Introduction

In the weeks and months that followed the September 11th terrorist attacks, what had been

a distinctly anti-feminist Bush administration expressed new-found concerns for the status of the

women of Afghanistan. Seemingly overnight, the Bush administration and the American

mainstream media came to recognize and take issue with the ongoing plight of the women of

Afghanistan under the Taliban which had been reported to them for years (Amnesty International

1995; Physicians for Human Rights 1998). During this period, the Bush administration made a

strong connection between its military mission in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom,

and the liberation of Afghan women. This connection was made so strongly that First Lady Laura

Bush declared in her radio address to the nation that “[t]he fight against terrorism is also a fight

for the rights and dignity of women” (2001). As the war progressed, government and media

accounts proliferated highlighting the Taliban’s oppression of women and the need for American

military intervention to ‘liberate’ Afghan women. Some have characterized the sudden Western

focus on the women of Afghanistan post-9/11 as the co-optation of women’s rights, accusing

Western media and governments of misappropriating and misrepresenting the plight of the

women of Afghanistan to gain support for the war (Hunt 2002). Perhaps less evident to most

observers is that the appeals to the status of women to justify war during the war in Afghanistan

did not reflect a new phenomena, but rather followed a legacy of the co-optation of the feminist

discourse to justify foreign intervention which can be traced back to the imperial projects of the

British in India and Egypt and the French in Algeria. In all of the aforementioned cases, appeals

to women’s rights were used to frame Western invasion and occupation as the liberation and

protection of women.Western actors constructed a rescue narrative to frame foreign occupation

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in which Western liberators rescued the victimized women of the invaded country from their

oppressive men. In doing so, Western actors framed invasion and occupation in a manner which

garnered support and provided moral legitimacy for their efforts.

The use of this rescue narrative in contemporary Afghanistan draws striking parallels to

its use in colonial Egypt, India and Algeria. Placed within this historical context, one can observe

a continuity in the use of appeals to women’s rights to justify war and occupation. In

Afghanistan, as in the colonial context, this rescue narrative is riddled with Orientalist binaries

between the people of the West and the occupied state. Likewise, in both the historical and

contemporary context, the focus of efforts at improving women’s rights is placed on cultural

practices rather than the structural economic and political roots of women’s oppression. In

Afghanistan, an obsessive focus on the veil overshadowed the impact of pervasive warfare and

economic marginalization on women’s lives. This can be likened to the colonial focus on the veil

in Algeria and Egypt and on the practice of Sati in India. Furthermore, as did colonial women,

Afghan women found their voices excluded from the discourse on their oppression except when

their message furthers the purpose of the occupation. Thus, one can observe a continuity between

the co-optation of the feminist discourse in the colonial and contemporary context.

Not only does the rescue framing and its particularities hold constant across Afghanistan

and the historical context, but so too do its surrounding circumstances. In both the contemporary

and historical context, the rescue narrative served as a moral justifier which obscured other more

pressing reasons for occupation. In the colonial context European pledges to liberate women

legitimized colonialism. In Afghanistan, these appeals further obscured the role of American oil

interests in Afghanistan and the Central Asian region. Furthermore, in Afghanistan as in the

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colonial context, appeals to foreign women’s rights are ironic and suspicious given the irrefutable

disconnect between support for women’s rights at home and abroad by those who co-opt the

feminist discourse to justify occupation and war. In the colonial context, men like British Consul

General Lord Cromer professed a desire to liberate Egyptian women while at the same time

vociferously opposing women’s equality in England. In the United States, President Bush

championed Afghan women’s rights while taking a regressive stance on women’s equality

domestically. Finally, and tragically, the use appeals to women’s rights and the co-optation of the

feminist discourse to justify war and occupation have negative or ambiguous impacts on the lives

of the women in question. War and occupation do not promote women’s equality.

This thesis employs a theoretical framework for understanding the rescue narrative.

Drawing on the works of Lakoff (1990), Stiehm (1982) and Jeffords (1991), it depicts a rescue

narrative constructed to frame invasion and occupation as the liberation and protection of women

in order to morally legitimize war and occupation. This framework also draws upon Said’s

Orientalism in order to identify the Orientalist discourse which permeates the rescue narrative.

Utilizing this framework, this thesis draws upon a broad range of journal articles, books,

government publications and news articles to demonstrate the use of this rescue narrative to

justify colonialism in the historical context, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and the recent

extension of the occupation until 2014. Having established the use of the rescue narrative, it then

utilizes Lakoff’s (2002; 2004) works on framing in political discourse to demonstrate the

powerful impact of this frame.

This analysis seeks to demonstrate how the rescue narrative is used to provide moral

justification and garner support for war by framing invasion and occupation as liberation and

3

protection. It further seeks to demonstrate how the contemporary use of this technique in the

occupation of Afghanistan does not constitute a new phenomenon, but rather a continuation of a

strategy to gain support which has existed since the era of European colonialism. It then proceeds

to demonstrate the continued use and expansion of the rescue narrative in the recent discourse

surrounding the post-2011 extension of the occupation. This argument will proceed as follows.

First, the use of appeals to women’s rights and the co-optation of the feminist discourse to

legitimize occupation is examined in the historical, colonial context. Second, the discourse

surrounding the invasion of the war in Afghanistan is examined to demonstrate the current use of

this strategy and its continuity with the historical context. Finally, examining the contemporary

discourse surrounding the recent post-2011 extension of the war in Afghanistan, this essay

examines how the rescue narrative was extended from a framing of occupation as protection to a

framing of withdrawal as abandonment to provide moral justification for an extension of the

occupation.

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Chapter I Methodology: Understanding the Rescue Narrative

The Rescue Narrative

! This analysis utilizes concepts of framing in political discourse, in particular the framing

of war, and of Orientalism to uncover how appeals to women’s rights justify warfare and

occupation. Jeffords, expanding on the works of Lakoff and Stiehm, describes a rescue narrative

used to justify war in the name of the protection of women (Jeffords 1991; Lakoff 1990; Stiehm

1982). The scenario under examination is referred to as the fairy tale of the just war by Lakoff

and the scenario of protection by Jeffords, but shall be referred to herein as the rescue narrative.

The rescue narrative is an example of what is referred to as a frame. Frames, as defined by

Lakoff in Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, are,

...mental structures that shape the way we see the world. As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a good or a bad outcome of our actions (2002, p. xv).

Given the significance of frames in shaping goals and actions, Lakoff argues that reframing is

social change (2002, p. xv). The effective use of frames in political discourse has a profound

impact on political outcomes.

Jeffords’ 1991 “Rape and the New World Order” builds upon the contributions of earlier

works by Lakoff (1990) and Stiehm (1982) to depict a framework for the rescue narrative. As

outlined by Jeffords, this rescue narrative involves three characters; the protector/hero, the

protected/victim and the threat/villain. In this narrative, the protected/victim is attacked or

threatened by the threat/villain. The protector/hero then rescues, or promises to rescue, the

protected/victim from the threat/villain (Jeffords 1991, pp. 204-207). These three roles are

interconnected in such a manner that none can be established in the absence of the other two

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(Jeffords 1991, p. 205). Given this interdependence, protectors must constantly identify victims

to protect and villains to vanquish in order to maintain the legitimacy of their role (Jeffords 1991,

p. 205). This frame is a perennial feature of war propaganda. As Lakoff explains, “the most

natural way to justify a war on moral grounds is to fit this fairy tale structure to a given

situation” (1990, pp. 4-5). The rescue narrative provides moral legitimacy for war by framing it

as a heroic effort.

Lakoff’s work on framing war stems from his 1990 article “Metaphor and War: The

Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf”, which was widely circulated in the lead-up to

the first Gulf War. While Lakoff’s version of the rescue narrative is gender-neutral, focusing on

the broader conceptions of states as protectors, the protected or villains, Stiehm’s “The Protected,

The Protector, The Defender” highlights the gendered characteristics of protection. According to

Stiehm,

For the most part, then, men have forbidden women to act either as defenders or as protectors. At the same time, a government's very existence affirms the need for defenders or protectors. In this situation all women have become 'the protected.' Some men become actual protectors; the rest remain potential protectors. (1982, p. 367)

Thus, the rescue narrative amounts to liberating a country’s women from its men. Highlighting

the racialized and gendered nature of this narrative in the context of the British colonial ban on

Sati in India, Spivak famously referred to it as “white men saving brown women from brown

men” (1994, p. 93).

As Jeffords points out, the strict interconnection between the roles in the rescue narrative

does not allow for the possibility of wrongdoing by the protector. The basis of the rescue

narrative is that the protected is violated by the villain and rescued by the protector. Thus,

“violation by the protector doesn’t count” (Jeffords 1991, p. 212). Because of this, the rescue

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narrative leaves no room for recognition of the damaging impact of the protector’s actions on the

victim. Another defining characteristic of the rescue narrative is that it contains an inherent

asymmetry between the hero and the villain. As Lakoff explains,

The hero is moral and courageous, while the villain is amoral and vicious. The hero is rational, but though the villain may be cunning and calculating, he cannot be reasoned with. Heroes thus cannot negotiate with villains; they must defeat them. (1990, p. 4)

This asymmetry bears strong similarities to Said’s concept of Orientalism, an elaboration of

which allows one to recognize the Orientalist discourse which permeates the rescue narrative.

Orientalism

The concept of Orientalism emerges from Said’s seminal 1978 work of the same name. In

this work, Said forwards three definitions for Orientalism. First, Orientalism can be understood

as an academic designation for the work of anyone who researches, writes about or studies the

Orient (Said 1978, p. 2). Second, Orientalism can be understood as “a style of thought based

upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the

time) ‘the Occident.’” (Said 1978, p. 2). Third, Orientalism can be understood “as a Western

style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said 1978, p. 3). Most

important for this analysis is Said’s second definition. As Said explains, the relationship between

the West and the Orient can be characterized by the West’s position of strength and domination

over the Orient (Said 1978, p. 40). This relationship produced a binary discourse in which “[t]he

Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different’; thus the [Westerner] is rational,

virtuous, mature, ‘normal’” (Said 1978, p. 40). Said describes Orientalism as “a political vision

of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, ‘us’)

and the strange (the Orient, the East, ‘them’)” (Said 1978, pp. 43-44). This binary discourse

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bears great similarity to the asymmetries between the hero/protector and the villain/threat Lakoff

identifies in the fairy tale of the just war. The result of this discourse has been to polarize the

distinctions between the West and the Orient, creating a system of binaries through which to

understand the relationship between the two.

The immense body of Orientalist discourse and literature accumulating over time has

produced what Said refers to as a “repertory of images” in which one can observe great internal

consistency amongst depictions of the Orient across time and space. The staying power of these

representations presents an image of the Orient as timeless, unchanging and stagnant. The

repertory of images is worth examining because, as Said argues, one must respect and seek to

better understand any system of ideas with the ability to remain relatively unchanged from the

mid-19th century until present (1978, p. 6). In his examination of 19th century Orientalism, Said

argues that by the 1850’s or 1860’s, for instance, if one from Europe wanted to write about India,

Egypt or Syria they would be greatly constrained in their capacity to write in a free and creative

way. This is because “[a] great deal of writing had gone before and this writing was an organized

form of writing, like an organized science.” (Jhally 2002). So powerful were these constraints

that “[e]ven the most imaginative writers of an age, men like Flaubert, Nerval, or Scott, were

constrained in what they could either experience of or say about the Orient.” (Said 1978, pp.

43-44). The result is a repertory of images which permeates representations of the Orient across

time and space and has a powerful impact on how we write, speak and understand the ‘other’.

A defining characteristic of this discourse is its lack of self-representation and consent on

the part of the ‘other’. As Said explains,

There is very little consent to be found, for example, in the fact that Flaubert’s encounter with an Egyptian courtesan produced a widely influential model of the Oriental woman;

8

she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively wealthy, male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him not only to possess Kuchek Hanem physically but to speak for her and tell his readers in what way she was “typically Oriental.” My argument is that Flaubert’s situation of strength in relation to Kuchuk Hanem was not an isolated instance. It fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between East and West, and the discourse about the Orient that it enabled (Said 1978, p. 6).

