The right place at the wrong time

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23969165-peers-wife-i-hid-in-cupboard-as-taliban-searched-hotel.do

In 2011 NATO initiated Inteqal – the process of transition of security responsibilities from ISAF to the Afghan state and its forces. It was launched on the assumption that the Afghan Army, Police and governance system, at national and local level, would have progressed to the point where handover was tenable. President Karzai formally announced transition arrangements to the Afghan people and in March it was welcomed in a joint statement by Foreign Secretary William Hague and Defence Secretary Liam Fox.

NATO aims to complete the transition by 2014, reducing its military presence but retaining a ‘footprint’ in the country beyond that date. Since the announcement of Intequal Osama Bin Laden has been killed – and ‘talks with the Taliban’ have rarely been off the agenda.  Heady stuff – but what do these events mean to Afghanistan’s female population? One British woman went to find out. This is what happened to her.

Fiona Hodgson and her friend walked out of the bloody siege of the Intercontinental Hotel in  Kabul wondering how they had escaped death.

They’d survived the bloodbath in which Taliban gunmen killed 11 people by hiding in a cupboard while slaughter and mayhem took place around them.

Fiona had gone to Afghanistan to connect with women’s organisations and activists and  see for herself what women’s hopes and fears were about transition and its security implications for half the population.

In February this year a travel reviewer wrote of the ‘Intercon’ -  “There are often large official events because of its secure location and plentiful armed guards. There have been no Taliban attacks and the last major incident was a shoot-out in 2003. So, by Kabul standards, it is very safe.”

For those who know the Afghan capital this is not such a surreal recommendation, but when I watched my friend walk out of this ‘safe’ hotel on a TV news channel I was stunned. As the story of the siege and suicide bombing unfolded I knew she was physically unharmed, but it wasn’t until she arrived back in London that I understood how close to death she had been.

Fiona and her companion from Action Aid spent nearly six hours in hiding listening to the sound of gunfire, explosions and screaming just yards away from them.

 “I honestly thought we were going to die,” she recalled. “My heart seemed to be pounding so loudly I felt the gunmen could surely hear it.”

So how did this Kensington mother of four find herself at the epicentre of a bloody siege? Call it displaced guilt, but I feel (very slightly) to blame!

We met a few years ago when I had just returned from a trip to Helmand. Fiona was then Chair of the Conservative Women’s Organisation and already alert to the plight of Afghanistan’s women. From our different perspectives, but with shared interests, we joined forces to co-author The Female Face of Afghanistan, a series of largely unedited opinions from a diverse range of contributors. Fiona became very keen to visit the country, meet some of the women and hear first hand how they felt.

We talked about going together but could never quite co-ordinate it so travelling independently, at her own expense, she went alone. First stop was Kabul where she stayed with Ana Hozyainova, a founder member of the Afghanistan Public Policy Research Organisation.  Seven days, eighteen meetings, several private visits and a joyful Afghan wedding party later, her nightmare began.

Over tea in the garden of her West London home Fiona re-counted the most frightening six hours of her life. In this most English of settings, with Monty the family dog chewing his favourite toy at our feet, a story of horror, courage  - and even occasional humour  - unfolded.                    

“Ana helped me meet some wonderful women in Kabul – mostly from NGOs, activists, former refugees and even a TV presenter. My admiration for these women grew as the week progressed but they are very, very worried about transition. There is generally enormous alarm about what would happen if the Taliban came back.

“Some said they would leave; one said she would get a gun and flee to the hills.  A particularly impressive group was Young Women for Change – aged mainly in their early 20s. One told me ‘It would be like slow death’. They know that activism identifies them but feel they have no alternative and quote the depressing proverb ‘Afghan women belong in a house or a grave’ as their spur.”

On the eve of the suicide bombers’ attack Fiona left Ana’s quiet home in a residential district for the Intercontinental Hotel where she was to meet her new hosts.

“The Action Aid representative had flown out that evening. I was tired but excited and looking forward to the next part of my stay. We were due to leave for Bamiyan early the next morning and had a full programme.”

