For years, they were banned from working, forbidden from the classroom and forced to wear the tent-like burqa whenever they left home. This weekend, Kabul’s women were given back the freedom to get behind the wheel of a car after a decade-long ban on women driving.
Few can be seen on the roads yet, and even fewer have their own cars. But courses of driving lessons run by the new Afghan government’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs, with help from a Ger man NGO, are booked up months in advance. This weekend, the first batch of graduates to have completed the three-month course will be handed their driving licences and set out to brave Kabul’s traffic.
There is more at stake than mere transport. After years under the repressive Taliban, women in Afghanistan are trying to regain lost liberty.
‘I love to drive myself. I don’t want to be too dependent,’ said Suhaila Kabir, a 42-year-old civil servant and mother of five. ‘When I see a woman driving, it gives me more confidence.’
Malalai Wardaki (33) who returned to Kabul from Pakistan and resumed work as a teacher six months ago, said she wanted to learn to drive because it would give her ‘a sense of freedom’.
Though in Kabul, many of the harsher restrictions imposed by the Taliban have been lifted, the cultural conservatism of Afghanistan is proving a more durable barrier. Few venture out without their burqas, which were traditional long before the Taliban came to power. Many of the aspirant woman drivers are attending the lessons in secret, for fear of the disapproval of their husbands. The course has been held during the day inside government buildings to give women an excuse to attend and to be away from home.
Many of the more conservative members of President Hamid Karzai’s government disapprove of the perceived liberalism of the new regime. Conservatives recently tried to ban women from attending the hugely popular showings of the latest ‘Bollywood’ movies in the capital. A version of the feared Taliban religious police has been reinstated in Kabul.
The tensions reflect those in the country as a whole. Karzai’s fledgling administration is still weak and is reliant on aid from Western donors. Though more than 4 000 international peacekeepers maintain public order in Kabul and, in the provinces, new teams of development specialists and soldiers are starting work, experts say there is a risk that extremist leaders will mount a serious threat soon.
‘It has been a hard winter and there is a lot of anger. Many people’s expectations have not been met,’ said Peter Marsden of the British Agencies Afghanistan Project.
A key consideration now is the effect that a US-led war in Iraq might have on Afghanistan. There is already widespread resentment of the American forces who are still hunting former Taliban and al-Qaeda elements in the east and south of the country. Recently there has been a rise in the number of attacks on US military targets and the first pitched battle between reconstituted former Taliban and American forces.
There have also been a series of bomb attacks in Kabul and fighting between warlords in the west and the north. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, once a major warlord and known for his hardline views, has been rallying support in the north-eastern Kunar province and on the Shomali plains north of Kabul. The Shomali, once known for its grapes, is now a mine-strewn, cratered wasteland. Aid has been slow to reach the area and Hekmatyar has been able to capitalise on resentment.
Aid workers fear an explosion in the event of war in the Gulf. ‘Digging a few wells is not going to offset the impact of going to war on another Islamic country,’ one said.
There is some good news, however, particularly for the women drivers of Kabul. Afghanistan’s roads, turned into strips of rubble and potholes by 23 years of war and erosion, are to be rebuilt with foreign aid.
If all goes well, the women of Kabul, if they can get a car and if their husbands, fathers or brothers allow them, will be able to drive from the capital to Pakistan or to Iran in less than four hours, journeys that currently take eight hours and 30 hours respectively.
‘At least it will making fleeing easier if it all goes wrong again,’ Malalai Wardaki said wryly. – Guardian Unlimited Â