Last Saturday, a speaking event was held at the Towson Unitarian Universalist church as a benefit for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). They are the only grassroots, feminist, secular, and social democratic women’s organization on the ground in Afghanistan. Currently, their primary activities involve humanitarian aid among people living in Afghanistan as well as in the refugee camps in Pakistan, education in schools in Pakistan as well as underground schools for girls in Afghanistan, clandestine mobile health teams in Afghanistan, and reopening their hospital in Pakistan. Radical agitation for women's rights in Afghanistan is a struggle they have been enaged in for the last 26 years.

The two speakers at the event were Fahmia Vorgetts, an Afghan woman living in Annapolis whose import business is used to sell RAWA crafts and help fund the organization, and Dr. Anne Brodsky, a associate professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at UMBC. It's the third such talk in the Baltimore area, and the smallest with only about 60 people attending. The first event in the Baltimore area was held at the UMBC ball room at the start of the U.S. bombing campaign and was attended by a packed house of approximately a thousand people. The organizers of the Towson event explained that outreach could have been better, because this is the first kind of event that they have ever done like this. The location was in a Baltimore suburb, and all the outreach was done with email among friends. Still, it turned out a fair number of folks, many who were not already politically active. The audience was quite interested with some money being raised through donations and the sell of rugs; the event appealed to a more affluent crowd than most of the typical activist benefits in Baltimore.



Fahima was a firebrand! I thought Tahmeena's talk at UMBC was a bit quiet on some of RAWA's radical politics, atleast until question time, Fahima started with attacks on U.S. foreign policy and anger over how the U.S. government (and Laura Bush) were trying to use the issue of women's rights in Afghanistan to justify their bombing. She described in detail the rise of the Mujhadeen, and how similiar it was with how fascism begins with low-level street violence against vulnerable, in this case, women. She also went into detail about U.S. and Pakistani support for the fundamentalist forces of the Taliban and Mujhadeen with arms and funds for religous schools. Further, she harshly criticized support for the Northern Alliance based on their activities in the rape of Kabul from 1992 to 1996.
When discussion turned to how could have a role in democracy in Afghanistan, whether democracay was even possible there... she even levelled a criticism against the United States's lack of democracy.

Another Afghan women in the audience asked a number of good questions, for instance she wondered whether Afghanistan as a construction among various different ethnic groups and tribes could ever be successful in trying to form a nation-state. When asked whether RAWA would form a political party under a democratic state in Afghanistan, both Fahima and Anne pointedly did not have an answer.

Outside of political activist circles, particularly anti-war activism, I haven't seen this level of informed discourse on Afghanistan. People attending to hear about the situation of women in Afghanistan are open to some of the radical criticisms that Fahima so energetically explained.

Anne's talk was also interesting; it was a slide-show presentation and a bit more low-keyed that Fahima's rant. She mixed discussion with her trip to the refugee camps in Pakistan with her own work with risk and resilience among urban women. Anyway, here is where I learned a few new things about RAWA:

RAWA could not function as well without the support of it's male supporters, particulary where they are forced to work underground. Even so, men can not be on any of the committees, can not vote on any of the issues, and can not be members of the organization. Among the reasons for this, is that they are aware that men can often dominate even an activist organization.

The UN still has a positive reception by many people in the refugee camps and in Afghanistan based on it's humanitarian efforts. Infact, institutions where RAWA can't use it's own identity, they often claim the are with the UN.

Some of the refugee camps, the more secular ones, RAWA operates openly. In other refugee camps under fundamentalist control, they operate underground just as they do in Afghanistan under control of the Taliban. In many of the refugee camps under fundamentalist control in Afghanistan, all the rules against women are still enforced so many women wear burqa or remained cloistered inside their "homes", often tents crammed with people.

Some of their schools have gun ports and armed guards to proect them from attack.

Some of the former Mujhadeen support RAWA.

The schools are not only for children, but also for adults as well. There literacy program starts with small texts, but eventually has students reading from political workers like RAWA's political magazine in Dari. Some of their students are fluent in 4 languages.

Afghanistan has some great untapped mineral resources: oil, natural gas, emeralds and uranium.

Before the war, Afghans used to say, "Atleast noone will ever starve here", since food stuffs were quite available and also exported. With 23 years of war and 3 years of drought... many are going to starve.

If you'd like to send a donation to RAWA:
Make checks payable to the

SEE/Afghan Women's Mission,

mail to

Afghan Women's Mission
260 S. Lake Avenue,
PMB 165,
Pasadena, CA 91101.

Your tax-deductible contribution will be sent to RAWA.