With All Our Strength

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

Anne E. Brodsky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135951948
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

With All Our Strength is the inside story of this women-led underground organization and their fight for the rights of Afghan women. Anne Brodsky, the first writer given in-depth access to visit and interview their members and operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, shines light on the gruesome, often tragic, lives of Afghan women under some of the most brutal sexist oppression in the world.

CHAPTER 1
“I’VE LEARNED THE SONG OF FREEDOM”
To Be Part of the Whole

The electricity was out again as we sat in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan, sharing the glow and the warmth of the kerosene burner on a cool January morning. Zala, the RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) member who was my guide and translator, had only told me briefly about Salima, the woman I was interviewing. I knew that the serious-looking, 20–something woman wearing shalwar kamiz,¹ the national dress of Pakistan, was a RAWA member based in Afghanistan. I knew that she had recently snuck across the border for clandestine meetings with RAWA members in Pakistan, and that she could tell me about RAWA activities and the RAWA community in Afghanistan. But in true RAWA style Zala hadn’t told me anything about Salima’s background or activities; even what to call her was unclear until a brief side conversation between Zala and Salima confirmed what name she would use with me. So I was asking Salima general questions about her life with RAWA when she nonchalantly mentioned her role in the covert filming of the infamous execution of Zarmeena.²

Zarmeena was a mother of seven who had been accused of killing her husband, and who in 1999 was publicly executed by the Taliban in Kabul’s soccer stadium. Although she had been jailed for 1½ years previously, it was said that the Taliban had decided that fall to make an example of her, especially as a warning to the women of Kabul. Even though her husband’s family had reportedly forgiven her, which according to Sharia, Islamic religious law, should have spared her life, the Taliban executed Zarmeena in front of a crowd of women, children, and men that included her family, in-laws, and children. Nearly 2 years later this one example of uncountable Taliban atrocities was seen by millions of people worldwide when, in the fall of 2001, CNN broadcast, over and over again, the BBC documentary Beneath the Veil, which featured the RAWA footage of this execution. To document this Taliban violence, RAWA members had risked their lives by sneaking a video camera into the stadium. The footage was first posted o n RA W A’s w eb site a s so on as it was smug gled out of A fg ha nistan . Im ag es were also published on the cover of the March 2000 issue of their quarterly political magazine, Payam-e Zan, (Women’s Message). However, despite years of efforts by RAWA, no world news organization would broadcast the execution until September 11 made Afghanistan and Afghan women suddenly newsworthy. When I learned that Salima had been part of this documentation effort, I responded, at first, like so many of the other outsiders/Westerners whom I have observed talking with RAWA members. After the footage became well known, a common question to ask any RAWA representative was whether she was the one responsible for the undercover filming. And initially I too was caught up in the idea that this action could be attributed to a particular person. I was thrilled to talk to an individual behind this brave and important piece of RAWA’s work, and I asked her to tell me her account of the event. But while listening to her story my broader awareness returned and I realized once again that no RAWA story or activity is ever about only one individual. It was not her story, but RAWA’s story.

Salima explained that in the fall of 1999 she was a member of RAWA’s Kabul-based Reports Committee: “a small committee of people whose responsibility is to document reports of atrocities and crimes of Taliban and previously the jehadis.”³ Her responsibilities included “collecting reports, photos, filming.” It was Salima’s responsibility as a member of this committee, to listen to Taliban radio news each night. It was a Tuesday evening in November when she heard the 8 P.M. broadcast announcing that a woman would be publicly shot at 2 P.M. the next day and that all of Kabul, and especially women, were exhorted to attend. Wednesday was not the usual day for Sharia punishment, which—as practiced by the Taliban—included various forms of public corporal punishment including shootings, stonings, limb amputations, and flogging. However, the Taliban had decreed that because Zarmeena was a woman who had supposedly killed her husband, a man she should have been subservient to, she was not even worthy of being killed on the Muslim holy day of Friday when such punishments were usually carried out. This surprise announcement left Salima and the other members of the Reports Committee with less than a day’s warning to come up with a plan of action to document this incident. Salima told me, “[B]efore Zarmeena’s execution we didn’t have much access to video cameras and mostly took photos and collected reports from witnesses.” Their planning time was limited further by the fact that an evening announcement in a city without phones and in which it was unsafe to leave the house after dark meant that they would have to wait until morning to discuss their response:

All of us on the committee heard the news that evening, but it was quite late so we couldn’t inform each other. By 8 P.M. it was difficult for men, let alone women, to get out. This announcement was not the first time we had heard such things. Before that in this stadium I had seen amputations of hands, flogging of women for adultery, amputation of a man’s feet. But what was new was the public execution of women. It is impossible to explain the painful feelings I had that night. Maybe all I can say is that it was one of the most painful nights in my life. I was thinking about how I belonged to an organization of women fighting to save women and their lives from misery but I knew a woman was going to be executed in a few hours and found myself helpless and hopeless to do anything to stop it. After I heard about the execution on the radio, I couldn’t sleep the whole night. But first thing in the morning at 7 A.M. we had an emergency meeting in a house that we knew to meet at in cases such as this.

