions on women, she said, cannot be justified by Afghan tradition, or by Islam. "The Taliban are not religious scholars, that's the problem. These man-made policies, or interpretations, those are applied to women only. For instance, Islam says men have certain responsibilities toward women, but from what I've seen of these Taliban, none of the responsibilities to protect women were carried out."

But men also lost their rights under Taliban rule, Amiryar said. "Men didn't have rights either. They were not able to walk around in western clothes, they did not have the right to attend sports, or to be clean-shaven." They watched their wives dying in front of them, she said, because they couldn't take them to male doctors, and female doctors were not allowed to work.

Amiryar pointed out that some of the Mujahideen, who preceded the Taliban in power, also perpetrated terrible atrocities on the Afghan civilian population, especially women. She said everyone hoped, originally, that the Mujahideen would return Afghanistan to normal. "But then I saw that the situation was getting worse."

Visiting refugee camps and talking to Afghan refugees during the two decades of conflict, Amiryar saw that women and children were once again the main victims. "The plight of women there was really terrible. I saw horrible things, I heard horrible things about what was going on," she said. Women and girls were forced into prostitution, she said, and she witnessed the deaths of two children who had been kidnapped from a camp to have their kidneys removed for black-market transplants. Children died from easily curable illnesses because of the lack of medical care, she said.

Amiryar said she believes "something good" will happen in Afghanistan now that the grip of the Taliban has been broken, and the international community is involved. The biggest need now, she said, is for "a broad-based government, to include all ethnic groups, and women as well as men."

She cited the need for non-interference from Afghanistan's neighbors, and the urgency of rebuilding the education system in Afghanistan as crucial to the country's recovery from decades of conflict and chaos. She said removing landmines and providing health care are also urgent needs.

The Afghan diaspora has a vital contribution to make to the rebuilding of Afghanistan, Amiryar said. She has been given permission to take unpaid leave from her position as associate director for affirmative action programs at Georgetown University to spend time in Afghanistan helping to rebuild the country's institutions. Other Americans of Afghan origin would go to help, she said, if it becomes financially possible for them to do so. "They are able, willing and ready to go back and help, with humanitarian aid and relief, with reconstruction, with using their expertise there."

To Afghan refugees waiting to return home, Amiryar said, "Help is on the way. You will be free once again. It's important not to let the atrocities of the past take away from you what you had before. Look forward to the future. Get up and be ready to go back and rebuild the country."