After a buffet dinner with members of the Action Aid team and Kabul MP Shinkhai Karokhail, Fiona and her friend retired early to their rooms on the second floor. The hotel is on a hilltop and Fiona had left her curtains open to look at the panoramic view of Kabul.

Then the gunfire started. She crawled to turn her bedside lights out before cautiously leaving her room. “I remember there was a man in the corridor, his body language was all wrong – he turned and looked at me, his arm flapping, then he ran past me. I knew then that something was going on and banged on my friend’s door.

“I don’t know why but I said ‘we’ve got to get into the cupboard’ – it was behind the door to the room which would swing back against it. And so we sat there, in the dark, still dressed in the clothes we’d worn to dinner while the firing continued. We rang the Action Aid security officer who had only recently left and he said he’d come back for us straight away.”

But it was to be nearly six hours before the women were able to leave.  Huddled in the confined space they heard shooting above them, on the ground floor, in the stairwell and along their own corridor. At first they thought it was the hotel security team fighting off attackers.  The shouting was harsh, aggressive and close, but incomprehensible.

“We put our phones on silent because we were terrified of being discovered,” recalled Fiona whose strangest moment was seeing a call come in from her husband Robin. “ I decided not to take it. Then he sent a text – and I replied saying that I was fine. I didn’t want to worry him.”

A man whose calls she did take was to prove a rock that night. “I suddenly remembered that we had registered our visit to Afghanistan with the FCO and had a number to call at the Embassy ‘in emergencies’.

“Rather hesitantly I rang it, thinking how mad I would sound saying ‘Hello, this is Fiona Hodgson; I’m in the wardrobe of Room 206 in the Intercontinental Hotel’ .”

The man at the Embassy did not laugh however, he simply asked for details. “He was wonderful; very professional and calm and as the night went on it was reassuring  to have him to talk to. Sometimes he asked us to leave the phone on so that he could hear what was happening, but he told us not to move until someone official came for us.”

Alternately whispering and lapsing into silence the two women strained to hear what was happening; the gunfire was intermittent but the stillness too was threatening. Then the unimaginable happened - it got worse.

“Suddenly we could hear doors being kicked in and shots. Then the helicopters came and the most massive explosions. The hotel rocked and we felt the floors below were giving way. We’d no idea what was going on. We were past thinking and in extreme terror. Later we learned that the explosion above us was what set the hotel on fire. We felt helpless but between us we managed to hold it together!”

A loud knock and a voice in broken English told the women to come out. “But we were beyond movement until the man on the phone ‘instructed’ us that it was alright. I slid the door open and put an arm out first, then went into the corridor where there was an Afghan soldier and a line of people.  A New Zealand Special Forces soldier met us at the stairwell, we went through the lobby and into the kitchen.”

                                                                                                                                

At last they were allowed to leave. “Dawn was coming up and we just walked down the hill towards the police checkpoints and past them. I still didn’t feel safe; I feared there could be gunmen in the bushes but when we got to the second police barrier the Security officer from Action Aid was waiting for us. He had been there all night.”

He drove the women to a rendezvous with the Embassy vehicle where they were provided with body armour. Fiona laughed. “I thought ‘we could have used this last night’!”

The journey home was not comfortable for either woman. Luggage at Kabul airport suddenly looked sinister; the clatter of suitcases pulled along a hotel corridor in Dubai sounded like gunfire. While we spoke in Fiona’s garden sudden noise on a nearby construction site made her twitch.

At Gatwick the women were met by their husbands and the CEO of Action Aid. Fiona said “They took us to a quiet room and that was when I was able to tell Robin the full story. I‘m fine talking about it all, but perhaps part of me is in emotional lockdown. So as for how I really feel – I don’t know. For a while I was numb. It’s OK for me – I can get on a plane, but for the people I’ve left behind, it’s different. So many women are psychologically damaged, so many are fearful. No woman will vote for the Taliban. ”

After Fiona’s return I spoke to Afghan journalist Bilal Saraway in Kabul. He said  “The gunfire could be heard by residents in all the surrounding neighbourhoods and it has shattered confidence in security. Everyone is asking how this could have happened. What was pretty upsetting was that the Minister of the Interior had been warned of a possible attack and despite that they were able to get in through the back entrance, past a police checkpoint.

