National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #37-01 Beyond the Burqa: The Taliban, Women and the C.I.A.
September 12, 2001

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2001/3701.html

Stephanie Welch: The information provided in this edition of Making Contact is relevant to current allegations against Osama bin Laden, and discussions about Afghanistan. This program's guests were interviewed, and the show was produced before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

This week on Making Contact.... Afghanistan is a country devastated by many years of war, a serious drought, and the dictatorial rule of the Taliban, a group that claims to be bringing the country back to the purity of Islam. Women are suffering most as a result. On this program we take a look at U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, and at how Afghan women are dealing with rule under the Taliban.

I'm Stephanie Welch -- your host this week on a special Women's Desk edition of Making Contact -- an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information...

During the Reagan administration in the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency ran covert operations in countries all over the world -- operations that involved assassinations, arms deals and drug-running. The C.I.A. also trained mercenary armies to overthrow governments it deemed unfriendly to U.S. corporate and military interests. One of the largest and most expensive covert operations involved Afghanistan.

Like many countries, Afghanistan was a battleground in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Bordering the USSR as well as Iran and Pakistan, it was an important area of conflict between the two superpowers. The Soviet Union feared the growing influence of what it viewed as anti-Communist Islamic Fundamentalism, which was spreading to Afghanistan from Pakistan. To stamp out this threat, the USSR used its troops to overthrow Afghan president Hafizullah Amin, who they charged was a C.I.A. agent.

Wayne Madsen is a senior fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., and deals with intelligence and military issues. He says the C.I.A. was involved months before the Soviet occupation, training Islamic fundamentalist Afghan exiles at the southern border, in Pakistan.

Wayne Madsen: Well basically what the United States was doing was involving itself in what ostensibly became a civil war in Afghanistan. We were trying to overthrow the Soviet-backed regime, which was highly secular, many of them called themselves communists. So, therefore the C.I.A. and the United States starting in the Reagan administration began backing Islamic fundamentalists. There were very many different groups involved, there were fundamentalists who were fairly moderate. But it turns out that the groups that the C.I.A. was backing were the people who are now the Taliban, for the most part.

Stephanie Welch: The Taliban was the most well-funded group among the many Mujahadeen rebels, or "holy warriors." Madsen says the C.I.A. joined Pakistan in training the rebel forces to fight the Soviet occupation, and assisted the rebels' distribution of heroin to fund their efforts.

Wayne Madsen: The Taliban was nurtured by the Pakistan Inter-service Intelligence Agency, the I.S.I., which is basically Pakistan's C.I.A. -- it combines the C.I.A. and military intelligence -- so a lot of the funds that came in from the C.I.A. were funneled through the Pakistani Intelligence Agency, the I.S.I. The C.I.A. decided that one way to destabilize the Russian, or Soviet, military presence in Afghanistan would be to start growing opium poppies, and refine the opium into heroin and get the Soviet troops stationed in Afghanistan hooked on heroin. And that's exactly what happened, and some of the Soviet veterans to this day continue to have problems with heroin. And of course, in collusion with the I.S.I., this heroin started to make it's way outside of Afghanistan and into the international drug distribution networks.

Stephanie Welch: Most of the profits from the lucrative drug trade and nearly three billion U.S. taxpayer dollars lined the pockets of powerful players involved in the fight, including Pakistani officials. The rest went to purchase weapons for rebel groups - mainly those favored by the C.I.A. and I.S.I. In 1989, Soviet troops pulled out, ending the U.S.S.R.'s ten-year occupation. By this time, over a million people were dead, three million disabled, and five million made refugees. Afghan heroin had also cornered sixty percent of the U.S. market.

After the Soviet troops left, fighting broke out among rebels vying for power. Sonali Kolhatkar is a board member of the Afghan Women's Mission. She says that during this period, the worst atrocities took place and have been documented, though little of it was mentioned in the U.S. press.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Very very little was heard in the West. Once the Soviets were kicked out, everybody was happy, the so-called freedom fighters -- which is what they were lauded as in the press -- the Mujahadeen had kicked the Soviets out, and the U.S. had helped them do so. But then the Civil war that happened from about 1992-1996 was incredibly brutal. These men went as far as to rocket shell and bomb cities such as Kabul, with very little regard for civilians, and thousands of people died. A lot of refugees who are now in Pakistan fled during this era as well. And so the people of Afghanistan really suffered incredibly during this four-year period -- which is called the civil war, but in fact was a war between foreign-funded, fundamentalist armed men inside this country.

