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Fawzia Koofi, an Afghan politician, women’s rights activist, and former vice president of the National Assembly, speaks to Rudaw in the Afghan capital Kabul, September 2019. Photo: Hassan Nikzad / Rudaw
Fawzia Koofi, an Afghan politician, women’s rights activist, and former vice president of the National Assembly, participated in the preliminary inter-Afghan peace process this summer.
Speaking to Rudaw English correspondent Robert Edwards in the Afghan capital Kabul in early September, Koofi describes her discomfort at coming face-to-face with the Taliban for the first time since the group was forced from power and shares her thoughts on the prospects for peace.
Koofi, author of the New York Times bestseller The Favored Daughter, says Afghan women are already an oppressed group in society and therefore have little else to sacrifice in the name of making peace with the Taliban.
Click here to watch Rudaw’s feature length documentary – Afghanistan: The Missing Peace
Rudaw: Have women’s rights been ignored in the peace talks?
Fawzia Koofi: Well, naturally in the talks with the Taliban, the expectation is not to prioritise women’s rights. Given the experience of living under Taliban and given the experience of Taliban government, horrible oppression of women, we don’t expect that the priority would be women’s rights. That being said, I think right now we understand that the United States is discussing its kind of own issues with the Taliban, which definitely women’s rights is not one of the issues. We would have hoped that this would be because many people in Afghanistan regard the international community presence as being closely linked with the women of Afghanistan’s liberty post-2001. So there is a price we have paid for this partnership with the international community, and therefore we were hoping that there would be a priority given to the women of Afghanistan in these talks. Not yet, as the Americans are talking. We are hoping that this will be during the inter-Afghan talks.
What was it like being in the room with the Taliban? Do you think they have changed in the past 18 years?
To sit in one room with the Taliban and to face them for the first time after the government has fallen in Afghanistan was not an easy experience. Every woman who lived in Afghanistan paid the price of Taliban government. Personally, they have stopped education for me and many other women, they put my husband in jail, I have seen women who were beaten up in front of my eyes, I have seen horrible things happen. So every Afghan in Afghanistan remembers those memories. And to therefore go with those memories and face the Taliban is not a nice moment. It is not a pleasant atmosphere, and it was not a pleasant atmosphere for me when I first saw them because what happened was the whole, everything that I actually went through during Taliban kind of crossed my mind. Not only actually during Taliban, but also what happened afterwards, you know, the suicide bombings that they commit, the civilian casualties. They actually attacked me after that too, militarily. They attacked my convoy of cars and my security was injured. So everything all came together. But above all their mentality towards women. At the end of the day I believe that we have to talk because there is no war you can win with war. You have to win war with peace. And then you have to talk because you have to end this bloodshed. And the people of Afghanistan expect that. So it is probably different to meet those who are in Qatar or in Moscow and face them as opposed to those who are fighting underground every day, killing our soldiers, killing the innocent people. It will be probably much more difficult to face them and to be there to see their reintegration into the society.
Should women be expected to sacrifice some of their rights in exchange for peace with the Taliban?
Well, already women of Afghanistan are suffering. It is a country where it has the worst kind of indicators for women. As a mother it’s the worst country to be a mother. If you look at all the indicators it has the lowest literacy rate for women, it has the lowest economy for women. So already we are an oppressed country for women. How much more shall we compromise? And I don’t think it’s realistic and it shall also be logical to expect women to give up – we don’t have enough to give. We are already a country which, you know, women of Afghanistan, although they have enjoyed liberty posts-2001, they have enjoyed exercising politics and social affairs, going to school, they had the freedom to attend gatherings and to be part of the progress of Afghanistan and part of the new Afghanistan. But still, if you compare this to the Afghanistan with even regional countries, still we are so far to reach them. And therefore, I don’t think it’s a realistic expectation to expect the women of Afghanistan to give more.
Has the post-2001 Afghan government done enough to promote female participation and leadership? Have women and girls in rural and working class communities seen any improvement since the Taliban fell? Is it just the urban elite who have benefited under the democratic government?
Well, the nowadays situation is nothing to compare with Taliban government or Taliban time. We have had progress. Afghanistan today has transformed. Women are part of the transformation. It is not just women in urban areas, in the cities, you go to the rural areas. As a representative I have been to the very remote areas of Afghanistan and I have seen that women and men come to ask for a school for their girls in those remote villages, which probably previously, 30 years back or 40 years back when my father first established a school in that village, people would not allow their boys to go to school. But now people from the same community come and ask me for a school for their girls. So there has been progress, and nothing to compare to what we have experienced under the Taliban. It is in the meantime true that there is a discrepancy of urban life and rural life. If you go to rural Afghanistan there is still the impact of culture and tradition, and wrong aspects of tradition, violence against women, still you have young girls who don’t go to school. In fact I went to a place yesterday, maybe just a few miles away from Kabul, young girls, the families would not allow them to go to school. So it is true that Afghanistan today is still living in a very diverse society, cities have a different kind of life, different expectations, women of cities are more progressive probably, you go to the villages the expectations are different. That being said, I think nobody, including the ones that are in the villages, they don’t want to go back to the Taliban time government. Yes they are suffering, there are shortcomings, the resources have not been equally distributed, there is a problem with education, quality of education, poverty, violence, lack of rule of law, culture of impunity, people commit crimes, the woman is put in prison, the man runs away – all of those problems exist. But there is a hope that one day this will be fixed. Something that did not exist during the Taliban.
