The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Cultural Weight of an Unveiled Face

A guest post from Slate contributor Vanessa Gezari, who writes frequently about Afghanistan and Pakistan:

I was deeply moved by the sight of Afghan women marching in Kabul this week to protest the so-called “rape law,” which requires a woman to “preen for her husband” whenever he desires it, not to leave the house without his permission and to have sex with him on demand. The law affects Shias, and news photos showed the faces of female protesters from the Hazara ethnic group, Afghanistan’s beleaguered Shia minority, some smiling, some firmly set—and all uncovered. In their cultural weight, the pictures reminded me of another image, printed in Unveiled, photographer Harriet Logan’s book on Afghan women, of a Kabul street protest in 1972. In it, a young woman with uncovered hair stands amid a sea of teenagers. The woman—little more than a girl—reads aloud from a notebook, one hand cupped at her waist in a dramatic gesture. The banners behind her call for peace, democracy and social progress, yet how distant those goals would seem just a few years on, as the Russians rolled in, and later, when rival Afghan warlords tore the country apart, giving rise to the stringent, chastening dispensation known as Taliban rule.

What’s heartbreaking about these 1970s photos, taken during the reign of the last Afghan king, Zahir Shah, is that the advances they document, as well as those under communist rule, were later used to drive Afghan women beneath the folds of burqas. The Russian invasion created a hierarchy of Islamic purity, with the corrupted, secular communist at the lowest level and the pure servant of God—as the mujaheddin leaders, and later Mullah Omar purported to be—at the top. Islam became an excuse for anything, a sheltering veil beneath which every kind of violence and immorality hid. Advances adopted by the admittedly flawed king, the Afghan communists and the Russian-installed puppet governments were condemned as un-Islamic, from the spread of secular education to the expansion of women’s rights. It would be ungenerous to say that we shouldn’t avidly support Afghan women’s protests against the so-called “rape law,” but when commentators talk about backlash, this is what they mean. Anything that looks like an import, like the hand of the west reaching too boldly into Afghanistan, will be furiously repulsed. It’s this outrage at foreign intrusion, regardless of its potential benefits, that’s already building in many parts of the country, and that feeds the Taliban resurgence. How else could insurgents slaughter Afghans and still win a measure of support, if they didn’t claim to be doing it in the name of Islam, which trumps all else? As a cleric who witnessed this week’s protest against the so-called “rape law” told the Times: “We Afghans don’t want a bunch of NATO commanders and foreign ministers telling us what to do.”

It’s frustrating, as a western woman, to be relegated to such a quiet supporting role in Afghan women’s struggle, but perhaps understanding the complexity of their situation counts for something. It might help explain, for example, an arresting NPR report about rising drug abuse among Afghan women (and men). Opium, Afghanistan’s main cash crop, is first and foremost a pain-reliever, and I’ve seen few places where pain is as dominant a part of memory and experience as it is in Afghanistan. Putting aside the horrors of 30 years of war, the inexorable rhythms of hope and disappointment that have characterized the lives of Afghan women—the fresh-faced girl speaking at a street protest and later, a muffled, cloaked women being publicly beaten for showing her ankles in the bazaar—are enough to make anyone crave opiates.