Afghanistan has been the focal point of world news for almost ten years now, but few know much about the country as it was before 9-11. We are vaguely aware that the British and Russians were there in the past; the Taliban held sway for a while; and, women are oppressed there—but for most people, Afghan history is a blur.
Melody Ermachild Chavis in Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan: the Martyr who Founded RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan helps bring all that into sharp focus.
Drawing the reader back in time to the 1970s and 80s, the world before 9-11, when Afghanistan was supposedly in the backwater of world conflicts, she tells the true story of one courageous young woman, Meena, and her heart-felt struggle to bring justice to Afghan women.
Chavis is a Buddhist private investigator who defends people facing capital punishment in the United States. She has written one other book, in 1998, Altars in the Streets: a Courageous Memoir of Community and Spiritual Awakening, which is about a community healing from violence and racism. Traces of “community and spiritual awakening” are evident in Meena’s activism, too. Perhaps it's this thread which connects Chavis to her unlikely subject. Meena was written in close collaboration with RAWA and with its authorization.
Motivated by 9-11 to Learn About Afghanistan
Motivated by the attacks of 9-11 to learn more about the land where al-Qaeda was based, Chavis came across the RAWA website. She approached the organization about writing a biography of its late founder, Meena. With its approval, she travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2002, meeting members, conducting interviews, and visiting the places where Meena had studied and lived. At that time the Taliban had just been defeated by coalition forces and the air was alive with the excitement of women, newly liberated from oppressive and misogynistic laws.
Writing in 2003, Chavis apparently assumed that these advances would last. With a new constitution and elections, it seemed that the democracy that Meena had fought for was being born. However, today’s reader knows that the promise of a monumental shift in internal Afghan affairs—new freedom for women in a fledgling democracy, a defeated Taliban, the promise of peace—is now no longer sure. As Canadian columnist Rex Murphy states in “A wasted ten years?” National Post, July 2, 2011 "Afghanistan’s fate is still inconclusive and the conflict far from resolved."
This hazy future for Afghanistan is troubling to anyone who ponders a little on the story of Meena's sacrifice. Learning about Meena’s daily life and struggles brings her closer to us, although we are distant in time and place. We are with her as she creeps at night through the no-man’s-land on the Pakistan border, or flits through the darkened streets of Kabul to deliver a clandestine pamphlet. It’s with sadness that we realize that twenty-four years after her assassination in 1987 by a trusted insider, Afghanistan’s situation has hardly improved.
The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
Chavis tells of Meena’s life and passions, from childhood in Kabul, through university and early political activism, to her eventual precarious situation as founder in 1977 of a the women’s organization, RAWA, dedicated to promoting women's rights in an anti-female society.
Conversations between Meena and her teacher, her husband, and her fellow workers in RAWA are recounted, based on information obtained in interviews. They serve to humanize Meena even more and we remember that she was a living and breathing person, as well as a brave martyr.
Against tremendous opposition from chaotic forces—Maoists, Marxists, Russians, Islamic fundamentalists—Meena nurtured her organization and broadened it to a revolutionary movement fighting for freedom for women—and Afghans. For this, she was abducted, possibly tortured, and then murdered.
Deeply critical of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, fundamentalist Islam, as well as all outside powers, RAWA continues to work for the common Afghan people, especially women. Not an organization to mince words, RAWA has this to say in 2007 about Karzai’s proposed plan for “National Conciliation”: "This act, for the thousandth time proved the Parliament’s anti-nation and treacherous nature and showed that this league of traitors and murderers, under the name of democracy, are practically in service of the fundamentalist warlords, who are the filthy enemies of Afghanistan and our unfortunate people."
The Role Islam Plays in Afghanistan
Chavis reveals in "Author's Notes": “It was my dream to build a bridge to Afghan women that would help American women and men to ally with them against ignorance, misogyny, and violence.” But she fails to address the influence of the dominant religion of Afghanistan, Islam, on those problems.
Instead she attributes them to Sharia, the system of Islamic law, and seemingly as an apologist for Sharia, she states that its “adjustment to modern technological and urban life has been difficult.” However, the possible separation of Sharia from Islam is a controversial topic, with most Muslims believing they are inseparable.
Elsewhere though Chavis notes the real danger that strict Sharia, or Hudood, laws posed for RAWA members who worked at refugee camps in Pakistan.
Meena sought for the root cause of the troubles she observed in Afghan society. She rejected Islamic fundamentalism which she saw as being a major part of the problem. Yet, she questioned further than this: With her sharp mind she recognized the hypocrisy of a society and a religion which proclaims respect for women, while allowing them to be downtrodden, deprived of their rights, and violently assaulted. Chavis writes, “She could not stand the hypocrisy of people who professed to be devout Muslims, and respectable citizens, yet mistreated people they considered to be beneath them.”
Family Violence and Discrimination in Afghanistan
Hints at the undercurrents of Afghanistan’s dire situation might be found by a careful reading of the vignettes Chavis describes from Meena’s early life. As a child she witnessed the violence of her father towards his two wives, experienced the pain inherent in a polygamous family, and saw a “lower” class, Hazara woman continually abused.
It’s usual now to ascribe blame for Afghanistan’s current woes to the British, the Russians, the Taliban, the Americans, etc. Chavis implies that a turbulent history combined with a system of Islamic law under which the Afghans are seemingly helpless have combined to produce the violence and oppression which is daily fare in Afghanistan.
Yet, Chavis describes how an educated, modern person, such as Meena’s father, who was not a fundamentalist, would beat his two wives at the same time when they annoyed him—and that Kabul society condoned this and provided no escape for them. The damage done to a society from such conditions must be great—whether they are attributed to Sharia, to Islam, or to fundamentalism.
The current situation in Afghanistan is changing in terms of international players and domestic dynamics. As Rex Murphy says, “All the good that has been done there could be undone once we’re gone.” In that case, the continuation of RAWA will become even more vital for Afghan women. It seems that Meena’s work is not yet finished.
Chavis, Melody Ermachild. Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan: the Martyr who Founded RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003.
ISBN: 0-31230689X
Jen L. Jones - Based in Canada, Jones writes on human rights, history,and the natural world. She focuses also on Turkish and Scottish travel and ...
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