Speaking from behind the veil: a foreign-aid worker's latest book explores the roles and worldviews of rural Afghani women who lived in the shadow of the fundamentalist Taliban regime

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 24, 2001 | by Diana Ray

In the eyes of many Westerners the wearing of the veil in Afghanistan confirms that women there are oppressed. Despite the images being broadcast constantly into American living rooms, that's not universally the case, anthropologist Anna M. Pont tells INSIGHT.

While serving as community-development specialist in Afghanistan and Pakistan for Mercy Corps, a U.S. aid agency operating in the region, Pont began interviewing women across southern Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan. She lived with families there to learn how Afghani women viewed their lives under the Taliban. And women of that country have had much to say from behind their veils. In her recently published book, Blind Chickens and Social Animals, Pont reports what they are saying.

Just one day after arriving from Pakistan at Mercy Corps headquarters in Portland, Ore., Pont spoke to INSIGHT about some of the misconceptions Westerners have of these women and their condition under the Taliban. She notes that the Taliban, which began as a small group of fundamentalist Muslims in the Afghani city of Kandahar in 1994, hit world consciousness when they took control of Kabul. They quickly prescribed strict codes of behavior and dress for men and women, and women were forbidden to go to school or work outside the home.

The Finland-born Pont spent a good deal of her formative years in neighboring Pakistan, returning to the region for graduate field study in 1995 and soon was working in the region for Mercy Corps. Pont got the idea to research and write her book when she recognized a surge in women's advocacy by a small but determined group of educated women in Kabul. She thought other important voices, those of women in rural areas, were not being heard.

Many women in rural Afghanistan did not experience much change in their lifestyle when the Taliban came to power in 1996. It was only in major cities such as Kabul that the Taliban restrictions meant change. In the countryside, Pont explains, social customs operate very much according to ancient protocol. Edicts such as those prohibiting schooling for women naturally had less impact in rural areas where women never had been exposed to education.

Pont tells INSIGHT, "Cities such as Kabul were perceived by the Taliban as places that needed to be cleansed" of modernity. What is ironic, she says, is that the emergence of the Taliban's prohibitions, and the world's reaction to their edicts, have contributed to what-' ever increased awareness there is by rural Afghani women that they too are being unjustly treated.

"Women in the village had no value when we were children. We were unaware of our nature, who we are. When we got married we just worked like servants and gave birth; no rights. Before, I thought all women in the world are like me, but now I am aware that all women are not the same," said 38 year-old Roqia, interviewed for the Pont book. After the Taliban crackdown in Kabul, some rural Afghani women began to seek information about the roles of women in the West from BBC Radio and other women they met. "Just because Afghani women aren't militant or making noise doesn't mean a lot isn't going on," Pont asserts. "Women there have been trying to make their lives better."

One of the weaknesses in some aid and development programs in the area, says Pont, "is the tendency to look at women separately, ignoring the fact that in the social context of Afghanistan it is more effective to look at families where men and women have complementary roles in and out of the home. Women have many decision-making powers within the immediate family. But the concept of family in Afghanistan differs from that in the West."

Pont writes that among Afghanis there are "two words for family -- one for those who live in the same compound and one for those who share their resources and income." Thus, daughters cease to be "family" when they are married and move to another household, which Pont says is the explanation given for why educating daughters is considered to be "watering someone else's garden."

And then there is the fact that education of women in the countryside has been so rare as to have been all but nonexistent in the best of times. A 55-year-old Afghani woman tries to explain: "You know, my sons are Talibs and I am in favor of education for both sexes. But look, I am uneducated. I have not even asked my sons why they don't allow education for women." Such women say that they may themselves be to blame for the lack of formal education in their communities through their own lack of interest.

But BBC Radio and refugee life are awakening respect for education. Refugee camps even offer incentives, such as cooking oil, for families that send their girls to school.

Even so, some rural Afghani women say, as women, they have the right to focus on their children and not have to worry about livelihood and security. A 19-year-old mother tells a Pont interviewer: "We women and girls, we are not allowed [to go to school]. It is not allowed in our society.... But on the other hand, it is good that we are at home and the husband, father and brothers earn money. Why should we waste our energy? Look at yourself, how you look tired and too far from your family. I think that even at this stage you don't have security. This is because of education."