The First Victims Afghanistan's Taliban party has been terrorizing women for years

By JAN GOODWIN Special to The News

One Friday afternoon, 30,000 men and boys poured into a dilapidated Olympic sports stadium in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. Hawkers peddled nuts, biscuits and tea to the crowd.

The scheduled entertainment? A young woman named Sohaila was going to be flogged.

Her crime? She was walking with a man who wasn't a relative.

Under Taliban law, she was guilty of sex out of wedlock. She was sentenced to 100 lashes, a punishment that has killed grown men. But Sohaila was considered lucky, her sentence "light," because she was single. Had she been married, she would have been stoned to death.

These circuses are weekly outings for the entertainment-starved males of Kabul. For women, however, life under the Taliban is like being "buried alive," says Spoghmai, a 27-year-old resident of Kabul. This former elementary schoolteacher lost her right arm and leg in a shelling attack in 1996. Since then, Spoghmai has not been able to leave her home: She cannot walk with crutches while wearing a burqa, and the Taliban forbid women to be uncovered in public. The despised burqa is like wearing a tent, it envelops women from head to toe and so impedes vision that some have been hit by cars; one woman was run over by a tank.

I offered to take Spoghmai out for a short excursion in my car. She refused. "It's too dangerous. Afghans are not allowed to be with foreigners, or talk with journalists. If we're caught, the Taliban will beat us both, maybe worse." Besides, she continued, "to go out briefly would be too painful. It will remind me of what I have lost, and make this prison so much worse."

Begging on the Streets

And life for women in Afghanistan is like a prison. Following the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, neighboring states have closed their borders to stem the flood of Afghan refugees. Once starkly beautiful, the country has become a devastated dust bowl after 22 years of war, seven years of Taliban oppression and three years of the worst drought in recorded history.

When the regime took power in 1994, one of the first things they banned was female education. Employment soon followed, a decree that has been particularly harsh on Afghanistan's countless war widows. Before, many families depended on women's income for survival. Now, streets are filled with desperate mothers in heavy veils, begging for scraps of moldy bread to feed their starving children. The burqa itself is a financial hardship — one costs the equivalent of six months' salary. Since most women cannot afford to buy the garment, whole neighborhoods often share one. A woman can wait days for her turn; even if she has money to buy food, she cannot leave her house to spend it.

Afghan women once wore miniskirts, served in parliament and as diplomats, and worked as doctors, engineers, architects, lawyers, judges and professors. Under the Taliban, they lost those rights. The most personal aspects of their lives are now dictated. It's illegal to use makeup, polish your nails, pluck your eyebrows or cut your hair short. Wearing colorful or stylish clothes, sheer stockings, white socks and high heels are forbidden, as is talking loudly or laughing in public. In fact, the government doesn't believe women belong outdoors at all: "Women, you should not step outside your residence," reads one Taliban dictate.

If women do venture out, it must be for a government-sanctioned purpose, and they must wear a burqa. But even veiled, they risk their lives. One young mother trying to get medical care for her seriously ill toddler was shot repeatedly by a teenage Talib with an AK-47 assault rifle. When her family complained, the Taliban authorities said it was her own fault: She shouldn't have been out in public in the first place.

Roaming God Squads

It would be easier to list what the Taliban hasn't banned in this country of some 24 million people: They've even outlawed paper bags. Like many of their edicts, this would be laughable if the penalties for infractions weren't so severe. To ensure that their dictates are followed, armed religious police — part of the "Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice" — roam the streets.

Women are not the only targets of this perverted God squad — no Afghan citizen is permitted to have TVs, VCRs, videos, tape recorders, cassettes, children's toys, cameras, photographs or paintings of people and animals, cigarettes and alcohol, magazines and newspapers, and most books. A recent Taliban proclamation says they will hang anyone found using a satellite phone. Wedding parties, New Year celebrations and picnics have also been banned. So have music, dancing and mixed sex gatherings of any kind. Even applause is forbidden; a moot point, since there's nothing to cheer.

