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With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
Abstract
With All Our Strength is the inside story of this women-led underground organization and their fight for the rights of Afghan women. Anne Brodsky, the first writer given in-depth access to visit and interview their members and operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, shines light on the gruesome, often tragic, lives of Afghan women under some of the most brutal sexist oppression in the world.
... 7 "[T]here is limited incentive and support […]. Indeed, given professional pressure to publish and teach, it is possible to say that further training and deep empirical and applied engage- (Emadi 1997(Emadi und 2002Benard/Schlaffer 2002;Brodsky 2003;Kolhatkar/Ingalls 2006;Joya 2009;Joffre-Eichhorn 2011), die sich mit (der Geschichte von) linken und femininistischen Basisorganisationen oder mit der Basisarbeit für Transitional Justice (Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung von gesellschaftlich bedeutenden Verbrechen) beschäftigen und die ich im Laufe der Forschung finden konnte, sind von afghanischen Autor*innen oder in Kooperation mit afghanischen Organisationen entstanden. Diese Texte werden i.d.R. nicht als Fachtexte der Politikwissenschaft oder der Friedens-und Konfliktforschung wahrgenommen. ...
... "Women students taunted the pro-Soviet Afghan soldiers by throwing their head scarves at them and calling them Soviet slaves and women, the latter, unfortunately but not surprisingly, a grave insult in Afghan culture." (Brodsky 2003: 63) Die Schülerin Naheed starb durch Polizeikugeln. Auch zu diesen Verbrechen gibt es bis heute keine Aufarbeitung. ...
... Ahmad Sharq beschreibt, dass im Gegensatz zu den fundamentalischen Gruppen, die nur Gefechte austrugen, die Gruppen der in den Dörfern verankerten Tribal Frontlines zusätzlich zum bewaffneten Kampf auch Alphabetisierungskurse und weitere Bildungsarbeit durchführten. Es beteiligten sich hier auch Frauen an den Widerstandsaktivitäten, einschließlich militärischer Ausbildung, Waffenreinigung, medizinische Hilfe, Frauenbildung, Kochen und Gasschutzmasken nähen (Brodsky 2003). Najla, die zusammen mit acht anderen Frauen für zwei Jahre an der Front war, sagt: "This group was different [from fundamentalist mujaheddin]. ...
Afghanische basisdemokratische und feministische Akteure äußern deutlich ihren Widerspruch zum externen Peacebuilding - doch sie werden nicht gehört. Ihre Analysen und Ideen werden von Politik und Wissenschaft weitgehend ausgeschlossen. Darin schlägt sich, so kann Mechthild Exo zeigen, die koloniale, epistemische Gewalt in der Weltpolitik nieder. Anschaulich und lebendig stellt sie das »unerwünschte Wissen« von vier afghanischen Organisationen vor, die in der künstlerischen Menschenrechtsarbeit, der feministischen Frauenorganisierung seit den 1970ern mit RAWA, dem Kampf gegen die Straflosigkeit von Kriegsverbrechern beziehungsweise dem besatzungskritischen Aufbau demokratischer Strukturen tätig sind. Die Studie ist eine bahnbrechende Pionierarbeit der dekolonialen Friedensforschung.
... Despite these hardships, Afghan women have shown tremendous resilience and remained active agents in resisting oppression, coping with instability and violence, and aiding others (Brodsky, 2003;Brodsky et al., 2011;Welsh & Brodsky, 2010). According to the transactional model of stress and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), coping represents the best response to an individual's appraisal of a stressful situation. ...
... One example of problem-focused coping through active resistance, and the setting of the present study, is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) 1 , which encourages and engages in political activism as well as humanitarian activities, in spite of the difficult context in which they operate, and the risk associated with these activities. RAWA is an underground volunteer women's organization founded in 1977 by an Afghan college student named Meena (Brodsky, 2003). In 1987, Meena and two supporters were assassinated, but the work of the organization continued, inspired by their sacrifices. ...
... In 1987, Meena and two supporters were assassinated, but the work of the organization continued, inspired by their sacrifices. Since its founding, RAWA has continued to run with an estimated 2,000 members and equal number of male supporters and been a strong voice for secular democracy, women's and all human rights, in addition to establishing schools, underground literacy courses, medical facilities, and programs designed to generate income for women and their families (Brodsky, 2003;Sultan, 2005). This paper examines how Afghan women associated with RAWA utilize humanitarian and political activities as a means of coping with violence. ...
En este libro se presentan trabajos de la III Conferencia Internacional de Psicología Comunitaria celebrada en Puebla, México. Los temas incluyen: a) bases teóricas, metas y valores de la disciplina, b) formación en servicio, c) identidad, diversidad y exclusión, d)violencia, e) comunidad y tecnología, e) salud y f) organizaciones y evaluación de programas. El libro tiene trabajos en español y en inglés.
... The organization organized more than 5,000 women and girls in the city of Kabul in a massive demonstration and called for inspections and punishment of the perpetrators by the government. The government also arrested and imprisoned a number of perpetrators (Brodsky, 2004 District Councils, and 3100 Primary Organizations. Dr. Anahita Ratebzad, who, in addition to the membership of the Afghan Women's Democratic Organization, was a representative of the Kabul people in parliament 12, played an important role in establishing provincial councils (Brodsky, 2004). ...