Stephanie Welch: In 1996, the group that became known as the Taliban took power. The Taliban regime has become known for it's extreme human rights abuses, especially toward women. There have been reports of women being publicly stoned to death, and according to Amnesty International, women have been beaten in public for not complying with the Taliban's codes for appropriate behavior or dress. Jan Goodwin has traveled to Afghanistan since the 1980s and has written extensively about her experiences. She says that though the Taliban claims to be ruling in the name of Islam, there is no basis in the Koran for their extreme edicts.

Jan Goodwin: The Taliban keep talking about that they're taking the country back to the purity of Islam. And I think probably every woman would wish that they did. In fact, Islam was the first of the major religions to actually formalize women's rights. I mean, this is what is so ironic here. At the time of the Prophet, Muslim women were scholars, they were certainly employed. The Prophet met his first wife because she was his boss. There was a medical corps in the Prophet's army that were all women, there were women who were generals, there were women who negotiated treaties, there were judges. And Islam actually dictates that education is mandatory for both males and females. The other thing that I think needs to be stressed very strongly is that one of the major teachings of the Prophet is that there is no compulsion in Islam.

They've banned basically everything: television, movies, video, music, dancing, tape recorders, cassettes, children's toys, board games, wedding parties, new year's celebrations, picnics, mixed sex gatherings, cameras, photographs, magazines, newspapers and books. They've even forbidden applause, which is kind of moot, because there's really not a great deal left to applaud. And if you're a woman it gets much worse: female education from kindergarten through graduate school has been banned, employment's been banned. And in fact, one of the earliest dictates is that women should not step outside their residence. And of course if you do go out, then you must wear this burqa garment, which is like traveling in a tent from head to toe. So it would appear that the Taliban's military prowess far exceeds their knowledge of Islam.

Stephanie Welch: On her most recent trip to Afghanistan, Goodwin interviewed the then Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, and asked him about the contradictions between women's rights in the Koran and the extreme restrictions the Taliban has imposed on women in the name of Islam.

Jan Goodwin: I said to him, "If all of these freedoms were good enough for the Prophet, why aren't they good enough for the Taliban?" This is what he said to me. "Whatever we're doing in our country it's not in order for the world to be happy with us. Time should be spent serving the country, praying to God, nothing else. Everything else is a waste of time, and people are not allowed to waste their time." But then, he did -- at the end of his interview -- come up with something that I thought was a little more honest. He said, "Our current restrictions are necessary in order to bring people under control. We need these restrictions until people learn to obey the government." And I think there is really the basis of where many of these restrictions come from.

Stephanie Welch: The Taliban marked its five years in power in August 2001 with an appeal for support from the Muslim world. But the International Muslim Organization does not consider the Taliban's brand of Islam acceptable. Only three countries -- Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates -- recognize the Taliban's rule as legitimate. And the United Nations has not allowed the Taliban a seat in the General Assembly. Among the most vocal and active opponents to the regime is the Revolutionary Afghan Women's Association, or RAWA, which organizes against the Taliban from neighboring Pakistan. Correspondent Nafisa Hoodbhoy reports.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: When the `jehadis,' more widely known as Mujahadeen took over Kabul in 1992, their Islamist decrees on working women fluctuated because of their preoccupation with civil war. As a result, women continued to work. But when the Taliban took over Kabul in September 1996, they decreed that all women should wear the all enveloping veil, the burqa. They also barred 200,000 professional women -- mostly teachers -- who worked in Kabul. RAWA's Saima Kareem, who's from Jalalabad, says the restrictions affected all Afghan women.

Saima Kareem: I think there is no big difference between the women living in Kabul and those living in Jalalabad. Because all of them are under the control of the Taliban. And the Taliban don't let women go outside. In Jalalabad also, I saw many women -- previously they were working in hospitals or schools or in the universities. But now they are in houses. And they are not allowed to go outside. And also, there's many women who beg, and many women who sell their bodies, and they become prostitutes.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: The Women's Action Forum, which works for women's rights in Pakistan, earlier this year met Taliban representatives to protest the manner in which women were being treated in Afghanistan. The forum's founder member, Nuzhat Kidwai, says the Taliban defended their policies as an internal matter of a Muslim country.

