'Liberation' is killing Afghan women
Western imperialism and the human rights' agenda
by Georgina Farah
After strong opposition by the Afghan people to a renewed war, the United States is once again bombing one of the most desperate and destroyed countries in the world. The difference this time is the carefully planned public relations agenda designed to please the 'caring' people of America who would like to see 'terrorism' eradicated and the Afghan people 'bombed' with food.
Under the mask of a 'human rights' agenda, American military strikes are creating one of the worst famines in Afghan history. The bombing campaign has forced the World Food Program and other Non-Governmental Organization's (NGO's) out of Afghanistan, leaving the people totally dependent on American food drops.
The token food packages being dropped by the US are grossly inadequate for the millions of displaced and starving people in Afghanistan. To add insult to injury, there are reports that much of the food has landed in mine fields and other inaccessible areas. This is not a campaign to root out suicide bombers, but a 'crusade' to instill suicidality through displacement and starvation.
Afghan women are being told that this is a humanitarian war, being fought in part to liberate them from their oppressors, the Taliban. Meanwhile, their loved ones are dying and they cannot feed their children. What's more, they are told that their 'salvation' lies in the hands of the Northern Alliance who, although framed as allies in the war against terrorism, have their own long history of committing atrocities against the people of Afghanistan.
For Afghan women, the US-Northern Alliance power strategy means being bombed, starved, and then 'saved' by the very same people who have abducted, raped and tortured them for over two decades. Mike Vickers, a former officer with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency admitted that the, "[Northern Alliance] may not be perfect but [they do] have some good elements." This is eerily reminiscent of what one US military official said in the Soviet-US war in Afghanistan (1980's), where Americans used the most violent of all faction leaders (now in the Northern Alliance) because "fanatics fight better". The US left those fanatics to rape, maim and destroy Afghan women and their families, and has now returned with its own brand of fanaticism.
For over twenty years, Afghan women have been resisting and denouncing all warring factions in Afghanistan, including the US, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Yet, in the West we only hear about the victimization of Afghan women, without any analysis of how these women have survived for so long and remained strong. The discourse around Afghan women's resistance is limited to the same old colonial dialogue of 'liberating' the poor, oppressed Middle Eastern women. Their context is disintegrated to a few fragments of Islamic 'oppression' and Taliban cruelty.
The Western human rights agenda of liberation continues to create these reduced dichotomies of good/evil, liberated/oppressed, and saviours/victims. It is these dichotomies that give rise to the stereotypes of terrorists and oppressed Afghan women, and have become the very philanthropist justification to invade and bomb Afghanistan. History is repeating itself.
As long as we continue to focus on Afghan women's stories and experiences as victims, without the context of their resistance, we will continue to entrench the idea that women are oppressed around the world only because of fundamentalist patriarchal regimes like the Taliban. This narrow discourse denies the role of the foreign policies of first world countries that are creating and have been creating poverty and oppression worldwide. Calls for liberation for Afghan women must include demands for an end to imperialist expansion (like the Soviet war and the current American war), as well as the elimination of racist immigration policies.
In addition to superpower policies, the United Nations must be held accountable for its role in providing corrupt and inconsistent aid. Long after the bombs stop falling, millions of people will continue to die due to the corrupt aid programs of the United Nations and other NGO's. In the meantime, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees will turn away millions of refugees as Western borders close down for Afghans. Refugee camps in Pakistan will once again return to being a prime haven for NGO projects that 'help' refugees while lining their own pockets.
Anyone who has been on the receiving end of the human rights agenda understands its own brand of oppression, corruption and missionary zeal. Compounded with the Taliban regime and globalization, the human rights agenda will continue to ensure that Afghan women will remain indentured to exploitive aid programs. As Sunera Thobani stated, "there will be no emancipation for women anywhere on this planet until Western domination of this planet has ended." True liberation for Afghan women will only occur when we all stand in solidarity and call for an end to patriarchal factions, Western domination and colonial projects all over the world.