... The government also arrested and imprisoned a number of perpetrators (Brodsky, 2004 District Councils, and 3100 Primary Organizations. Dr. Anahita Ratebzad, who, in addition to the membership of the Afghan Women's Democratic Organization, was a representative of the Kabul people in parliament 12, played an important role in establishing provincial councils (Brodsky, 2004). ...
... RAWA is one of the most prominent Afghan women's organizations. According to RAWA's website, this organization has been working since 1977 for the liberation, democracy and the rights of women in Afghanistan (Brodsky, 2004). ...
This article talks about Afghan women's political movement since 1919 - the ear of King Amanullah Khan to present date - presidency of Ashraf Ghani, the current present of Afghanistan. I have looked the Afghan women's desire for political space in Afghanistan through a historical perspective. The entire aim of this paper is to give the readers a new horizon for analyzing the challenges and opportunities that Afghan women had in the past for their liberation.
... 14 Since it has long been the case that few sexual harassment targets actually formally report sexually harassing behavior-the estimated figure is around 12 percent-the result is that such policies have very little effect on preventing sexual harassment. 15 I do not know whose intention we look to when trying to determine whether sexual harassment law, and Title VII and Title IX more generally, were intended to transform workplace and educational cultures so that those previously cast as "outsiders" become fully integrated into those cultures. 16 But I do know that this was and is the hope of many opposed to inequality and oppression. ...
... Interestingly, when sexual harassment policy was debated in academic senate, a discipline's expertise (viz., women's studies) was ruled immaterial to the nature or content of policy deliberations of the whole faculty. 15 But most senators demurred to the expertise of educational psychology when students' course evaluations were on the table. There is a lot of theorizing to be done here regarding the preeminence of educational psychology in characterizing learning, but I suspect that the scientistic emphasis on quantifiability, the co evolution of educational metrics and the accountability society, the epistemological turn to cognitive science in its reductionist form that sees mind as programmed and programmable brain, and the marginality of women's studies are ingredients. ...
... The university has a variety of resources in terms of personnel, materials, and capital, but it is vulnerable, nonetheless. 15 It risks losses of control and resources necessary for the accomplishment of its aims. It relies on various parties to help it fulfill those needs. ...
... 14 Since it has long been the case that few sexual harassment targets actually formally report sexually harassing behavior-the estimated figure is around 12 percent-the result is that such policies have very little effect on preventing sexual harassment. 15 I do not know whose intention we look to when trying to determine whether sexual harassment law, and Title VII and Title IX more generally, were intended to transform workplace and educational cultures so that those previously cast as "outsiders" become fully integrated into those cultures. 16 But I do know that this was and is the hope of many opposed to inequality and oppression. ...
... Interestingly, when sexual harassment policy was debated in academic senate, a discipline's expertise (viz., women's studies) was ruled immaterial to the nature or content of policy deliberations of the whole faculty. 15 But most senators demurred to the expertise of educational psychology when students' course evaluations were on the table. There is a lot of theorizing to be done here regarding the preeminence of educational psychology in characterizing learning, but I suspect that the scientistic emphasis on quantifiability, the co evolution of educational metrics and the accountability society, the epistemological turn to cognitive science in its reductionist form that sees mind as programmed and programmable brain, and the marginality of women's studies are ingredients. ...
... The university has a variety of resources in terms of personnel, materials, and capital, but it is vulnerable, nonetheless. 15 It risks losses of control and resources necessary for the accomplishment of its aims. It relies on various parties to help it fulfill those needs. ...
... Multiple sets of analysis focused on various theoretical processes were conducted. Based on the research focus, some analyses were conducted by the primary researcher alone (e.g., Brodsky, 2003Brodsky, , 2014, some with area experts (e.g., Brodsky & Catteneo, 2013;Brodsky & Faryal, 2006), and some in a consensus-based research team approach (e.g., Brodsky, Welsh, Carrillo, Talwar, & Bulter, 2011). ...
... Among the most noteworthy findings of this project were the in-depth, narrative description of the lives, experiences, and activities of this organization and its many Afghan members and supporters (Brodsky, 2003); articulation of a culturally sensitive, multilevel model of resilience (Brodsky et al., 2011); further conceptualization of the processes of multilevel psychological sense of community (Brodsky, 2009); exploration of the ways in which bridging diversity between inside and outside collaborators may be a false goal (Brodsky & Faryal, 2006); and description of the experiences of war, violence, and foreign intervention on women's lives (e.g., Brodsky, 2014). In addition to dissemination in scholarly and trade books and journal articles, the findings have been shared with participants and the public in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Europe, and the United States through newspaper and magazine interviews and articles; slideshows, talks, radio and TV interviews; and classroom lectures at the elementary through graduate school levels. ...
As this introductory chapter and those that follow illustrate, qualitative methods provide a rich and robust approach to enhancing community-based research and action. It is incumbent upon researchers to not only choose the methods that fit their research question and theoretical paradigm but also to be well trained in the pros, cons, and appropriate application of the methods they choose. Appropriate ethical and cultural considerations are also key to producing research and action that provides the necessary protection and respect to participating and nonparticipating members of a community. With these caveats in mind, we believe that qualitative methods can contribute immensely to the creation of contextually based, culturally relevant understandings and knowledge, enhanced well-being, and positive community change that are the ultimate hallmarks and goals of community-based research and action.
