[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 162 (Wednesday, November 28, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H8554-H8555]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               THE FUTURE OF WOMEN LEADERS IN AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Jeff Miller of Florida). Under a 
previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Millender-McDonald) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. Mr. Speaker, a number of my colleagues rose 
on the floor to speak to the critical issue of women in Afghanistan and 
their needs during these perilous times. As Democratic chair of the 
Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues, I wish to add my voice in 
support of their excellent intervention.
  The Women's Caucus has been stressing for some time now that, in 
working out any transitional settlement in Afghanistan, Afghan women 
leaders and organizations should be at the forefront of all 
discussions.
  We must recall, in 1977, the women of that country made up 15 percent 
of the legislators in their legislative body. There is no reason that 
their representation should be less than that today when new and far-
reaching decisions on governance are being made.
  In light of the fact that so many Afghan men have been killed over 
the past 22 years in war and conflict, Afghan women constitute 60 
percent of the women's population and should be so represented 
accordingly.
  We must work, therefore, to help restore the women's level of 
participation in the rebirth of Afghanistan. As they strive both inside 
the country and outside to contribute toward shaping a meaningful 
future, we must demonstrate our resolve to help those Afghan women 
leaders to be involved in all political and economic negotiations from 
the very beginning.
  This is why it was distressing to note the absence of Afghan women's 
groups at the U.N.-sponsored conference held this past week in Bonn. 
They should be viewed, I believe, as principal actors in Afghan 
political negotiations from the outset, not as marginal leaders and 
players to be brought in to rubber stamp decisions.
  As the Afghan journalist Jamila Mujahed pointed out in an article in 
Sunday's Washington Post, ``This is very unfortunate that they have not 
invited women to join this meeting. No one has experienced such 
brutality against women anywhere in the world as what happened in 
Afghanistan. I want to go and tell everyone the things that happened to 
me and my colleagues these past 5 years.''
  Mr. Speaker, I will submit the entire article for the Record.

               [From the Washington Post, Nov. 25, 2001]

            In Talks on Afghan Future, Women Aren't Present

                         (By Keith B. Richburg)

       Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov. 24.--In her 16 years as a 
     professional radio broadcaster, Jamila Mujahed has been at 
     her microphone for some of the city's most memorable news 
     events: the toppling of President Najibullah in 1992 and the 
     march of Islamic holy warriors into the capital, and, four 
     years later, the arrival of the Taliban.
       So it seemed only fitting that when the Taliban fled and 
     the Northern Alliance arrived on Nov. 13, it was Mujahed who 
     brought Afghans the news on the evening broadcast of Radio 
     Kabul.
       Now Mujahed has another very public message, one aimed at 
     U.N. officials and German diplomats organizing the Afghan 
     political conference scheduled to begin in Germany on 
     Tuesday: Open the meeting to professional women like herself, 
     and give women a say in shaping Afghanistan's future.
       ``This is very unfortunate that they have not invited women 
     to join this meeting,'' she said. ``No one has experienced 
     such brutality against women anywhere in the world as what 
     happened in Afghanistan. I want to go and tell everyone the 
     things that happened to me and my colleagues these past five 
     years.''
       The meeting in Bonn is being hailed as a first step toward 
     ending decades of civil strife and helping Afghanistan's 
     warring factions form a truly representative and broad-based 
     government. Representatives of several Afghan factions will 
     try to hammer out plans for an interim government to replace 
     the Taliban and prevent the country from descending into 
     anarchy.
       But many Afghans here--not only women, but also 
     professionals, academics and others--are chafing at the 
     highly restricted invitation list.
       The Northern Alliance, the armed anti-Taliban faction that 
     seized control of Kabul and about half the country during the 
     past two weeks, is the only group from inside Afghanistan 
     that is attending the Bonn conference. A delegation 
     representing Afghanistan's former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, 
     will be attending from Rome, where he has been in exile since 
     1973. And two other groups that have held political talks in 
     the past--the Peshawar Assembly for Peace, named after the 
     Pakistani border city, and the Cyprus group--also will 
     attend. In all, just 30 Afghans will meet to begin mapping 
     out the country's future.
       In the view of many left on the outside looking in, 
     whatever government eventually emerges from the process will 
     be neither representative nor broad-based. ``It will be a 
     less-than-50-percent government,'' said Sariya Parlika, a 
     women's rights activist. Excluding female representatives in 
     Bonn, she said, ``is a clear human rights violation.''
       ``This is only the gun barrel that is sending 
     representatives,'' said Said Amin Mujahed, a history 
     professor at the Academy of Social Sciences in Kabul and the 
     husband of Jamila Mujahed. ``It's not the scholars or the 
     professionals or the other educated people in Afghanistan. 
     It's only the war factions and King Zahir's people. It 
     can make a government, but not a broad-based one.''
       The United Nations is sensitive to such criticism but says 
     the makeup of the conference is for Afghans to decide.
       At a recent news conference, U.N. special envoy Francesc 
     Vendrell said, ``This meeting will be as representative as we 
     can make it, given the very short notice.'' When asked about 
     the participation of women, he said it was up to the invited 
     groups to include women as part of their delegations--and not 
     up to the United Nations ``to tell the Afghans who to 
     invite.''
       Today, U.N. spokesman Eric Falt told reporters, ``The women 
     of Afghanistan . . . have a central role to play in the 
     country's future.'' He said the Bonn meeting would 
     demonstrate ``how much our encouragement to include women in 
     the delegation has been listened to.''
       Even if women are present at the Bonn meeting, no one 
     expects the number to come close to representing their 
     percentage of the Afghan population. Because of the large 
     number of men killed in two decades of war, women make up 
     about 60 percent of Afghanistan's 26 million people, 
     according to most estimates.
       ``I think women should have more of a role than men,'' said 
     Faizullah Jalal, a Kabul University professor who has pressed 
     for the inclusion of academics at the conference. ``They have 
     faced a lot of disasters in this country.''
       Women have long been treated as second-class citizens in 
     this conservative Muslim country, but the Taliban stripped 
     women of the few rights they did have. After coming to power 
     in 1996, the radical Islamic movement prohibited women from 
     working, banned girls from attending school and made it 
     illegal for women to be on the streets without a male 
     relative and without being covered head-to-toe in the 
     traditional long, flowing veil known as a burqa. Women caught 
     violating the rules--even allowing an ankle to accidentally 
     show--risked a public lashing by Taliban guardians of ``vice 
     and virtue.''
       Just before the Taliban took over, 70 percent of 
     Afghanistan's teachers, half of its government workers and 40 
     percent of its physicians were women. There were female 
     lawyers, doctors and journalists, and women helped staff the 
     foreign relief agencies working here.
       Jamila Mujahed, now 36, was among those caught up in the 
     Taliban's reordering of society. A journalism graduate of 
     Kabul University and a veteran broadcaster, she was abruptly 
     told by the Taliban that she could no longer work because of 
     her sex.
       ``We were used to being very free women,'' she said, 
     describing how she and her colleagues in the pre-Taliban 
     world would remain at the station until late at night working 
     on big stories. ``How do you feel, changing to a world where 
     you have no freedom? These five years caused a lot of 
     psychiatric problems for me.''
       She stayed at home. She wrote poetry. She said she 
     sometimes took her anger out on her children, hitting them. 
     When she sought professional help, she said, doctors told her 
     ``the only medicine they could prescribe was going back to 
     your job.''
       after facing those hardships, women like Mjuahed say they 
     deserve a place at the table in forming Afghanistan's next 
     government.
       Particularly upsetting, to the women and others, is that so 
     many Afghan exiles will be attending the sessions while so 
     many who stayed in Afghanistan and suffered under Taliban 
     rule will be excluded.
       ``The presence of women from Afghanistan is necessary,'' 
     said Parlika, the activist. ``Afghan women from Western 
     countries can just tell tales about what a bullet can do. A 
     woman from inside the country can express it with her eyes. 
     She can express it with her body. She can express with her 
     voice how the war has affected her.''