First to die was a hotel driver and an old guard who had worked there for more than 50 years.”

Saraway added “There were renovations going on in the main lobby which may account for the lack of security, but people are asking senior police how it is they managed to take in so many heavy weapons – nine people are understood to have had RPGs while the Afghan police were only lightly armed with AK47s.

“It’s clear too that the attackers were prepared for a long siege; their backpacks contained cans of Red Bull and biscuits. But if there is a positive aspect to this, it is that the Police Chief arrived straight after the attack; local forces did well.”

Fiona echoed this. “I don’t blame anyone; we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone was wonderful – Action Aid, the Embassy staff, the Afghan police/army and the New Zealand Special Forces. I just feel so very sorry for those who lost loved ones or did not survive.

“Will I go back? I hope I have the courage to return and finish what I set out to do. I don’t want this tragic incident to overshadow the real issues, Afghanistan’s women must not be forgotten. We can help them in all sorts of ways, through networking and information hubs as well as practical support. Women must be involved in the peace process in a meaningful way and not just as window dressing. ”

Her companion doesn’t want to be identified but added "The best way to ensure that the rights Afghan women have gained over the last 10 years are not swept away is to make sure that women are at all peace and reconciliation negotiations and are able to represent their interests. This is their right, but it is also the only route to a just and lasting peace. Any deal that excludes women does not deserve the name of peace."

So, as the Intequal process takes it’s course all eyes should be on those women and the West’s ears open to their very real concerns about a return to the ‘ground zero’ of human rights abuse in Afghanistan. To many, exhausted by the demands of yet another long engagement in a country where no-one has ever ‘won’ a war, the death of Bin Laden might signify ‘mission accomplished’. If it leaves Millennium Development Goals for Women unaddressed it will be a job far from done.

ENDS

Lady Fiona Hodgson is a member of the Conservative Human Rights Commission and the Chair of the Advisory Board of GAPS:  (Gender Action in Peace and Security), President of the National Conservative Convention and former Chair of the Conservative Women’s Organisation. She is also a patron of Afghan Connections.  She is the wife of former Tory MP Lord Robin Hodgson.

http://www.conservativehumanrights.com/reports/ 

The right place at the wrong time

http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/the-right-place-at-the-wrong-time/article13402.html

Human croquet in Absurdistan?

(First published http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/)

The ‘most famous woman in Afghanistan’, Malalai Joya, has decided not to stand for re-election to Parliament because it is too corrupt, the commander of multinational forces, General Stanley McChrystal, has been dismissed and American politicians have temporarily cut off aid to the Afghan government after it emerged that billions were being ‘redirected’. Coalition deaths are above 1,800, Afghan civilian deaths are unknown – and there are fears that Afghan women may be airbrushed out of yet another key International Conference in Kabul on 20 July. Against this depressing background a wedding took place that gave some small cause for hope.

PICTURES by David Gill.


IMAGINE a drama, co-authored by Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll, in which a dark game of human croquet is played daily. The game has no point and there are no winners, because every evening the human ‘hoops’ that have been negotiated move. The play is called ‘Contradictions’ and the imaginary country it is set in is called Afghanistan – a place where answers neatly segue away from questions - and half the population (i.e. the female half) is virtually mute.

For nine years this theatre of the absurd has played to global audiences. Transfixed by rhetoric about human rights, counter-terrorism and drug eradication Western ‘theatregoers’ – politicians, journalists, military personnel, security staff, civil servants and aid workers – have bought their tickets to watch or participate.
But recently there have been rumblings, that this long-running drama might be nearing its end. With a fatal review by ‘Rolling Stone’, a new leading man cast in the role of ISAF Commander, a British coalition Government disinclined to bankroll indefinite performances and a body count more bloody than Macbeth, the augurs are not good!

