Regarding the violence against women in Afghanistan, there is a bizarre situation that requires the genius of Einstein to be understood. Every passing day increases the number of reports in which a person tortures, mutilates, burns, chains or sometimes kills a woman. Then a traditional cycle begins in which this news is highlighted in a way that its resonance crosses the borders and echoes in the parliaments of developed countries of the world and becomes the topic of the discussion for a number of NGO’s working for the welfare of women in the world. With this, the image of Afghanistan further worsens as a country where women become the victim of violence now and again and where they are not given any rights. Then, a debate starts in the programs of television channels where the same old ideas are repeated. In the same way, parliamentarians also feel the need to discuss the issue and keep it in their agendas and sometimes, when their patience slips out, they call the concerned minister and ask about the situation and the minister satisfies them by the fresh vows to eradicate such incidents in future. Similar kind of drama is staged by the women who are there to protect the rights of women and run a number of NGOs and organizations for the purpose where huge sums of funds are engulfed without any tangible result. This drama is so often repeated that any common person would understand what would happen after an Afghan woman becomes a victim of the cruelty of her male relative. Everyone understands that all these would fail to affect the present scenario.
No one is interested to discover and address the true reasons responsible for these tragic events. In this chain of interests, everyone is making money and they are not ready to disturb the setup which is in benefit of all. If this scenario changes and there was no violence against women, what would be the use all these organizations that are receiving handsome donations from the countries that are much concerned about the welfare and protection of Afghan women and they appear to be the only party in this regard, working with sheer sincerity.
It would be unfair if we did not mention some of the organizations which are working to address the true reasons of the problem. They arrange trainings to the women so that they should be able to earn their livelihood and don’t suffer in their practical lives.
But there is a strange paradox in bringing awareness among the women regarding their rights. Most of the organizations arrange seminar and educational workshops to educate the women about their rights granted to them by the international laws, the constitution of the country and also our religion; Islam. When women don’t know about their rights, they try to compromise with their situation, either good or bad but when they perceive their rights and see that they are being deprived of these rights, they show resistance which results in the conflict and this conflict usually ends up in the torture of the woman because this is a male-dominated society and when the reason ends, a male tries to restore his dominance by resorting on the use of physical power in which he is always a winner.
The violence against women was either less before this democratic government or was less known due to the limited coverage of media but these days bring increased number of reports of such violence and cruelty. Whatever may be the reasons, it is a reality that such incidents of violence have increased which is a question mark on the performance of NGOs and the concerned government authorities.
Everyone knows that the prime reason behind any such incident is a man who is too rash, less tolerant and believes in and follows strictly the norms and traditions that he inherited from the society and that has not changed for the centuries. These traditional beliefs are not only extreme about a number of things like treating children, treating the guests and others but also regarding women. It says that a woman needs to be kept under strict control and she is good only if she is kept in good cover. If she tries to come out of the strict control of the man or does anything to come out of this cover, the man is greatly annoyed because his traditional beliefs are greatly hurt and he fears that this small change would turn into a violent storm and would blow away everything that comes in its way. It’s the reason why his reaction usually comes in its violent form. It thus comes out that the main reason responsible for this is the strict mindset that has gained more rigidity in all these years and is not going to easily show any kind of flexibility.
The only thing that has brought some flexibility in this mindset is the education and we see that those who are educated or live in educated surroundings show more flexibility and their traditional mindset is slowly and gradually replaced with a set of more acceptable ideas and beliefs. Till now, a lot of efforts have been done in educating the woman, the victim, but there has hardly been done to educate and change the mindset of the person who is the creator of this problem; the man. It is not going to be an easy task but I dream of a day in which people working on women’s issues are arranging programs for the men.
It is also paradoxical that our traditional man believes in religious teachings, sayings of prophets and saints and values the ideas of the literate people and is eager to listen and be convinced of them but he has not been shown the true picture in this regard. In no religion, including Islam, there are no orders that women should be tortured or kept in tight control and dominance of man and there a lot of orders in which rights of women have been emphasized but such religious teachings have never been transmitted and he has only been misinterpreted some orders which are meant for some specific conditions only. It is also disappointing to discover that we never dare to talk in public about this burning issue and bring into light the true teachings of both our religion and modern sciences that should play its share in changing the rigid and extreme mentality of men.
Another reason responsible for such repeated incidents is the lack of proper punishment. If a man kills a man by mistake, he is severely dealt with but if a man kills or tortures harshly a woman on the name of traditions or so called ‘honor-killings’, his act is not taken much seriously and thus he succeeds in escaping easily. Due to this reason, there a number of people who kill their female relatives out of some evil intentions like snatching their wealth or property and name it ‘honor-killing’ because they are sure that they will succeed to escape any kind of punishment. In this regard, a strict punishment would make a person think a lot before taking any such horrible step.
All those who are sincere in bringing an end to the miseries of Afghan women should divert their energies to men instead of women and this would bring a sustainable solution to this problem.