... Thus, we had a unique opportunity to investigate the role of a well-established correlate of IPV, masculine honour (Rodriguez Mosquera et al., 2002a;, in a setting that was highly relevant to test our hypotheses considering its cultural climate. In this country, many people act towards women more in the name of honour, rather than in the name of the law: As a result, most Afghan women are victims of violent behaviours such as, for instance, forced marriages, rape, educational deprivation, and IPV (Brodsky, 2003). According to the Global Database on Violence against Women of the UN, 51% of Afghan women are victim at least once in the lifetime of physical and/or sexual IPV 2 . ...
Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a widespread phenomenon. Despite the prevalence of IPV in Western societies, most cases remain unnoticed or at least unreported to authorities. Social psychologists have been investigating bystanders’ reactions to IPV, to understand which factors may influence the willingness to intervene in support of a female victim of violence. We review a research programme that directly investigated personal and situational factors that make potential bystanders believe a woman victim of IPV deserves and needs (their) help and support, and what, on the contrary, makes them deny any such willingness to help. We present evidence about the situational antecedents of bystander’s reaction, the underlying mechanisms of this intervention, and an extension of such evidence to non-prototypical cases, i.e., to an IPV episode occurring within a same-sex couple. We conclude by discussing future directions, and by highlighting the theoretical and practical contributions of this programme of research to the understanding of IPV for both researchers and practitioners.
... While we believe feminist critiques of the constraints of feminine socialisation are important and necessary, they also unwittingly uphold femininity's second-class status (Paechter, 2018;Schippers, 2007), reduce the complexity of all femininities, and erase the presence and power of multiple types of femininity (Collins, 1999). For example, Black, Latina, and transnational feminist scholarship explores how women of colour use collective racial and national identities in powerful ways that demonstrate agency outside of the norm (Brodsky, 2003; ...
Consider the messages that Western, patriarchal cultures create and disseminate about femininity: that it is weak, passive, deceitful, and manipulative. Systems of male domination devalue femininity relative to hegemonic masculinity by framing feminine attributes as opposite and in service to men and masculinity, and naturalising these characteristics to female and feminine bodies. Much gender studies scholarship critiques the constraints of feminine socialisation in patriarchy. While such feminist critiques are important and necessary, they also unwittingly uphold the second-class status of femininity, reduce the complexity of all femininities, and erase the presence and power of multiple types of femininity. In this article, the authors situate their analysis in femme theory to show how, under specific conditions, feminine ways of being are powerful on their own terms. Drawing on data from exotic dancers and bedside nurses, the authors operationalise four types of feminine power: yielding, re-direction, vulnerability, and establishing connections, arguing that feminine strategies do not universally serve hegemonic masculinity, do yield success, and do increase joy.
... There is ample evidence of the extremely poor climate of gender equity experienced by women in Afghanistan, reflected in the country's current ranking of 154th out of 157 nations on gender inequality (United National Development Programme 2015). Afghan women and girls are victims of numerous violent behaviors committed by men and other family members, including entry into forced marriages, rape, educational deprivation, IPV, inducement to self-immolation, acidification, and murder (Brodsky 2004). The results of the current analysis illustrate high levels of IPV, with more than one-third of women reporting a recent experience of physical or emotional IPV. ...
Ongoing internal conflict, high gender inequality, and a patriarchal society contribute to a high prevalence of intimate partner violence towards women (IPV) in Afghanistan. Seeking help from formal and informal sources can provide social support to IPV survivors, buffering negative health consequences. The purpose of this study is to examine the individual, interpersonal, and community-level factors associated with help-seeking for physical, sexual, and emotional IPV in Afghanistan using a nationally-representative sample of women aged 15–49. Data for this analysis comes from the 2015 Afghanistan Demographic and Health Survey. The outcome variable is a binary measure of informal or formal help-seeking behavior among women who reported physical, sexual, or emotional IPV in the last 12 months. Drawing on existing theory of help-seeking for IPV, key covariates included summative indices of health care use, decision-making power, and barriers to accessing health care measured at both the individual and community levels using multilevel modeling. Nearly half (46%) of women in the dataset reported experiencing some type of IPV in the past 12 months. Among the 20% of women who reported seeking help for IPV, informal sources of support were used almost universally. Engagement with the health care system, barriers to accessing health care, and decision-making power were all significantly associated with seeking help for IPV. IPV is widespread in Afghanistan and help-seeking is uncommon. A better understanding of what shapes help-seeking in this context may allow more women to disclose violence, increasing social support and reducing the negative health effects of IPV.
... Additionally, the opportunity to develop knowledge of the shared consequences of existing inequalities within one's community may better equip individuals with tools and incentive to work toward change that is collectively transformative. Several scholars have noted the value of having supportive relationships in facilitating a sense of empowerment and desire to create change (Brodsky, 2003;Peterson, Speer, & McMillan, 2008). For example, one study found that individuals who were members of a specific church group reported feeling less like "outsiders" in society, thus feeling encouraged to participate in events within their community (Maton & Salem, 1995). ...
This study examines a psychosocial process linking women's involvement in a grassroots women's organization with skills and experiences to promote empowered solidarity. Empowered solidarity is described as a process of increasing the sense of connection and capacity to create social transformation among a group of people united by interest in addressing a social issue. Data collected and analyzed for this research were 298 quantitative surveys conducted with two groups of women living in rural Nicaragua. One group of women were members of a grassroots feminist organization, and the other group lived in nearby communities where the organization did not offer programs. Findings document higher levels of leadership skills and sense of community, and lower levels of powerlessness among members of the organization. Additionally, tests of a process model using structural equation modeling provides support for a model that links involvement in the organization to women's increased interest in, capacity and experience in working to support women, broadly. Overall findings from this research are valuable to both community psychologists and groups seeking to enhance social justice and uphold feminist values of equity and community well‐being.