There, as a group, they discussed the risks including the fact that if they were caught they would possibly be killed on the spot, their options, and whether they should try, for the very first time, to use a video camera:

We knew this execution wouldn’t be documented by any news agency. Taliban wouldn’t do it and they wouldn’t let others. So it was our responsibility. And we discussed if we should just take photographs or make a report or if we should film it. The opinion of the committee, including me, was that RAWA was a political organization of women, defending human rights and women, but we didn’t have power to make the Taliban stop. The least we could do was document the scene by filming it and getting the word out. We did it because no one else could document this, to show the brutalities. We were willing to sacrifice our lives to do this. It was a matter of determination.

So the main problem was where to find a camera. RAWA for years had been thinking of the possibility of getting a small camera to document such things.

Always in meetings mas’ul⁴ [responsible person] said that photographs and reports are good but film is better. But for a long time we knew no one with access to a small camera and it was not possible to document with large cameras as we use in Pakistan. But mas’ul had thought about this since she heard the announcement. She knew of someone with a small camera that he used to film wedding parties since the Taliban had banned photography. But the main issue was secrecy and could we expose our plans to that man and others and the risk to us and to him. Mas’ul wanted the group to make the decision of whether to take this risk. Finally in this meeting we decided that the member who knew him [best] should bring the camera from this man and pay for it plus a bit more than usual and say if anything happened and the camera taken, we would replace it. The other thing we decided was to keep it as secret as possible because if a mistake happened, the plan couldn’t be implemented and something could happen to the camera or to us members.

But because they couldn’t tell the camera owner the truth, borrowing it took a creative story. After they’d borrowed the camera, they still had another matter to resolve—none of the members of the Reports Committee had ever used a video camera before:

We decided to tell the camera owner that it was for a family who wanted to go around the city to document scenes of destruction, like the Palace.⁵ The two other problems were who should film, because none of us was familiar with filming, and lack of time. Between our meeting in the early morning and the execution at 2 P.M. we had to get the camera, learn to shoot it, and get to the stadium. So that’s why when you see the film footage you know immediately it was not filmed by anyone with the least acquaintance with a camera.

The final decision was that three of us should learn the most basic things. So another member went to get the camera and also brought the owner to the house of a RAWA supporter. The rest of us were introduced as friends who wanted memories of Kabul. It was a bit unusual for him that we were totally unfamiliar with a camera and also it was not usual for him to give it to women, but he trusted this member so he loaned it to us. By this time we had less than 1 hour to learn.

One among us knew a little about cameras from a cousin who had come from abroad. And because we had all seen VCRs the buttons like play, stop, forward were familiar. So he showed us on/off, record, how to change the battery, how to put the cassette in and each of us practiced and then we decided who should film it. The member who filmed it was chosen finally because she was born in Kabul and knew most places and so we predicted that if something happened and she was arrested she knew the side streets and could escape better. Also she learned recording faster and better and she remembered what she learned better.

By 2 P.M. they had a group of about 15 members and male supporters, including the member with the camera, assembled to go to the stadium. But because of the danger not all of them could know what was going to happen:

Only some people knew we were filming and only members of the committee knew who had the camera. We didn’t tell the others; we just asked them to come and be present to witness this atrocity. Even all of them didn’t know each other on sight, but they knew other members were present, and most of them knew at least one of the committee members. They also knew why we were there; they at least thought we were taking still photos since that always happened.

When they arrived at the stadium they still weren’t sure how they would get the camera inside. They knew that the women would be seated in a separate section from the men, and they guessed that these seats would be at mid-field on the near side of the stadium in a section that was a level above the rest. If this was the case, they would at least have the advantage of being slightly apart from the male crowd, but there were still the Taliban guards on the way in and Taliban security wandering throughout the crowd in the stands. Salima continued:

As I was going to the stadium my legs and hands were trembling. This was the only time I have had that feeling. And I think that maybe I won’t ever have it again. While I was concerned about how the documenting would go and how to enter the stadium, I also knew that a woman would be executed and that made it very difficult for each and every RAWA member I was with….