Nuzhat Kidwai: They were insisting that women are allowed to move around so long as they fulfill the requirements. And the requirements being that they should not be seen. That they should be covered completely in their burqa. And as explanations they would say things like these, that they're allowed to go to school. That they're allowed to study. And they're allowed to work.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: The Taliban claims that women are free to be educated and to work, but Nuzhat says they've created a situation where this is no longer possible.

Nuzhat Kidwai: The situation is that if there were teachers at the university. And there were male teachers over there. Of course the male teachers stayed. The women teachers had to go. And if there were no women teachers, there could have been no girls over there to be taught either. So its like Catch 22 situation.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: RAWA walks on dangerous turf. On August 2001, the Taliban arrested Afghan and Western members of a non-governmental organization, Shelter Now, inside Afghanistan on charges of spreading Christianity. And RAWA members are attacked each time they demonstrate on Dec 10 -- Human Rights Day. RAWA's Marina Mateen was at one such demonstration in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Marina Mateen: At one of the demonstrations we were attacked by a Taliban group, about 200 people. So we witnessed them by our own eyes. They were just like wild people. They wanted to harm the members of RAWA but they couldn't, because we were also armed with sticks and wood, so they couldn't. And we also had some of our male supporters.

Nafisa Hoodhboy: RAWA maintains that the Taliban -- who are ethnic Pushtuns -- does not have the support of other ethnic groups in Afghanistan, and exists through the power of the gun. Huma Saeed says that the countries who interfered in Afghanistan, and helped bring the Taliban to power, particularly Pakistan, will experience what some call the "Talibanization" of Pakistan.

Huma Saeed: First there were the Russians. And when they left the country then these fundamentalists, they were trained, they were brought in Pakistan. And Pakistan and also Saudi Arabia. And there were other parties which were trained in Iran by the government of Iran, and also the United States. These are the countries that interfered in the affairs of Afghanistan. For example, the Taliban were trained in the religious schools of Pakistan. What has happened in Afghanistan will happen one day in Pakistan.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: Women's Action Forum's Nuzhat Kidwai says that the Taliban influence surfaced in the recent local elections held in the Northwest Frontier province of Pakistan. In that predominantly Pushtun province which borders Pakistan, religious leaders issued a fatwa -- a religious proclamation - against women's participation in the political process.

Nuzhat Kidwai: In the Northwestern Frontier provinces, they actually pulled away the nomination papers of women. They pushed women around. And they gave a `fatwa', all the religious parties together, saying that anybody who either votes for a woman, or a woman who stands for elections, or anybody who supports the fact that women should participate in elections. In all these cases they are going against the teachings of Islam. These are the ways you find the manifestation of the Taliban.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: As the Taliban comes up with fresh restrictions on working women, including large numbers of widows, RAWA's Saima Kareem says that the people of Afghanistan are dying a slow death.

Saima Kareem: Everywhere in Afghanistan, women have difficulties, not only security problems but financial problems. And when we talk to them, all of them are against the Taliban. All of them want to be free. And all of them want to go to work and get money for their children. And I think when you come to Jalalabad or to Kabul or other cities in Afghanistan, you'll find many women and children and even men -- they don't know how they are alive.

Stephanie Welch: Huma Saeed urges supporters not to waste money circulating petitions or sending flowers to the women of Afghanistan. Rather, she says that people should support RAWA's activities and spread awareness about what is happening to women under the Taliban.

Huma Saeed: The organizations of women around the world, they should not be silent about the ongoing human rights tragedy in Afghanistan. And they should raise their voice of protest in whatever way possible and they should help the women of Afghanistan, RAWA and other organizations that work for the women of Afghanistan in practical and meaningful ways.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: For the National Radio Project, I'm Nafisa Hoodbhoy.

Stephanie Welch: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or you would like to get in touch with any of our guests, we'll be giving out our toll free number at the end of this broadcast...

The burqa garment required for women by the Taliban regime is an expensive item that most women cannot afford. It is common that in a village many women will share a single burqa. The garment has become known in the West as a symbol of women's oppression in Afghanistan, but some Afghan women are using the all-encompassing burqa to hide books and other tools of resistance. Using loopholes in the system and an underground network of schools, educators both inside and outside Afghanistan have taken on the dangerous task of guaranteeing women their fundamental right to an education. Correspondent Kathryn Washington has more.

