Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) Testimony to
the U.S. House Of Representatives Committee on International
Relations, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, October
31, 2001
The basics of Afghanistan’s situation have become
more known in the past weeks, in the U.S. and across the world. After years of
neglect, the desperate situation of the Afghan people is receiving much needed
attention. However, the people’s voices are rarely heard, and are at risk of
being drowned out entirely by the horrific crash of war and global geo-politics.
Formed in 1977, the Revolutionary Association of the
Women of Afghanistan is the oldest women’s humanitarian and political
organization in Afghanistan. Based inside Afghanistan and in neighboring
Pakistan, RAWA is an independent, all-volunteer, non-violent organization
calling for multilateral disarmament and the establishment of a secular
democratic government in which women may once again participate fully in public
life. Currently, RAWA provides refugee relief, underground medical care and
education, income-generating projects, orphanages, documentation of Taliban and
other Jehadis’ atrocities, protest demonstrations and events, and other
initiatives in both countries. RAWA members in Afghanistan have stayed to
continue our work during many past crises, and we remain there today.
RAWA’s work is also aimed toward giving voice to our
downtrodden people, especially the women -- and empowering women and men not to
forget that they we all deserve human rights and freedoms and to look towards
a day when the guns and rockets will stop and we can begin to rebuild.
The current humanitarian situation is grave, and being
made worse each day by the continued fighting, the US bombing, and the
destruction and fear both continue to cause. Winter is coming and starving
people are, of necessity, fluid in their alliances.
The political situation is made ever more precarious by
what some Afghans perceive to be US aggression against our country and our
civilians, even as we cheer the possibility of the Taliban’s demise. And,
continued and increasing foreign assistance to the reviled Northern Alliance has
plunged our people into a horrific anxiety and fear of re-experiencing the
dreadful years of the Jehadis’ “emirate” of the 1990’s. In the words of one
refugee in Peshawar (Sept 25th of this year), many many of the people say that,
“ All of them, Taliban and Taliban opposition, are criminals, and we don’t want
them ruling Afghanistan. For the past 20 years they have all given the people
only bullets instead of food and graves instead of houses.”
The Afghan people want what any people on this earth
would want the cessation of wanton violence and establishment of basic
stability so that we may re-establish civil society. What is going on now, and
has for decades, is NOT our religion, our culture, nor our traditions it is an
abomination of Islam and all other peaceful religions, and a violation of our
people who are being held hostage by fanatics. As another long-time Afghan
refugee said this October, “the people of Afghanistan want peace, security, and
the opportunity to rebuild under a government established by legitimate
elections where the people vote without a gun to their heads. “
RAWA sees the former king, Zahir Shah, as a viable
non-monarchical central figure around which an interim government could form.
However, if he comes to the scene while relying on the Northern Alliance and
so-called “moderate” Taliban elements, he will not only betray his reputation
among the Afghan people, but will also undermine the stability and viability of
whatever structure he forms.
So many of those now involved in what has come to be
called the Northern Alliance have the blood of our beloved people on their
hands, as of course do the Taliban. Their sustained atrocities have been well
documented by independent international human rights organizations such as
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and others. Those in the Taliban
and the Northern Alliance have also proved themselves to be incompetent and
corrupt as governing forces. Our people have not forgotten the years after the
collapse of the Soviet puppet regime of Najib the most horrible years of
terrorism and unchastity1,2 and as well we don’t forget the time not so long ago
when the Jehadis’ themselves were the cheap servants of Abdullah Ezam and Osama
bin Laden as the Taliban are today.
Currently, RAWA and many other Afghans fear that the
“Northern Alliance” groups now lie in ambush, waiting to ride the guns of the US
into Kabul and working to gain western backing to establish their second
“emirate.” They have yet to prove, or even to offer, a single shred of reason
or credible evidence suggesting that they would not repeat their prior
atrocities.
In its 1995 report on the Mujahadeen wars that followed
the Soviet withdrawal, Amnesty International1 documented that “Thousands of
unarmed civilian women have been killed by unexpected and deliberate artillery
attaches on their homes…They have been blown up or hit by rockets or bullets
while walking in the streets, waiting at bus stops, working in their houses, or
sheltering in large buildings. Many have died or been injured in attacks aimed
at mosques, schools, and hospitals. These attacks were justified on the grounds
of fighting rival groups, but the nature of the attacks, especially on
residential buildings, revealed a deliberate policy of terror by the Mujahadeen
against Afghans.”
In addition, Mujahadeen forces, armed and trained by
the US and other governments and now part of the Taliban and the Northern
Alliance, waged a brutal war against women, using rape, torture, abduction, and
forced marriage as their weapons. Many women committed suicide during this
period as their only escape. Given their past record, we see no possibility
that any of these Jehadis will change their nature.
Therefore, any U.S., “Rome process,” or multi-lateral
initiatives to establish a broad-based government must exclude all Taliban and
other criminal Jehadi factions from political power, unless and until a specific
faction or person has been absolved of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Else the people will again be plunged into the living hell that engulfed our
country from 1992-1996 under elements now involved in the Northern Alliance and
continues to the present under the Taliban and other factions.
RAWA, on behalf of more than half of the population of
Afghanistan, also must insist that any Loya Jirga or interim-government
development process is not legitimate unless it includes and heeds women’s
voices from beginning to end in substantial and meaningful ways. We ask the
unequivocal support of the US and other democracy- and justice-loving countries
for this and our other standpoints.
Afghanistan of course needs substantial help from the
international community, but we cannot tolerate external control, and even
starving Afghans will resist foreign domination. RAWA as an organization does
support the intervention of a multi-national UN or other peacekeeping force to
assist in disarming the warring factions, establishing basic securities, and
setting the stage for the establishment of an interim government.
We know that such an interim government will likely
fall short of democracy, and we strongly insist that the world community assist
our people in making certain that such an interim government is only that a
temporary stepping stone towards full establishment of citizenship rights
including equal rights for women in all spheres -- and democracy in a new
Afghan constitution and governmental structure.
Based on historical evidence, we gravely fear that
continuation of the US attacks and the resulting civilian lives lost give
excuses to the Taliban and Northern Alliance to wage war, and will also empower
and embolden fundamentalist forces in the region and across the world
endangering not only Afghans, but further American lives, and the citizens of
many countries.
After the horrific terrorist attacks of Sept 11th here
in the US, Afghans and Americans, like too many other peoples across the globe,
share a common experience of living under the rule of fear and death. Let us
make the best of this tragic commonality: Join us in advocating for U.S. and
international policies and initiatives that will…
- help build a lasting peace in our country,
- re-establish internationally recognized human rights for the women,
children and men of Afghanistan,
- pave the way directly to a secular, broad-based, democratic government
welcoming to all who are innocent of crimes against our people, and
- bring all fundamentalist and other terrorists to justice under the rule of
international law.
Thank you.
RAWA
References----------------------------------------
1. Women in Afghanistan: a human rights catastrophe, Amnesty International
report, London, 1995. AI Index: ASA 11/03/95.
2. RAWA. Marginalised Women: Documentation on Refugee Women and Women in
Situations of Armed Conflict. A publication of the Asian and Pacific Development
Center, 2000
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