As with the Orientalist discourse in general, the rescue narrative can be characterized by a lack

of self-representation on the part of the protected. The protector tends to speak for the protected

or, when rare opportunities for self-representation arise, are selective in what they acknowledge.

Framing in Political Discourse

This analysis proceeds to account for the success of proponents of the War in Afghanistan

in framing the debate, and thus the failure of anti-war activists and feminists to do so, by

applying Lakoff’s lessons on framing in political discourse. Drawing from the academic field of

cognitive linguistics, Lakoff posits six lessons on framing which help to account for the power

and resilience of appeals to women’s rights to justify the War in Afghanistan. First, “words are

defined relative to conceptual frames” (Lakoff 2002, p. 419). Words evoke frames and for this

reason one must use the right words in order to evoke the right frames. For instance, the word

liberation, often deployed in the context of liberating Afghan women from the Taliban, evokes

the framing of the war as a rescue mission; of American and allied troops as heroic protectors,

Afghan women as protected victims and the Taliban as villainous threats. Second, “to use the

other side’s words is to accept their framing of the issue” (Lakoff 2002, p. 419). Thus, those who

seek to counter this narrative by positing alternative ways to liberate Afghan women actually

reinforce this frame. Third, “[h]igher level moral frames limit the scope of the frames defining

particular issues” (Lakoff 2002, p. 419). This means that frames of the protection, liberation, or

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abandonment of Afghan women which appeal to people’s morality and sense of what is ‘right’

are very powerful in shaping and limiting the scope of our understanding of the interrelation

between the War in Afghanistan, the Taliban, Afghan women and the American military. Fourth,

“to negate a frame is to [evoke] that frame” (Lakoff 2002, p. 419). This means that when

opponents of the use of Afghan women to justify the War in Afghanistan contend that “war won’t

liberate Afghan women”, they are actually evoking the rescue frame. Fifth, Lakoff contends that

“rebuttal is not reframing” and that one must impose their own alternative frames before they can

successfully rebut (2002, p. 420). Thus, one must reframe the debate in order to refute the rescue

narrative. Sixth, Lakoff makes the critical observation that “the facts themselves won’t set you

free”, arguing one must properly frame messages in order for them to have the meaning one

wishes them to convey (2002, p. 420). When facts are presented in the absence of a fitting frame,

the facts are deflected and one’s pre-existing frame is retained. For this reason, when facts are

presented which demonstrate the damaging impact of war on women or the misogynist policies

of America’s Northern Alliance allies, these facts are discarded because they do not fit the

preexisting frame of the rescue narrative. In the final section of this analysis, insight from

Lakoff’s lessons on framing is used to demonstrate how the rescue narrative allowed proponents

of an extension of the war to effectively frame the debate as one between the continued

protection or abandonment of Afghan women.

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Chapter II The Rescue Narrative in Colonial Egypt, India and Algeria

The Rescue Narrative

As several academic studies have pointed out, in the experiences of British colonialism in

Egypt and India as well as French colonialism in Algeria one can observe the deployment of a

rescue narrative through which the colonizer, portraying itself as a hero and a liberator of

women, justifies its occupation. This framing evokes an understanding of occupation as a noble

act of liberation. Within this context, women of colonized societies were portrayed as passive

and oppressed victims, colonized men as barbaric oppressors, and Western men as civilized

liberators (Hasan 2005, pp. 27-30). In colonial India, the rescue narrative portrayed Indian

women as helpless victims who were “unwelcomed at their birth, untaught in childhood,

enslaved when married, accursed as widows, and unlamented at their death.” (Haggis 2003, p.

173). Indian men, the villains, were portrayed by the British as brutal and barbaric, their

degradation of women “unequaled even among the most primitive African or Australian

savages” (Loomba 2003, p. 244). British imperialists, the protectors, portrayed themselves as

civilized liberators who freed Indian women from their oppressive men. This same narrative held

true for colonial Egypt, where British rule was justified as necessary so that enlightened and

civilized British men could liberate Egyptian women from uncivilized and oppressive Egyptian

men (Ahmed 1992). Likewise, Algerian women, “humiliated, sequestered [and] cloistered”, were

portrayed as the victims of Algerian men’s barbaric and sadistic behaviour (Fanon 1969, p. 164).

French colonialists, the protectors of Algerian women, professed a desire to liberate them in their

imperial conquest. All three cases are riddled with Orientalist binaries between the West and the

Orient, between civilized Western men and brutal Oriental barbarians, between liberated Western

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women and oppressed Oriental women. As these examples demonstrate, Western imperialists

justified their domination of colonies as necessary for the protection of these societies’ women

from their men. European colonization of Egypt, India and Algeria was morally justified through

the utilization of a rescue narrative which legitimize their occupying presence as an act of

liberation and protection.

A Focus on Culture

A commonality amongst the historical uses of the rescue narrative to justify occupation is

that Western efforts to liberate women targeted and purposefully undermined local culture. One

way this manifested itself was Western actors’ emphasis on native customs and traditions, rather

than women’s economic and political marginalization, as the source of their oppression. In India,

colonial portrayals of Indian women’s oppression focused on the practice of Sati, the self-

immolation of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre, which became not only emblematic of the

oppression of Indian women but also the moral basis for British imperialism (Loomba 2003, pp.

243-5). In Egypt, British consul general Lord Cromer focused his efforts to liberate Egyptian

women on the removal of the veil, which he perceived to be the most apparent manifestation of

Islam’s “degradation of women” (Ahmed 1992, pp. 152-153). Given this perception, despite

enacting measures that negatively affected women’s access to education and medical services,

Cromer regarded himself as the champion of Egyptian women’s rights (Ahmed 1992, p. 153).

Likewise, In Algeria, French colonialists focused their efforts for improving women’s rights on

de-veiling. Evidence that these efforts sought to undermine local culture was most emphatically

demonstrated during the events of May 13th 1958. On this day French generals bused thousands

of Algerian men into Algers where they ceremonially de-veiled a group of Algerian women,

12

upon which they cheered “Vive l’Algeria francaise” or “Long Live French Algeria” (Lazreg

1994, pp. 134-136). As Fanon observed, French imperialists used women as the site of their

attack on Algerian culture, trying to “win over the women [so] the rest will follow” (1969, p.

163). In all three cases, the thrust for liberating women ignored their material circumstances and

instead used women’s bodies as a site through which to undermine local culture. As a result,

what was, in the case of Sati, a “diverse, variable and uneven” custom (Loomba 2003, p. 245), or

in the case of the veil, one of the last “few shreds of national existence” (Fanon 1969, pp.

166-167), became a site of cultural struggle. Thus, one way in which Western appeals to the

liberation of women served to undermine local culture was the focus on cultural traditions and

customs, rather than women’s economic and political circumstances, as the source of their

oppression.

Another way in which Western efforts to liberate women purposefully undermined local

culture and served the purposes of colonialism was that the prescription for women’s liberation

often involved adopting Western gender norms in the place of indigenous ones. In colonial India,

Egypt and Algeria the prescription for the liberation of women was essentially replacing native

patriarchy with Western patriarchy, suggesting a primary concern with cultural domination rather

than improving the status of women. In India, missionary women sought to liberate Indian

women by imposing upon them Victorian middle-class gender roles so they could be good wives

and mothers (Haggis 2003, p. 174). In Algeria, the Plan de Constantine, the French strategy for

improving Algerians’ access to education and economic opportunities, recognized that male

unemployment was too high for women to enter the workforce so it recommended that they stay

home and utilize French home management methods or, where available, enter a limited number

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of feminine positions (Lazreg, 1994, p. 134). In Egypt, where Lord Cromer criticized Islam’s

degradation of women, one must not forget that his measuring rod for women’s liberation was

middle-class Victorian English gender norms which vehemently rejected the notion of women’s

equality (Ahmed, 1992, p. 150-151). As these examples illustrate, Western colonial efforts to

liberate women often undermined local culture since the prescription for the liberation of women

involved abandoning native gender norms to adopt Western ones. In their attack on local culture,

these efforts reflected the advancement of the domination of the occupying society more than the

furthering of women’s rights.

The Lack of Self-Representation in the Rescue Narrative

A defining characteristic of the deployment of the rescue narrative to justify foreign

occupation is the absence of the native women’s voices from the Western discourse on their

oppression. By being silenced from the discourse, these women are denied self-representation

and the opportunity to raise criticisms of either local or Western patriarchy. The rescue narrative,

by portraying native women as passive and helpless victims, has been constructed so that, as

Spivak famously concluded, “[t]he subaltern cannot speak” (1994, p. 104). Given her perceived

helplessness, the oppressed and victimized woman is rarely asked for her opinion. For instance,

in colonial Egypt, in contrast with Western women who defined the bra for themselves as a site

of feminist struggle, Egyptian women had little say in the politicization of the veil (Ahmed 1992,

p. 167). In Algeria, during the era of French colonialism, most Algerian women could neither

read nor write in either Arabic or French and thus neither know what was being written about

them nor have the opportunity to contribute to the debate (Lazreg 1994, p. 98). Lazreg points out

that much has been written about the politicization of the veil and its importance for French

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colonialists and Algerian men, but little has been written about its significance for Algerian

women (1994, p. 136). Compared to Algerian women, she argues, few have experienced “the

expropriation of their moral outrage by so many women and men ostensibly speaking for them

but in fact speaking against them” (Lazreg 1994, pp. 223-224). In India, as the contestation

between British and Indian culture manifested itself in women, little space was reserved for

Indian women to question either indigenous or colonial patriarchy (Loomba 2003, p. 246). When

it was, it was only the voices of those who supported the imperial discourse which were

permitted to speak. The few Indian women’s voices represented in the missionary literature came

from the Bible Women who were “Christian converts who, in South India, assisted the

missionary women by actually doing the work of reaching the ‘heathen women’” (Haggis 2003,

p. 184). According to Haggis, the Bible Women’s voices were,

...present in fragments of their work diaries, submitted to the missionary women who supervised their work. These reports were translated into English and edited by the missionaries for inclusion in missionary reports and articles (2003, pp. 184-185).

Thus, because they came from a narrow segment of the population and were filtered by the

missionaries, such voices could hardly be expected to reflect an accurate or representative

sample of Indian women’s lived experiences. As these examples demonstrate, the women of

colonial India, Egypt and Algeria could find a multitude of voices willing to speak for them but

rarely, if ever, were they asked for their input. The absence of their voices from the discourse

denies them the opportunity for self-representation and empowerment, which are both

fundamentally crucial for the advancement of women’s rights. Therefore, a definitive

characteristic through which one can identify appeals to the liberation of women as the co-

optation of the feminist discourse to justify occupation rather than a concerted effort at

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empowering women is the absence of these women’s voices on own their oppression from the

Western discourse.

Other More Pressing Incentives for Occupation

The legitimacy of the rescue narrative is called into question by the fact that the

occupation, while justified through the liberation of women, invariably provides the occupiers

some form of economic, strategic or geopolitical gain. In India, Sati served as “the moral

justification for empire” (Loomba 2003, p. 245), and missionary women’s accounts of the

perceived horrors of Indian women’s lives served as a main contributor to British support for

imperial rule (Haggis 2003, p. 180). In Egypt, the inferior status of Egyptian women confirmed

British perceptions of their own superiority and worthiness to dominate other societies (Ahmed

1992, p. 150). Furthermore, couching the attack on the veil in the language of feminism provided

a guise for the undermining of Egyptian culture and the perpetuation of British dominance.

Likewise, in Algeria, using appeals to women’s rights to attack the veil helped legitimize

attempts at acculturation, and served the colonial establishment’s efforts at de-structuring

Algerian culture (Fanon 1969, p. 164). Haggis, addressing the paradox of British colonial

feminists in India promoting the same gender relations abroad which they opposed at home,

argues that British women used the colonial mission as a way to liberate themselves from

domestic oppression (2003). Thus, feminists carved themselves a civilizing role in India as their

responsibility “because it affirmed an emancipated role for them in the imperial nation

state” (Burton 1990, p. 296). In India, Egypt and Algeria, while feminism and the language of

women’s rights were used to justify intervention, these self-professed liberators invariably

benefitted from their occupying role. Thus, as these examples demonstrate, the deployment of

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the rescue narrative is invariably used as a moral justification to obscure some gain afforded to

self-professed liberators by their occupying presence.