... Analytic findings and working hypotheses were discussed with research participants and collaborators, key informants, and area experts, as well as peers. Findings from this study included work focused on multilevel resilience, multilevel psychological sense of community, bridging diversity between insider and outsider research collaborators, and violence against women, and findings have been disseminated in scholarly and mainstream books, chapters, articles, postings, and presentations (e.g., Brodsky, 2003Brodsky, , 2009Brodsky & Faryal, 2006). ...
There is a natural fit between (a) the ontology and epistemology that undergird much of community psychology and (b) the paradigms from which qualitative methods spring, leading to particular scientific approaches. The assumptions and beliefs of community psychology include the importance of context, culture, and setting; attention to the frequently ignored disjunction between grand and local theory; efforts to reframe a dominant narrative, which often searches for negative causality in the least empowered individual, into one of strength and emic (i.e., insider) resources; respect for emic perspectives and strengths; an aim to address social inequalities through research and action; and a willingness to thus be called 'involved,' that is, scientifically unobjective. The congruent qualitative approaches and aims involve a focus on the discovery phase of research, including the identification of variables and working hypotheses for further study; efforts to develop holistic, detailed description of systems, theories, and processes from multiple perspectives; attention to emic perspectives; a belief that the control demanded by quantitative methods strips away the context that is central to life; concern for the inapplicability of generalized data to individual, specific experiences; and a conception of the interconnection of facts, theories, and values, which disrupts the notion that researchers can simply discard their worldviews and act objectively (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). This is not to say that quantitative methods do not contribute to community psychology, but the distinctive fit between qualitative methods and community psychology precepts seems to us to be particularly innate and direct. Qualitative methods are quite useful for what Kuhn (1962/1996) called 'scientific revolution,' something community psychology has been waging since its founding in the 1960s. It is no wonder, then, that rich examples of the application of qualitative methods can be found in the global literature of community psychology today, and the field is well poised to benefit from new and novel qualitative methods utilized in allied social science fields around the world.
... Most of the women remained uneducated and poor. (Brodsky, 2004). Violence remained a constant threat. ...
Women face tough challenges in developing countries which usually enforce strong traditional stereotypes. Afghanistan is a good example where women have experienced both radical and moderate changes. Some of the changes have ameliorated their position in society whereas for the most part the changes endured have kept them from fulfilling their potential roles in a traditional patriarchal structure. This article attempts to highlight the various fluctuations that have occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries, paying special attention to the period during and after the Soviet invasion of 1978. Afghan women possess legal rights which are on a par with other developed states but it is the implementation of these rights which leaves much to be desired. The impact of culture and history cannot be minimised when trying to explain the obstacles faced in improving Afghan women’s rights.
... Presto il femminismo americano si mobilita scoprendo RAWA, le Donne Rivoluzionarie dell'Afghanistan, che divengono rapidamente protagoniste di una serie di libri pubblicati negli States (Bernard 2002;Brodsky 2003; Ermachild-Mena 2003;Mehta 2002) mentre alcune loro attiviste, in particolare la futura deputata Malalai Joya, sono ospiti pressoché stabili di seguitissimi eventi pubblici sponsorizzati da ricche fondazioni. ...
In post 9/11 one of the main focuses of the debate over Islam concerns the situation of women in Muslim countries. The rhetoric of Muslim women’s liberation has produced a huge wave of Islamophobia and has generated (Neo) Orientalist representations of the “oppressed” Muslim women in need of imperialist interventions. The promoters of this campaign are both Western “feminists” and “dissident” Muslim women who, by pretending to fight for human rights, have produced a sensationalist Neo-orientalist literature based on the assumption of the existence of a unique, eternal and denigrated “Muslim woman”.
This article explores some Neo-orientalist issues fabricated around the myth of “the Muslim woman” by Western women observers also with the complicity of female “native informants”.
... Equally obscured by this naive embedded feminism are decades of complex historical agency and mobilization of Iraqi and Afghan peoples on behalf of those very same rights that President Bush and his administration appear to hold as the exclusive property of the United States (Brodsky 2003). Just as "colonial fantasies" of rule (Yegenoglu 1998, 1) were condensed and expressed in the contest between the colonizer and the colonized over who was to govern and gaze upon the women, so too did President Bush and his administration sternly warn the Taliban that the "days of . . . ...
... During the time of the Soviet occupation, 1.5 million Afghans lost their lives, 2.5 million were injured, and 1.1 million were internally displaced. Out of 5 million refugees, 2.6 million lived in camps in Pakistan and Iran, where the living conditions were only marginally better than what was found in war-torn Afghanistan (Brodsky 2003). This is what Meena has to say about her country: "All our houses were bombed. ...
... Another example of work at this interface is the ongoing collaboration of psychologist Anne Brodsky with The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, RAWA (Brodsky, 2003). ...
... Afghan women and girls are victims of numerous violent behaviors committed by men and their family members: forced marriages, rape, educational deprivation, IPV, inducement to selfimmolation, acidification, and killing, among others (Brodsky, 2003). ...