Elham Rahmanie: If a woman get educated all her children will be educated. If a man gets educated maybe a few of his children will get educated. So what we are trying to do is to reach out to all women to get them educated.

Kathryn Washington: In June 2OO1, Elham Rahmanie -- who used a pseudonym -- spoke at the Global Fund for Women in San Francisco. Along with other courageous teachers, Rahmanie created a system of home schools for girls throughout Afghanistan and in the refugee camps of Pakistan.

Elham Rahmanie: We didn't start the home school. The people, the community came to us. They came to us and said we want to have a school. We want to help our children to learn and we want your support. And we said okay. So we had about 25-30 schools last year. From last year to this year, now we have 71 schools inside Afghanistan and we are working in five provinces. Kathryn Washington: Under Taliban rule, the literacy rate among women has plummeted to an estimated four percent. To be clear, education in pre-Taliban education left a lot to be desired. Teachers relied on rote memorization emphasizing regurgitation of information not learning. One solution is what Rahmanie calls the 'student-centered technique' which thrives on a dynamic interchange between student and teacher.

Elham Rahmanie: We developed this program to completely demolish the system of rote memorization. Before, the teacher goes to the classroom, did not have material, didn't have any lesson plan. These teachers are unbelievably delighted with the system. As a result we so far, we've trained about 3000 teachers.

Kathryn Washington: In many underground schools teaching about revolution is a vital component. From basic literacy to peace-building, students are taught to resist. Activist Sehar Saba -- not her real name -- was educated in a school run by the clandestine Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, or RAWA. Sehar became a student in a RAWA school after her family was forced to flee to Pakistan.

Sehar Saba: Our school was different from other schools. Besides the scientific subjects we also were talking and had discussions about the women's movement and also how to resist and how to struggle. And I learned there. In fact I found my way how to achieve my rights as a woman and how to struggle for other women.

Kathryn Washington: Activists in the U.S. are joining that struggle. Take for example the Feminist Majority's Back-to School Campaign which sends donated funds to home schools. Through its web site an individual can adopt a school, donate money for supplies or pay a teacher's salary. Mavis Leno heads up the campaign.

Mavis Leno: We actually act as an intermediary. We simply help the people conduct their work. We are aware that it's life-threatening work and we certainly wouldn't ask anybody to do it. But these are people who've made that decision on their own and the least we feel we can do, you know, in the face of such incredible courage is to add the little bit that we can add.

Kathryn Washington: As the educated flee the Taliban, Afghanistan has become an intellectual wasteland. Rahmanie says that the resiliency of the nation will someday depend upon technological advances. One organization that is putting this into practice is the Afghan Institute of Learning. It has created a computer training program for high school girls.

Elham Rahmanie: When they sit behind the computer, and when they push that button and when they get available through the internet all this information, they go 'Wow'. Believe me, it's not sufficient to just say okay primary school education is enough. They should go higher, and they should be ready [so] that when Afghanistan is ready they will be able to go inside Afghanistan and carry the work, because they are the only ones who can do it. And right now there's not that many educated people left inside Afghanistan. Once these kids complete all their programs in computers, we would like to try to see if we can teach them university classes through the distance education, through the computer. That's our vision.

Kathryn Washington: And it is a radical vision. Even when home schools are given permission to operate, previously liberal officials may crackdown and bring retroactive charges against the schools. Mavis Leno.

Mavis Leno: You know it's very hard, you're at risk no matter what you do. You understand that the Taliban are not against teaching girls in a higher level, they're against teaching girls at all. It is their stance that there is no reason for women to read or write -- period.

Kathryn Washington: Despite the risks and the hardships the women and children in Afghanistan's underground schools are finding hope, personal inspiration and a means to resist. As for the teachers, their reward is found in the work itself.

Elham Rahmanie: Working with women and children, believe it's not easy over there to work bit when you see the joy form those kids face, when you see the joy from the teacher. They sit on the floor, they are under the tree. There are no books, no facility, and they are learning. And when they learn and you see how bright they are, it's joyful. It's just, you forget all the trouble. For the National Radio Project's Women's Desk, this is Kathryn Washington.