Not long ago there was a much-vaunted Peace Jirga. In the expat compounds of Kabul, where diplomats, NGO staff and hacks congregate, a ‘Mask of the Red Death’ mentality obtains. Poe would have loved Absurdistan! In the homes of ‘ordinary’ Afghans a more ‘pig with lipstick’ attitude prevailed. Another triumph of experience over hope.

Two days before it started, when security in the city had already started to ramp up, Farah Senator Belquis Roshan said, “I condemn it. It is just way of ‘squaring the circle’ of getting the Taliban back into Government. But these warlords and Taliban are killers who have raped women, children and boys . . . they should be in jail. The devastation of Kabul reflects their crimes. The evidence is all around us.”

In fact, the debate was nugatory. The Taliban failed to show up then . . . and have since indicated that they have no desire, or need, to sit round the table with an ‘enemy’ who has nothing to offer them.

The jirga’s start was not auspicious. Its 1,600 delegates, gathered in a huge air-conditioned tent, soon came under attack despite days of police planning. A few RPGs were lobbed into the surrounding area; there were armed clashes, but no delegates were hurt. Even the protests, it seemed, were off the mark.

President Karzai called the gathering “the hope of our Afghan nation to reach a peace agreement” and appealed to the Taliban to join the peace process. But to women like Roshan and suspended MP Malalai Joya his words were hollow.

Roshan, a single woman and former provincial council member for Farah Province, was cynical and disillusioned. Like Joya, of whom she speaks with pride and admiration, she is tough, blunt and has reason to be concerned for her personal security. From the safety of a supporter’s house in Darulaman, she showed me her invitation to the jirga and laughed scornfully.

“In 2001 we (Afghans) accepted foreigners in our country for the first time in 30 years, to rebuild our country and its infrastructure. They have let us down – brushed aside our hopes. They do these token PR exercises pointing out what they have done, but we didn’t get any real benefit. Crime increased, corruption rose, poppy production grew.”

Like Joya she advocates NATO withdrawal, claiming that in many ways things were better under the Taliban rule. “Of course it was bad for women, but at least they had rules and there was security of a kind.”
Today she describes Afghanistan as a series of fiefdoms, ruled by gangsters, and claims the word ‘taliban’ is meaningless and no longer describes any discrete entity.

“The US and NATO allies take credit for building schools for girls, but four years ago there were schools all over Afghanistan. Now people still want education but are too afraid to send their daughters.”
“Two years ago, in the Khak Safed District of Farah, one of the local warlords had a teenage girl murdered just because she left home. Nothing happened to him.”

IWPR reports catalogue routine interventions by Taliban taking a cut of aid funding. Explanations of why it should – and should not – be tolerated are predicated on pragmatism rather than ethics. This is Farah, not Utopia!

Roshan and Joya believe that 2001 was NATO’s chance to win the hearts and minds of Afghanistan’s people by arresting its many war criminals. Roshan said “In Iraq they had no compunction about hunting down and executing criminals. Here such men were allowed to take seats in Parliament, where they sat with their guns and pistols.”

They subsequently voted themselves amnesty from prosecution and crudely intimidated anyone who opposed them. Joya, who openly condemned them in her now famous speech to the Loya Jirga, became a particular target. She later described her experiences in parliament as ‘pure torture’.

To Joya and Roshan the Peace Jirga was simply the next step in the process of legitimising Taliban and other criminal elements. Roshan said “I asked a question in the Senate recently and was told ‘We will give you the answers after the Peace Jirga’. I said, no – this is wrong. You should say now how we want things to be, not wait to be told.”

The picture painted by both women is bleak. They describe the Presidential elections as a farce citing their own province as an example. Farah is a large, lawless area, sandwiched between Pakistan and Helmand
Roshan said through her interpreter “In some areas there were no polling stations, yet votes were returned. It is well known that deals were done and votes bought. The Governor and local warlords bought votes for Karzai; Dr Abdullah Abdullah – he also bought some votes. Only (Ramazan) Bashardost got true votes. In Farah some Talibs even fired rockets into the city to stop people voting . . . this is not democracy.”

