Sisters, only your consciousness, and unified struggle can break the chains of oppression!
- Category: Party Documents
- Written by Solidarity Party of Afghanistan
- Published: Thursday, 07 March 2013
The continuation of cruelties, insults, sexual harassments, threats, killings and hundreds of other horrendous brutalities, have turned Afghanistan to a big prison for its women. Although the whole nation is wriggling torturously under the domination of ignorant fundamentalists, the US and NATO occupation and the current corrupt government, the burden of this escalating despotism and injustice has been exceptionally heavy and backbreaking on the shoulders of our ill-fated women.
For many years, Afghan women have been the prime and most vulnerable victims of the brutalities of the murderous fundamentalist gangs; but with the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and its allies in the past eleven years, this deplorable and painful situation has been used in a shameful and treacherous way for propaganda and to benefit political aims.
Just days after the occupation of Afghanistan, George Bush announced that thanks to their operation, women were no longer imprisoned, they were free. In November 2001, Laura Bush said, “The brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists… Women are no longer imprisoned in their homes… The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”
In the early days of the attack on Afghanistan, even the foreign minister Joseph Fischer, to justify the military crusade, had said in a demagogic manner, “First of all, our aim is restoring the usurped rights and dignity of the women of Afghanistan.”
While making up these sham schemes against our women, they brought to power the worse human rights and women’s rights violators, the most ignorant and villainous forces and elements, in the government they themselves established. They have given warlords and different species of fundamentalist a free hand in committing violence against our women till today. After a decade of bombardments and killings, the US announced that ‘our war is not with the Taliban’, and its clowns in Arg also labeled these creatures from the middle-ages, their ‘brothers’, and are working themselves to the ground to share power with these criminal, fanatic and mercenary figures.
It is an undisputed fact that ‘rights are not given, they are taken’. It is for this reason that the hypocritical claims of the US and West that they have apparently attacked Afghanistan to liberate the Afghan women, is no more than a blatant lie. They have not done anything to help the Afghan women, rather, by offering unconditional support to the most reactionary and misogynist groups and persons, and installing a corrupt and misogynist government, they further enchained our deprived women in oppression and humiliation. With their blind bombardments and serial massacres, they have added countless other painful sufferings to the already bleeding wound of our nation, and particularly women.
In the past few years, all the gains of the West and the puppet regime for the women of Afghanistan have been a few symbolic and superficial movements, and deafening propaganda. These feats brought no positive change for most of the women, and only served a very small minority. They have placed a few women here and there as vitrines, and widely misuse them as symbols of the emancipation of Afghan women. The establishment of the women’s ministry, sending sixty-eight women to the warlord-blighted parliament, the positioning of female ministers, governor and officials, passing the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) Law and others, are all planned and dictated efforts for propaganda purposes. The Western media has been using these as signs of ‘liberation of Afghan women’ for the past ten years, so as to attract their people’s support for the Afghan war.
On March 26, 2010, Wikileaks published a confidential document of the CIA in which it was suggested that Afghan women be widely used to persuade the European people to support the Afghan war. A number of women had to grow prominent in the press and talk about how the current war had served them well, and this way the aims of ISAF could be showcased as humanitarian.
It was on the basis of these inhumane policies that once Aisha’s story would be made famous by the Western media, and a handful of shameless Afghan women would be invited to international gatherings where they would propagate for continued occupation of our country in exchange for Dollars. Sometimes, a few women, molded by the US as its showpieces, got prizes from the White House or other imperialist institutions, so those women could supposedly thank them on behalf of the women of Afghanistan, and declare that the ‘war on terror’ had endowed freedom upon them. But suicide and self-immolation of women around Afghanistan, rape of Sanobars, Saimas, Aneesas, Zar Bibis, Gul Afrozes, Shakilas, Lal Bibis, Azizas and many other innocent girls by warlords, and other horrendous crimes against our women and girls are covered and hidden from the sight of the people of West.
By transforming Afghanistan to the center of drug mafia, a gateless land, the most corrupt country in the world, it practically forced our women to face new disasters. Today Afghanistan is first in the world on the list of maternal mortality rate. Women are the chief victims of the overriding poverty and destitution in the country, and have been dragged towards complete demolition. The suicide rates among women cannot be compared to any other country. Rape and trafficking of women has peaked. Injustice and corruption in the judicial bodies of Afghanistan is even worse than that of the dark era of the Taliban; there are many cases where the Afghan courts have greatly pressurized our browbeaten women, both mentally and physically. Now this warlord-favoring attitude has reached a point where Karzai offers the Ministry of Justice and Supreme Court to the Taliban, these enemies of women and humanity, so that they can freely implement their savage laws on our unfortunate women once again.
Oppression of our women has deep-running social, economic, and cultural roots. No person or force can bring liberty and prosperity for our women. Only women can free themselves through a conscious and united struggle for their rights. Attainment of basic women’s rights in other countries has been a result of several decades of coordinated struggling and hard work by women’s organizations. Rights that humans achieve in their struggle and perseverance, cannot be easily taken away from them. But in Afghanistan, where rights of women were ‘gifted’, even the US and its stooges are constantly crying that these ‘gains’ will be reversed with the withdrawal of foreign troops!
Unless our society does not become truly democratic and just, the roots of these cruelties against women shall not be cut. Today fundamentalists of every creed, Taliban, factional, or of the Velayat-e-Faqih (Guardianship Council of Islamic Jurists) kind, who serve as the most reliable social pillars of the US and NATO in our country, are all the sworn enemies of our women, and back crimes against women. Therefore, struggling against fundamentalists and occupiers, is the first step towards the salvation of women. The conscious women should get organized and play their role in this struggle, and teach the women of other countries that remaining silent in the face of this prevailing horror, will worsen it. In societies where women are active in economic, social, political, and cultural fields, the scale of gender inequality is at its minimum. We can see a clear example in Kurdistan where women have participated actively in all fields and achieved their rightful demands with their own hands. As pioneers in their freedom-seeking war, they have even stood unitedly by the men in their armed struggle. It is for this reason that barbaric ignorance clad in religious attire has not gained ground there and guzzled women down its throat.
Separation of religion from state, and establishment of a society free of discrimination and gender, religious, tribal, national, and class inequality, can guarantee to grant women their deserving position. In such a system, women, together with men, can abolish misogynist and anti-human laws, and play an active role in every field. In the current situation, where more than half of our population has been marginalized from the political and community life, it is not possible to guide Afghanistan onto the path of progress and welfare. When the bereaved men and women work hand in hand for the prosperity of our country, our wounded Afghanistan will definitely have a different fate.
The Solidarity Party of Afghanistan (SPA) has a firm belief in the capabilities of Afghan women. We are proud to be one of the few parties in the country who have always been active in the path of women’s liberation, both in words and actions. We ignore the imprudent views that a woman is half a man, incapable, and weak, as moronic nonsense. We believe that in certain matters women have practically proved that when they arise, they can play a worthy part better than men can. We hope for a day when one of our female cadres becomes the leader of our party.
The Solidarity Party of Afghanistan (SPA) congratulates all the captive women of Afghanistan and other countries on the International Women’s Day, but we repeatedly announce that discrimination against women is not separate from injustice in other sections of the society. We can only defeat the occupiers and their infamous agents by a conscious, united and unswerving struggle, end despotism and injustice, and attain equal rights for men and women with a democratic and popular government.
Solidarity Party of Afghanistan
March 8, 2013
Kabul
