Fawzia Koofi Spotlights the “Empowered Women” of Afghanistan
By Elaine Pasquini
Photo by Phil Pasquini

Washington: Afghan women’s rights advocate Fawzi Koofi, a former Afghan parliamentary lawmaker who is currently a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), addressed the current situation in Afghanistan with Daniel Runde, senior vice president at CSIS, on October 7.

With the US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan 14 months ago and interest in the entire region waning among many Americans, Koofi expressed concern that “if we don’t keep the attention on Afghanistan, the world’s global security might be at risk.”

Runde also stressed the importance of the US remaining engaged, “because, if we leave, we may have to at some point…be forced to re-engage in Afghanistan in ways we don’t really want to.”

Having physically left the region, the leverage of the US and Europe is decreasing every day, because “the Taliban have now learned how to maneuver the regional politics,” she said.

In addition, the Taliban have new allies. Russia was the first country to open an embassy in Kabul and accept the credentials of a Taliban diplomat. China has many economic interests in Afghanistan, including its mineral resources.

Uzbekistan hosted an economic conference in July which heightened Koofi’s fear that once the Taliban start bilateral relationships with the other Central Asian countries, the US will lose its leverage. “These are potential substitutes for the US and Europe,” she pointed out.

One advantage for the US is that the Taliban are not united. The group is divided among the Durranis who were in the Taliban’s political office in Doha, another group in Kandahar led by Mullah Habibullah Akhundzada who do not believe in girls’ education as they consider it to be against their religion, and the Haqqani branch “which portray themselves as progressive but I don’t think they mean it because they want to really have a good relationship with the world,” she said. “They want to whitewash their faces, so they want to say what the world wants to hear.”

In addition, Koofi argued, the US still has leverage in the form of the Afghan people who believe in a different Afghanistan. “The women of Afghanistan could be your partner,” she said. “Don’t regard the women of Afghanistan just as victims and survivors. Regard them as your partners because they are empowered women. Act in solidarity with the women in Afghanistan.”

She also urged the US “to look beyond the humanitarian issue, beyond the political situation. Your other leverage is to work with the region.”

In 2005, Koofi was elected to the Wolesi Jirga (Council of People) as the representative  from her native Badakhshan province . She entered politics, she explained, because she wanted to tell the Taliban: “The country is a transformed Afghanistan. It is not the same country they took over in 1996.”

Addressing Runde’s concern that girls are not allowed to continue their education after the sixth grade, Koofi posited that this issue is just one of hundreds of challenges the people of Afghanistan face today. “But the fact that girls don’t go to school explains the ecosystem of how women are living in Afghanistan,” she added. “It is a clear benchmark of oppression and gender apartheid. Women don’t go to school and ultimately they don’t go to work.”

A recent UN study reported that barring women from the workplace has impacted Afghanistan’s economy by $5 billion at a time when the country can least afford it as more than 23 million Afghans are facing severe poverty.

According to the Qur’an, education is a fundamental right for both men and women. Qatar, for example, even has 12 percent more female students than boys, she noted. And women’s education is a fundamental right of every female citizen of Pakistan.

The Taliban narrative on education is not Islamic, and it is going to create further Islamophobia, Koofi said. Member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) have an immense responsibility to counter this narrative, “and their silence is frustrating for the people of Afghanistan.”

Koofi pointed out that Afghanistan’s civil and penal codes are based on Egypt’s, but the Taliban abolished them, saying they were “anti-Islamic, but I think in many ways the Taliban’s beliefs are in contradiction with Islam. I think the role of actual Islamic scholars is very important and that they counter this narrative. I think the OIC must be vocal on this.”

On the subject of what a peaceful Afghanistan would look like, Koofi said it is a “peaceful, prosperous Afghanistan where every human being will be regarded as a human being, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, color or race.” The people of Afghanistan still want democracy, she stated. “We really need to get serious about the business of bringing constitutional order, rule of law back to Afghanistan.”

“The new history of Afghanistan will be written by the women of Afghanistan, because they are in the forefront of standing against oppression,” Koofi said in conclusion. “Women are asking for a better Afghanistan, which is a seed we cultivated over the last 20 years that we see now is growing. My plea to the world is let’s continue to help them achieve a better Afghanistan. We want our basic fundamental rights – to go to school, to work and the right to have a say in the future of our country and live in a society which is equal.”

(Elaine Pasquini is a freelance journalist. Her reports appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.Ink.)