The Discrepancy Between Support for Women’s Equality at Home and Abroad

The nobility of the deployment of the rescue narrative in Egypt, Algeria and India is

called into question by the presence of a conspicuous discrepancy between European occupiers’

support for feminism when directed against men of other cultures and feminism in their home

countries. This discrepancy is emblematic of the fact that claims to protect women’s rights are

not borne out of legitimate concerns but rather a strategic co-optation of the feminist discourse to

justify occupation. French colonialists in Algeria, while professing a deep concern for Algerian

women’s rights, did not truly believe in equality of the sexes either at home or abroad (Lazreg

1994, p. 63). Likewise, in India, British colonialists espousing feminist concerns conveniently

ignored the fact that women were regarded as intellectually inferior and barred from equal access

to prosperity in Victorian England (Hasan 2005, pp. 37-38). The most striking evidence of this

hypocrisy between support for feminism abroad and domestically, however, comes from British

colonialism in Egypt, where Lord Cromer, the champion of women’s rights in Egypt, was

“founding member and sometimes president of the Men’s League for Opposing Women’s

Suffrage” in England. (Ahmed 1992, p. 153). As Ahmed reflects, even though Victorian men

“rejected the ideas of feminism and the notion of men’s oppressing women with respect to

[themselves], [they] captured the language of feminism and redirected it, in the service of

colonialism, toward... the cultures of Other men” (1992, p. 151). In Algeria, India and Egypt,

colonial men with overtly anti-feminist beliefs regarding their own societies’ women embraced

the language of feminism to justify foreign intervention. Thus, as these examples demonstrate,

17

the legitimacy of the rescue narrative is further weakened by the discrepancy between occupiers’

support for feminism when used again other men in other societies and their vociferous

opposition to it domestically.

The Outcome for Women’s Lives

Unsurprisingly, the occupation, morally justified through the liberation of women, did not

improve the economic, political and social circumstances of women in the colonies. Although the

site of much politicization, the lives of women, whose oppression has been highlighted and

misappropriated to justify occupation by Western actors, are rarely improved. In India, for

instance, British colonial regulation of Sati in 1813 led to a sharp increase in the number of Satis

in the following years1 (Loomba 2003, p. 245). Furthermore, while the British establishment

professed a desire to elevate the status of the women of India, imposing Victorian middle-class

gender roles upon them did not improve their economic standing (Haggis 2003, p. 174). In

Egypt, while Cromer professed a desire to liberate Egyptian women, his educational policies,

including raising school fees and placing restriction on the training of female doctors, had a

detrimental impact on Egyptian women’s access to education and employment (Ahmed 1992, p.

153). In Algeria, despite embracing the rhetoric of women’s liberation, the French colonial

establishment limited women’s educational and employment opportunities in their Plan de

Constantine (Lazreg 1994, p. 134). As these examples show, the policies of those who co-opt the

feminist discourse for imperialistic intentions often have negative or ambiguous effects on

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1 The British Colonial establishment began regulating Sati in Indian in 1813. In establishing this regulation, they asked pundits at the courts to provide them with regulations in conformity with the scriptures. Prior to regulation, the practice Sati may have been diverse, contextual and subject. With British regulation, however, it became calcified in law in accordance with a traditional understanding of the practice. It is argued that this gave Sati a legitimacy which it previously lacked and enforced a rigid interpretation of a less structured practice (Loomba 2003, p. 245). Furthermore, it is argued by others that the sharp increase in Sati after British regulation reflected a resistance to Western control (Loomba 2003, p. 246).

women’s lives. Thus, the use of the rescue narrative to legitimize occupation in the name of

women’s liberation most often results in a lack of improvement in the economic, political and

social circumstances of the women in focus.

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Chapter III The Rescue Narrative in Post-9/11 Afghanistan

A Continuity of Methods

Placed within this historical context, the appeals to the liberation of Afghan women by

the United States during the onset of the war in Afghanistan bear a striking resemblance to the

appeals to women’s rights to justify colonial occupation in Egypt, India and Algeria. As did their

imperial predecessors, actors in the United States cultivated support for the occupation of

Afghanistan in the name of women’s liberation. Much of the evidence demonstrates the

continuity between the historical use of the rescue narrative in colonial Egypt, India and Algeria

and the United States invasion of Afghanistan.

The Rescue Narrative in Afghanistan

! In the Western discourse on the War in Afghanistan one can clearly identify the utilization

of the rescue narrative to justify military intervention. Drawing on the same repertoire of images

(Said 1994) used by the French in Colonial Algeria and the British in Colonial India and Egypt,

these actors cultivated popular support for the war by framing it as a heroic mission for the

liberation of Afghan women. Through the narrative of the protector, the protected and the villain

(Jeffords 1991; Stiehm 1982), the Western discourse called upon America and its allies (the

protector) to liberate Afghan women (the protected) from the Taliban (the villain). This narrative

drew heavily from Orientalist binaries used in the historical colonial context. President Bush laid

the foundations for the rescue narrative weeks prior to Operation Enduring Freedom during his

September 20th, 2001 address to the Joint Session of Congress when he told Congress and the

American public of the “brutalized” citizens of Afghanistan, a country where “[w]omen are not

allowed to attend school” (Bush 2001a). This narrative grew increasingly prominent in the

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mainstream discourse after the declaration of Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7th, 2001.

First Lady Laura Bush explicitly and inextricably tied the war in Afghanistan to the liberation of

Afghan women during her radio address to the nation on November 17th, 2001, declaring that

“[t]he brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists”, and that “only the terrorists

and the Taliban forbid education to women” (Bush 2001). Contrasting the ‘brutality’ of the

Taliban with the outrage of ‘civilized’ people, First Lady Bush directly attributed Afghan

women’s liberation to American military intervention, declaring that “[b]ecause of our recent

military gains in Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes” (2001). Support

for this narrative drew consensus across party lines, with Hillary Clinton writing in Time

Magazine that “[t]hanks to the courage and bravery of America's military and our allies, hope is

being restored to many women and families in much of Afghanistan” (2001).

The post-9/11 discourse on the women of Afghanistan is not only inaccurate but

deliberately misrepresentative of the historical origins of Afghan women’s oppression on at least

two accounts. First, the Bush administration’s assertion that “[t]he assault on the status of women

began immediately after the Taliban took power in Kabul” (Bureau of Democracy, Human

Rights and Labor 2001) deliberately ignores knowledge of the systemic human rights abuses

against women under the Rabbani government which preceded the Taliban from 1992 until 1996

(Hunt 2003, p. 57). The Rabbani government was responsible for widespread rape and murder of

women (Warnock 2008, p. 133). Amnesty International, highlighting the brutalization of women

under the Rabbani warlords, had been urging the international community to intervene in

Afghanistan since 1995 (1995, p. 21). Likewise, in their 1998 report on the Taliban’s oppression

of women, Physicians for Human Rights observed that the oppression of women greatly

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escalated in 1992 under the Rabbani government (1998, p. 30). The United States was aware of

these reports yet continuously portrayed the oppression of women in Afghanistan solely as a

product of the Taliban (Bush 2001; Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor 2001).

In reality, egregious violations of the rights of the women of Afghanistan began neither

under the Taliban in 1996 nor the Rabbani government in 1992, but rather in 1978 when the

United States began providing tremendous support to Mujahedeen fundamentalists (Warnock

2008, p. 149). Thus, a second way the United States’ discourse on the women of Afghanistan

deliberately misrepresents the historical circumstances of these women is the lack of recognition

of American complicity in their current woes. The United States, by funding the most

fundamentalist of forces in Afghanistan, is directly responsible for the plight of Afghan women.

As part of its cold war strategy, the United States provided a total of $3 billion to the

Mujahedeen to fuel their struggle against the Soviets (Hirschkind and Mahmood 2002, p. 342).

In a 1998 interview Jimmy Carter’s Former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski,

revealed that American support for the Mujahedeen didn’t start after the war in 1979 as was

commonly thought, but rather in 1978 in order to purposefully induce the Soviets into their own

Vietnam. Asked reflectively if he regretted funding the rise of Islamic fundamentalists,

Brzezinski responded by asking his interviewer “[w]hat is most important to the history of the

world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the

liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?” (Le Nouvel Observateur 1998). While

a number of moderate Afghan nationalist groups opposed the Soviet occupation, the vast

majority of aid was given to the most radical and fundamentalist groups. According to

Hirschkind and Mahmood , over 50% of US aid to the Mujahedeen went to a group headed by

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Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord “known for throwing acid in the faces of women who refused

to wear the veil” (2002, p. 343). Thus, the American administration and government directly

contributed to the development of Afghan women’s current plight by funding oppressive and

fundamentalist groups with a disregard for their human rights records. In fact, American support

for fundamentalists in Afghanistan despite their atrocious human rights abuses against women

continued as late as May 2001, when the United States provided Afghanistan with $43 million

dollars as a reward for the Taliban’s ban on opium (Kapur 2002; CNN 2001). Thus, the rescue

narrative used to justify the war in Afghanistan misrepresents the historical roots of the

oppression of Afghan women by ignoring its existence prior to the rise of the Taliban as well as

America’s contribution to it. A deeper understanding of the roots of Afghan women’s oppression

and America’s complicity in its emergence is cause for skepticism of American concerns for

Afghan women and suggests they reflect little more than the co-optation of the feminist

discourse to justify military occupation.

The Focus on Afghan Culture and the Veil

Much like the French and British colonial discourses on the oppression of women in

Algeria, India and Egypt, the contemporary Western governmental and media discourse on the

oppression of women in Afghanistan has focused almost obsessively on the cultural

manifestations of Afghan women’s oppression, leaving the material, economic and, most

importantly, political and conflict-related sources of their plight relatively ignored. This

discourse fell short of prescribing the replacement of Afghan with American culture, but it

clearly rooted Afghan women’s oppression in their local culture and targeted local practices,

particularly veiling. In doing so, this discourse legitimized the notion of Afghanistan having an

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inferior culture worthy of Western domination while failing to address the real sources of Afghan

women’s oppression. In the discourse that emerged, the plight of the women of Afghanistan was

reduced to a battle against fundamentalism (Zine 2006, p. 35). During this time it became

“popular common-knowledge” that the veil epitomized the oppression of Afghan women (Abu-

Lughod 2002, p. 785). In the final weeks of November 2001, Time Magazine alone produced

numerous articles focusing on culture, and specifically the burqa, as the source of Afghan

women’s oppression, with titles like ‘Kabul Unveiled’ (Stanmeyer 2001), ‘The Women of

Islam’ (Beyer 2001), ‘About Face for the Women of Afghanistan’ (Lacayo 2001), ‘Veil of

Tears’ (Walsh 2001), and ‘Looking Behind the Burqa’ (McGirk 2001). Hillary Clinton cultivated

these images in an article for Time Magazine, asking readers “[b]ut how, some might say, can

women emerge from behind the burqas to positions of leadership in Afghan society so

quickly?” (Clinton 2001). Importantly, the vast majority of representations of the burqa in this

discourse failed to point out that it was not the burqa itself but rather the Taliban’s forced

imposition of it which was problematic (Ayotte and Husain 2005, p. 119). The prominence of

culture in this discourse led many to ask, and rightfully so, “[w]hy... conditions of war,

militarization, and starvation [were] considered to be less injurious to women than the lack of

education, employment, and, most notably, in the media campaign, Western dress

styles?” (Hirschkind and Mahmood 2002, p. 345). Put bluntly by Kolhatkar, “[w]hat good is an

uncovered face if it is starving to death?” (2002). In a study of Afghanistan, Physicians for

Human Rights found that “the rights to freedom of speech and expression, the instituting of legal

protections for women, and issues surrounding peace and de-mining [were] amongst the most

pressing concerns for women in Afghanistan”, while the burqa and dress were among the least

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important (Kapur 2002, p. 219). Despite these pleas, an examination of the impact of decades of

conflict was passed over in the West for a focus on culture, religious extremism and the veil as

the source of Afghan women’s oppression (Khan 2008, p. 128). With this focus, the Western

discourse not only ignored the real sources of Afghan women’s oppression, but by proposing war

as a remedy it attempted to solve Afghan women’s problems by contributing to their very source.

