Some Thoughts on Women, Afghanistan, and War Reporting
The faces we have grown accustomed to seeing reporting the news from Afghanistan, if any local reporters are shown at all, are decidedly male. The typical image is a man, dressed in clothing not terribly different than the troops around him giving a concise report. Or maybe from Kabul Richard Engel will be shown in a button down and slacks reporting on politics. It isn't that war reporting isn't a job for women. It is just, well, it gets complicated in Afghanistan.
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC had the opportunity this week to broadcast her show live from the country. The program was a combination of live interviews and editorials (her standard format) from Camp Phoenix along with pre-taped segments from Kabul and other areas. While with the troops, beyond the bulletproof vest and helmet she really didn't appear that different than she does on most location shoots- a loose shirt and pants (in fact along with her standard suit jacket and top she actually wears cargo pants on the set of her show most days if you look closely).
It was during the location shooting along with Richard Engel in Kabul that something truly stood out- Rachel Maddow was the only woman visible. When they went to a crowded local market, she was the only woman in the entire sweep of the camera not in a burqa. And there were not even very many women or young girls at that. Even with her head covered with a scarf and being escorted by Richard Engel she was followed by numerous men who directly stared at her. The entire scene left me feeling thoroughly Othered and foreign. The next night they showed them going to Chicken Street, a well known market which mostly caters to foreign tourists of late. This time she was literally the only woman. Again, despite the fact that foreigners frequented this market more regularly (which I know independantly to be true) men stared and followed her. Again, the sense of being Other carryed itself through the camera.
The point of the two filmed segments was not to highlight how women are treated in Kabul. The markets were mostly backdrops for Maddow and Engel to discuss global politics. And yet, I was left with many questions concerning Afghanistan and more specifically women in Afghanistan. Most Americans have an idea of what rules the Taliban put in place limiting the rights of women. I'm not sure we have as good an idea of what life was life for women in Afghanistan before the rule of the Taliban or what life is like now. Nor does the average American have a clear understanding of the regional nature of Afghan culture, which I will not get into now for the sake of simplicity. For the record: not all of Afghanistan is Muslim. Those that are not all homogeneous in beliefs or the strictness to which they adhere to what they do believe. Got that disclaimer. Ok, good.
Here is what I've been pondering...
The Taliban essentially eliminated all public rights of women in Afghanistan. However, before that time women already had fewer rights than men. And even with the rights they had under law, the law was often applied differently. Post-Taliban women have more legal rights than before, but they still do not have equal rights. A woman can be raped by her husband and has no recourse (this caused international controversy, but is strictly still law). And the laws protecting women are still not enforced in many areas for reasons such as the need to have a female officer interview a female victim. So even though marriage to child brides is illegal, it still occurs. Girls have a legal right to an education, but there are very few schools and many of those are vandalized. Some studies have estimated that as many as 87% of women are victims of some form of violence in their lifetime, mostly sexual in nature. In addition or because of this suicide is very high among women, significantly higher than among men.
Legally women do not have to wear a burqa as they did under the Taliban. Some women do not. Most do. I am left to wonder what percentage still wear the burqa out of religious belief- of which I have no right to criticize- and how many wear it out of fear. If a woman cannot walk down the street without being followed by a mob of men, would it just be easier to cover herself and be done with it?
Americans seemed to have this idea that in 'freeing' Afghan women would en mass burn their burqas and don hijabs (or more naively wear no head covering at all). It would sort of be like the US women's libers of the 1960s all going and burning their bras. But those kind of sweeping ideas don't work when we try to apply our cultural normatives to other societies. Afghan cultural normatives are completely different than ours and may include women who choose to cover themselves with burqas.
And yet, I cannot accept that violence against women has a place in Islam. That rape is an acceptable social normative. This is where my thought pattern gets very tied up in knots. Because I cannot separate the part of me that desires to respect cultural differences from the part of me that cannot tolerate what feels to me to be a lack of basic human rights. Foreign troops and politicians will not solve the problems faced by the Afghan women. But it is unclear what anyone within Afghanistan wants. And I sit here typing all of this as much an Other looking at them as those men were looking at Rachel Maddow, trying desperating to understand what they who have so few public voices truly want, trying to make sense of their place in a war torn country so far away from my own.
