Women, the Afghanistan War, and the Malalai Joya Problem

On my co-blogger Daniel's first controversial post on Afghanistan, one commenter posted a link to a speech by Afghan peace activist and suspended member of parliament Malalai Joya, who argues all foreign forces should leave Afghanistan immediately.  Another commenter quickly added, "I won't comment again, I will just put up Malalai Joya's words! Her knowledge is greater than anyone's." To which I say, wait a minute. Joya is a committed democrat in a tough situation, but that does not make her knowledge "greater than anyone's."

Since her suspension from the parliament two years ago, Joya has traveled the world and delivered her message to thousands of people, in intimate activist gatherings, packed lecture halls, and dozens of opinion pieces in national newspapers. No other Afghan woman has received as much international attention since the toppling of the Taliban eight years ago. In the Western press, Joya has become more than a cause célèbre --she's become a stand-in for Afghanistan's entire female population.  Even the UK cover for her recently-released autobiography calls her "the Afghan woman who dared to speak out" as opposed to "an Afghan woman who dared to speak out." There is something deeply troubling about this framing.

Joya is far from the only outspoken Afghan woman in public life, and no one woman should be used as a representation of all women from her country or her culture. When she ran for parliament four years ago, Joya never asked her foreign supporters to appoint her Voice of All Afghan Women, a position made even more problematic by the stark fact that her view on the international military presence is actually in the minority in Afghan civil society.

When American anti-war group Code Pink visited Kabul recently, founder Madea Benjamin, a staunch opponent of US military involvement in Afghanistan, was shocked to find the Afghan women's rights activists she met with almost unanimously supportive of coalition troops remaining in the country. Women for Afghan Women, an Afghan-international humanitarian NGO recently released a statement saying it "deeply regrets having a position in favor of maintaining, even increasing troops," but the alternative is "abandoning 15 million women and children to madmen." In an interview with NPR, Kabul-based human rights activist Orzala Ashraf Nemat said, "I think definitely getting away or staying away from Afghanistan will not only affect our lives and the progress that we have made so far but it will also affect the lives of everyone beyond that country in specific." In a Washington Post column I recently wrote about, Wazhma Frogh, another activist, echoed that senitment:

At this time of violence and anxiety, it is important for the international community and the United States to reaffirm their commitment to Afghanistan rather than questioning whether it is worth defending an entire people against those who would install another brutally repressive regime under which women cannot be educated or seek to improve their lot, where "justice" is meted out in mass public executions, where repression is the rule -- and where new terrorist plots will inevitably be hatched to attack the United States and its allies.

"We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban," Benjamin told the Christian Science Monitor. "So many people are saying that, 'If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We'd go into civil war.' A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that." Once a proponent of all American troops leaving within two years, she now favors a flexible timeline for withdrawal, along with greater support for Afghan civil society and education initiatives.

For listening to Afghan women --instead of simply speaking for them -- and then taking a nuanced position among peace groups, Benjamin's organization was dubbed "Whores for Wars" by AntiWar.com columnist John Walsh. Classy, no?

Lost in the name-calling, the battles over who speaks for the women of Afghanistan (answer: no one, many people, and all Afghan women), and the debate over troops are Afghan civil society's priorities and plans for the future --concrete goals and strategies for bettering Afghan life that deserve far more attention than they are presently receiving. Here at War and Peace,  I will try to cover these issues in greater depth in the future.

UPDATE: A commenter below correctly notes: "The concluding declaration of a Nov. 10 CodePink blog entry (which extensively quotes Malalai Joya) is 'Call on your government to ground the drones and bring the troops home now!' ) So it may not be quite accurate to say that CodePink is pushing for a flexible timeline for withdrawal."

[Photo: UK book cover for Raising My Voice, by Malalai Joya. Defense Committee for Malalai Joya.]