The failure of the West to recognize and challenge the major sources and manifestations of

Afghan women’s oppression rather than focus on culture and the burqa suggests that American

appeals to the liberation of Afghan women reflect the co-optation of the feminist discourse to

justify military occupation rather than legitimate concerns for their welfare.

The Absence of Afghan Women’s Self-Representation from the Western Discourse

In the Western discourse on the oppression of the women of Afghanistan, as was evident

in the discourse during colonial times, one can observe a general absence of Afghan women’s

voices except when they fit within the rescue narrative. Those voices outside of this narrative are

largely excluded. This reflects the simultaneous silencing and co-optation of these women’s

agency. Western representation of Afghan women simultaneously present two distinct images;

Afghan women as helpless victims who must be rescued, but also as vocal opponents of the

Taliban (Hunt, 2002 p. 117). Both of these images serve to justify military intervention in the

name of Afghan women. The more dominant of these two images has been of Afghan women as

helpless, passive victims of the Taliban’s brutality. This portrayal legitimizes foreign intervention

in Afghanistan by forwarding the notion that Afghan women can only be liberated by outside

assistance (Ayotte and Husain 2005, p. 123). Through this discourse, Afghan women’s “ability

throughout decades of war and hardship to survive adversity with tenacious resistance was lost in

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the attempt to cast them as voiceless victims” (Zine 2006, p. 35). Flying in the face of these

representations of Afghan women as passive victims are the thousands of women of the

Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), a group that has courageously

opposed fundamentalism, warlordism and violence in Afghanistan in all its forms. The women of

RAWA have bravely defended their rights in Afghanistan and have represented themselves

articulately before both the United Nations and the United States Government. Unfortunately,

however, the voices of the women of RAWA have only been represented in the West when they

are woven into the discourse of opposition to the Taliban. The agency of RAWA members and

their powerful criticisms of the Taliban were co-opted into the Western discourse to justify the

war in the name of Afghan women (Hunt 2002, p. 117). For Western actors, highlighting

RAWA’s opposition to the Taliban added credence to the notion that the war is supporting Afghan

women. What is far less reported, however, is that RAWA has opposed the bombing and the war

from its onset (Abu-Lughod 2002, p. 789). Also absent from discussion is the fact that RAWA

was formed in the late 1970’s and stood in opposition to numerous previous regimes, including

the Northern Alliance that the United States has taken on as an ally in its war effort (Abu-Lughod

2002, p. 790). At the onset of the war, RAWA warned the United States of siding with the

Northern Alliance, stating that their human rights record was just as horrific as the Taliban’s and

that “[o]ne fundamentalist band cannot be fought by siding with and supporting

another” (RAWA 2001). RAWA warned against the U.S.-led invasion numerous times both

publicly and before the U.S. House of Representatives, but these calls went unanswered. If

American concerns for promoting Afghan women’s rights were legitimate one would expect

more respect for Afghan women’s organizations’ claims that war would negatively impact human

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rights and democracy in Afghanistan (Hunt 2003 p. 57). The selective representative of Afghan

women’s agency when it accords with the occupying effort provides further evidence that U.S.

appeals to the liberation of Afghan women reflect little more than the use of appeals to women’s

rights to justify occupation.

The Discrepancy Between Bush’s Support for Women’s Equality in Afghanistan and at

Home

Support for the claim that American concerns for the status of the women of Afghanistan

reflect the co-optation of women’s rights can be found in the conspicuous contradiction between

the Bush administration’s professed concerns for liberating women in Afghanistan and its

markedly anti-women and anti-feminist domestic policies. Like Britain’s Lord Cromer and other

colonial officials who utilized feminist discourse, Bush co-opted the language of women’s rights

abroad while vehemently resisting feminist concerns domestically (Ahmed 1992). On his very

first day as President he denied funding to any international organization offering abortion

services or counseling (Viner 2002), effectively eliminating the option for millions of women in

the developing world, including the roughly 80,000 who die annually from unsafe abortions

(Eisenstein 2006, p. 195). Like Ronald Reagan and his father George H. W. Bush before him,

President Bush declared a National Sanctity of Human Life Day on January 20th, 2002 to

coincide with the January 22nd, 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling on women’s access to abortion services

(White House 2002). In his announcement of the day, Bush explicitly tied abortion to terrorism,

telling the American public that “[o]n September 11, we saw clearly that evil exists in this world,

and that it does not value life... Now we are engaged in a fight against evil and tyranny to

preserve and protect life” (White House 2002). Bush also shut down or reduced the size of a

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number of government offices focused on women’s equality in the workforce. Most troubling

among these was his closure of key offices in the Women’s Bureau of the Labor Department

charged with measuring data on wage-earning women and wage discrepancies between men and

women (Eisenstein 2006, p. 195). These closures made this data unavailable, eliminating

evidence to support gender-based claims of inequality or discrimination in the workforce

(Eisenstein 2006, p. 195). In addition to this, Bush also closed the White House Women’s Office

established under the Clinton administration which was responsible for the coordination of

policy initiatives concerning women (Eisenstein 2006, p. 195). Also under Bush’s watch,

Attorney General John Ashcroft appointed a number of judges opposed to reproductive choice

and women’s rights as well as two members to the National Advisory Commission on Violence

Against Women seeking its abolition (Eisenstein 2006, p. 195). While the Bush administration

touted its efforts to liberate the women of Afghanistan it systematically undermined the rights of

women in the United States and abroad through ideologically-driven anti-women policies. The

conspicuous contradiction between the Bush Administration’s concerns for women’s status in

Afghanistan and its markedly anti-feminist and anti-women policies suggests American desires

to liberate the women of Afghanistan, like those of Cromer and other colonial officials, reflect

little more than the co-optation of the feminist discourse to justify military occupation.

Other More Pressing Incentives for Occupying Afghanistan

The nobility of American desires to liberate Afghan women is significantly reduced upon

recognition of the economic and geopolitical objectives forwarded by American military

occupation of Afghanistan. Just as the French and British stood to gain from their presence in

Algeria, India and Egypt, so too does the United States have economic and geopolitical

28

incentives for controlling Afghanistan. Thus, one must be skeptical of whether American desires

to liberate Afghan women reflect legitimate concern or an attempt to mask economic and

geopolitical motivations. First and foremost, one cannot overstate the significance of the fact that

American policy-makers only sought to liberate the women of Afghanistan after September 11th

despite a long-running recognition of their suffering. More importantly, however, one must also

recognize the role economic concerns, specifically the desire to control Central Asian energy

resources, play in American interests in Afghanistan.

During the 1990s, a United States oil company called Unocal was engaged in discussions

with the Taliban regarding the development of a 1,040 mile pipeline from the Caspian Sea

through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan into the Arabian Sea (Talbot 2003, pp.

316-318). In addition to this, there was also a 790 mile natural gas pipeline planned to run

through the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan border through Afghanistan into Central Pakistan

(Physicians for Human Rights 1998, p. 29). By bypassing Russia and Iran this would not only

greatly enhance profits but serve American geopolitical interests in the region (Talbot 2003, p.

316). Taliban representatives came to Texas to discuss the pipeline deal with Unocal executives

in December 1997 (BBC World Service 1997b), however discussions fell through following Al

Qaeda’s August 1998 embassy bombings and the U.S. cruise missile strikes on Al-Qaeda targets

in Afghanistan which ensued (Warnock 2008, p. 132). Prior to this setback, the importance of

Central Asia to U.S. oil interests was demonstrated earlier in 1998 by John J. Maresca, VP

International Relations for Unocal, who testified before the U.S. House of Representatives that:

The [Caspian] region’s total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels. In 1995, the region was producing only 870,000 barrels per day. By 2010, western companies could increase production to about 4.5 million barrels a day, an increase of more than 500 percent in only 15 years. If

29

this occurs, the region would represent about 5 percent of the world’s total oil production. (Maresca 1998)

In this same testimony, Mr. Maresca concluded that because of the competitiveness of the

European market and because of American sanctions on Iran the only viable route for the

pipeline would be through Afghanistan. Despite his optimism for the potential of the region, Mr.

Maresca concluded that the pipeline through Afghanistan “could not begin until a recognized

government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company”,

urging Congress to provide support to a U.N. peace process in Afghanistan (Maresca 1998). Mr.

Maresca’s call went unanswered, but American interest in the Caspian Sea region continued into

the Bush administration, with Dick Cheney’s 2001 report on US energy needs calling for major

American developments in the area (Warnock 2008, p. 83). The primacy of oil interests in the

U.S. involvement in the region is evident in the fact that Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as an

advisor to Unocal during the 1990s (Warnock 2008, p. 81), served as Bush’s Special Presidential

Envoy to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2003 and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to

2005 (U.S. State Department). It was also widely alleged that Afghanistan’s President Hamid

Karzai served as a Unocal advisor (Warnock 2008 p. 81), although this has been denied both by

Karzai and Unocal (Global Security 2009).

Progress towards the development of the pipeline followed shortly after the invasion. In

May 2002 the BBC reported that “Afghanistan hopes to strike a deal later this month to build a

$2bn pipeline through the country to take gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to Pakistan and

India” (BBC News 2002). Mohammad Alim Razim, Afghanistan’s Minister for Mines and

Industries reported that Unocal was the preferred company to carry out this project (BBC News

2002). A framework agreement on the plan was signed by Turkmenistan, Pakistan and

30

Afghanistan in December 2002 for what would be known as the TAP pipeline, named after its

member states (McWilliam 2002). India, which was invited to join the project when the TAP

agreement was signed, officially joined what then became the TAPI pipeline agreement in April

2008 (Foster 2008, p. 4). The project has been coordinated by the Asian Development Bank, a

regional development bank owned by 48 member states in the region and 19 from other parts of

the world (Foster 2008, p. 4). During a steering committee meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan on

April 23-24 a framework agreement was signed by the four partners to facilitate implementation

of the project (Thomas Financial News 2008).

Construction of the pipeline remains stalled due to continued instability in the region, but

U.S. interest in the project remains. A rival deal has been proposed which would flow gas from

Iran through Pakistan to India through what is known as the IPI or Peace Pipeline. This pipeline

would be constructed by the three states separately, reportedly to avoid sanctions for cooperating

with Iran (Foster 2008, p. 8). The United States has vociferously opposed the IPI pipeline.

According to Foster,

In 2007, a senior State Department official, Steven Mann, stated that the United States is unequivocally against the deal. “The U.S. government supports multiple pipelines from the Caspian region but remains absolutely opposed to pipelines involving Iran.” Washington fears the IPI pipeline deal would be a blow to its efforts to isolate Iran. The Bush administration has been trying to pressure both Pakistan and India to back off from the pipeline (2008, p. 8).

India withdrew from the IPI pipeline in 2009 citing transit fees and pricing disputes (UPI 2010).

Development of the pipeline continued between Iran and Pakistan, and the door remains open for

India to participate. In February 2011, however, the project was officially suspended (Cutler

2011).

31

At the same time as the IPI pipeline deal reached a stalemate, progress towards the TAPI

pipeline surged ahead. The TAPI greatly progressed in December 2010 when a deal was signed

between the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat

(BBC News 2010). In February 2011 U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake reported that

“good progress had been made” on the TAPI pipeline as he wrapped up a tour of Central Asia,

adding that he was engaged in discussions with U.S. companies interested in the pipeline

development (UPI 2010b). To add further economic incentives, it was revealed in the summer of

2010 that the United States had identified nearly $1 trillion of mineral deposits in Afghanistan

(Risen 2010). In January 2011, Afghan Minister of Mines Wahidullah Shahrani reported the

estimated value of recently-discovered untapped mines had increased to $3 trillion (Najafizada

2011).

The role of oil interests in Afghanistan is absent from the mainstream discourse because

civilian populations in the U.S or elsewhere have scant interest in participating in war for

economic motives, and so these are often masked by noble and just causes to garner public

support (Delphy 2002, p. 343). Coverage of the pipeline is virtually absent from the Western

media with the occasional exception in the business pages of Forbes and Bloomberg.

