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Authors: Jenny Nordberg
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cried. She was silent and refused to eat for days. She existed in a delirium between sleep and the barest consciousness from lack of food and complete exhaustion. Some things she dreamed and some were real; she could not tell it apart. There was little she could do—if she had run away, she would most likely have been arrested, beaten, and imprisoned as soon as she left the house. She knew escape was not an option. To refuse her parents would draw shame over the entire family, and her father would be disgraced.
She needed at least ten more years, she told her mother as she tried to negotiate. The situation in Afghanistan would change. She could go on to university, just as they had planned. Make them proud, and become extraordinarily successful.
“I will do whatever you want. Just give me more time,” she implored her mother.
“I am sorry, my child,” Siddiqua responded. “I cannot do anything more. It is over.”
Later, Azita thought she had perhaps been naive. She had only vaguely imagined getting married someday, to a man who would shareher goals in agreement with her parents. It would be someone educated, like herself, and they would both work. Perhaps an academic, like her father. Someone to look up to, who in turn supported her own ambition. But her illiterate cousin, whom she had not seen since they were toddlers?
A few months later, Azita left her parents’ home with her new husband. She was carried away on a donkey, headed for her mother-in-law’s house in a remote village. As a bride price, Azita’s father received a small piece of land and one thousand American dollars.
T ODAY , AS SHE steps out of her morning ride in dark sunglasses and nods at the security guards, Azita represents the law in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Today, like any other day, tribal elders from her province will come and ask for her favors. Leaders of political factions will try to court her vote. Businessmen will attempt to negotiate her support.
She receives them all in a parliament annex, presiding over meetings at the head of a long mahogany conference table. Meetings are rarely timed or scheduled and have no set agenda, but just keep rolling throughout her day; there is always another group of men waiting outside. She is paid two thousand dollars a month to sit in the national assembly’s lower house, tasked with creating and ratifying laws and approving members of government.
A visitor can reach the steps of the yellow building only after being approved for passage through four sandbagged roadblocks; the final checkpoint is flanked by two American Humvees, with machine gunners sticking their heads out on top. The guards may be local, but this government, as well as the very state itself, isupheld by 130,000 troops from forty-eight countries, though most are American. They are positioned just beyond the mountains in the distance, above the thick walls that surround the compound, with a single Afghan flag on a pole fluttering high in the air.
The government was created usingthe standard playbook of“state building” by Western countries after a regime is removed. At a conference near the former West German capital of Bonn in November 2001, a few dozen Afghans selected from those who had aligned themselves with Americans were brought in to design the first national government since the Soviet invasion of 1979, and to draft a new constitution. It was largely a gathering of winners, most notably of those Afghans representing the armed Northern Alliance, which had helped U.S. Special Forces to topple the Taliban. Leaders of several major Pashtun tribes deemed by foreigners to be close to the Taliban were not invited. Back then, no compromises were to be made in the planning and execution of a brand-new country.
Around the same time, the liberation of women began to be described by politicians in the United States and Europeas one more rationale for the war in Afghanistan, almost equal to that of fighting
She needed at least ten more years, she told her mother as she tried to negotiate. The situation in Afghanistan would change. She could go on to university, just as they had planned. Make them proud, and become extraordinarily successful.
“I will do whatever you want. Just give me more time,” she implored her mother.
“I am sorry, my child,” Siddiqua responded. “I cannot do anything more. It is over.”
Later, Azita thought she had perhaps been naive. She had only vaguely imagined getting married someday, to a man who would shareher goals in agreement with her parents. It would be someone educated, like herself, and they would both work. Perhaps an academic, like her father. Someone to look up to, who in turn supported her own ambition. But her illiterate cousin, whom she had not seen since they were toddlers?
A few months later, Azita left her parents’ home with her new husband. She was carried away on a donkey, headed for her mother-in-law’s house in a remote village. As a bride price, Azita’s father received a small piece of land and one thousand American dollars.
T ODAY , AS SHE steps out of her morning ride in dark sunglasses and nods at the security guards, Azita represents the law in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Today, like any other day, tribal elders from her province will come and ask for her favors. Leaders of political factions will try to court her vote. Businessmen will attempt to negotiate her support.
She receives them all in a parliament annex, presiding over meetings at the head of a long mahogany conference table. Meetings are rarely timed or scheduled and have no set agenda, but just keep rolling throughout her day; there is always another group of men waiting outside. She is paid two thousand dollars a month to sit in the national assembly’s lower house, tasked with creating and ratifying laws and approving members of government.
A visitor can reach the steps of the yellow building only after being approved for passage through four sandbagged roadblocks; the final checkpoint is flanked by two American Humvees, with machine gunners sticking their heads out on top. The guards may be local, but this government, as well as the very state itself, isupheld by 130,000 troops from forty-eight countries, though most are American. They are positioned just beyond the mountains in the distance, above the thick walls that surround the compound, with a single Afghan flag on a pole fluttering high in the air.
The government was created usingthe standard playbook of“state building” by Western countries after a regime is removed. At a conference near the former West German capital of Bonn in November 2001, a few dozen Afghans selected from those who had aligned themselves with Americans were brought in to design the first national government since the Soviet invasion of 1979, and to draft a new constitution. It was largely a gathering of winners, most notably of those Afghans representing the armed Northern Alliance, which had helped U.S. Special Forces to topple the Taliban. Leaders of several major Pashtun tribes deemed by foreigners to be close to the Taliban were not invited. Back then, no compromises were to be made in the planning and execution of a brand-new country.
Around the same time, the liberation of women began to be described by politicians in the United States and Europeas one more rationale for the war in Afghanistan, almost equal to that of fighting
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