I put it to her that untimely NATO withdrawal would simply leave a power vacuum that criminals, warlords and Taliban would quickly fill, turning the country into a battleground again. She acknowledges this and concedes that corruption and fear rule out any hope of security or an honest rule of law being delivered by the Karzai Government. “In fact we have no ‘government’” she says dismissively.

But this didn’t, in Roshan’s eyes, excuse the Peace Jirga’s role as a reconciliation platform. “My point of view is the same as that of my people. They don’t want Taliban back in government where they can (legitimately) use their powers against the us. This ‘Peace Jirga’ – I condemn it! The foreigners should have supported us – but they didn’t. The US and its Allies are doing just the same as the Taliban – killing local people with their air strikes. Our people are fed up of foreigners. People want them to withdraw from Afghanistan because civilian casualties are increasing day by day and the security is getting worse. Secondly, if foreigners really want to help Afghanistan become a democratic state they should support democratic minded people in and take our views to their leaders.

“We don’t want their troops to die here – they are also victims. Ordinary people in the international community should put pressure on their governments to support true democrats. They arrested Saddam Hussein in Iraq – why can they not do the same with Dostum, Sayaaf and the other criminals here!”
In the event, Roshan did go to the Peace Jirga. As it drew to a close she tried to speak. She was told it was not appropriate and microphones were switched off. Only two media outlets reported her attempt. Hopefully more are aware of it now.

WEDDING

Two days before meeting Roshan I had attended a wedding. Hosted by Malalai Joya it celebrated the marriage of a rape victim from the northern province of Sar-e Pul. It was a seminal event in Afghanistan where violated women are socially annhiliated by rape.

Friba, a spokeswoman for RAWA (The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) – an organisation that profiles and publicises human rights atrocities – told me that there were no reliable statistics available on rapes in Afghanistan: “Because first rape usually goes unnoticed and in most cases the victim and families try to keep silent because they think if the case is made public, it will be a “shame for the family”. We have cases where the rape victim has been killed by guardians to “keep their honor” in society.

“We have seen rare cases where rapists were prosecuted . . . . but most of the rapists are warlords and powerful men that Afghanistan’s corrupt and rotten system can’t bring to justice. And unfortunately, due to backward tradition in Afghanistan, a rapist does not feel any shame and many of them proudly announce that they raped a girl or a boy, but again the rape victim is regarded with shame in the society. And if they file a case against the rapist, they will be victims in the court too and the powerful rapists may pressure them to keep silent.

“Even more tragically you can find women in Afghan prisons who have been raped and then arrested and charged for committing ‘Zena’ (”adultery”), while the actual rapists are free. And many imprisoned women are raped while in custody.

“Last year, two sons of a powerful warlord in Helmand province, raped a small boy and also filmed their savage act, then they proudly released their film in public, although the family of the boy filed a case and raised their voice for justice, but no action was taken against the rapists because their father is a warlord and their mother (Bibi Laeiqa) is a member of Provincial Council of Helmand.”

When I told her about the wedding of Joya’s bodyguard and his sweetheart she was incredulous. “We have never heard of any rape victim ‘make a full recovery and marry’. Especially those whose cases are public, their entire life is bleak and we have examples where the victims commit suicide.”

The wedding that Joya facilitated was a rare beacon of hope for women whose fate once featured so prominently in talk of Millennium Development Goals for Afghanistan. Roshan was also one of the guests. She said later “This wedding was special and I applaud what the bodyguard did. Really, Faramarz is a hero because here in Afghanistan no-one marries a raped girl. This does not come from the Koran, its just a tradition – people think that women are second-hand if they have been raped and we must struggle to change this view.”