Recognizing this reality, one can understand why the U.S. has promoted the idea that the war is

liberating Afghan women. Thus, given the existence of American economic incentives for

invading Afghanistan one must be skeptical of whether America’s expressed desires to liberate

the women of Afghanistan represent legitimate humanitarian concerns or the co-optation of

women’s rights to mask other economic and geopolitical motives.

32

Afghan Women’s Lives After Nearly Ten Years of Occupation

Just months into the invasion of Afghanistan, during his first State of the Union address,

President George W. Bush boasted of the liberation of Afghan women, telling America that “[t]he

last time we met in this chamber, the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their

own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today women are free, and are part of

Afghanistan's new government” (2002). Despite these boisterous claims, however, more than

nine years later the occupation of Afghanistan has yet to follow through on its promise to liberate

Afghan women. The women of Afghanistan have achieved measured gains in terms of political

inclusion, legal protection, access to education and economic opportunities since the fall of the

Taliban, but these improvements must be tempered against the death, pervasive violence and

threats to their personal security which have also increased. Thus, while the status of women in

Afghanistan has improved according to certain measures during the occupation of Afghanistan it

would be extremely difficulty to argue the war has been to their benefit.

The inclusion of the women of Afghanistan in the new Afghan government has been

perhaps the most highly touted accomplishment of post-Taliban Afghanistan in terms of women’s

equality, but women’s numerical representation doesn’t reflect their marginalization and

exclusion from power. Afghan women have been involved in Afghanistan’s political

reconstruction since the initial negotiations of the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan at the

Bonn negotiations, where they constituted 10 percent of the delegates. Women’s political

representation further increased in subsequent stages of the reconstruction, with female delegates

comprising “12 percent of delegates at the emergency Loya Jirga, 20 percent of the

Constitutional Drafting and Constitutional Review Commissions, and 20 precent of

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representatives at the Constitutional Loya Jirga.” (Sultan, Levine and Powley 2005 p. x).

Women’s political inclusion was ultimately enshrined in Article 83 of the Afghan constitution,

which reserved for women 25 percent of the seats in Afghanistan’s lower house of Parliament

and nearly 17 percent in its upper house. In addition, Afghanistan’s first cabinet included three

female Ministers. Unfortunately, despite these impressive initial strides, women’s political

representation is already on the decline. This is particularly acute in areas without quotas such as

cabinet positions, where the only current female Minister of the Minister of Women’s Affairs

(Human Rights Watch 2009, p. 5). In parliament, where quotas do exist, numerous flaws have

been observed in the process. Malalai Joya, a former member of Parliament and outspoken critic

of the Afghan government, alleges that “the quota system has in fact been abused by the

warlords, who intimidate independent women from running for office, ensuring that their stooges

are elected instead” (Joya 2008, p. 161). A 2009 study conducted by UNIFEM Afghanistan found

that women who receive the highest percent of the vote in their province during elections are not

placed in regular seats, but rather are automatically placed into female quota seats. Thus, the

quota is essentially used as a ceiling rather than a floor for women’s political representation

(UNIFEM 2009, p. 11). Women’s political representation has been further undermined by

President Hamid Karzai who, in February 2010, passed a Presidential Decree which “permits

unfilled quota seats to be filled by ‘the most voted candidate in the candidates list,’ regardless of

gender” (UNIFEM 2009, p. 12). In the context of violent hostility against women’s political

participation, this greatly increases the risk of female candidates being threatened if they run for

office by giving the men incentive to threaten them. Thus, while women’s representation has

34

been constitutionally guaranteed in the new Afghan government, there are serious limitations to

women’s political participation.

In addition to guaranteed representation of women in Afghan parliament, the very

enfranchisement of Afghan women was a significant improvement from their experiences under

the Taliban regime. Evidence from the October 2004 Presidential election suggested that many

Afghan women embraced the right to vote, with women constituting 40 percent of the overall

voter turnout. Despite these impressive aggregate figures however, those in certain provinces are

extremely problematic, such as in Oruzgan and Helmand provinces, where women’s turnout was

only 7 and 2 percent respectively (Sultan, Levine and Powley 2005, p. x). Some light is shed

upon the cause of this low turnout by a 2005 survey of Afghan men and women in which 87

percent said they believed women required permission from their husbands to vote (United

Nations Development Programme 2005, p. 5). Furthermore, women’s low turnout is closely

linked to the general insecurity for all Afghans, but particularly women, during elections. In the

2009 Presidential elections it was reported that the Independent Election Commission only began

to recruit women to conduct security checks at female voter stations weeks before the election,

and ultimately could not provide sufficient security personnel at female voting stations during

that election. As a result, male security personnel worked at many female polling stations which

led many Afghan women to stay home on election day (Human Rights Watch 2009, p. 30).

Optimism about women’s enfranchisement in the new Afghan government must be

measured against the evidence of widespread voter fraud using women’s ballots. Despite

women’s low reported turnout in elections, female votes cast in the 2009 election were high and

likely a result of serious fraud. For instance, in the Paktia province the majority of ballots

35

counted were cast by females, but this is unlikely given that women’s reported turnout was low

in district areas and virtually non-existent in rural areas (Human Rights Watch 2009, pp. 30-31).

In the end, nearly one third of all votes cast in the 2009 election were eliminated due to fraud

(UNIFEM 2009, p. 5). Thus, while women’s political enfranchisement represents a significant

gain for the women of Afghanistan, this improvement is limited by the general insecurity of

female voters as well as pervasive electoral fraud using women’s votes.

In addition to the serious challenges posed by the shortcomings of the inclusion of

women in political bodies and the electoral process, the prospects of the representation of

women’s interests and the defence of women’s rights in Afghanistan’s new government has been

seriously hampered by the inclusion of numerous fundamentalist warlords in the government. In

attempts to increase security and support for the government, current and former warlords have

been co-opted and given official positions and impunity from punishment (Human Rights Watch

2010, p. 6) This process began in the Bonn negotiations of 2001, where U.S. State department

representative Zalmay Khalilzad made closed-door arrangements with numerous warlords in

order to gain their support (Joya 2008, p. 54). This pattern of co-opting warlords was so

pervasive that a Human Rights Watch report suggested that 60 percent of the members of

Afghanistan’s first parliament were either warlords or their allies (Joya 2008, p. 124). These

warlords were responsible for the destruction of Afghanistan under the Rabbani government

from 1992 to 1996, and include men such as Abdul Rashid Dostum and Karzai’s first vice-

president Mohammad Qasim Fahim (Sands 2010). Thirty-four members of Afghanistan’s first

parliament belonged to Hezb-e-Islami, the party once controlled by the warlord Gulbiddin

Hekmatyar (Joya 2008, p. 125), who has been “known for throwing acid in the faces of women

36

who refused to wear the veil” (Hirschkind and Mahmoud 2002, p. 343). The party now denies

being under the control of Gulbiddin, but this claim is contested (Joya 2008, p. 125). Regardless,

the United States and President Karzai have shown interest in integrating Gulbuddin, the once-

CIA patron who is now a powerful anti-government leader, into the Afghan government. Karzai

has been so explicit as to publicly state that he would offer him a government position if he could

help stop the conflict (Grono and Rondeaux 2010). The integration of warlords into the Afghan

government poses a serious challenge to the political representation of women due to these men’s

fundamentalist views on gender and their respective histories of pervasive human rights abuses.

The willingness to co-opt these individuals into government suggests their fundamentalist

orientation is less of a concern to the United States than often professed.

The story of former-MP Malalai Joya is emblematic of both the low status of female

Parliamentarians and the power of the warlords in Afghanistan. Joya, an outspoken critic of the

warlords, was regularly silenced in parliament by having her mic cut off (Joya 2008, p. 127). In

addition to attempts at silencing her, Joya received regular death threats not only from the

Taliban and warlords outside of government, but also from her fellow parliamentarians. One of

many examples would be the warlord-parliamentarian Abdul Rab Rasool Sayyaf, leader of the

Islamic Unity Party, who Joya alleges turned to her in Parliament, and with a menacing motion

told her something to the effect of “Shut up! I will make you silent forever.” (Joya 2008, p. 133).

Joya’s enemies in parliament effectively silenced her on May 21st 2007 when they suspended her

from parliament for the rest of her term for insulting her fellow parliamentarians. The event

causing her expulsion was a television interview in which she compared the parliament to a

stable. Joya says these comments were edited out of context from a statement in which she

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divided parliament into two groups; “one working to uphold democratic principles, the other

working to undermine them, thereby, she said, serving the Afghan population even less than

animals in a stable” (Human Rights Watch 2009, p. 26). Since her expulsion Joya has been living

in hiding and says she has not received protection from the Afghan government. Given her

experiences, Joya did not run in the recent September 2010 parliamentary elections but has

remained an outspoken critic of the War in Afghanistan and the Afghan government. Her story is

illustrative of a number of challenges faced by Afghan women seeking political representation.

In short, while the representation of women in the new Afghan government through gender-

quotas and their inclusion into the electoral process are significant gains, flaws with the quota

system, the marginalization of female parliamentarians, excessive voter fraud, barriers to female

voting and the broad representation of warlords in the Afghan parliament and government place

serious limits on the representation of women in Afghanistan.

The purpose of these examples is not to suggest all Afghan men are fundamentalist and

repressive of women. They are not. Afghanistan had pro-women’s rights reforms as early as 1923

under King Amanullah and had women entering electoral politics as early as 1964 (Ahmed-

Ghosh 2003). Rather, what this analysis seeks to demonstrate is that the the rights of Afghan

women have been systematically hindered by the explicit strategy of U.S. actors to co-opt

fundamentalists into the Afghan government.

Afghan women’s rights are defended by the Afghan constitutional but this protection is

jeopardized due to ambiguous provisions for Islamic law and their interpretation by an overtly

fundamentalist judiciary. Afghan women’s rights have been enshrined in a number of

constitutional provisions including the crucial article 22 which states that “[a]ny kind of

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discrimination and distinction between citizens of Afghanistan shall be forbidden. The citizens of

Afghanistan, man and woman, have equal rights and duties before the law” (Choudhury 2007, p.

157). Despite the significance of provision, concerns about its capacity to protect the status of

women have been raised due to article 3, which states that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs

and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.” (Sultan, Levine and Powley 2005, p. x). The

ambiguity of this provision has raised concerns that it could be used by hardline fundamentalists

to deny women’s rights. These concerns came into fruition with the announcement of Mawlavi

Fazl Hadi Shinwari as the first Chief Justice of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court (Choudhury 2007,

p. 157-159). Shinwari has publicly opposed the declaration of equality of the sexes in the

constitution, and under his watch likeminded jurists have been appointed to all levels of the

Afghan judiciary (Choudhury 2007, p. 181). Shinwari was replaced by a moderate reformer in

Abdul Salam Hazimi in 2006, but the pervasive conservatism of Afghan’s judiciary remain a

significant barrier to women’s equality. In addition to this, the passage of a number of laws

which contravene women’s equality such as the Shi’a Personal Status Law in 2009 and a general

disregard for women’s constitutional protections have seriously limited women’s legal equality.

Thus, while women’s rights have been constitutionally enshrined these rights face ongoing

challenges from a conservative judiciary, laws which contradict women’s equality and a general

disregard for women’s constitutional protection.

Girls’ access to education in Afghanistan has made notable improvements since the fall of

the Taliban, yet enrollment levels remain unacceptably low. Between 1997 and 2002 the overall

school attendance rate in Afghanistan doubled from 27% to 54%, and the attendance of girls

tripled during this period from 13% to 40% (United Nations Development Programme 2005, p.

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6). In early 2002 fewer than a million children were enrolled in school, but this number has

surpassed six million by the 2008-2009 school year (Human Rights Watch 2009, p. 76). While

these gains are laudable, girls’ educational attainment in Afghanistan remains unacceptably low

more than nine years after the invasion. While school attendance drops for all Afghans at the

secondary level, this is particularly pronounced for girls, of whom “only 11 percent of secondary

school-aged girls are enrolled in grade 7-9” (Human Rights Watch 2009, p. 9). According to the

United Nations Millennium Development Programme, Afghanistan is the only out of its sixteen

regional compatriots considered “seriously off track” on achieving gender parity in girls’ primary

education (United Nations Development Programme). While gains in girls’ access to education

have been widely touted by Western governments to legitimize their presence in Afghanistan,

one must keep these accomplishments in perspective and recognize that years after the invasion a

majority of Afghan girls still do not attend primary school (Human Rights Watch 2009, p. 8).

