by Barbara Bick
We also spend an afternoon at the university where Shakira teaches, roaming the lovely campus where students, dressed in jeans and T-shirts like students the world over, lounge under the shade of great old trees. The university, which opened for classes in 1932, began with many foreign instructors, but now has an all-Afghan faculty of six hundred, including some two hundred women. Women presently make up 60 percent of the students since many of the male students have died in the war. Education at all levels is free, with stipends for university students. Clearly, many Afghans do not have access to the university even with the stipends—the rural majority, especially. Still, no other Muslim country in the world does so much to encourage higher education.
As the holidays wind down, our hotel comes to life. We witness three lavish weddings with elaborate dinners, large bands, and dancing, fueled with alcoholic beverages. The young brides, dressed in Western-style gowns, as has been the fashion since the days of Amanullah, are so heavily painted with cosmetics they look like dolls. Family men, stout in dark business suits, stand together gossiping while the corseted women, dressed in glittering sequined and beaded dresses, move heavily around in their spike-heeled, dyed-to-match shoes. They are the only overweight people I ever encounter in Afghanistan. After dinner, the young people and men dance, boy with boy, girl with girl, man with man, while the women sit against the wall, watching and gossiping. These celebrants are some of the seventy-five thousand civil servants who, with the help of Soviet funds, maintain the government of President Mohammad Najibullah. The hovering shadow of the encircling mujahidin warriors lends a surreal cast to the lavish parties of this bureaucratic class.
Some of the more religiously moderate of the mujahidin are in negotiation with the Najibullah government and appear at the hotel one day. I stare at their bearded faces, their coarsely woven, layered robes, folded woolen caps or turbans of twisted patterned cloth. Miagol’s comment to Gabi in Washington that members of the government are not the good guys to the average Afghan barely resonates in my consciousness. For me, Kabul is the whole of Afghanistan and the women who fear the mujahidin are now my friends.
When not on excursions, we often sit in the hotel lobby and talk to any other guests who speak English, including the few journalists covering events in the country. Deeda Tripathi, an Indian national with the BBC, had been denied entry during the occupation but has now been in Kabul for six months. Grinning with amusement, he tells us that he was denounced on Afghan television once a month on schedule during the occupation. He thinks the Najibullah government is far better than any of the other Soviet-backed ones and believes it should be recognized by the United States.
Leiz Doucet, with Canadian Public Broadcasting, lived in Kabul for a year and is now based in Islamabad, Pakistan. She is here visiting Afghan friends. Leiz says that the mullahs have increased their activity in the camps in Pakistan and that the intimidation of women has worsened as the mullahs’ authority has expanded. The mullahs are building a power base, she says, in preparation for the struggle for control of the government as Afghan refugees flow back into the country following the Geneva Accord for mutual disengagement, negotiated between US Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. The mullahs are waging a campaign of terror not only against women but also against Western relief agencies, whose educational and social programs threaten their concept of Islam. Several humanitarian groups have already left Pakistan because of death threats to their members.
I first hear the name Gulbuddin Hekmatyar from Leiz, who describes him as the most murderous zealot among all the mujahidin commanders. He is a favorite of Pakistan’s military and received the largest percentage of the $3 billion that the United States sent during the Soviet war to arm the mujahidin. Leiz describes him as ambitious, wily, and anti-Western and says he has been accused of being a drug smuggler and counterfeiter. “He is the most intelligent of the mujahidin,” she says, “but the most dangerous.”
Zahera had known Hekmatyar in the 1960s when they were both at Kabul University. An engineering student, he had been a charismatic political firebrand. As Leiz describes him, Zahera listens quietly, then pulls Leila close to her and joins the conversation. “He was known on campus,” she says, “for throwing acid at a woman’s face because she was not covered.” Zahera tenderly kisses Leila and adds softly, “I greatly fear him.” I long to embrace the two of them but feel a barrier. Although I have grown to love Zahera, I feel it is somehow unseemly to intrude upon that most intimate connection between mother and child, especially when I do not share their circumstances. I can get out. I am the visitor from another world.
