The Real Story Behind Time's Afghan Woman Cover: American ComplicityRalph Lopez
Co-Founder and Director, Jobs for Afghans
Posted: August 14, 2010 03:00 PM
There has been much discussion, as well as misunderstanding, of the Time magazine cover photo of the Afghan woman who had her nose cut off by the Taliban. The purported object lesson is clear: If we leave Afghanistan now, this is what will happen. The woman had tried to run away from her abusive husband, and this was her punishment. Despite the torrent of bad news about the war, Time would have us believe this is the choice we face. But that is a comic-book version of Afghanistan.
The reality is even more disturbing: The repressive and misogynistic forces the picture depicts are the very ones now being bolstered by U.S. policy.
How could this be? To understand Afghanistan, it is necessary to understand that the key fissure in the society's slow evolution towards modernity is not tribal, nor ethnic, but country versus city. And here, America's historical role in the region has had a disastrous effect on Afghanistan's women.In 1979, the CIA started secretly aiding opponents of the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, increasing the likelihood that the Soviet Union would be drawn into what Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski hoped would be "their own Vietnam." The young socialist government, which had overthrown a centuries-old monarchy, was cosmopolitan, outward-looking, and stressed the education of women as well as men. This was a time when women in Kabul could wear mini-skirts. In its search for proxies to attack the Kabul regime, Brzezinski and the Cold Warriors turned to the conservative warlord elements in the countryside. They were of all ethnicities; Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek. What they had in common was their ability to raise and organize fighters - and their Medieval attitudes toward women.
These Mujehadeen were natural enemies of any central government that sought to consolidate power and force change. The CIA supplied them with billions of dollars in weapons and ammunition, including surface-to-air missiles that could bring down Russian jets and helicopters. The rest is history. The Russians left, Afghans were abandoned by the U.S. to deal with bombed-out rubble and millions of landmines which remain to this day, and the country devolved into brutal civil war among the factions we had armed, from which the Pakistan-based Taliban emerged victorious.
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