Crying for Justice from Kabul
In Afghanistan, revolutionary women have taken to the web in order to combat government oppression
- BY
Matt Richtel
RAWA,
www.rawa.org
For what Sohaila Danish and her compatriots have posted on
the Internet, they could lose their hands. After all, summary amputation
is the sort of punishment readily meted out by Afghanistan's Taliban
sect, the fundamentalist Islamic group that controls much of the
country.
While the world has focused its humanitarian and media
attention on other conflicts, the Taliban regime has quietly earned
itself a reputation that would make Pol Pot proud, inflicting on the
citizenry extraordinary levels of brutality and oppression. The Taliban
has lopped off the hands of petty thieves, killed political opponents,
stoned adulterers, and treated women with particular enmity, restricting
their education and attire, and forcing them to live as fifth-class
citizens.
Enter the Revolutionary Association of the Women of
Afghanistan, a group devoted to fighting for the human rights of the
country's people. RAWA has turned the Web into a weapon for social
justice. "Our site," says Danish, "is like a dart in the
heart of the misogynist Islamic fundamentalists."
That dart has become a primary tool for raising funds and
circulating the group's message. In fact, says Danish, the Web is
integral to RAWA's success, providing a forum where one hadn't existed
previously. "Without the Web, it would have been most difficult for
us to make ourselves seen and heard," she explains. "It has
had a liberating effect on us."
In calling for the deliverance of Afghan women, the site
includes news accounts of Taliban policies and activities. Last year,
for example, the Taliban militia stole two vans that had been donated by
the Princess Diana Memorial Fund for the purpose of bringing prosthetic
devices to children injured by land mines.
Thus, the page urges the United Nations to send a
peacekeeping force to Afghanistan, and RAWA strongly advocates a policy
of disarming the Islamic fundamentalists. RAWA also argues that the
Afghan government should hold "free and fair elections," and
encourages a separation of religion and state. The organization, the
site proclaims, "believes that only a government with a secular
orientation can thwart the nefarious designs of these reactionaries from
the Dark Ages."
The Web also acts as something of a virtual headquarters for
the RAWA guerrillas, who are forced to run a clandestine campaign.
Fearing an unannounced visit from gun-toting Taliban operatives, RAWA
has no official office. Indeed, the group's mailing address is a
post-office box in Pakistan.
RAWA launched its site three years ago, when members taught
themselves to use HTML. But the group itself has been around since 1977,
founded by female Afghan intellectuals led by a revolutionary named
Meena. According to the site, the "martyred leader" was
assassinated 10 years later by KGB agents and their fundamentalist
accomplices.
Danish says the Web page receives about 150 visitors and five
to 10 e-mail messages daily, as well as periodic donations of clothing
and food from other women's organizations. The site has also felt the
ire of the Taliban and its supporters, who once published a counterfeit
RAWA site that included pornographic pictures.
"They would love to see the end of our site," says Danish, noting that even the location of her Web server is a secret. "But this is fortunately beyond their means."