On April 25th 2009, the “Honor et Dignitas” prize was awarded to RAWA at the Balducci Reception CentreRAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan has been active for 25 years. It was founded in Kabul in 1977 by a group of women intellectuals, under the leadership of Meena, a teacher and poet, who was assassinated in 1987 by Afghani agents of the KGB in collaboration with the fundamentalists of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
RAWA maintains a political position in defense of democracy and against all forms of fundamentalism. RAWA also performs social work both in Afghanistan and among the refugees in Pakistan. They have opened schools, orphanages, literacy courses for women, groups to raise awareness about health, rights, and democracy.
In a female population that is suffering from serious problems of depression - statistics show percentages rising to 98%- the women of RAWA have tried to keep alive the awareness of rights and the hope of change in a civil society devastated by civil war, by fanaticism, by exile. They have preserved the seeds of culture and of civilisation that represent the only prospective for the future.
It was May 2001, when Mariam Rawi and Zoya Gathol, invited by the Women in Black, first met the women and men of Udine. The assembly was attentive to their testimony, participative and grateful for the example of courage and simplicity that the young women of RAWA offered when they denounced the arrogance and the freedom-killing power of the Taleban. They were admired for their nonviolent resistance, for the tenacity with which they continued to sow the seeds of a free future in their martyred land.
We know that the Afghans look to the Italian Resistance as an example of an achievement that in their own country seems dramatically remote; a symbolic place from which to draw the force to feed the hope that they need. And for this reason, they immediately accepted the proposal of participating with the Women in Black in parade celebrating the liberation of Italy on the 25th April. So, on a wonderfully sunny day, crowned by the prize giving ceremony that took place a few hours later at the Balducci Centre, they walked with us - Women in Black from Udine and other cities and with the women of Cisda.
We walked, knowing that we were participating in an event that transcended the limits of our own lives and the limits of geography. In a great embrace of recognition we joined with those who fought during the Resistance because they could not live with injustice, so that it might be possible to build a world founded on respect for the rights of everyone, founded on peace.
Perhaps also for this reason, the Afghan women sought among the lined faces and among the flags, a face of a woman who could, at least in part, make that embrace a reality. They wanted to tell a woman partisan about the importance they felt in being there, and they found her in one who after having urged them to continue in their struggle - firstly in the struggle for freedom from male oppression - took off the ANPI neckerchief and gave it to Sahar, who then tied it round the tiny head of her little four month old daughter. A gesture of passing on, that moved us deeply.
The prize giving ceremony was held at the Balducci Centre in Zugliano. A long and emotional applause accompanied Mariam when she moved to take her place on the platform. Her testimony spoke to us of an ever more violent Afghanistan - more violent today than it was on the eve of the armed Western intervention. In 2001, three objectives were bandied to justify the war in Afghanistan: to bring freedom and rights to women, to bring democracy, and to defeat terrorism. But the situation now is terrible, much worse than the international media would have us believe, since the strategy that the US have adopted to destroy the power of the Taliban has been to make pacts with war criminals and fundamentalists, who have come together in parties like the Northern Alliance and who currently make up - according to Human Rights Watch – 85% of the Afghan parliament.
Strategies such as setting up talks with so-called "moderate" Talibanis ” or with criminals like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – cannot and have not set a course towards pacification. Instead they have lead to a new heightening of the conflict. And the countries of Europe, including Italy, have lined up behind the US policy.
The consequence of the power structure in Afghanistan is to make the conditions for women even more dramatic: “ Violence and rape of young girls and very old women, group rapes, forced marriages - including very young girls” are commonplace, as RAWA has witnessed.
“The percentage of women who commit suicide has risen sharply, as have the acid attacks on women students and teachers. ”.
However, the most serious matter - that has no parallel in other countries, according to Mariam, is the recent law proclaimed by parliament that denies women the rights of freedom of movement and self-determination.
“we have returned to the Taliban period and the US is doing nothing to oppose the violation of elementary and fundamental rights, such as the right to leave the house or to study. The war, so they said, was needed to free women from the burqa, but eight years on, no woman goes about without the burqa or the chador, because of the fear of being attacked by fundamentalists. ”.
Mariam also asks: how can cities and villages be bombed killing helpless civilians, in the name of the fight against terrorism? Further - with a completely corrupt parliament, in the hands of the fundamentalist war criminals, whose pockets are being lined with the economic aid coming from the international community?
For the population it's clear that the the strengthening of the Western presence in Afghanistan brings about only the construction of more military bases.
“The Afghan parliament, supported by the West, is absolutely nothing to do with democracy and those who use the instruments of democracy to oppose it are persecuted - for example, the case of independent journalists like Sayed Kambaksh who was condemned to death and has had his sentence commuted to 20 years in prison. Many others are in prison like him, many have even been killed. The Afghan parliament, supported by the West, is absolutely nothing to do with democracy since one of the conditions imposed to get the reconstruction law passed has been the total impunity for war crimes committed by those who now sit in the parliament.”
Mariam also asked what kind of democracy the West has brought to Afghanistan when threats are made against “associations like RAWA while war lords are free to do whatever they want”.