The insufficient progress in education reflects an overemphasis on the role of the military

in the occupation of Afghanistan. When examined within the larger context of America’s role in

Afghanistan the underinvestment in education cannot be justified. The investment in education

has been paltry when seen as part of America’s overall role in Afghanistan. The cost of one

soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year is estimated to be $1 million dollars. With a

deployment of nearly 100,000, the annual cost of America’s occupation is upwards of $100

billion (Klein 2010). For the cost of one soldier in Afghanistan for one year, the United States

could build twenty schools in Afghanistan (Kristof 2010). Pulitzer Prize Winner Nicholas D.

Kristof calculates that if America removed 246 soldiers from Afghanistan for one year it could

pay for a higher education plan for all of Afghanistan, both men and women (2010). While it is

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often contended that security must first be established before schools can be built, there is ample

evidence to the contrary. For instance, Greg Mortensen, author of Three Cups of Tea, has

overseen the construction of 145 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Likewise, CARE runs 295

schools in Afghanistan educating 50,000 girls (Kristof 2009). None of these schools have been

attacked (Kristof 2010). The key, according to Kristof, is developing “respectful consultation

with tribal elders and buy-in from them” (2010). Kristof’s analysis illuminates the insufficient

and secondary focus on education in America’s policy in Afghanistan. While girls’ access to

education in Afghanistan has seen marked improvement in recent years these gains remain

woefully insufficient. Although investments in education have been made and noteworthy

improvements have been achieved, these remain a tertiary priority of the occupation.

In terms of their access to economic opportunities, Afghan women made significant

strides after the fall of the Taliban, yet the deterioration of the security situation since then has

resulted in a decline in women’s participation. In 2006, women represented 31 percent of all

workers in the civil service. This figure reflects a tremendous increase from the Taliban period.

Unfortunately, and extremely troubling for the prospects of women’s continued strides towards

equality, this figure had dropped to 21.4 percent by 2009. In general, the percentage of female

government employees deceased from 31.2 percent in 2005 to 22 percent in 2007, and women

constitute less than 10 percent of employees in 16 of Afghanistan’s 25 Ministries (UNIFEM

Afghanistan). In 2007, only 38.2 percent of women were economically active, and in 2004

women’s per capita income was US$402 compared to US$1182 for men, constituting a

significant gap (UNIFEM Afghanistan 2007 p. 2). The decline in women’s economic

participation in the public sphere can largely be attributed to the declining security situation and

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attacks on Afghan women in public life. Women are often attacked for traveling without a

chaperone, having connections to foreigners or even simply for being visible outside the home.

In addition to these attacks, a number of high-profile attacks on women in public life have

occurred in recent years, which are said to have a “multiplier effect” which deters women from

occupying prominent roles outside the home (Human Rights Watch 2009). Thus, while women

gained greater access to economic opportunities in the post-Taliban Afghanistan, evidence

suggests that women’s access to employment and economic opportunities has been stalled and in

many areas retrenched in recent years.

Despite Afghan women’s measured gains in the areas mentioned above, they face serious

threats to their basic safety and security. One cannot examine the impact of the occupation of

Afghanistan on Afghan women without examining these threats. In this respect, one can observe

two startling challenges posed to Afghan women’s basic security in the post-Taliban era; the high

and increasing number of women killed indiscriminately of gender alongside men as civilian

casualties of the war and the increased prevalence of targeted violence against women. In

Afghanistan, 1,013 civilian deaths were recorded by the United Nations Assistance Mission to

Afghanistan in the first 6 months of 2009. This represents a 24 percent increase over the same

period in 2008 (United Nations 2009). In 2010, civilian casualties worsened once again, with

1,271 civilian deaths recorded in the first six months of the year (Rogers 2010). The majority of

these attacks were caused by the use of air strikes by pro-government forces and the use of

improvised explosive devices from anti-government forces (Rogers 2010). When examining

these statistics one must be mindful that the WikiLeaks Afghanistan war logs suggest civilian

casualties may be significantly higher than have been reported (Davies and Leigh 2010). While

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public figures have not been disaggregated by gender, one is likely to observe that a high number

of both men and women have both fallen victim to the war. Studies conducted in 2001 and 2002

on the impact of war on civilians support this conclusion, finding that civilian casualties of war

tend to be divided equally amongst males and females (Hynes 2004, p. 436). Thus, the modest

gains women have made in political empowerment, legal protection and access to education and

employment as a result of the occupation of Afghanistan have come at the cost of the lives of

many Afghan civilians, both male and female, who have been killed as a result of the conflict.

While weapons, bombs and combat kill male and female civilians indiscriminate of

gender, women are also discriminately targeted for gender-based violence during times of war

(Hynes 2004). As Hynes observes, few have highlighted the fact that civilians have been the

greatest casualty of modern warfare, and “[f]ewer still have acknowledged that, among civilian

casualties, women and girls are deliberately targeted and disproportionately harmed by war and

its aftermath” (2004, p. 431). In Afghanistan, according to the United Nations Development

Programme, “the pervasive violence against women is now considered ‘a silent epidemic’ that

has its roots in the low status of women, and is compounded by long exposure to hostilities and

conflict” (2005, p. 4). Violence against women in Afghanistan is so pervasive that, according to a

nationwide survey of 4,700 Afghan women in 2008, 87.2 percent have “experienced at least one

instance of physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage in their

lifetimes” (Human Rights Watch 2009, p. 6). Despite widely-held perceptions of the existence of

epidemic-level violence against women in Afghanistan, however, the majority of cases go

unreported due to women’s limited access to justice (Center for Policy and Human Development

2007, p. 26). Women continue to be specifically targeted, not only by the Taliban but also by

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other armed groups. These attacks are especially pronounced for women in public life (Amnesty

International 2008, p. 1). Such backlashes against women are unsurprising given Afghanistan’s

tremendous changes since 2001 and the specific emphasis placed on gender. According to

Abirafeh,

[T]he increased levels of violence against women are attributed largely to poverty, the ongoing occupation, and the failure of the aid apparatus to make real changes to women’s lives. Backlashes against women in the aftermath are not unusual. There is worldwide evidence that violence against women predominates in situations of poverty, particularly where women gain economic independence while men remain unemployed. If such socio-economic changes provoke violence against women, perhaps more caution should have been taken in design of gender interventions. (2009, p. 146)

In short, not only have Afghan women died indiscriminate of gender alongside men as civilian

casualties of the war but they have also been targeted for specific gender-based violence which

has emerged in large part as a backlash to gendered intervention. Thus, gains made by Afghan

women in other areas must be tempered against the reality that the war has dramatically

jeopardized their personal safety and security from violence as civilian casualties of the war

alongside men and as victims of gendered violence.

Nearly ten years later, the promises of liberation for the women of Afghanistan have gone

unfulfilled. The occupation has resulted in notable gains for some women in education, economic

opportunities and political and legal rights, but so too has it resulted in increased violence, death

and suffering for many others. To legitimize the occupation in the name of the former is to

condone the latter. Furthermore, as the discussion on the underinvestment in the development of

schools and the co-optation of warlords into the post-Taliban government demonstrate, women’s

rights have always been a tertiary focus of the occupation. To legitimize the occupation of

Afghanistan in the name of increasing women’s education, economic opportunities and political

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and legal rights is to ignore the possibility of achieving these ends through more peaceful,

humane and inexpensive diplomatic and developmental alternatives. Research into the impact of

war on women suggests the status of women is greatly diminished in situations of warfare, and

conflict and warfare lie at the root of Afghan women’s oppression. There is no reason to have

expected anything different to result from the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

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Chapter IV The Continued Use of the Rescue Narrative

Setting the Stage for the Re-Emergence of the Rescue Narrative

As the war in Afghanistan waged on, the women of Afghanistan gradually faded into the

background of the Western discourse. Once appeals to Afghan women’s rights had garnered

significant moral legitimacy for the war in the minds of Western populations the coverage of

Afghan women dissipated, and the political discourse on the war focused less on pledging to

improve their circumstances. When support for the occupation waned, however, they were

trotted out from the background as necessary to maintain the moral legitimacy for the effort

(Bury 2003; Reichmann 2005; Lawrence 2009). Once again, as the July 2011 troop drawdown

approached, the rescue narrative would be used to legitimize war in the name of women’s rights.

This time, however, one can observe an expansion of the rescue narrative to include an

understanding of withdrawal as abandonment. As this analysis demonstrates, this would serve as

a powerful frame which shaped public perception and which critics of the war would be unable

to effectively counter.

From Occupation as Protection to Withdrawal as Abandonment

In early-December 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a troop surge of

30,000 soldiers to be deployed in Afghanistan (White House 2009). Along with this deployment,

the president announced a July 2011 deadline to begin America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Speaking before a television audience, President Obama stated that:

[T]hese additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011 (White House 2009).

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As time progressed and the prospects of a graceful exit came increasingly in doubt, discussion of

an extension of America’s occupation of Afghanistan emerged.

As pressure to extend the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan mounted, the status

of Afghan women came once again to the forefront of the discourse on America’s future in that

country. Just as the initial invasion of Afghanistan was morally justified through the liberation of

Afghan women, so too would calls for an extension of the occupation. During the summer of

2010, as time inched closer towards the July 2011 deadline, a powerful frame of abandonment

emerged in the discourse surrounding America’s future in Afghanistan. This frame followed as a

logical extension of the rescue narrative. If invasion was the liberation of Afghan women and

occupation was their protection, it is only a logical extension to understand a U.S. military

withdrawal as their abandonment. Thus, as a progression of the rescue narrative which justified

America’s invasion of Afghanistan through the liberation of Afghan women from the Taliban,

what emerged over the course of the summer of 2010 was a powerful abandonment frame in the

discourse surrounding the future of America’s occupation of Afghanistan and its impact on

Afghan women. This frame shaped the way the debate surrounding withdrawal from Afghanistan

was understood. When perceived through the abandonment frame, the choice between extending

the mission in Afghanistan and withdrawing was not one between continuing a costly and

unsuccessful war and putting an end to it, nor was it one between choosing to prolong or end an

occupation causing human suffering, civilian casualties and destruction. Rather, when

understood through this frame the choice was a simple decision between continuing to protect

the women of Afghanistan from Taliban oppression or abandoning them forever.

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Explaining the Effectiveness of the Abandonment Frame

The power of this abandonment frame in shaping the discourse surrounding the war in

Afghanistan can be best explained by Lakoff’s work on framing in political discourse. As Lakoff

explains, words evoke frames and, thus, repeated use of the word abandon evokes the

abandonment frame. In addition to this, Lakoff contends that “[h]igher level moral frames limit

the scope of the frames defining particular issues” (2002, p. 419). Thus, the abandonment frame

limits the way one can understand the debate surrounding both America’s occupation of

Afghanistan and the status of Afghan women. Moreover, frames are more than just a theoretical

concept. Frames shape our understanding of issues and their ultimate political outcomes. As

Lakoff explains,

Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions. In politics our frames shape our social policies and the institutions we form to carry out policies. To change our frames is to change all of this. Reframing is social change (2004, p. xv)

Thus, the use of the abandonment frame in the debate surrounding America’s withdrawal from

Afghanistan has serious implications.

The abandonment frame was first laid out in the context of Afghan women by U.S.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on May 13, 2010 while speaking at a press conference with a

group of senior female Afghan officials. Discussing the future of women’s rights in Afghanistan

amidst speculation surrounding peace negotiations with the Taliban, Clinton pledged to the

women of Afghanistan that “We will not abandon you; we will stand with you always” (Gorman

et. al 2010). This statement was a powerful evocation of the abandonment frame, the power of

which was made evident by its mention in the media coverage of the conference. The word

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abandon was included in the title line of every article on Clinton’s address, with titles such as

“Clinton Vows Not to Abandon Afghanistan’s Women” (Quinn 2010), “Clinton to Afghan

Women: ‘We Will Not Abandon You’” (Ortiz 2010), and “Clinton: We Won’t ‘Abandon’ Afghan

Women” (Gorman et al. 2010).