Stephanie Welch: As the resistance to the Taliban continues inside and outside Afghanistan, ongoing conflict, a four-year drought and economic devastation have made life unbearable for the millions of refugees who have fled their homes, says Sonali Kolhatkar, of the Afghan Women's Mission.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Today, Afghanistan has the largest refugee population in the world, if you don't count Palestinians as refugees. There are about three million Afghans that are residing in neighboring countries, such as Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, etc., and the largest chunk of that, about 2.6 million resides in Pakistan today. Many children who've been born in refugee camps, and don't even know what their homeland is like or have never even visited -- they live in makeshift camps with mud huts in a very desperate condition. You'll see a lot of children who'll go collecting garbage as a means to earn money next to some of the fancier cities in Pakistan.

Stephanie Welch: Kolhatkar added that although there are aid agencies working to help the Afghan refugees -- who suffer from treatable diseases such as diarrhea and malaria -- these agencies offer no long-term solutions to provide for the most basic needs. Kolhatkar criticized the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which she says has put most of its emphasis on repatriation programs that would send Afghans who have fled back to their homes.

Sonali Kolhatkar: The reasons why Afghans have fled their country still exist today. They've fled because of war, some because of drought, obviously the oppression of women, their lives being devastated. The war is still continuing, and to repatriate these refugees is a ridiculous thing.

Stephanie Welch: In 1990, while the U.S. government was still funding Afghan rebels, it was also trying to gain support for its war against Iraq. Saudi Arabia was one country that joined the U.S. military operation, allowing U.S. troops on their soil for the first time. This move by the government angered many Saudi Arabian people, particularly a wealthy businessman by the name of Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden was one of the many Muslims who had joined the war against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, trained by Pakistani intelligence, which was assisted with funding and military strategies by the C.I.A. Now bin Laden is the number one enemy of the U.S. government. He is accused of organizing a band of Islamic fundamentalists responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and for bombing U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. Bin Laden traveled to Afghanistan for protection under the Taliban.

Wayne Madsen, a former government official and a senior fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says that despite the Taliban's reputation for human rights abuses, U.S.-based oil executives have been trying for years to arrange oil deals with the Taliban.

Wayne Madsen: There's been interest in building a pipeline across Afghanistan through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. Of course none of that could be possible as long as there was a destabilized situation in Afghanistan involving the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance and some other factions. Let's face it, the oil industry is very very influential in this administration, because the President happens to be a former oil executive and the Vice President happens to be a former oil executive for Halliburton -- a company, I might add, that would have a vested interest in that type of pipeline, because that's what their business is. They build pipelines, and they build infrastructure support for the oil industry. So there apparently was an outreach beginning in 1998 between the oil industry and the Taliban to see if the Taliban could moderate its ways and allow Western oil companies to build this pipeline and conduct other operations in the country.

Stephanie Welch: Madsen adds that even the Bush administration -- including members of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the C.I.A. -- met with the Taliban and pro-bin Laden representatives early in 2001, meetings the Pentagon vigorously opposed.

Wayne Madsen: The unofficial Taliban representative in the United States is Laili Helms, who happens to be the niece-in-law of Richard Helms, the former director of the C.I.A. So with that type of influence within the C.I.A. headquarters, it was very easy for the Taliban -- and in addition to the Taliban representatives, there were representatives of the Jamiaat-I-Islami Party of Pakistan -- this is the pro-bin Laden party that is vowing a jihad against the United States. One of their representatives was also received here in Washington by high-level officials of the State Department, C.I.A. and the National Security Council. My question is: By dealing with these people, what did the United States -- what did the Bush administration get in return?

Stephanie Welch: That's it for this edition of Making Contact, a look at Afghanistan. Thanks for listening. And special thanks this week to Dahlia Massachi, Krissy Clark, and Nancy Pearlman for recorded portions, and to Annessa Mattson for production assistance.

Phillip Babich is our managing producer. Laura Livoti, managing director. Peggy Law, executive director. Associate producer, Shereen Meraji. Women's desk director, Lisa Rudman. Senior advisor, Norman Solomon. National producer, David Barsamian. Administrative coordinator, Rosalyn Fay. And, I'm your host and associate producer Stephanie Welch.

If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or if you would like to get in touch with any of our guests, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That's 800-529-5736. You can also go to our website at radioproject.org (repeat).

Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we'd like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter trio. Bye for now.