This paper examines how attitudes toward violence against women (VAW)—in terms of justification—influence the behavioral intentions of Afghan police officers when dealing with a case of intimate partner violence (IPV). An experimental study was carried out with 108 Afghan police officers who took part in a training course at the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan (NTM-A) bases in Herat and Kandahar. Participants read an extract of a police intervention for an IPV case. They were faced with honor-related attitudes and possible actions to be taken to help victims and arrest perpetrators. In the experimental condition, in the questionnaire provided to police officers, there was reference to the victim admitting to an affair with another man. No such reference was present in the control condition. Results showed that admitting an infidelity produced more lenient attitudes toward the violence against the woman, which in turn reduced police officers’ intention to intervene by arresting the man and providing support to the victim. Results are discussed in terms of the role and function of the so-called culture of (masculine) honor and the rule of law and its implications.
... The first author's model of resilience was built on data from a unique setting and at-risk population-an Afghan women's underground humanitarian and political resistance organization in Pakistan and Afghanistan Brodsky 2003;. The model was built on the grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) that arose from this setting, combined with the extant theoretical and applied work on resilience, including past US based work (Brodsky 1999). ...
Resilience and empowerment are widely employed concepts in community psychology and other social sciences. Although empowerment is more closely associated with community psychology, both concepts hone to community psychology's strengths-based values, recognizing, respecting, and promoting local capacity and positive outcomes. Both concepts also have been critiqued for lacking clear consensus regarding definition, operationalization, and measurement (Cattaneo and Chapman in Am Psychol 65(7):646-659, 2010; Luthar et al. in Child Dev 71(3):543-562, 2000). This deficiency is reflected in the wide ranging applications of each term independently, and is particularly concerning when the terms are used together or interchangeably. Theoretical work on these concepts' boundaries and interaction is lacking. This paper builds on the authors' prior work operationalizing the processes and outcomes of each concept (Brodsky et al. in Am J Community Psychol 47(3-4):217-235, 2011; Cattaneo and Chapman in Am Psychol 65(7):646-659, 2010; Cattaneo and Goodman in Psychol Violence, in press) to present a combined transconceptual model illuminating the divergence, convergence, and interactions between the two. Both resilience and empowerment are fueled by unsatisfying states, but are differentiated by, among other things, internally (resilience) versus externally (empowerment) focused change goals. Goal determinants include context, power differentials, and other risks and resources. These concepts have the potential to facilitate each other, and understanding their interaction can better inform community psychologists' work with marginalized populations.
This paper concerns young adults who came to Sweden from Afghanistan as unaccompanied refugee minors (UMs) and their engagement with poetry and other creative activities. The aim was to explore how UMs use poetic writing and other creative activities to handle resettlement challenges. Seven young men and six young women, aged 18–24, participated in semi-structured interviews. The material was analyzed using the three components of poetry therapy, developed by Mazza. Three themes were identified: (1) Encouragement; (2) Creative expressions as a “safe place”; and (3) A sense of recognition. Through creative expressions, our participants could understand and handle the emotional difficulties and the insecurity associated with resettlement. Poetic writing was a way to convey personal experiences of injustices, a source of self-understanding, and a way to establish new social networks. We discuss and present suggestions on how poetry and other creative activities can be integrated in interventions toward UMs.
The paper identified the fact that right after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, an environment of fear and uncertainty prevailed among Afghan women which ultimately either confined the women into their houses or force them to flee from Afghanistan. On the other hand, the new Taliban regime expressed publicly to ensure the rights of women and would allow them to take part in political, social, education and economic activities; however, the past rule of Taliban are certain memories which do not allow them to be convinced. The paper also found that for the sake award of recognition from international community, Taliban have been compelled to be at the backfoot position. Still international community is so watchful in awarding recognition to the Taliban regime. The paper also tried to answer the question that what mechanism Taliban needs to adopt in order to convince international community for their political and economic support which is mandatory for Taliban to survive. The paper is qualitative in nature which investigated different facts, events and incidents to find a way forward for the restoration of freedom of Afghan women and their rights under the shadow of Taliban regime.
Consumption of alcohol is a global issue associated with socio-economic and health consequences, while amongst tribal communities it has more complex associations linked to culture. Strengths-based approaches (in which the concept of resilience is prominent) have high potential of application in studies on the risky use of substances. In the current study, a descriptive phenomenology approach was used to capture the lived experience of a tribal community in Southern India. This was followed by thematic analysis of the data through an inductive as well as deductive approach. The study resulted in the identification of ten resilience (to alcohol use) themes, viz., perception & skills, relationship, absence of temptations to drink, social support systems, faith factors, awareness, positive outcomes, biological & psychological responses, financial factors, and alternative substances. One of the key findings is the identification of the tension between the pull forces of increased alcohol access and associated enablers vs. the inner resilience building social forces from NGOs. The resilience in the presence of opposing forces as identified in the community has implications in prioritizing interventions such as risk reduction and resilience promotion in the particular community at a point of time. The value of the study is based on the chosen combination of population segment (specific tribal community), methodology (thematic analysis), and a specific contextual frequency (resilience) within the spectrum of social determinants for alcohol use, that could more effectively inform the design of interventions.