The emotive power of appeals to Afghan women’s rights in framing the debate on the

West’s future in Afghanistan was not lost on the United States government. A CIA Red Cell

Memorandum released by Wikileaks from March 2010 entitled “Afghanistan: Sustaining West

European Support for the NATO-led Mission—Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough”

recommended European governments use appeals to Afghan women’s rights to garner support

for an extension of the war. According to the memorandum,

Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission (CIA Red Cell 2010).

While this memo was directed towards encouraging America’s allies to appeal to Afghan

women’s rights, this message was apparently not lost on domestic audiences. This memorandum

suggests an explicit intent to capitalize on Afghan women’s suffering.

The abandonment frame came to dominate the media discourse in the months which

followed. A particularly striking example is Thea Garland’s New York Times Op-Ed piece from

July 14, 2010 entitled “Will We Again Abandon Afghan Women?” (Garland 2010). Garland

highlights the brutality of the Taliban and attributes their rise to America ‘walking out’ after it

funded the mujahideen war against the Soviets. Thus, in calling for an extension of the military

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occupation of Afghanistan Garland concludes that “[w]e must not allow the progress of the last

nine years to be snatched away from the women of Afghanistan. We must not abandon them

again” (2010). However, the most powerful and controversial use of the abandonment frame

came from Aryn Baker’s August 2010 Time Magazine cover story entitled “Afghan Women and

the Return of the Taliban.” The article depicts the story of Bibi Aisha, a young Afghan girl whose

nose and ears were cut off by her husband for running away from home. Aisha’s face is pictured

on the cover of the magazine; her well-groomed hair and make-up cause the gaping hole where

her nose should be to stand out even further. Beside Aisha’s face is the caption “What Happens if

We Leave Afghanistan”. The caption is noticeably missing a question mark, suggesting that such

a fate is a foregone conclusion of an American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Time Magazine’s Managing Editor Richard Stengel claims Baker’s article was not

published to influence public opinion on America’s future in Afghanistan in one direction or

another, but a closer examination of his self-described intensions for running the article suggests

otherwise. Given its controversial nature, Stengel felt it necessary to publish an editorial

justifying his decision to run Baker’s cover story. According to Stengel, he put great

consideration into whether or not to put Aisha’s image on Time’s cover. He claims to have “not

run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to

it” (Stengel 2010). Rather, Stengel claims the article is an attempt to illuminate the reality of life

in Afghanistan. He states that the article is in part a response to the WikiLeaks documents. He

contends the article and Bibi Aisha’s image contain “a combination of emotional truth and

insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land and the consequences of the important

decisions that lie ahead” which one cannot gain from the WikiLeaks documents (Stengel 2010).

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While Stengel alleges his magazine is neither in support nor opposition to the war his

convictions are evident. By his own admission Stengel states that his article seeks to influence

readers’ feelings towards America’s future in Afghanistan, telling them that “I would rather

confront readers with the Taliban's treatment of women than ignore it. I would rather people

know that reality as they make up their minds about what the U.S. and its allies should do in

Afghanistan.” (Stengel 2010). Thus, despite his professed neutrality, Stengel’s statement makes

his own beliefs evident.

Baker’s own story begins by recounting Aisha’s experience as a rescue narrative. “The

Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for

running away from her husband's house” she tells readers (Baker 2010). According to Baker, a

local Taliban commander then adjudicated over an ad-hoc mountainside trial of Aisha. She was

quickly found guilty, after which the men removed Aisha’s nose and ears and “left her on the

mountainside to die.” (Baker 2010). Luckily, Aisha survived the ordeal and is “[n]ow hidden in a

secret women's shelter in the relative safety of Kabul, where she was taken after receiving care

from U.S. forces” (Baker 2010). As Baker points out, “This didn't happen 10 years ago, when the

Taliban ruled Afghanistan. It happened last year” (2010). Interestingly, she appears seemingly

unaware of the contradiction between this current reality and Time’s cover’s suggestion that this

is what would happen if we leave Afghanistan. Baker’s article goes on to discuss the impending

July 2011 troop drawdown, which “has made Taliban leaders feel they have the upper

hand” (2010). Highlighting the Taliban’s oppression of women and the gains which Afghan

women have experienced as a result of the American occupation, Baker stresses the crux of her

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argument; that “[f]or Afghanistan's women, an early withdrawal of international forces could be

disastrous” (2010).

Baker’s depictions of the Taliban’s brutality are not misrepresentations, however her

article is deceptive and misrepresentative because it selectively presents the reality of women’s

oppression in Afghanistan to garner support an extension of the U.S. occupation. She is correct

when she tells readers that under the Taliban regime “women accused of adultery were stoned to

death; those who flashed a bare ankle from under the shroud of a burqa were whipped” (2010).

Her account is misrepresentative, however, because while providing great detail of the Taliban’s

brutality and the reign of that regime between 1996 and 2001, she fails to express the realities of

life under the Rabbani Government which preceded the Taliban from 1992 to 1996, or explain

the atrocities that members of this regime have committed during that era or since returning the

power with the support of the West. Baker tells readers that fundamentalist oppression of Afghan

women “wasn't always so,” and that “Kabul 40 years ago was considered the playground of

Central Asia”, yet there is a notable lack of explanation of how Afghanistan arrived at its current

state from where it once was (Baker 2010). To her partial credit, Baker highlights the ideological

consistency between the Taliban and some within the current government, focusing on Abdul

Hadi Arghandiwal, Afghanistan’s Minister of Economy (2010). What Baker fails to express,

however, is that the vast majority of power holders in Afghanistan are of this ideological

tradition and that it has been the strategy of U.S. policymakers since the onset of the invasion to

align themselves with fundamentalist Northern Alliance warlords. Thus, Baker’s piece

selectively delivers the facts on the ground in Afghanistan in order to fit her story into the rescue

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narrative and lead readers to perceive the debate surrounding America’s future in Afghanistan

through the abandonment frame.

As with the earlier discourse focused on women’s rights in Afghanistan, Aisha’s story is

devoid of self-representation. According to a New York Times piece by Rod Nordland, Aisha not

only could not read or write, which is tragically common for women in Afghanistan, but also she

“had never heard of Time Magazine until a visitor brought her a copy of [the issue with her face

on the cover]” (2010). Aisha’s only opportunity to speak in Baker’s article comes when, hearing

that the Afghan government is seeking a political accommodation with the Taliban, she

emotionally responds, “They are the people who did this to me... How can we reconcile with

them?” (Baker 2010). This rightfully raises the question of the extent to which Baker’s story on

Aisha exploits her situation to justify an extension of the occupation.

Another particularly powerful example of the abandonment frame came from John

Hughes’ article “Obama Must Not Let Taliban Rule Over Afghan Women Again” in the

September 8, 2010 Christian Science Monitor. Hughes evokes the rescue frame in the article’s

byline, which states that “[e]ven as Washington prepares to begin withdrawing US forces from

Afghanistan next summer, it must not abandon newly-emancipated Afghan women to the

Taliban brutality that would reassert itself in our wake” (2010). For Hughes and others, the

invasion of Afghanistan liberated the women of Afghanistan, who have achieved “new-found

freedoms since the invading US forces routed the Taliban in 2001” (2010). Thus, for Hughes,

“[w]hat is clear is that if the US military departs Afghanistan before the Taliban is either defeated

or has laid down its arms, the outlook for women’s rights is bleak” (2010). Hughes’ work reflects

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a textbook example of the abandonment frame which uses emotive appeals to Afghan women’s

rights to justify further occupation.

As with the rescue narrative which emerged at the onset of the invasion, the abandonment

frame is riddled with Orientalist depictions of Afghanistan. Hughes, for instance, homogenizes

the experiences of Afghan women and those in the so-called Islamic world, as well as the Arab

world, despite the fact that Afghans are not Arabs. “Although Afghanistan is not an Arab

country,” he explains in a section entitled ‘Women in the Arab World’, “it is an Islamic one, and

while there are some exceptions, the tribulations of women under the Islamic yoke throughout

the Arab world mirror those of the women of Afghanistan” (Hughes 2010). In one sentence, not

only is the status of women homogenized across an immensely diverse range of Arab and Islamic

countries, but the complex and interconnected economic, socio-cultural, political, domestic and

foreign roots of Afghan women’s oppression are summarized in one word; islam. For Baker, the

struggle for Afghan women’s rights is one between tradition and modernity, and as she observes,

“[t]raditional ways... do little for women” (2010). Across all representations is a contrast between

Taliban brutality and the freedoms brought by U.S. invasion. These representations produce

dichotomous distinctions between the West and the so-called Islamic and Arab world, modernity

and tradition, Western liberators and Taliban oppressors which serve to reinforce the

dichotomous decision between continued protection and the abandonment of Afghan women and

render invisible the complex relations that have contributed to women’s oppression.

The Response to the Abandonment Frame

The notion that an American military presence in Afghanistan increases the safety of

Afghan women has been publicly challenged by Congressional Democrat Barbara Lee. An

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advocate for women’s issues and a staunch critic of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Lee cast

the lone vote in opposition to the authorization of use of force following September 11th in either

the House of Representatives or the Senate. Over the course of the past nine years, Lee has

maintained her opposition to the occupation of Afghanistan. On July 30th, 2010, Lee introduced

the Responsible End to the War in Afghanistan Act, which would limit funding for Afghanistan to

the safe and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops and military contractors (Lee 2010). On July 21,

2010, in an article in the San Francisco Gate Lee was quoted as saying that the U.S. troop

presence hasn’t safeguarded Afghan women’s rights, and called for greater aid and diplomatic

support alongside a troop withdrawal. In response to the notion that America needs to stay in

Afghanistan to protect Afghan women, Lee told the press that,

Women's rights throughout the world, in Somalia, Iran and Afghanistan, are of extreme concern to me but I don't believe increased militarization in Afghanistan will help secure women's rights... The security of women in Afghanistan is more dangerous with the troop presence. I've talked to several women from Afghanistan, and the results for them have not been good because of this war, some worse for women in certain parts. (Oustinovskaya 2010).

Thus, Representative Lee contends the war has been to the detriment of Afghan women.

Rethink Afghanistan, the anti-war in Afghanistan campaign and self-titled documentary

by the Brave New Foundation, has also fiercely challenged the notion that the war in Afghanistan

is helping women. Drawing on a wealth of expert commentary, their 2009 documentary

dedicates a ten minute segment to documenting the ongoing plight of Afghan women and

dispelling the myth that the NATO occupation has liberated Afghan women. To this end, the film

highlights the hardships placed on Afghan women as a result of the war, their ongoing struggles

against violence and oppression as well as the Karzai regime’s fundamentalist tendencies.

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More so than any other evocation of the abandonment frame, Time Magazine’s cover

story received a fervor of opposition from the anti-war left and a number of prominent women’s

rights activists. Ann Jones, the author of Kabul in Winter, challenged the accuracy of Time’s

depiction of Aisha’s experiences. Jones had met with Aisha several weeks before the Time article

was published and questions the inclusion of the Taliban in Time’s depiction of the events.

According to Jones,

She told me that her father-in-law caught up with her after she ran away, and took a knife to her on his own; village elders later approved, but the Taliban didn't figure at all in this account. The Time story, however, attributes Aisha's mutilation to a husband under orders of a Talib commander, thereby transforming a personal story, similar to those of countless women in Afghanistan today, into a portent of things to come for all women if the Taliban return to power. (2010)

Privamvada Gopal, British journalist and professor in the Department of English at Cambridge

University, confronted Time’s cover head-on in The Guardian as “the latest cynical attempt to

oversimplify the reality of Afghan lives” (2010). Gopal also questions the neutrality professed by

Time Magazine editor Richard Stengel. Stengel alleges to have published the article to give

“emotional truth and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land” (2010), yet Gopal

points out that “[t]he real effects of the Nato occupation, including the worsening of many

women's lives under the lethally violent combination of old patriarchal feudalism and new

corporate militarism are rarely discussed” (2010). As she reflects, “[f]eminists have long argued

that invoking the condition of women to justify occupation is a cynical ploy, and the Time cover

already stands accused of it” (Gopal 2010). Thus, Jones and Gopal have challenged Time’s use of

the rescue frame head-on.