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC had the opportunity this week to broadcast her show live from the country. The program was a combination of live interviews and editorials (her standard format) from Camp Phoenix along with pre-taped segments from Kabul and other areas. While with the troops, beyond the bulletproof vest and helmet she really didn't appear that different than she does on most location shoots- a loose shirt and pants (in fact along with her standard suit jacket and top she actually wears cargo pants on the set of her show most days if you look closely).
It was during the location shooting along with Richard Engel in Kabul that something truly stood out- Rachel Maddow was the only woman visible. When they went to a crowded local market, she was the only woman in the entire sweep of the camera not in a burqa. And there were not even very many women or young girls at that. Even with her head covered with a scarf and being escorted by Richard Engel she was followed by numerous men who directly stared at her. The entire scene left me feeling thoroughly Othered and foreign. The next night they showed them going to Chicken Street, a well known market which mostly caters to foreign tourists of late. This time she was literally the only woman. Again, despite the fact that foreigners frequented this market more regularly (which I know independantly to be true) men stared and followed her. Again, the sense of being Other carryed itself through the camera.
The point of the two filmed segments was not to highlight how women are treated in Kabul. The markets were mostly backdrops for Maddow and Engel to discuss global politics. And yet, I was left with many questions concerning Afghanistan and more specifically women in Afghanistan. Most Americans have an idea of what rules the Taliban put in place limiting the rights of women. I'm not sure we have as good an idea of what life was life for women in Afghanistan before the rule of the Taliban or what life is like now. Nor does the average American have a clear understanding of the regional nature of Afghan culture, which I will not get into now for the sake of simplicity. For the record: not all of Afghanistan is Muslim. Those that are not all homogeneous in beliefs or the strictness to which they adhere to what they do believe. Got that disclaimer. Ok, good.
Here is what I've been pondering...
The Taliban essentially eliminated all public rights of women in Afghanistan. However, before that time women already had fewer rights than men. And even with the rights they had under law, the law was often applied differently. Post-Taliban women have more legal rights than before, but they still do not have equal rights. A woman can be raped by her husband and has no recourse (this caused international controversy, but is strictly still law). And the laws protecting women are still not enforced in many areas for reasons such as the need to have a female officer interview a female victim. So even though marriage to child brides is illegal, it still occurs. Girls have a legal right to an education, but there are very few schools and many of those are vandalized. Some studies have estimated that as many as 87% of women are victims of some form of violence in their lifetime, mostly sexual in nature. In addition or because of this suicide is very high among women, significantly higher than among men.
Legally women do not have to wear a burqa as they did under the Taliban. Some women do not. Most do. I am left to wonder what percentage still wear the burqa out of religious belief- of which I have no right to criticize- and how many wear it out of fear. If a woman cannot walk down the street without being followed by a mob of men, would it just be easier to cover herself and be done with it?
Americans seemed to have this idea that in 'freeing' Afghan women would en mass burn their burqas and don hijabs (or more naively wear no head covering at all). It would sort of be like the US women's libers of the 1960s all going and burning their bras. But those kind of sweeping ideas don't work when we try to apply our cultural normatives to other societies. Afghan cultural normatives are completely different than ours and may include women who choose to cover themselves with burqas.
And yet, I cannot accept that violence against women has a place in Islam. That rape is an acceptable social normative. This is where my thought pattern gets very tied up in knots. Because I cannot separate the part of me that desires to respect cultural differences from the part of me that cannot tolerate what feels to me to be a lack of basic human rights. Foreign troops and politicians will not solve the problems faced by the Afghan women. But it is unclear what anyone within Afghanistan wants. And I sit here typing all of this as much an Other looking at them as those men were looking at Rachel Maddow, trying desperating to understand what they who have so few public voices truly want, trying to make sense of their place in a war torn country so far away from my own.