The weight of prejudice is oppressive. How can attitudes be changed? Roshan’s interpreter says “It is only possible with positive attitudes, coming from politicians, and the provision of education. Things are a little better in Kabul, better than in Kandahar, Helmand and Farah; they are the most conservative provinces.”
Roshan believes there are ‘good laws’ for dealing with rape, and in theory married men who commit rape attract even more even more severe punishments. “The problem is that there is no implementation” she shrugs.

Joya’s critics will probably dismiss the wedding she brokered as a publicity stunt, but to was clear to everyone who attended the ceremony, and spent time with the couple in the days following their marriage, that the only thing Joya ‘arranged’ were the formalities and logistics.

The bride and groom were obviously in love. A handsome, and immediately likeable man, Faramarz is one of Joya’s most loyal bodyguards and clearly has great admiration for her. He described his new bride as “a victim, a holy girl, a wholly innocent young woman”. When she agreed to marry him he recalled “I was so happy I didn’t know whether I was in the clouds or on the earth”.

As he led his bride out of her parents house, on the day of their marriage, the sun momentarily blinded him. As he blinked, our eyes locked, and he gave me a smile of pure happiness.

YouTube video still records the days after his bride’s assault. Abducted by eight men, she was gang raped and marked for death. She escaped and her family tried repeatedly to get justice. In the byzantine ways of ‘Absurdistan’ her father ended up being arrested for bringing the reputation of a powerful local businessman into disrepute. The family now live in safety – and grinding poverty – in a suburb of Kabul.

That this is a familiar tale, eliciting no more than sighs and shrugs in some quarters, is an outrage.

Roshan and Joya are iconoclasts – brave individuals who want to appeal directly to the people of the international community who have become stakeholders in their destiny. Roshan said “My message to the people of the USA and UK is that we are not such conservative or people; if our own people can provide security, in my village for example, all the men and women will allow their sons and daughters to go to school.”

Joya is a self-confessed ‘secular moslem’ who sees education as the key to liberation of Afghanistan’s women. After the wedding she translated for me as Faramarz explained that one of his hopes for his new bride was to get some proper schooling. “Education is the best revenge on those cruel, evil men who hurt her” he says. “ And I will help her. "

*In the run up to the Kabul Conference on 20 June women are battling to get a voice, wider represenation and a guarantee that five key issues of development ( higher education, employment, leadership/management, agriculture and security) are both on the agenda and addressed. At the request of organiser Dr Ashraf Ghani a group led by activist Palwasha Hassan of wrote: “The Kabul Conference is an occasion for the Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to reconfirm its commitments to its people and realign its development priorities to their needs. Women’s civil society groups in Afghanistan have always contributed to these discussions by clarifying the needs and concerns of women who constitute over 48% of the population. The aim of this document is to urge the Kabul Conference to contribute to the empowerment of women through enabling immediate implementation of commitments that the government has already made in various policy documents such as the Constitution of Afghanistan, the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, the National Action Plan for Women in Afghanistan, the Millennium Development Goals reports and the Communiqué of the London Conference among others.”

The paper concludes with a positive suggestion: “Select at least three hundred to five hundred of the brightest girls in Afghanistan and invest in their education overseas in various fields such as foreign diplomacy, agriculture, medicine, engineering, civil service, natural resource and mines management, etc. This way, the country will be sure to have at least 300 top notch professionals to fuel the growth of this country. This kind of program, in fact, should continue over a period of 15 years until such time that the country has a critical mass of young women who could lead the country.”

Just days before the conference Dr Vic Getz, a sociologist and gender adviser based in Kabul, asked the question on everyone’s lips – “Where are the women? “ And she added “There has been zero gender analysis in or attention to women’s voices in the preparations for the Conference.

FOOTNOTES:Kandahar’s SurgarWeekly recently reported: “In the first quarter of 2010, 44 cases of violence against women have been reported in Kandahar, which shows an increase in the violence against women in the same period last year.


Rolling Stone, in the now infamous McChrystal feature, quotes Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan: ”Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem. A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we’re picking winners and losers” – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that 
President Obama studiously avoids using the word “victory” when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible.”