Shame On The Family

"Women are in a worse condition now. Every day they are being killed, having their ears, noses cut. It is not just women in villages, it is also people like me.
"He would get drunk and demand I remove his shoes. Then he would shout at me to put them back on, over and over. If I refused he would beat me. It was torture. He would come to me the next day and apologize but then at night he would do it again. Finally I asked for a divorce.
"They saw my face bruised, and scars from the knife, but they told me it ws a traditional society,that I would bring shame on the family."
Noor Zia Atmar, Kabul, Afghanistan

Concerns: Noor Zia Atmar, 40, who was a politician from 2005 to 2010, now lives in a home for abused women after escaping from a husband who beat her and a family who disowned her after she divorced him

Noor Zia Atmar's family fled Afghanistan when the Taliban established themselves to rule in Kabul. Her engineer father had died, her mother was determined her young daughter would have the benefit of an education. Under Taliban rule, schools for girls were closed, women banned from work outside the home, and burqas had to be worn, while women were forbidden to appear in public unless they were in the guiding presence of a male family member.

The Atmar family returned to their country of origin after the Taliban was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion on the hunt for al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden after the atrocities of 9-11. She worked as a community activist, going to remote villages to teach women the basics of self respect, to guide them toward education and health care. When elections took place in 2005 after a new draft constitution guaranteed women's rights she ran for office and won.

As part of the new government she was busily involved in pushing through legislation banning acts of violence against women. With others she visited Britain, India, Turkey and France, welcomed along with the other female Afghan legislators as representatives of the new Afghanistan. Toward the end of her five-year term as a Member of Parliament she married. Her husband, a wealthy businessman, refused to help fund her campaign for re-election, and she lost her seat.

He refused to allow her to leave the family home, even banned the use of the telephone. He became physically abusive and she was completely disillusioned; her political career at an end, her marriage a brutal oppression. When she obtained the services of a lawyer to seek a divorce against the express wishes of her family they abandoned her. She had nothing left, and three years ago began living in a shelter for battered women.

Progress in the area of women's rights is cited so often as a major plank in the successes in reforming Afghanistan society, in turning its government in the direction of serving its people with equality and justice. Girls, after all, were flocking to the new schools built through Western aid. Women were being employed outside the home as never before, finding their independence and personal pride. Women have no intention of looking back.

Noor Zia Atmar has attempted to leave Afghanistan, to emigrate to a Western country. She applied at the British embassy for asylum. To be informed through a curt message that it was not available for women suffering from domestic abuse. "They said that would open the doors to too many women to come", she said in an interview. Ironically enough, an interview published in The Sunday Telegraph.

And now the full weight of concern for her own future and the future of the country's women and girls has struck fully. The Western presence in the country has been diminished and will diminish further in 2014 with the final departure of foreign troops and Western agencies, although humanitarian groups will doubtless seek to remain to continue providing their vitally needed welfare services.

The Afghan government is prepared to negotiate a peace agreement with the Taliban. In a very practical sense in a very Islamic country many of whose laws still reflect the repression of Islamism, there will be no new reforms. Some reforming legislation that was enacted under the tutelage of the West, will doubtless be reversed.

When the Taliban return as they most assuredly will, to 'share power' with the current government, much in Afghan society will return to what it was before the entry of foreign forces.

"It will be a huge tragedy if this happens. We must remove fundamentalism from Afghanistan. The world should remember, the fire from here might not reach their country, but the smoke will", promised Noor Zia Atmar. A gloomy prognostication, but one no one should be prepared to equivocate over.

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