With news of the last deployment of British troops of Afghanistan breaking last month it seems appropriate to look back at what has been, by all accounts, a highly contentious and controversial mission. Although these have been lessening, news bulletins are more often than not punctuated with bad news from Afghanistan, be it civilian or military casualties, the state of the Afghan National Police or the instability of the new Afghan state infrastructure. Again, more often than not, casualty figures are reported in terms of ‘women and children‘.
This focus on young and female victims of war is of particular interest because it suggests a sort of value structure, whereby women and children could not possibly be involved in the war so they should somehow be ‘off limits’ to combatants. Removing children from the equation for a second, this becomes slightly offensive. The suggestion is that women are not engaging in combat, that women will not take sides, and that women should be protected by their male counterparts and the international norms of war. I am not passing comment on my own personal opinions regarding the above, I am merely pointing out the discourse surrounding the idea that women and children becoming casualties implies an innocence that is not reserved for men also. And yet, hypocritically, the same discourse is not applied to sexual violence in conflict zones. The media and the West get on their high horse regarding women and children casualties but sexual violence is not mentioned; I cannot remember a time I saw or heard rape in Afghanistan being mentioned on the news. But gender-based violence is an every day occurrence across Afghanistan.
Accurate figures regarding the number of women experiencing and surviving sexual violence are incredibly hard to come by due to the many barriers to the reporting of sexual violence. Studies show that women rarely report sexual violence to the police if there are no visible female officers. Currently only 1% of Afghanistan’s polices officers are female. Furthermore, women who do report sexual violence have no guarantee of a case even being opened, between March 2010 and March 2011, 4,103 sexual violence cases were registered by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, 26% of which were opened with a tragic 7% resulting in indictments. Only 155 of those cases saw charges made against a perpetrator.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Women from the first graduating class of the Afghan National Army Female Officer Candidate School stand for the playing of the national anthem during their graduation ceremony, Sept. 23, 2010. Image credit: The U.S. Army
Several survivors of sexual violence who report their experience can face charges themselves. So far this year, 600 women in Afghanistan have been charged with zina, sex outside marriage. This is an increase of 200 from 2012. Over the last few years there have been some high profile cases of female of sexual violence charged with zina: a woman was publicly executed by the Taliban in 2012, a pregnant 14 year old girl gave birth in prison after being sentenced because her rape was viewed as adultery, and a 16 year old girl who received a year sentence when her attackers, a gang of rapists, received three years each (UNAMA 2011, UN Secretary-General. This means that a woman or girl who has been raped may actually be sent to prison because she has had sex outside a marriage, the fact she did not consent to itis not considered.
Several studies show that sexual violence is not conducive to peace and security yet still not enough is being done to secure women’s rights in Afghanistan. Casualties are still talked about in terms of ‘women and children’, the Taliban are condoned for using women and children as human shields to great uproar in the West, yet Western forces have not taken basic steps to secure women’s rights. There has been a lack of international political will to tackle one of the biggest threats to stabilisation and positive peace in Afghanistan, and this must be addressed. 15,326,057 of Afghanistan’s population are women, out of a total 31,108,077, their needs, rights and security must be addressed in order to achieve a true and lasting peace in Afghanistan, and the West must remember that.
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