May 22, 2003
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
Read the special Afghan Report posted at the PXP web siteExcellent photos of the women's circles!!
Our correspondent in Kabul, Alean Haider (right), 22, with her sisters, all members of the Afghan Women's Union
Back from
Kabul
Photographer brings news of women fighting for inclusion in new government
By Stephanie Hiller
Photos by Teressa Rerras
The confinement, cruelty, humiliation and suffering endured by the women of Afghanistan is perhaps more extreme than any in the world. But the Afghan women have been fighting back, and that is one reason why our Women's Council was gratified to link up with a women's circle in Kabul, the Afghan Women's Union.
Our connection with the 48-member AWU was facilitated by Peacexpeace, a new non-profit dedicated to supporting the global women's network with a documentary film, a book, and a web site. Formed in response to the terrors of 9-11, PXP facilitates communication between women's circles here in the U.S. and women's circles in war-torn and devastated countries. As founder Patricia Melton Smith explained to me, the conditions needed to create peace are the same ones that sustain it. The qualities of the women's circle -- equality, justice, and respect -- are the conditions for peace, and it is the unseen work of women on behalf of family and community, which continues even in the worst of circumstances, that creates its foundation.
Our group, located in comfortable Sonoma County, California, had read about the extreme poverty of Afghan women and children even after the "liberation" promised by the U.S. attack. We had also read that vast US surpluses of wheat and milk were sitting unused in US warehouses at a cost of $2 million a year. Our first thought was to try to get some of that surplus food over to Afghanistan. With war looming in Iraq, delivering food turned out to be far more difficult than we expected. Besides, what the women in Kabul really need is money -- money to pay the rent for their community building, to pay the expenses of reaching out into the countryside, to start small businesses and make education a reality for their children. But even sending money is complicated; and delivering a few boxes of books seemed impossible too, once we learned that the US post office does not deliver to Afghanistan.
When I asked Patricia Melton Smith how we might at least send some books and money to the AWU, she told me that a friend traveling to Kabul in March might be able to take them with her.
Teressa Rerras had met Patricia on the airplane back from Kabul more than a year ago. When Teressa proposed another trip to Afghanistan to photograph the women there, Patricia lent her support. She linked Teressa up with Sima Wali, who runs an organization for refugees, and gave her a list of organizations to contact.
I spoke with Teressa on the telephone a month after her return from Kabul. "I have a terrible case of wanderlust," she told me. "Five years a go I started photographing women in very remote areas, women of different cultures, some of which are becoming extinct." Teressa, who works for the airlines, has always been "pretty comfortable traveling by myself." Drawn to Afghanistan, she visited there several times. But this trip, she said, was "life changing." Sitting in the women's meetings, "I realized that I was ignorant. Once I realized what was happening there I saw the importance of women getting together."
Asked what the women in our Peace Circle were focused on, Teressa said that wherever she went, women were working for a voice in the new constitution, which had just been drafted. "They're very concerned that under this constitution, they're not going to be represented. They're trying to get the message out, for a woman's voice to be heard." The constitution is due to be finalized in August.
Getting the word out into the remote areas is challenging. Without telephones or electricity, "they work almost like a tag team to spread the word." Even getting around Kabul is difficult, Theressa said.
"Kabul looks like a war-torn country. Some of their houses don't have roofs." Sanitation is a problem. Yet "they dress beautifully. I don't know how they do it." Meetings are generally held on Fridays because that is like Sunday in Afghanistan. But even then, it is often difficult for the women to come. Many of the women are widows working to support themselves. Most of them don't have jobs; they depend on other family members.
For women, life is still fraught with fear. The same warlords who threatened them before the arrival of the Taliban -- the Northern Alliance -- are in power again. Women feel they must continue to wear the burkah when they go out in the streets. Food distribution to women in the provinces must be done very carefully. "You can get killed doing it," said Theressa. And women are still being forced into marriages they don't want. "They talked about women being traded off to be married because their families were in debt. I had just met with an 18-year-old girl who said she would commit suicide because she was going to be married to a 60-year old man. Her words to me were, I am a human being, I am not an animal to be sold." What women want most of all is not to be married but to pursue their education, which was interrupted under the Taliban.
The women were "so touched by the letters and the books." One young woman in our sister circle, Alean Haider, was so delighted to have an English dictionary, "she held on to that dictionary for dear life."
They want communication with the women of the US. "They want us to be aware of what they're going through, to share their hopes and dreams, to support this gathering of women that is coming together all over the world. They want to get the word out, for the women's voice to be heard in the constitution."
Most of all, the women want peace. "They're starving for peace," said Teressa.
Teressa brought back 35 letters from the Afghan women to our circle, all but one in Dari. Here is the one written in English, exactly as it was written:
My name is shugufa. I am student of second year of kabul medical university. I ws born in 1980 in an educated family. My father is an officer and my mother is a teacher. I love peace very much, therefor I prefer to join the (circle peace). We suffer from war since 24 years and we bored of it. We want our rights and we want to dfend from the whole women rights, specially those women who are living inprovinces, which are far from education. We must be aware of their lives.I want peace in my wartorn country. I want progress and big movemt towards peace. I want Afghanistan reconstruction. Five years ago, I was in university and still I am. Because of bad condition of education in Afghanistan I'am back from my education, and my boys classmets are doctor. now they are working in hospital.
I hope peace be stable in the country and no more obscles in the way of my education.
I am also member of All Afghan women Union.
Shugufa Basij Rasikh, 22
Inspired by the determination of the women she met in Kabul, Teressa is making plans to dedicate herself to the work she loves.
"I found this program started by photographer Wendy Ewald, called, 'Literacy through Photography'. I haven't taken the course. But in Afghanistan I did come across a school, the Voice of Women, and I'm going to be teaching there when I go back. I'm going to set up a darkroom and encourage them to document and tell their stories."
Theressa will be returning to Kabul this June to begin that project. A foundation to support her work should be up in about three weeks.
Read Theressa's report and see more of her excellent photos in the Special Afghanistan Edition of the PXP newsletter at the PXP web site.