Liberalism and Transformation is the first scholarly work that explores the historical, philosophical, and intellectual development of global liberalism since the nineteenth century in the context of the deployment of violence, force, and intervention. Using an approach that includes interpretive and contextual analysis of texts from writers, philosophers, and policy-makers across nearly two centuries, as well as historiographical and historical analysis of archival documents (some of which have been recently declassified) and other media, Liberalism and Transformation narrates the messy history of emancipatory liberalism and its engagement with issues of war and peace. The book contributes to both a rethinking of liberal democracy and its relationship to world politics, as well as the effects of liberal internationalism on global processes. Furthermore, Liberalism and Transformation invites readers to reflect on global ethics and transformation in world politics. In the first place, it shows how ethical imaginings of the world have direct effects on actions of transformative importance. In the second place, it suggests that discourses are fluid, changing, and complex.
This empirical research documented voices of women and girls in female shelters and prisons in Samangan, Laghman and Wardak provinces who experienced systematic sexual and gender based violence before and after they escaped forced marriages, forced virginity tests, physical and sexual violence. Women who challenged the status quo, fundamentalism and extremism faced imprisonment for up to five years. The research interviewed primary, secondary and territory health care professionals, who carried out or witnessed invasive virginity tests. The evidence suggests that women are being deprived of basic human rights of exercising autonomy and freedom. It shows difficulties some health professionals’ encounter in documenting, reporting and treating cases of violence against women and girls. The research concludes that a survivor-centered approach, and secular framework is required against tyranny, misogyny and oppression. Instead of imposing moral arguments and harmful laws that undermine women’s rights, brave leadership at many levels is required to tackle health inequities, dismantle patriarchy, counter fundamentalism and other entrenched systems of inequality. A new kind of feminist citizenship is needed not based on identity but political values.
Child marriage and intimate partner violence have been globally recognized as human rights violations. Both indicators can derail an individual’s future and have various public health implications. Previous studies have shown an association between child marriage and domestic violence in low- and middle-income countries; however, data in Afghanistan are not known. This study aimed to assess the association between child marriage and domestic violence in Afghanistan. We used nationally representative data collected by the Demographic and Health Surveys to conduct logistic regression analyses. Child marriage was separated into three categories: very early marriage (<15 years), early marriage (15–17 years), and adult marriage (≥18 years). Domestic violence was the response variable and was assessed as any violence, physical violence, emotional violence, and sexual violence. Of the sample ( N = 21,324), 15% of the respondents were married before the age of 15; 35% were married between the ages of 15 and 17; and 50% were married as adults. After adjusting for current age, place of residence, and socioeconomic status, the odds of sexual violence were 22% higher among women who married before age 15 compared with those married as adults (OR = 1.22, 95% CI = [1.05, 1.40], p = .005). However, the odds of reporting any violence, physical violence, and emotional violence among those who married as children did not differ compared with those who married as adults. This may be due to a shift in traditional norms or underreporting in Afghanistan. This study adds to the body of research on child marriage and intimate partner violence, and specifically provides novel information on this association in Afghanistan.
I explore the construction of women as the secret for the ‘successful’ prosecution of war in Afghanistan. To do so, I take up the mobilization of gender in the US counterinsurgency doctrine as deployed in Afghanistan. I draw on the 2006 Counterinsurgency Field Manual, human rights and humanitarian reports, and scholarly works to identify and analyze this mobilization, paying attention to the colonial histories upon which COIN explicitly and implicitly relies. By critically integrating these sources and the paradigmatic moments that exemplify COIN, I demonstrate the constitutive relationship of gender and COIN. The valence of the secret – of women as concealing, revealing, being, and bearing the secret – is still a lesser explored element in the analysis of the gendering of COIN and of its ‘military orientalism’. Even as scholars have powerfully shown how, in the case of Afghanistan and elsewhere, the veil functions as an overdetermined and ‘multilayered signifier’ in its own right, symbolizing the ‘tension between disclosure and concealment that defines the dominant conception of the secret’, less subject to detailed analysis in case of Afghanistan is the ways in which Afghan women are constituted through COIN in polysemous relation to the notion of the secret.
In the mainstream narratives on the Afghan conflict, primacy is assigned to a binary of ‘Mujahedeen’ and People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) regime. The struggle of organisations, beyond this binary, such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) against and during the communist rule, belies these narratives.
Consequently, this article argues that women’s liberation is not possible when a state/society is run by an autocratic regime denying democratic freedoms in general. This is equally true about present-day Afghanistan despite the staging of a mainstream intellectual/political spectacle to show that Afghan women were rescued by the USA. In the case of PDPA, we argue that through the harsh measures to subdue the opposition, the ‘communist’ regime introduced policies with huge consequences for women. Regarding the post-9/11 regime, we flag up its ideologically anti-women character. Therefore, we conclude that women’s liberation cannot be achieved under foreign occupations.
This article considers the rhetorical implications of transnational exchange between feminist activists in the late twentieth century. It uses Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Magazine (est. 1972) and the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) as a lens through which to understand the emergence of the gender-apartheid analogy in the 1990s. During the 1970s and 1980s, Ms. demonstrated knowledge of and commitment to the anti-apartheid movement. However, when the FMF and Ms. began using apartheid as an analogy for gender-based oppression in the Middle East after the fall of the apartheid regime, the limitations of transnational understanding became fundamentally apparent. This article traces the historical and rhetorical foundations for the use of race-based analogies in women’s rights activism. It then examines the journalistic and foreign policy perspectives espoused toward the South African apartheid regime and women’s rights abuses under fundamentalist Islamic regimes. At the turn of the twenty-first century, this article argues, the transnational feminist imaginary was shaped by a process of inspiration and appropriation which delimited solidarity and understanding across transnational networks of feminist activists.