One of the most emotional visits for me is to the psychiatric wing of a general hospital. It brings to mind my beloved daughter, who spent years of her life in a psychiatric hospital. This Afghan unit, a facility for long-term female patients, is in a compound separate from the main building, surrounded by low walls with perhaps a dozen two-room cottages. Cots are squeezed alongside each other, covering most of the floor space in each small room. A nurse accompanies us but does not speak. As we enter the grassy, tree-lined compound, a young woman patient with a badly scarred face rushes over and appoints herself our guide. She speaks English well and begins to wail that she is not “crazy”—and at first it seems she is not. Her husband, she laments, threw acid on her face because she was beautiful and he was jealous. The nurse nods confirmation. How did the woman learn to speak English so well? Had she been politically active? I want to learn her history, but I never do, since she becomes increasingly agitated as she takes us through the cottages and introduces us to the other patients, many with their mothers sitting beside them.
That scarred woman, the women suffering mental illness, the constant interviews with women whose stories fill me with dread, begin to unnerve me. I feel anxious and worried about all of them and the children. Yet at the same time, albeit with shame, I feel growing within me a pinching, cold fear for myself. Shakira and Zahera are clearly and increasingly worried about the approaching fighters. I begin to experience a submerged panic. Many nights I do not turn off my lamp for fear of waking in the dark, yet I also worry that my light might shine through the window and create a target.
After the hospital visit, I have one of my worst nightmares. There is a black-veiled, desperate woman; she is not me, but I know I am there and I, like her, have to escape. The surroundings are shrouded, gray. Suddenly, white-bearded mullahs loom up, black robes flowing. The veiled woman and I are running, running. An ancient stone fortress rises above us, deep mists swirl, the shrouded woman goes up, up, up circling steps—she might get away from the mullahs! My heart pounds. She is on a high battlement. But suddenly the mullahs are there! I plead, she pleads. The mullahs’ arms wave, threatening. And then I plunge from the roof, falling down, down, screaming. I wake up, panting and sweating, staring around the room, trying to get my bearings.
“Why am I here? I want to get this trip over with!” I write in my journal. How mistaken I had been to believe that this would be a lark, an adventure in an interesting ancient Muslim country with a war somewhere off in the distance. And yet I already intuit that I am changing in a way I do not yet understand. It has to do with fear, a searing emotion I have never before truly understood. Of course, I have been afraid in my life, but it has never been anything like this endless, anxious terror of unknown danger lurking over the city. Fear is forging a bond between me and these women and this country.
The local TV carries daily news reports of our meetings. We are billed as American friends of Afghanistan. I feel like a fraud, since I know how meaningless this “friendship” is in terms of any help from my country to theirs. If anything, these broadcasts will only end up in CIA files.
Toward the end of our visit, one of Shakira’s uncles invites us to his apartment for dinner, and we learn that he and some of her other relatives are highly placed in Communist circles. At the time of our visit, this uncle heads the Communist Party’s C
ommittee on Foreign Policy, but he had earlier been an ambassador to an Eastern European country. The huge apartment complex where he lives reminds me of the World War II–era housing project in Berkeley where I lived with my former husband and our infant twins when my husband was a graduate student. It gives me some insight into the level of the Afghan economy in 1990, as well as Kabul’s critical housing situation, that this is the best his important position can provide. But Shakira thinks the apartment is wonderful and dreams of having one like it. She has brought her husband, who seems a rough, uneducated man, and her youngest son.
Shakira’s uncle is warm and gracious, politically astute, and sophisticated. Like Miagol in Washington, he believes that the government party, the PDPA, had made a grievous error in calling upon the Soviets. Again Gabi challenges this position. The uncle seems bemused by her, but I am embarrassed at what I consider her classic American arrogance.
