A Disobedient Wife

"My daughter always said she wouldn't stop studying, and would one day become important, having to travel to work in a convoy of cars.  But now she is under a tonne of clay."

Photo:wfiupublicradio

Afghan women in eastern Afghanistan lead tightly circumscribed lives. Most wear burqas, the body-concealing garment, when out of their homes. 

A young woman in Afghanistan, aspiring to make something of herself, to attend school, to study and to attain an education, and to fulfill a personal dream to make an impression of usefulness in her society, to garner respect for what she could accomplish, to live a life of promise.  But then, this is Afghanistan, and girls and women are not independent, and they cannot choose what kind of life they may live.

That choice is taken from them, when, as is traditional, their family sees fit to oblige the girls to marry someone of their parents' choice.  Someone the girls have never met.  Someone who in all likelihood has no intention of honouring them as a human being, but using them for their breeding potential, as a servant, as someone who will be in thrall to do their bidding without complaint.

For there is no one to complain to.  And it is perfectly permissible - indeed, recommended - that Afghan men beat their wives to remind them constantly who it is who controls decision making, and it is not the women.  The women of Afghanistan must be discreet and modest, and most learn early in life how that is accomplished - through the medium of a dark blue head-to-toe covering in a hot climate where the burqa stifles and makes movement awkward and uncomfortable.

The mother mourning the death of her daughter Tamana calls out: "My daughter!  Why did they kill you so brutally?" while screaming her pained anguish in the cemetery 65 kilometres north of Kabul.  The young woman was killed by a relative in what is commonly refrred to as an "honour killing".  An event that is growing rapidly as violence steadily grows in Afghanistan against vulnerable women.

The murders of 52 girls and women in the past four months has been recorded by Afghanistan's independent human rights commission.  Of those murders 42 were classified as honour killings; double the number that had been committed in all of the year before.  President Hamid Karzai's anxiety to reach a truce and understanding with the Taliban has been cited as the reason.

The situation where women and girls were banned under the Taliban from education, voting, working outside the home, where they were not permitted to be out in public without a male family escort, where music and dance were banned, is threatening to return.  The government of President Karzai appears to be backsliding on its stated commitment to women's rights and equality.

A week ago, Hanifa Safi, head of women's affairs in eastern Laghman province was killed when a bomb planted on her car exploded.  "Unfortunately incidents against women do occur.  The government is doing what it can", stated Siamak Herawi, a government spokesperson.

Tamana was fifteen years old.  She died close to where a 21-year-old woman was publicly executed by the Taliban a month before for alleged adultery before a crowd of approving, cheering Afghan men.   Tamana was forcibly married to her cousin.  She had refused his overtures for months.  She was beaten and killed for being "disobedient".

No one has been arrested for her death.  But the man who her family knows killed their daughter gave his sister as a bride to Tamana's brother as compensation.  This is an Afghan social practice.