Why has the Taliban reemerged with such strength? What could have been done differently to prevent this?
I think after 2001, when the Taliban government was removed from power, there was no such expectation that the Taliban could come back. The first mistake was I think when the American’s went to Iraq. Afghanistan became a forgotten war, not any more in the priority of the world agenda. This was the first problem or the first mistake. In the meantime I think those countries who are the source of supporting terrorism, and there is enough evidence that the world could pressurise them, that the world could have been more harder to them, especially after Osama bin Laden was killed, there could have been much more stronger measures to make sure that these countries in the region fulfil their commitments in the war on terror. But they did not and the international pressure was not enough. I think that was another problem. Internally also I think that many of these international forces placed themselves in the villages of Afghanistan instead of fighting a strategic war. They actually went to the villages and committed mistakes, which resulted in people starting to not like them anymore. The government also, I think there were problems in terms of corruption, lack of service delivery, a lot of social division, political exclusion. All of this resulted, injustice I would say, lack of rule of law, or at least weak implementation of laws. I have seen cases in at least my constituency where people just prefer to join the Taliban because they did not receive enough attention and enough support in a case where they were supposed to receive justice. So all of this I think got together and then paved the way for the Taliban to reemerge, I would say.
Do you predict a return to civil war if the international community loses interest again?
It could be if, it could be a real danger for Afghanistan to repeat the history of 1992 and 1993 if a few things happen. First of all if the international community decides to look at the situation as an Afghan internal war, which it is not an internal war. Afghanistan, not only Taliban are the only military extremist group, but there are other military extremist groups including Daesh, Al-Qaeda still exist, there are other regional, especially Central Asian networks including IMU and others who are actually operating in Afghanistan – not from Afghanistan but in Afghanistan – probably operating from somewhere else, but with their linkages to Afghanistan. So in a peace deal with the Americans and the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the expectation is not to 100 percent have peace and stability in Afghanistan. We’re expecting to minimise the violence, not to 100 percent have a peaceful Afghanistan, because of the reasons that I mentioned. That being said, I think it would be a mistake if the international community completely withdraws from Afghanistan, and I say this because we have a partnership with the United States and with NATO. The partnership started when the US was attacked, not when Afghanistan was attacked. Right? So this was the time when Americans came to Afghanistan, when the 11th of September attack happened. And therefore they came to protect their own territory, not because there was a problem in Afghanistan. Before that we were kind of shouting that we are a victim of terrorism, international terrorism. Everybody looked at the Afghanistan war as a civil war. Once again we are on the eve of repeating that part of the history. I hope it does not happen. I hope the international community carefully respects this relationship, the partnership with Afghanistan. The partnership is we are partner with this war on terror, and they have to respect this and then continue to support us on this.
Are you optimistic about peace? Attacks have continued and the Taliban believe they have won.
Naturally the people of Afghanistan have always been optimistic. I remember during Taliban when I looked from the window of my house to the streets of Kabul, I could not see in five minutes one car passing the street because there was no life basically. We were optimistic then. Not that all this progress has happened, of course we are optimistic. However, we are carefully optimistic about this peace process because the level of civilian casualties that happened in the past months, basically this leaves no reason for us to give to the people that, you know, we’re going to bring peace to you. Whenever there is an attack, my daughters keep asking me why are you going to meet Taliban if they commit this? So you see, these kind of questions from my own daughters, now can you imagine how the public think about this process? So I think for Taliban to, I think the Taliban are strategically doing this because they want to demonstrate that they have gained and they have won, and anyway they are the winner because the Americans are leaving, that’s what they think, probably. But from my perspective, that’s not the way they can win, because they have to win the hearts of people. They have to win the love of people. They have to win, that they participate in elections, that they win through democracy. Right? So that way, I think by killing more people you cannot win because not only that they win but people sometimes start questioning our faith in this process like why we are attending such kind of processes and even the Americans and our partners. I think for them it was important for the Taliban to do some trust building measures and one of the trust building measures was probably for them to reduce the civilian casualties. In fact this is something we have agreed in Doha. In Doha, I was part of the drafting committee of the declaration. We have drafted this declaration jointly. We sat with the Taliban for 14 hours or more than that, jointly drafted this declaration. We have argued and agreed on every word. One of the main things people were hopeful and happy about was their promise that they will minimise the attacks on big cities and on civilians. But when we returned to Afghanistan they actually went the other way around and you see more people are being killed now. And they claim they have killed foreigners. With the foreigners they are talking with actually. They are not yet talking to the Afghans officially but with the foreigners that they are talking they claimed that they killed foreigners. In any case it’s a very complex situation right now, people are very hopeless, but we are still in the meantime optimistic that this peace will benefit the people of Afghanistan. We need to put really this long lasting bloodshed, some of us are born and grown up in the war. I think the people of Afghanistan deserve some level of prosperous and peaceful life.
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