This past week the people of Afghanistan went to the polls to elect their president. While the results are still pending, the politics of the election itself highlights how much further Afghanistan has to go in terms of human rights.
To start with, President Hamid Karzai very quietly passed the Shiite Personal Status Law last weekend, which among other things gives Shiite husbands the power to forbid their wives from leaving the house without their permission except in limited circumstances and the ability to starve their wives if their sexual needs are not being met. Although the law only applies to the small Shiite minority, comprising of roughly 15% of Afghanistan’s population, many women rights activists see it as another step back for all Afghan women as it demonstrates the futility of the equal rights women are guaranteed under the constitution.
The law first emerged two years ago when Shiite parliamentarians advocated for a separate law to govern Shiites due to differences between Shiite and Sunni interpretations of Islamic law. Under the Afghan Constitution, Islam is a recognized source of law, but currently most of Afghanistan’s civil laws are based on the majority Sunni interpretation of Islamic law. Furthermore, under Article 131 the courts are obligated to apply Shiite jurisprudence and law when the respondents are Shiite. The purpose of the Shiite Personal Status Law was to ensure that Shiites had their own interpretations of Islamic law codified for this purpose.
This in and of itself does not seem like a bad thing. But when the law was hurried through parliament and sent to Karzai for approval in March 2009, it created an uproar both inside and outside of Afghanistan due to several provisions that limited the rights of women, particularly in relation to their husbands. The initial law legally obligated women to satisfy their husband’s sexual needs and denied them the right to inherit any of their husband’s property upon death. President Karzai signed the law but due to the controversy the law created, opted to put it on hold and it did not immediately take effect. That changed a few weeks ago when human rights activists discovered that the law was now in effect.
The reaction in the West has been predictable. A headline in the New York Times proclaimed “Afghan Husbands Win Right to Starve Wives” while The Scotsman ran with “Karzai ‘has revived Taleban’s barbarism to women’.” Human rights groups have condemned the law, which they say essentially legalizes marital rape. But most of the news stories ignore the underlying issue of real pressure from conservative Muslim clerics, the link to the presidential election, and the battle for what Afghanistan is to become.
The timing of the law enactment is not a coincidence. Occurring a little more than a week before the election, it was clearly an attempt by Karzai to persuade the conservative vote. The selling out of one group for the sake of another is nothing new in politics, but it may carry a greater risk in Afghanistan. The Jurist ran two interesting editorials last week by Zainab Salbi of Women for Women International and Farzana Hassan of the Muslim Canadian Congress that examined the basis for the law and its effect of women in Afghanistan. In particular, Salbi points out the gradual creation of “two Afghanistans” – “one in Kabul where women’s rights are preserved as women gain more access to social, economic and political opportunities, and another where socially excluded and rural women are subject to a different set of rights and laws that restrict their socioeconomic development and often endanger their lives and violate their human rights.” This can be seen clearly with the passage of this law that clearly restricts women in certain ways next to the elections where women are voting and running for office.
It could also be seen in the internal reaction to the law itself. When first passed in March, hundreds of women protested in Kabul. They were met by thousands of counter-protestors who threw stones at them and chanted “Death to the slaves of Christians.” It appears that for now, while some improvements are being made, women are still fighting for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.
