JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Parveena almost got away.
She was on her way home from a visit to her parents in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan with her children by her side and a small group of women. Two men, their faces covered by kaffiyehs, pulled up on a motor scooter.
“Who is Parveena, daughter of Sardar?” said one, looking at the group of women, their faces hidden behind blue burqas.
No one answered. One of the men took his Kalashnikov and used the muzzle to lift the burqa of the nearest woman — in conservative Afghan society, a gesture akin to undressing her in public. It was Parveena, who like many Afghans used only one name. She grabbed the muzzle, according to her father and her brother, and said, “Who is asking?”
But the gunmen had seen her face, and they fired 11 bullets into her.
Parveena’s story — she was one of six policewomen killed in 2013 — is an extreme case, but it reflects the dangers and difficulties of Afghan policewomen and the broader Western effort to engineer gender equality in Afghanistan. The plight of women under the Taliban captured the Western imagination, and their liberation became a rallying cry. A flood of money and programs poured into Afghanistan, for girls’ schools and women’s shelters and television shows, all aimed at elevating women’s status.
But these good intentions often foundered against the strength of Afghan sexual conservatism. As the tale of Afghan policewomen shows, repressive views of women were not just a Taliban curse, but also a deeply embedded part of society.
Now, as Western troops and money flow out of Afghanistan, the question is just how much the encounter with the West and its values has really changed the country, and whether any of the foreign ideas about the status of women took hold.
In 2001, when the Taliban regime fell, women in Afghanistan were among the very worst off on earth: They had no access to education, women’s health care was scant, and government-sanctioned public beatings were widely accepted. Women rarely ventured out at all, and when they did, they had to be accompanied by a man and covered head to toe with a burqa.
Fourteen years later, there is a palpable sense of possibility for women, especially in urban areas. Girls are going to school in large numbers, at least up to age 11, and there is more access to women’s health care even in some remote parts of the country. However, in rural areas and in the Pashtun-dominated east and south, most women still live confined lives. They are subjected often to forced marriage, child marriage and beatings, and sometimes to honour killings. And conditions for Afghan women over all still rank close to the bottom among developing countries.
Hiring and training policewomen have been key priorities of Western governments and funders. They reasoned that Afghan women and girls, who face high levels of violence, sometimes on a daily basis, would be more likely to report abuse or seek help if they could turn to other women, and that meant ensuring there were women on the police force.
The New York Times