  While it was left to the Afghani groups to decide on participation at 
the Bonn meeting, the U.N. agreed that the women of Afghanistan have a 
central role to play in putting that country back together. The future 
of women in Afghanistan, and ultimately the stability of any 
provisional settlement, will rest upon a foundation of inclusion, not 
exclusion.
  Therefore, America, so often viewed as a beacon of freedom and human

[[Page H8555]]

rights throughout the world, must ensure that the rights and freedoms 
denied to Afghan women for so long are restored as soon as possible.
  In my national address this past weekend on behalf of the Democratic 
Caucus, I pointed out that we must strongly support the funding for 
resettlement and humanitarian efforts to aid Afghan women. We are at a 
crossroads, Mr. Speaker, since we have reached a stage of military 
advantage that few of us expected to reach so quickly. We must find 
common ground to push ahead to support reconstruction at the same time 
that the military actions are being concluded.
  The women Members of the House of Representatives are working with 
the U.N. women ambassadors and women's NGOs toward this purpose. We 
will continue to hold meetings and briefings to give public exposure to 
all of the concerns I mentioned above. Several of us, as I did on 
November 15, have introduced bills to authorize the provision of 
educational and health care assistance to women and children of 
Afghanistan. My bill, H.R. 3304, has been referred to the Committee on 
International Relations and awaits a full hearing.
  Let me say emphatically, we cannot afford to exclude more than half 
of Afghanistan's population in helping to bring about an interim 
settlement and peaceful resolution to this troubled country. Afghan 
women must be assured of their basic human rights once more; to gain 
access to safe drinking water and sufficient food; to receive decent 
health and maternal care; and foremost, to again move freely in their 
society without being subjected to harassment and abuse. Above all, 
they must be allowed to practice their religious beliefs as Islamic 
women, veiled or unveiled, without retribution.
  I urge all of us to help these women in Afghanistan regain the basic 
freedom and freedoms we so cherish as a people. I urge us as Members of 
the House to join together to forge a comprehensive package of 
assistance that can help achieve the important objectives being sought 
by Afghanis for goodwill everywhere.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, there is an old African saying that women hold 
up half of the sky. We must do our utmost, therefore, to ensure that 
the women of Afghanistan resume their part of this equation and help 
hold up half of the sky. To do less would imperil all of us in the 
pursuit of democratic governance and the well-being of a global 
community. Helping Afghan women to regain their rightful place of 
national life is one of the best ways I know to combat terrorism in 
Afghanistan, and on behalf of the American women and people of America, 
let us begin the rebuilding today.

                          ____________________