AFGHANISTAN: Women Candidates Face Own Attacks

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Pajhwok Afghan News

KABUL, Jun 8 2005 (IPS) - As deadly attacks on military targets in Afghanistan rise prior to scheduled fall elections, women candidates are facing their own entrenched non-lethal barriers, says one contender.

Inadequate security and traditional male dominance have loaded the dice against women campaigning, said Negar Khalaiz in eastern Nangarhar province, urging authorities to help make it safe for women to go out on the stump.

"In our villages, women can neither dare attend public meetings nor explain their problems to men and thus suffer in silence. Female candidates in Nangarhar, facing financial handicaps and security problems, can’t travel from one area to another," she added.

"I was a representative at the Emergency Loya Jirga held in Kabul; on my return home, I was dismayed in the extreme to learn all my money and belongings had been stolen. I didn’t speak publicly of the robbery because that could have discouraged other women," recalled Khalaiz, who heads a women’s rights organisation.

She called on men to respect women’s rights as allowed by Islam and to let them exercise their political freedoms without hindrance.

Her plea comes as another attack on a U.S. military base in southeastern Paktika province Wednesday killed two soldiers and injured eight others. It was the second fatal strike on U.S. forces in the troubled province in less than a week, amid a recent surge in militant attacks on Afghan security personnel and coalition forces in Kandahar, Paktia, Zabul, Khost and Uruzgan.

The mortar attack follows last week’s suicide bombing in southern Kandahar city that killed at least 20 people praying at a mosque.

On Tuesday, a government official said that bombing might be part of a militant campaign to scuttle September’s parliamentary elections. "It’s logical to assume the enemies of Afghanistan – the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda elements with links to circles outside the country – would have chosen this time to set in motion their plot," said presidential spokesman Javed Ludin.

Taliban rebels claimed this week to have attacked a civilian convoy of trucks in southeastern Afghanistan, killing two Pakistani drivers supplying the U.S.-led military.

Abdul Latif Hakimi, a purported Taliban spokesman, told foreign media that anyone working for the United States would be targeted. "We will continue to attack those who supply Americans – we’ve got to cut off the Americans’ supply routes," Hakimi said.

Suspected Taliban guerrillas often target Pakistani trucks, which supply fuel and goods for the U.S.-led coalition. More than 350 people, many of them militants, have died in Taliban-related and political violence this year.

Khalaiz is one of 23 women (of 485 candidates) running for Nangarhar province’s 14 seats in parliament and 19 berths on provincial councils. She told Pajhwok News Agency that if elected, she would raise her voice for women’s rights in parliament and espouse their causes at all forums.

In the run-up to last October’s presidential vote, won by President Hamid Karzai, then minister of women’s affairs, Habiba Sarabi, said the race’s only women candidate would find it difficult to break the mould that controls the Afghan mindset towards women. ”The society is not ready for a female candidate because Afghanistan is completely dominated by men,” she added in an interview with IPS.

But Chandni Joshi, regional director for South Asia at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) sounded a bright note in an interview. "There is more space opening up within governance for women to be involved and there is a lot of advocacy for women’s rights."

Women are participating in trade fairs, even in India, to confirm their passion to be entrepreneurs, Joshi added. "There is a sense of relief among women that they are heading somewhere."

Yet she cautioned against expecting a dramatic sea change overnight in South Asia, including Afghanistan, since ”the women have been hit so hard; we have to give them more time to change.”

On Wednesday a committee headed by Women Affairs Minister Dr Masooda Jalal was formed to combat violence against women.

The body will monitor incidents of violence against women every three months and suggest ways of overcoming the social evil in deference to Islamic teachings, constitutional law and international conventions signed by Afghanistan.

Its members include senior officials of the Supreme Court and ministries of foreign affairs, hajj, justice, public health, information and culture.