They aren't just bushy-bearded Afghan men with black turbans - they are a state of mindB.K.BANGASH/The Associated Press
On a recent panel presentation in Canada, I was asked the question: How can we Taliban-proof Afghanistan?
In formulating a response, I realized we must first define Taliban: Who are they? Where do they come from? What does it mean to be one of them? What does a Talib look like?
The Taliban are perhaps less easily identifiable than we might think. We are accustomed to thinking of them as bushy-bearded Afghan men with black turbans and kohl around cold eyes, clutching automatic weapons. Yet this is merely the visual symbol of what does, in fact, not always announce itself visually. The Taliban were officially born in 1994. But in truth, they were born long before.
As an Afghan woman, I've known the Taliban since before I was born. My mother knew them, and my grandmother knew them. I've had Taliban encounters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Canada, as well as other countries. I have known the Taliban a long time. Only now they have a name. And only now, the rest of the world also knows their name.
The Taliban are a state of mind. Taliban can be and are found anywhere in the world, anywhere where the ideology of misogyny spreads its seeds uninhibited. Being a Talib demands adherence to no particular faith, no ethnicity, no nationality.
When I was studying in a university outside of Afghanistan, I had a law professor who issued a statement decreeing that female students would not be allowed to join the Afghan Student's Council because they cause immorality among the male students. For me, this professor was a Taliban.
Talibanization can even cross gender lines. I know an Afghan émigré in Coquitlam, B.C. She has dyed hair and wears short skirts, interacting seemingly seamlessly in Canadian society, while she devotes her spare time to arranging her adult son's marriage to a teenage girl so that there might be a permanent servant in her home. Don't be fooled by those who are modernized, beautiful, and educated. Inside, you might still find a Talib.
Afghan women have lived amidst the Taliban mindset for generations. This mindset was responsible for telling my mother, growing up in Kabul in the late 1960s, that she shouldn't study because she was a woman. She was unable to continue her education because her aunt found it of less value than a woman who could clean a house and cook well, and believed schooling was a distraction - ultimately a waste of time, and worse, something that risked corrupting women's minds.
Just as the Taliban mindset has always existed, so has women's resistance to it. After my mother was pulled out of high school, my father, then her fiancé, bought her a radio. Each morning she woke up, hung the radio around her neck with a strap and did her housework while she absorbed information, making the most of limited means.
My grandmother, who could not read, would often say to me, "women like me are blind because we look everywhere but we can't see." In the shadow of my grandmother's illiteracy was the Taliban already born.
We have lived with the Taliban for a long time, for as far as my memory goes. The only difference is that now "Taliban" is a household name in Western societies. It's repeated nightly on the evening news. It's face to face with Canadian soldiers in Kandahar. Do Canadians recognize what they are facing, like Afghan women do? When they do recognize it, what will they do?
When I came to Canada, I found freedom, and perhaps more importantly, hope. I was free to pursue an education, free to plan and dream. I adjusted to my new home. But I still have not adjusted to the support I have found among Canadians for the Taliban state of mind. It made me sad to see that in a free and modern society, there remain those who excuse an ideology based on the hatred of women, by citing multiculturalism. And they are not Afghans, or even immigrants, but those born in Canada who somehow think that the abuse of women and a fundamentalist view of the world, are acceptable among Afghans, and so no intervention is required. But remember that among Afghans, women can also be found. Have you remembered to ask whether the Taliban represent their culture?
I have found that no matter how far away I go, I still live under the shadow of the Taliban. Not only has the ideology immigrated to Canada in parts of the Afghan communities here, it has also immigrated into the minds of Canadians in their tacit acceptance of a future for Afghanistan that includes the Taliban in power.
I have found little acknowledgment among Canadians of the damage that the Taliban did to the women of my country. There is little understanding of the legacy of the Taliban's five year regime in Afghanistan: a government premised on the systematic oppression of women.
It hurts further when I hear the Taliban as being equated with Afghans. That is a terrible mistake, and offensive to me as a Muslim and as a woman. The Taliban have never represented Afghans and to believe this is to succumb to the propaganda and the fear the Taliban seek to impose. The Taliban represent backwardness and ignorance.
Coming back to the question, how to Taliban-proof Afghanistan, my answer is that first we must acknowledge what they represent, then find the antidote. The antidote to backwardness and ignorance is education. But first Canadians will need to educate themselves, to truly learn about the enemy that Afghans, and now Canadians, face and to recognize it as the danger that it really is. Ask an Afghan woman, she can tell you.
Fereshta is an Afghan-Canadian who lives in Vancouver. She is writing under a pen name for the protection of her family.