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The Failure to Reframe the Debate

Despite challenges to the notion that the United States’ occupation of Afghanistan is

protecting Afghan women and even the outright identification and rejection of the abandonment

frame, this frame continues to shape discussion of the status of the women of Afghanistan and

the West’s future in that country. During the November 2010 NATO Summit in Lisbon, Portugal,

the United States and NATO’s military engagement in Afghanistan was extended from 2011 to

2014. Following the announcement, the title of an article by Associated Press writers Julie Pace

and Robert Burns widely distributed in The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, MSNBC,

Businessweek and elsewhere read “NATO: We Won’t Abandon Afghanistan” (Pace and Burns

2010). An observer well-versed on the matter must naturally ask how such an understanding can

persist despite the knowledge that: many groups within the Karzai fold are not much different

from the Taliban; the problems of Afghan women are rooted in decades of conflict; war makes

life worse for women; the Western presence has not changed life in Afghanistan in many parts of

the country outside Kabul; and, that the war has cost many innocent women their lives. The

answer to this question lies in the inability of journalists, politicians and activists who reject this

frame to reframe the debate.

The ineffectiveness of these critics can also be explained by Lakoff’s work on framing in

political discourse. As discussed previously, Lakoff identifies a number of traps one can fall into

in terms of framing which help to explain this failure. First, using the other side’s words evokes

their frames which supports their perception of the issue. Thus, Ann Jones’ article entitled

“Afghan Women Have Already Been Abandoned” accepts the abandonment frame, and its title

might even give proponents of an extension of the occupation, who profess a desire to not

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abandon Afghan women, moral high-ground over those suggesting they’ve already been

abandoned. Likewise, the 2009 Rethink Afghanistan documentary falls into the same trap. The

film’s content effectively dispels the notion that the war liberated Afghan women, but it uses the

language of the rescue narrative and thus falls right into this frame. For instance, sections of the

documentary’s segment on Afghan women are preceded with captions like “Were the Women of

Afghanistan Liberated?” and “Will More Troops Help Women in Afghanistan?” (Brave New

Foundation 2010). While the content of the documentary is clearly to the contrary, these titles

evoke the frame of the rescue narrative and project the notion that Afghan women need to be

liberated and that the U.S. military has an instrumental role in that process.

The critics’ response to the abandonment frame contradicts a number of Lakoff’s other

lessons. One of these is that “to negate a frame is to [evoke] that frame” (2002, p. 419). The

classic example of this comes from Richard Nixon. When Nixon stood in front of America and

declared “I am not a crook” he projected the image of himself as a crook (Lakoff 2004, p. 3).

Likewise, when the Rethink Afghanistan documentary ends with the caption “War Won’t

Liberate Afghan Women” it evokes the rescue narrative (Brave New Foundation 2010). When

arguing for a cause, one must remember that “rebuttal is not reframing” and one must

successfully impose their own frames before they rebut (Lakoff 2002, p. 420). Thus, one must

reframe the debate in order to successfully refute the abandonment frame. Barbara Lee, the U.S.

Representative for California’s 9th district, falls into this trap. Representative Lee strongly

disagrees with the notion that the U.S. troop presence is protecting Afghan women and contends

that it’s actually making life more dangerous. She calls for more aid and diplomatic support for

Afghan women alongside a responsible and timely withdrawal of U.S. troops. Where

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Representative Lee’s message fall notably short, however, is in its lack of delivery within a

frame, and it fails to take hold as a result.

Derek Crowe, Political Director for Brave New Foundation, delivers a pointed and well-

articulated rebuttal to Time Magazine’s use of Bibi Aisha to justify an extension of the

occupation of Afghanistan, and attempts to dispel the underlying faulty premise of Time’s article.

Crowe identifies the abandonment frame as the oversimplification of the realities of Afghan

women’s lives which it is, telling his readers that “the issue is far more complex than the farcical

‘stay or leave’ choice framed up on Time’s shameful propaganda cover art.” (2010). Crowe sees

the appeals to Afghan women’s rights for what they truly are, telling readers that,

using the rights of women as a justification for extending our massive U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan is a recipe for failure on this issue and for the betrayal and heartbreak of those who care about the fate of Afghan women. (2010)

Even more so than any other critic of Time’s article, Crowe is acutely aware of the frame it uses.

Crowe explicitly identifies “the bad framing behind Time’s cover,” which suggests that “keeping

a massive U.S. military force is ‘helping,’ while withdrawing troops is ‘abandoning’”. Crowe

understands the importance of framing the issue of women’s rights in Afghanistan, concluding

that,

the frame set up on Time's cover serves to obscure the neglect of women's political equality in the current U.S. policy in Afghanistan, and if we want to support the struggle of Afghan women, we have to reject that frame (2010).

Despite explicitly acknowledging the importance of framing the debate and being acutely aware

of the specific frame used by proponents of an extension of the war, Crowe and the Brave New

Foundation’s Rethink Afghanistan campaign are frustratingly unable to reframe the discourse

and fall into many of Lakoff’s perils of framing. The Rethink Afghanistan campaign and its staff

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break virtually all of Lakoff’s rules for successful framing, which helps to account for their

limited success in shaping public opinion.

Perhaps Lakoff’s most crucial observation on framing in political discourse is that “the

facts themselves won’t set you free”, arguing one must properly frame messages in order for

them to have the meaning one wishes them to convey (2002, p. 420). People’s understanding of

the world are filtered through conceptual frames. The failure of all the anti-war movement and

the feminists opposed to the occupation has been their inability to deliver their facts within an

effective frame. As previously noted, when facts are presented in the absence of a fitting frame,

the facts are deflected and one’s pre-existing frame is retained.

Changing perceptions on the occupation of Afghanistan’s impact on women and

dispelling the false dichotomy between protecting and abandoning Afghan women requires a

reframing of the debate. The discourse surrounding the women of Afghanistan and future of

America and other occupying countries in Afghanistan must shift to one which more accurately

reflects the reality of the impacts of this war on women’s lives. The message that this occupation

has caused a high number of civilian casualties and suffering, that war disproportionately harms

women and that violence against women is on the rise in Afghanistan must be delivered within a

frame which articulates how this occupation has put Afghan women in the line of fire and made a

war zone of their communities. There is an irreconcilable contradiction in the fact that the United

States has repeatedly highlighted and denounced the Taliban’s oppression of women while at the

same time aligning itself with fundamentalist warlords ideologically aligned with the Taliban on

women’s rights. This must be explained within a frame which identifies American appeals to

Afghan women’s rights as the deception of the American public, the abuse of their goodwill

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towards Afghan women and the betrayal of these women’s hopes for the future that it truly is.

Using the suffering of Afghan women as an emotive tool to justify military occupation, war, and

supporting and arming one fundamentalist regime to fight another is morally reprehensible. What

is needed is a frame which encapsulates these messages and expresses the fact that Afghan

women need peaceful disarmament, the opportunity for meaningful self-representation and

inclusion in rebuilding Afghanistan, not exposure to never-ending conflict and paternalist

protection from foreign occupiers. The key to dispelling the justification of the ongoing

occupation of Afghanistan in the name of Afghan women lies in the ability of progressive

American politicians, journalists and academics to reframe the debate.

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Conclusion

Appeals to women’s rights and the co-optation of the feminist discourse are powerful

emotive tools to legitimize war and occupation. Moral justification for war is garnered by

constructing a rescue narrative to frame the public’s understanding of war. The rescue narrative

involves a heroic protector, a victim to protect, and a villain from whom the protector must

protect the victim. Using these three roles, Western actors portray themselves as the protectors of

other societies’ victimized women from those societies’ villainous men. In doing so, they are able

to frame invasion as liberation and occupation as protection. In the historical context the rescue

narrative was used to legitimize colonial domination. In India, colonialism was deemed

necessary to liberate Indian women from their barbaric men; in Algeria to free them of the veil.

In Egypt, Lord Cromer justified his rule in the name of Egyptian women’s liberation, while at the

same time being the founder and sometimes president of the Men’s League for Opposing

Women’s Suffrage back in England. Flashing forward, the status of Afghan women quickly came

to the forefront during the invasion of Afghanistan. Using the rescue narrative to frame the

invasion, the United States and its allies gained moral legitimacy for their efforts. Thus, the use

of the rescue narrative to justify the war in Afghanistan reflects a continuity of the use of appeals

to women’s rights to legitimize occupation.

The rescue narrative must not be understood as a previously undertaken strategy but

rather as a frame whose use is ongoing and expanding. In the contemporary discourse

surrounding the proposed July 2011 troop drawdown, this frame was extended from an

understanding of occupation as protection to one of withdrawal as abandonment. This reflects an

expansion of the frame to garner support and moral legitimacy for an extension of the mission.

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The use of the rescue narrative to garner moral support for war and occupation is

unfortunate because it masks the fact that it inflicts suffering on the very people it pledges to

protect. The co-optation of the feminist discourse to legitimize war in the name of women’s

rights has a disappointing track record of improving the lives of women. In the colonial context,

these appeals were a blatant misappropriation of women’s bodies to wage an assault on

indigenous Egyptian, Algerian and Indian society. This had a perverse effect on women’s lives by

making women’s bodies a site of cultural struggle and by likening appeals to women’s rights

with colonial domination in indigenous men’s minds. In Afghanistan, efforts at improving

women’s lives have been a secondary focus of the occupation at best and efforts at alleviating the

struggles of Afghan men, women and children have been greatly overshadowed by the war

effort. These efforts are further undermined by the fact that violence against women escalates in

situations of conflict and warfare. The tumultuous descent of the status of Afghan women since

the 1970s was a direct result of the arming of the mujahideen fundamentalists and decades of

persistent warfare and conflict. Since the invasion of Afghanistan, evidence suggests targeted

violence against women has risen as time progressed, and both Afghan men and women have

been lost as civilian casualties.

Not only does the use of the rescue narrative negatively impact women, but it skews

public perceptions of war and propagates misinformation. Using appeals to the rights of women

to frame invasion as liberation presents a distorted and inaccurate explanation of the reasons for

and impacts of war. It obscures the public’s understanding of the motivations for war and

provides moral legitimacy and support where it might otherwise be lacking. In the context of a

democratic society, a misinformed public lacks the capacity to make informed decisions on their

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collective future and the proliferation of false information stifles debate and meaningful public

engagement on the issue. Thus, by proliferating misinformation, the rescue narrative has a

detrimental impact on the clarity of public perception and overall understanding of America’s

role in Afghanistan.

The use of the rescue narrative to legitimize war and occupation must be identified and

rejected to prevent its negative impact on women’s lives and its misrepresentation of the reasons

for war. The continuing use of the rescue narrative to garner support for war prevents any frank

discussion of the oppression of women around the world and proposals for meaningful solutions.

Rather, the rescue narrative invites orientalist, ethnocentric analysis of the oppression of women

in other parts of the world which incorrectly pins the blame on local culture and prescribes

warfare and destruction as the solution. Equally as important, the rescue narrative must be

rejected so as to allow for meaningful consideration and analysis of the validity of the

justifications for war. However, as the argument presented here demonstrates, this is not easy as

challengers of the rescue narrative are disarmed by the power of these frames. As Lakoff’s

lessons on framing have shown, the rescue narrative is a powerful frame which shapes the way

one understands the issue. For that reason, one cannot dispel the notion that the occupation is

liberating Afghan women without delivering this message within an effective alternative frame.

A further obstacle to reframing the debate is that the rescue narrative is a tool propagated

powerful actors in politics and government, used in the Afghan context by the President of the

United States and key members of two consecutive administrations. These actors have legitimacy

and access to the media unmatched by challengers of the rescue narrative. This provides them the

capacity to shape the public discourse, which the mainstream media’s wholehearted adoption of

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the rescue narrative emphatically demonstrates. Despite these difficulties, those who challenge

the use of the rescue narrative must reframe the debate on both America’s future in Afghanistan

and its impact on the status of Afghan women. Difficult as it may be, the rescue narrative must

be dispelled to prevent misinformation and deception on issues of women’s rights and the

reasons for war.

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