Last month, US-based Afghan physician Khaled Hosseini released his second novel, A Thousnd Splendid Suns. Like in his first novel, The Kite Runner, which has been one of the bestselling novels of the decade with nearly 4 million copies being printed, Hosseini excellently portrays human relations in Afghanistan in the backdrop of the country’s historical events and political changes between 1959 and 2003. He captures, through a story of two women from two different ways of life, the pain, suffering, emotions, and dreams of Afghan women during the Communist and subsequent eras.
Should Hosseini have waited a few weeks more, he would probably have a lot to add in the light of the recent tragedies that took the lives of two well-known Afghan women.
On June 6, extremists believed to be part of the deposed Taliban regime assassinated Zakiyah Zaki (35) in front of her 8-year-old son inside her house in the town of Jabul Siraaj, showering her with 8 bullets in the head, chest, back and feet. Only days before that, Shokiba Sanga Amaaj (22) had been killed at her residence in Kabul in the same way.
During the Taliban rule between 1996 and 2001, thousands of ordinary women were brutally executed in the Kabul Stadium and elsewhere. But that was mostly because those women had dared to challenge the regime’s taboos of no education, no jobs, no traveling, no music, no jewelry or cosmetics, and no venturing outdoors.
Zakiyah was certainly not an ordinary woman; otherwise she would not have been targeted by the Taliban and like-minded extremist groups. For the last 6 years, she has been a prominent figure in the media and education fields.
Realizing that these particular fields play a significant role in shaping the minds of people, extreme Islam-based political groups seeking power in Afghanistan and elsewhere have always strived to control them in order to exclusively promote their own ideas. If and when this was not possible for a reason or another, they would have resorted to terrorizing or assassinating liberal figures working in the two fields. This explains why Zakiyah, a long-time educator and new radio personality, and Shokiba, a newsreader for private Shamshad TV., were targeted by fundamentalist militants.
Zakiyah was also a threat to the extremist groups’ agenda of imposing outdated ideas because she was an influential, talented, courageous, optimistic women with a clear mission and strong personality.
It was said that during the 1997 Taliban war to control northern Afghanistan from warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud, Zakiyah refused to flee like other women, preferring to remain with her four children and the family cow for 7 months in a locked room with little food and water. This was out of her belief that barbarism would soon vanish and the sun of freedom would ultimately rise.
With the collapse of the Taliban regime, Zakiyah could go outdoors and work again. And because of her strong belief that in the case of a country like Afghanistan, where the majority of people were illiterate, nothing could serve the goal of promoting tolerance and peace and educating women of their fundamental rights better than radio broadcasting programmes, she establish in 2001 a radio station called “Solh Radio” or Voice of Peace.
Despite all challenges stemming from financial difficulties, increasing criticism from tribal leaders, and threatening messages from fundamentalist groups, she continued running the station with her husband, broadcasting news reports, music, and interviews with successful Afghan women, taking calls from women struggling with the changes in the post-Taliban uncertainty, and trying across the air waves to preach peace and women’s rights.
Meanwhile, Zakiyah retained her original job as a teacher and principal of a girls school in the province of Parwan, meeting the challenges of convincing conservative fathers to send their daughters to schools on the one hand, and improving the educational system on the other. The latter task took her in 2005 to the United States, where she and 12 other Afghan educators spent months at the University of Nebraska, taking computer and English classes, visiting local schools to learn about advanced administrative and teaching methods, and seeking educational aid from the Americans.
Zakiyah’s concerns about serving her country and people in various fields led her also to unsuccessfully try to win a parliamentarian seat in the 2005 general elections, in which women participated for the first time as both candidates and voters.
During her campaigns, and unlike other female candidates, Zakiyah ignored the issue of women’s veil or Chaderi (burqa), proving that she was concerned about far more important issues than a piece of cloth. Instead, she focused highly on such issues as providing women with the kind of education and training that ensure them independency, protecting them against male repression, and saving widows and orphans from poverty and begging.
Afghanistan has certainly lost a courageous and sincere woman, but her splendid image and achievements will always be there inciting other women to carry out her noble objectives.
elmadani@batelco.com.bh
*Academic researcher and lecturer on Asian affairs