And
this year, I want to honor the mothers of Afghanistan by calling for a renewed commitment
to a peaceful and democratic Afghanistan
that empowers women to participate on equal footing
with men in the rebuilding of their nation.
When
President Obama announced his plan to send an additional
21,000 troops into Afghanistan,
I came down with a serious case of ambivalence. Just give the President’s plan a chance, I found myself thinking.
Yet the striking parallels between the surge in Iraq
(which candidate Obama vociferously opposed) and the
proposed surge in Afghanistan prompted
me to engage the issue more thoughtfully. Why, I wondered,
was my knee-jerk reaction to entrust the healing of
a war-torn nation to a military escalation?
My
thoughts turned to a personal email I received from
a Pakistani woman, who confessed: the
Taliban are getting stronger in Northern areas of
Pakistan
and people are conscious that if they are not stopped,
one day they will reach our capitol. Women across
the country are terrified due to this incident in
which the Taliban whipped a young veiled girl publicly
in a Swat village. Children are shocked by watching
this scene on TV and ask their parents, “Why are they
beating her?” Yesterday our women’s prayer group prayed
for this wave of Talibanization, for God to stop it.
The
news has come in from Kandahar,
Karachi, and Kabul
about the resilience of girls and women in the face
of fundamentalist violence. Teenage girls sprayed
with acid defy terror daily in their perilous journey
to school. More than 500 women rallied in Karachi
to protest the flogging of a burka-clad
teenager. And despite the heckling of angry men, 300
women marched two miles to the parliament building
in Kabul
to resist a new law that permits marital rape.
In
spite of their courage, I seem to have lost mine.
The Taliban’s terrible hatred of women tempts
me to trust in the myth of redemptive violence. If
ever there was a time when I wanted to solve a problem
with military force, this is it. I imagine
the terror of a nuclear armed Taliban and another
generation of girls robbed of their right to quality
education and health care, exposed to violence in
every sphere of their lives. The absolute horror of
misogyny disguised as religion compels even a peacemaker
like me to proclaim that all options should remain
on the table for dealing with such unjust violence.
But
what is best for the girls and women of Afghanistan
and Pakistan?
What do they want for their future and, in their experience,
what is the best pathway to a just peace that welcomes
them to fully participate in public life?
In a recent poll, just 18% of Afghans support a troop increase.
Afghan women surveyed through Women
for Women International cite peace and security
as their greatest priority. Their 2009
Afghanistan Report states, “If Afghan women can
participate shoulder to shoulder with men in rebuilding
their country, all of society will benefit. Before
this can happen, though, women need access to the
health, education, economic, civic, and security resources
that are their rights as humans.”
Can
military escalation achieve these goals? According
to Gilles Dorronsoro of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan are “the most important
element driving the resurgence of the Taliban.” And
with those forces pushing insurgents into Pakistan,
risking the further destabilization of a nuclear-armed state, military escalation
could prove disastrous.
Katrina
Vanden Heuvel,
editor of The
Nation, argues that the “militarization of U.S.
foreign policy” has not been constructive in achieving
security. In fact, the RAND Corporation issued a report
last year demonstrating that only 7% of terrorist
groups were brought down by military force. Most terrorist
group networks have dissolved into the political process
or through intelligence resulting in criminal prosecution.
Highly militarized societies, however, almost always produce
bad results for women. Kavita Ramdas of the Global
Fund for Women claims, “Yes Afghanistan
needs troops–but it needs troops of doctors, troops
of teachers, troops of Peace Corps volunteers, and
troops of farmers to go and replant the fruit orchards.”
While nations like India have provided Afghanistan with
doctors, the world has grown weary of the only American
boots on the ground belonging to those in the military.
Eleven aid agencies, including
Oxfam, recently issued a report claiming
that a military escalation will lead to increased
civilian casualties, further eroding our credibility.
Rather than military escalation, we need “targeted
economic and strong diplomatic engagement to resolve
this conflict.”
And so in memory of Julia Ward Howe’s audacious proclamation
of Mother’s
Peace Day and in honor of the Afghan women who
so courageously resist fundamentalist violence, I
lift my voice for peace this Mother’s Day. I hope
you will join me. In the words of
Julia, “Arise, all women who have hearts!”
Looking for a Mother’s Peace Day
resource for use in the classroom or with a small group?
Check out “Women
and War: the Survival of Hope” from WAND’s
Faith Seeking Peace curriculum and WAND’s
action guide, “The Real Meaning of Mother’s
Day.”