"Whatever we are doing in our country, it is not for the world to be happy with us," says Sher Abbas Stanakzai, Taliban rank TK. "Time should be spent serving the country and praying to God. Everything else is a waste of time, and people are not allowed to waste their time."

The Taliban insist they are returning Afghanistan to the purity of Islam, a claim that outrages other Muslim countries and Islamic scholars. The Taliban is not recognized by either the U.N. General Assembly or the Organization of Islamic Conference, a 75-country body. The Taliban is not the image the Islamic world wants to project, say Muslim diplomats.

Most Talibs (the name means religious student) are young zealots, graduates of madrassas, religious schools based in Pakistan. In these cloistered academies, mainly funded by the Saudi government and Osama Bin Laden, boys grow up totally segregated from women. They strive to earn the title of qari, a Muslim honorific given to those who memorize and can recite the entire Koran (and a number do). But they do so in Arabic, a language the boys neither speak nor understand. Consequently, they have no idea how Islam actually treats women.

"Islam dictates that education is mandatory for both males and females," says Zieba Shorish-Shamley, Ph.D., head of the Women's Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan, based in Washington, D.C. At the time of the Prophet, Muslim women were so well-educated, they became teachers to prominent men. They also worked. In fact, the Prophet Mohammed met his first wife because she was his employer. The Taliban's military skills exceed their knowledge of Islam, say Muslim scholars. In fact, a cornerstone of Mohammad's teaching says: "There is no compulsion in Islam."

An American Apologist

In a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction twist, the Taliban's U.S. spokesperson is a woman: Laili Zikria Helms, a highly Westernized Afghan-American. Although Helms has been silent since the terror attack on America, for many years she worked — unpaid — as the regime's public relations representative. As their most successful, and most sophisticated, apologist, Helms arranged appointments for leaders with members of the U.N., U.S. congressman and the media. She has also helped translate and disseminate Taliban materials.

Helms, 38, was born into a privileged Afghan family. Her grandfather was once foreign minister. Her family moved to the U.S. when she was 11. Bright, articulate, fluent in three languages, she studied psychology and communications at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

She met her husband when she was 16; they used to sneak off to dance at Studio 54. Today, Roger (whose uncle Richard Helms is a former CIA director), their two sons and a golden retriever named Sam complete her idyllic suburban N.J. existence. Helms' dark hair is fashionably short and her uniform of choice is jeans and a T-shirt. Even when working with the Taliban, she usually wears pants and shirt. Her head and face are never covered.

Acquaintances may think that Helms is a feminist — she coached her sons' soccer team and sat on the board of the National Abortion and Reproductive League. "I joined NARAL because I don't want people telling me what I can legally do with my body," she said.

Helms sees no conflict in simultaneously volunteering for an organization that aims to empower women and for a regime that has forbidden them even basic freedoms. She denies the burqa is a human rights issue and believes Westerners willfully misunderstand the Taliban. "I don't know why the media focuses on this sort of thing, or paper bags, or white socks," she complained. "Why focus on the small issues?"

If Helms seems hypocritical, she has company in the Taliban leadership. Many top-ranking members enroll their own daughters in schools, either in Pakistan, or, until recently, the U.S. And while smoking is outlawed by the regime, full ashtrays are common in Taliban offices.

But just as the Taliban defy the law, so do many Afghan women. The difference is that in running underground schools for their daughters in their homes, they risk their lives. In a city where paper and pencils are now extremely hard to acquire, their teaching aids are fashioned from scraps of whatever they can find, including stones and twigs.

Although Mullah Mohamed Omar, the reclusive leader of the Taliban, and his father-in-law, Osama Bin Laden, have reportedly fled Afghanistan, those most affected by the terrible conditions their rule has fostered don't have that option. If he so chose, Bin Laden could shave his beard, remove his turban and hide in plain sight in a cafe in Paris or Rome, or even a Starbucks in New York. Afghan civilians, the majority of whom are women and their small children, have no place to hide — they remain in the slums of Kabul, wrapped in their burqas, waiting for the retaliation they know will surely arrive soon.

Jan Goodwin's book, "Price of Honor," examines how Muslim women live under Islamic fundamentalism.

Original Publication Date: 10/4/01

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001