We brought the camera in a bag to the gate. We had decided to see what the gate was like and decide what to do then. When we saw that they were checking bags, but not bodies, we took the camera from the bag and the woman who was film ing held it on her body under her burqa. We had a plan for another member to take the film cassette if something happened, because we knew this member would be killed and the camera taken if it was discovered.

Salima described the scene that they documented once inside. The stadium was filled with many children, some of whom were selling food and drinks, as well as adults, many of whom were beggars who used this opportunity to work the crowd for money. In addition to the radio announcements, the Taliban had been making public address announcements near the stadium all morning, as well as stopping people on the streets outside and, depending on individual approach, either asking or ordering people to go inside the stadium to watch.

Although the execution had been announced for 2 P.M., Salima reported that the first 20–30 minutes were filled with speeches by various Taliban officials and mullahs, Islamic religious leaders, who preached that “today they were happy that God’s Sharia was being implemented in the land of God” and announced that the Taliban Supreme Council, the Taliban’s highest Sharia law authority, and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar himself had personally approved this execution. After the speeches Zarmeena was driven onto the field in the back of a red pickup truck where she was seated between two other women. All three women were covered in blue burqas. Some thought the accompanying women were from the husband’s family, but since the family had pardoned her, Salima thought it more likely that they were women wardens from the jail where Zarmeena had been held for the last year and a half, after a trial and sentencing about which mixed stories abound. Zarmeena was walked to the soccer pitch and made to kneel on the chalk lines marking what was once a playing field. It is said that even to the end, Zarmeena thought that her life would not be taken and that she would perhaps be flogged instead.

But with the burqa still covering her head and body and obstructing her ability to see what was happening, a Talib (singular of Taliban, meaning literally “religious student”) put a gun to the back of her head and pulled the trigger. On the raw footage, the video image blurs as the RAWA member’s arms shake in grief and fear while she holds the camera hidden in the folds of her burqa. After the first shot, cries are heard from the crowd as well as from the women documenting this death and a small cloud of dust appears on the pitch as the bullet goes through Zarmeena’s head and hits the ground in front of her knees. A second shot is heard but not captured on tape as the camerawoman’s visceral reaction to seeing a woman murdered in the sports stadium of the once cosmopolitan capital city of Afghanistan momentarily tips the camera lens toward the ground.

The reaction of the assembled crowd was in stark contrast to that of the Taliban present:

Of course it was painful and heartbreaking to see little kids present in [such a] shocking scene. And the immediate reaction from the men and women was screaming, yelling, crying. Many women, whom I heard more because they were closer, were asking why and expressing hate toward the Taliban. Afterward the senior Taliban officials left immediately in cars. I thought maybe they were fearful of the reaction of the crowd. Those Taliban who were left came toward the body, and to them seeing a dead human body appeared as normal as seeing a dead bird or dog.

Salima said that they completed their task with mixed feelings. On the one hand, they were pleased and relieved to have successfully documented this crime because they knew no one else had been able to. They even laughed ruefully afterward about how RAWA might have to change its standpoint against burqas because, ironically, they couldn’t have carried out this task without the protection of these mandatory garments. On the other hand, they also had to cope with the fact that they had been helpless to stop the killing of Zarmeena. Despite their strongest desires and beliefs, a woman was dead, her children now without a mother or a father; the Taliban had further terrorized the city; and all they had been able to do was take pictures for a world they weren’t even sure cared:

Figure 1.1. The execution of Zarmeena. (Photocredit RAWA)

On the one hand we were happy to have successfully documented it, but on the other it was a terrible feeling. I couldn’t sleep well for nights afterward and couldn’t stop thinking about Zarmeena.

Had our conversation stopped there, it might have seemed a complete picture of this woman’s individual heroism and the efforts of a small band of equally brave and committed colleagues. But this story neither starts nor ends here. This is not just an isolated, self-contained, individual narrative but a story that is embedded in many layers of context, including Salima’s geographic and historical location, the role of RAWA and the people within it, as well as her family and peers. These multilayered factors represent the complexity of an organization like RAWA and, for that matter, life itself.

SALIMA’S STORY

Salima was a high school student when she first heard about RAWA. She was 16 years old during the civil war, reading books about Joan of Arc and F...