This book offers an accessible and timely analysis of the 'War on Terror', based on an innovative approach to a broad range of theoretical and empirical research. It uses 'gendered orientalism' as a lens through which to read the relationship between the George W. Bush administration, gendered and racialized military intervention, and global politics. Khalid argues that legitimacy, power, and authority in global politics, and the 'War on Terror' specifically, are discursively constructed through representations that are gendered and racialized, and often orientalist. Looking at the ways in which 'official' US 'War on Terror' discourse enabled military intervention into Afghanistan and Iraq, the book takes a postcolonial feminist approach to broaden the scope of critical analyses of the 'War on Terror' and reflect on the gendered and racial underpinnings of key relations of power within contemporary global politics. This book is a unique, innovative and significant analysis of the operation of race, orientalism, and gender in global politics, and the 'War on Terror' specifically. It will be of great interest to scholars and graduates interested in gender politics, development, humanitarian intervention, international (global) relations, Middle East politics, security, and US foreign policy.
Auch im zweiten Jahr des Neuanfangs auf der Basis des Petersberg-Abkommens vom Dezember 2001 verlief der Wiederaufbau staatlicher Institutionen in Afghanistan (A.) nur schleppend, in einigen Bereichen gab es sogar Rückschläge. Die afghan. Übergangsregierung blieb trotz vielfaltiger internationaler Unterstützung selbst in Kabul schwach und konnte im größten Teil des Landes kaum irgend etwas gegen den Willen örtlicher und regionaler Machthaber, darunter einige notorische „Warlords“, durchsetzen. In den paschtunischen Südostprovinzen verbreiteten Taleban und andere Gegner der Übergangsregierung und der ausländischen „Besatzer“ erneut Unsicherheit. Erst am Jahresende gelang mit der erfolgreichen Tagung der Constitutional Loya Jirga wieder ein großer Schritt nach vorne.
Seit dem 1. Juli 2002 wird sexuelle Gewalt erstmals in der Geschichte des Völkerstrafrechts explizit als Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit und als Kriegsverbrechen benannt. An diesem Tag trat das Statut des Ständigen Internationalen Strafgerichtshofes (ICC) in Kraft, das zu dieser Zeit von 89 Staaten ratifiziert worden ist. Mit diesem Statut sind Vergewaltigung, sexuelle Sklaverei, Nötigung zur Prostitution, erzwungene Schwangerschaft, Zwangssterilisation und „andere Formen sexueller Gewalt von vergleichbarer Schwere“ sanktionierbar.1 Ebenso ist nun die „Verfolgung aus Gründen des Geschlechts“ als Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit verboten.2
Reaching beyond sensational headlines, Land of the Unconquerable at last offers a three-dimensional portrait of Afghan women. In a series of wide-ranging, deeply reflective essays, accomplished scholars, humanitarian workers, politicians, and journalists-most with extended experience inside Afghanistan-examine the realities of life for women in both urban and rural settings. They address topics including food security, sex work, health, marriage, education, poetry, politics, prisoners, and community development. Eschewing stereotypes about the burqa, the contributors focus instead on women's empowerment and agency, and their struggles for peace and justice in the face of a brutal ongoing war. A fuller picture of Afghanistan's women past and present emerges, leading to social policy suggestions and pragmatic solutions for a peaceful future.
The twenty-first century is characterized by the global circulation of cultures, norms, representations, discourses, and human rights claims; the arising conflicts require innovative understandings of decision making. Deliberative Acts develops a new, cogent theory of performative deliberation. Rather than conceiving deliberation within the familiar frameworks of persuasion, identification, or procedural democracy, it privileges speech acts and bodily enactments that constitute deliberation itself reorienting deliberative theory toward the initiating moment of recognition, a moment in which interlocutors are positioned in relationship to each other and so may begin to construct a new life world. By approaching human rights not as norms or laws, but as deliberative acts, Lyon conceives rights as relationships among people and as ongoing political and historical projects developing communal norms through global and cross-cultural interactions.
This chapter provides a a modest attempt to build on Julian Rappaport's vision of a community psychology in which empowerment is the guiding motif to life. Drawing upon research on three different kinds of empowering settings, it delineates, in more detail, the setting-specific: mediators through which organizational characteristics empower setting members and the pathways through which community betterment and positive social change occur-member-radiating influence and external organizational activities.
Empowerment is central to any effort by researchers, community practitioners, or policymakers for bringing about meaningful social change related to marginalized individuals and groups. It is invaluable as a guiding paradigm because it points both to a process of social change (citizen-based) and an outcome of such change (enhanced access to critical resources) for those lacking power in society. The process of empowerment is participatory and developmental-occurring over time, involving active and sustained engagement, and resulting in growth in awareness and capacity. Many different aspects of empowerment as a process and as an outcome have implications for the work of social scientists interested in enduring social change. This book focuses on two aspects: developing new empowering settings in the community and enhancing the influence of existing ones, and using research methods that seek to hear, understand,support, and amplify the voices of those individuals and groups in the community. This introductory chapter briefly discusses each of these. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
In this book, David MacDougall, one of the leading ethnographic filmmakers and film scholars of his generation, builds upon the ideas from his widely praisedTranscultural Cinemaand argues for a new conception of how visual images create human knowledge in a world in which the value of seeing has often been eclipsed by words.In ten chapters, MacDougall explores the relations between photographic images and the human body-the body of the viewer and the body behind the camera as well as the body as seen in ethnography, cinema, and photography. In a landmark piece, he discusses the need for a new field of social aesthetics, further elaborated in his reflections on filming at an elite boys' school in northern India. The theme of the school is taken up as well in his discussion of fiction and nonfiction films of childhood. The book's final section presents a radical view of the history of visual anthropology as a maverick anthropological practice that was always at odds with the anthropology of words. In place of the conventional wisdom, he proposes a new set of principles for visual anthropology.These are essays in the classical sense--speculative, judicious, lucidly written, and mercifully jargon-free.The Corporeal Imagepresents the latest ideas from one of our foremost thinkers on the role of vision and visual representation in contemporary social thought.