Shakira and her uncle are both members of the PDPA, which had been formally set up on New Year’s Day 1965 while Afghanistan was still a monarchy. They give us a brief history of the party, which was unique among Communist parties loyal to the Soviet Union in that it quickly split into two distinct and murderously rival factions: Khalq (Masses) and Parcham (Banner). The split reflected cultural, ethnic, and class factors in Afghanistan, Shakira’s uncle tells us. Both factions, however, recruited among the 5 percent of the country who were literate. Khalq was strongest among the rural educated, the military, and those who hated the royal family. It endorsed radical action to impose social change, but believed that women belonged in the home. Parcham drew its support from the urban educated class and included left-leaning members of the wealthiest, most powerful families; it functioned almost as a loyal opposition to the monarchy. Women were welcomed and important.
After the Communist coup in April 1978, the head of Khalq became president and Parcham leaders were soon purged—jailed or ordered into diplomatic exile. That was when Shakira’s uncle, who had joined Parcham, was sent to Eastern Europe and Dr. Mohammad Najibullah—who would later become president—was sent to Tehran. Khalq’s reign was Byzantine; terror became the norm and rival comrades were frequently assassinated. Shakira was arrested for a short time, along with other feminist members of Parcham such as Suraya Parlika, the head of Red Crescent, whom we had met earlier. Repeating Amanullah’s mistake, the Khalq Communists enforced immediate social reforms, including bringing women into full civic participation, that were viewed as anti-Islamic by religious forces. Interparty violence continued amid growing resistance by the mass of the Afghan people. The Khalq chief, in desperation, called upon the Soviets for help and on Christmas Eve 1979, the Soviet army rolled in, bringing to power a more moderate Afghan Communist leader, Babrak Karmal of the Parcham faction.
Perhaps our most important meetings in Afghanistan are with two female government ministers. Neither woman has been a member of the PDPA, but both have been leaders of our hosts, the Women’s Council. I am told that President Najibullah recruited these two impressive women and other nonparty officials after the Soviet withdrawal as part of his effort to build national reconciliation under a multiparty system. At that time he also abandoned the PDPA name for his party and chose a more nationalist one, Waban, meaning Homeland, although many Afghans still use the original name.
We meet first with Saleha Farugie Aetemadi, Minister of Social Affairs. She is probably in her mid-forties and is pleasant but formal; she sits behind her large desk throughout our interview, flanked by a male assistant and Zahera, who is an old friend. Her important ministry combines labor, economic planning, and social security. The scope of her work is enormous, encompassing everything from employment training programs to refugee relocation to agricultural development, including land mine clearance.
Before the Communist coup, Aetemadi had been president of the Women’s Council for a decade, so she is sensitive to the special needs of women. I am surprised and impressed that she has heard about Women Strike for Peace, which I helped found, and I take the lead in answering her close and intelligent questions about the American women’s movement. At the end of our interview, Aetemadi demands of us, “You must be the voice of the Afghan women! Bring our desire for peace to the American women.” I feel chastened again for having come to Kabul for personal gratification. I answer her with gravity but with a sinking inward feeling that I can never live up to her expectations. I wonder what will happen to this impressive woman if the mujahidin win the war.
Minister of Education Massouma Asmity Wardak is quite different. Warm and informal, she leads us to a room adjoining her office where we sit at ease on a cushioned divan and armchairs and are served tea. Older than Aetemadi, she is tall, stately, with a gently commanding quality. When a TV crew comes in to film us, as they have done at most of our interviews, she drapes a shawl over her head.
Wardak’s family is middle class, her mother went to university, and she herself is fluent in English. She tells us that the building we are in was built by Americans and that many Americans had taught in Afghanistan before the “revolution,” the Communist coup. She is proud of the fact that since the revolution—and despite the war—illiteracy among women has been reduced, and that primary schools for girls have been started in many villages. Ninety percent of the country’s teachers are women as well as 50 percent of its doctors and nurses. I am impressed, but assume that all of this has been accomplished only in the towns controlled by the Communist government; I wonder what is happening in the rest of Afghanistan.
Our last interview of the trip, arranged by the Women’s Council, is with President Mohammad Najibullah himself. We are driven to a government-military complex surrounded by high walls. Inside there is no traffic, neither pedestrian nor vehicular, just several tanks and soldiers.
President Najibullah welcomes us with a brilliant smile. He is warm and charming, thanks us for our visit, and speaks about the need for peace and his hope that the United States will aid Afghanistan with American specialists. He goes on to say that his is a coalition government, dedicated to reconciliation. He hopes that all Afghans will return to help reconstruct their country. He smiles as he says he does not need to remind us that women constitute one-half of society and it is essential that they work side-by-side with men. Najibullah adds that Afghanistan is an Islamic country, that all law is based on Islamic law, the sharia, and that the mullahs must be part of national reconciliation. Gabi turns visibly white after that last sentence and she forever after holds Najibullah in contempt.
My impression of the president that day is of a magnetic, charismatic man. He is handsome, with strong features, coal black hair, dark eyes, and full lips. He wears an open-necked shirt and a black blazer. Watching and listening to him, it is almost easy to forget that before he became president, he headed KHAD, the Communist regime’s fearsome secret service. Despite my doubts, I find myself wishing with all my heart that he can succeed in negotiations with the mujahidin and bring peace to the country.
After this visit, we jump into our car, already packed with our luggage, and rush to the airline office to pick up our tickets. After pushing our way through a crowd to the counter, we discover that even though the council had booked our tickets months earlier, there are no seats for us. Since I have never shared my fears with Cynthia and Gabi, I have not realized that they are as full of dread and as anxious to get away as I am. But I know it then, as we stand there in that crowded room, terrified we won’t be able to leave.
Shakira takes charge. Using her extensive circle of relatives, she calls a cousin who holds an important position with Arianna Airlines, and in a short time, tickets are produced. Next we rush off to the airport, which is as noisy and crowded as the ticket office, startlingly different from the empty cavern we found on our arrival. Other scheduled passengers are clamoring to get out of the country, and everyone is told there is no space. Again Shakira comes to the rescue. She finds a friend who works for Arianna and the two women literally push and haul us on
to our plane. I crush Shakira in a goodbye hug, blow a kiss to Zahera, and almost weeping, settle into my seat.
Flying over a snowcapped mountain range on our way to India, I feel guilty and grieved to be leaving our two friends behind, and I cannot stop thinking about all those other brave women who are working to ease the burden of war, to educate, to support others while the deadly threat of the mujahidin hangs over them.
During our short stay in India, I become ill and as the illness grows more severe, I decide to fly back to the States ahead of Cynthia and Gabi. When I reach home, I am hospitalized in intensive care, suspected of having cholera. My physician brother insists upon having an infectious disease consultant, who discovers that I have been infected by Giardia lamblia, a protozoa that one gets by drinking contaminated water. I recover quickly, yet in a visceral way I never completely recover from what I have experienced. It is not only that I am haunted by what may happen to Shakera, Zahera, and Leila and all the women I have met. I have also become obsessed with Afghanistan itself, and angry about the role my country has played in its tragedy.
Chapter 2
Against the Taliban, 1992–2000
I have been an activist nearly all my life. I remember when I was ten years old and held my mother’s hand as we walked on a picket line in front of the White House, she carrying a sign demanding support for the democratically elected Republican government of Spain. My parents and their friends were always discussing politics, at times vehemently and often around us kids, so I understood even at that age that Mother and I were protesting Franco’s fascist insurgency, which was backed by the governments of Italy and Germany. Other Western governments, including the United States, did not support the Republicans, and the defeat of the Spanish government had deep repercussions. It foreshadowed World War II, when the world would have to confront the threat of fascism on a much larger scale. That history of the Spanish Civil War and the world’s response to it would resonate in my experience of Afghanistan.