This article explores the Soviet mission to emancipate Afghan women during the Soviet war in Afghanistan through a detailed reading of the stenogram of a 1982 seminar in Moscow designed as an exchange of ideas and experiences between leading members of the Committee for Soviet Women and the Democratic Organization of Women of Afghanistan. Approaching this episode as a moment in the quest to find new forms of modernity – Communist, Islamic, or Western – in Afghanistan, the article shows how Soviet women's representatives repeatedly played up the important of the hujum in 1930s Soviet Central Asia as a model program for Afghan and, to some extent, all Third World societies. At the same time, however, the Afghan women at the conference, while avid Communists, articulated their own vision of women's emancipation for Afghanistan which did not reject the veil, a vision at odds with that articulated by their Soviet 'teachers.'
Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Mike Nichols's film about the womanizing Congressman who engineered black funds for the CIA's proxy war in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, is historically misleading but highly instructive, because in packaging dominant American masculine identity and war politics as popular entertainment for post-9/11 audiences, it reveals the sexed and gendered ‘politics of the visual’ in global affairs. This intertextual study of ‘Charlie Wilson's war’ as movie, constructed history and legacy examines Wilson as a prime exhibit of a needy masculinity that, like the film's emasculated CIA, bulks itself up through surrogate military selves. It also analyses modes of the imaginary and specularity in brother-bonding with the mujahidin, tracks the proxy system's loops of masculine identity-and-war-making between Stateside and South Asia in the post-Vietnam 1980s and interrogates the dynamics of imperial ‘un-seeing’ in this campaign and its long aftermath. While US proxy wars proliferate worldwide, the lack of useable political memory about the ground truths of ‘Charlie's war’ continues to matter because America's second ‘good’ war in Afghanistan, bound to the first by gendered causal links, has re-empowered the forces that still menace women's rights and lives.
Women in Afghanistan from the very beginning lived a diverse life. In the semi-tribal patriarchal Afghan society women remained all obedient to the male members of her family, in daughter to father, sister to a brother, wife to husband, mother to a son, etc. She has always been marginalized and accorded a subordinate status. In a male dominated conservative society in Afghanistan, women have always been at the receiving end; she have lived a life of segregation and isolation; denied of access to modern amenities like education, health, employment, etc; and the basic right to dress, movement and work at their will. Oppression on women folk in Afghanistan have been thus innumerable that also included rape, murder; beating in public, etc. Women were, however, respected and kept in high dignity by their husbands and children. Their status within family remained highly respectable but secondary to her male counterpart. In this paper an attempt has been made to highlight the major areas in which Afghan women in general have been suffering through ages.
Feminist scholarship has shown how gender is integral to understanding war, and that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was partly legitimated through a reference to Afghan women's ‘liberation’. Recognizing this, the article analyses how gender is crucial also to understanding the practice of ‘population-centric’ counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Because this type of warfare aims at ‘winning hearts and minds’, it is in engaging the population that a notable gendered addition to the US military strategy surfaces, Female Engagement Teams (FETs). Citing ‘cultural sensitivity’ as a key justification, the US deploys all-female teams to engage with and access a previously untapped source of intelligence and information, namely Afghan women. Beyond this being seen as necessary to complete the task of population-centric counterinsurgency, it is also hailed as a progressive step that contributes to Afghan women's broader empowerment. Subjecting population-centric counterinsurgency to feminist analysis, this article finds that in constructing women both as ‘practitioners’ and ‘targets’, this type of warfare constitutes another chapter in the various ways that their bodies have been relied upon for its ‘success’.
Refugee women face many challenges, such as traumatic flight, loss of family members and property, and dramatic cultural differences in the country of resettlement. We examined the adjustment issues and role changes of Afghan women refugees in northern California. Afghans comprise the largest refugee population in the world, and continuing political turmoil prevents most Afghans in the United States from returning home. Data are presented from interviews with 32 Afghan women. These interviews were conducted as part of a larger ethnographic study that included participant observation and interviews with 90 Afghans and the American health and social service providers who worked with them. Although similar issues were expressed by most Afghan women, generation influenced the experience of such issues. The elderly suffer from social isolation and lack of respect; the middle generation shoulders the triple burden of housewife, employee, and mediator between children and spouse; and young and single women face culture conflict and the lack of appropriate mates.
The nature and consequences of researcher-participant relationships are explored within methodological frameworks, and the impact of relationship roles and decisions are examined through an example of applied research with low-income women and an agency that serves them. Three types of relationship issues and decisions are discussed: (1) the construction of research relationships with two groups of participants: agency staff and agency clients; (2) the involvement of multiple researchers; and (3) the definition and boundaries of the research relationships pertinent to work with people and communities with limited resources. Researcher-participant relationship dilemmas and decisions have implications for the quality of our research and the lives of our participants.