AFGHANISTAN: Hamid Karzai is Failing Afghan Women

Afghanistan's president doesn't seem to understand that without the inclusion of women there will be no lasting peace.

The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is hosting a "peace jirga" in Kabul at the end of this month. Its purpose, he told a news conference, will be to "get guidance from the Afghan people on how to move forward reintegration and reconciliation, where reconciliation may be possible" with the Taliban.

The decision to reintegrate the Taliban by offering so-called "moderate" members government jobs and money was taken earlier this year by Karzai, with the backing of the international community at a conference held in London.

Conspicuously missing and deliberately excluded from the London conference were the women of Afghanistan. Despite the Afghan government's refusal to include them in the delegation, a number of Afghan women made their own way to London to try to have their voices heard. After much pressure, one was allowed to address the conference for a couple of minutes. The message of the women was loud and clear: they were not prepared to see their rights sacrificed and did not support the plan to give positions of power to the Taliban. The Taliban have many differing aims, but one thing has remained consistent: their opposition to women's rights and equality.

Karzai has stated that any Taliban coming into the system would have to abide by the constitution – a constitution that guarantees equality between women and men.

But when Karzai met with a leading Afghan militant group last March as part of the process leading up to reintegration, one of its main demands was for a new constitution – so you may forgive the women of Afghanistan for fearing the worst.

Karzai's own record has not shown him to be a champion of the constitution. Women's lack of access to justice is lamentable, the law enforcement system ineffective or corrupt and Karzai himself was willing to facilitate a tremendous backward step for women when he was prepared to sign a law which would have legalised marital rape and prevented Shia women from leaving their homes without the consent of their husband. His pardoning of three men convicted of gang rape sent another terrifying signal that women's rights are dispensable.

Activists in Afghanistan who have expressed concern that the reintegration of the Taliban would further erode the rights they have managed to secure are being dismissed by the government as anti-peace. As women's rights activist Wazhma Frogh states: "The preservation of these achievements is important no matter how nominal they might appear to the rest of the world. This is because no peace can ever be brought without justice."

It appears that of the 1,200 Afghans who Karzai says will be welcomed at the peace jirga, a mere 115 will be women – far less than even the 27% reservation for women in parliament (a quota that Karzai has been rumoured to be trying to abolish.)

The Afghan government has a duty to involve women in all the implementation mechanisms of peace agreements and conflict resolution under UN security council resolution 1325, which recognises the critical role of women in promoting peace and security and calls for increased representation of women in decision-making.

The few women who are given the opportunity to take part in public life as parliamentarians, in local governance, the media and public administration do so at their own risk. The Afghan government has done little to protect women in public life. Yet another woman provincial council member, Nida Khayani, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt last month.

Women must not only be included in decision-making but must also be given the necessary protection to enable them to take part. As Afghan human rights activist Orzala Ashraf stated at the Associate Parliamentary Group on Women, Peace and Security in London last January, it's not that the women of Afghanistan are weak and can't stand up for their country, but that they are not being given an opportunity or platform to do so.

While the warlords, the Taliban and corrupt government officials fight for power in Afghanistan, excluding the voices of women fighting for peace and justice means that true progress is unlikely. The women of Afghanistan who oppose reintegration of the Taliban are not anti-peace and do not want to see their country continuing on a downward spiral of violence. However, they no longer want to be the sacrificial lambs in a game of politics which has nothing to do with the welfare of the people of Afghanistan.

Lasting peace cannot be achieved without the inclusion of the women of Afghanistan. Their concerns about this plan for reconciliation and reintegration are legitimate and must be taken seriously.

As archbishop Desmond Tutu, head of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has said: "Reconciliation is not about being cosy; it is not about pretending that things were other than they were. Reconciliation based on falsehood, on not facing up to reality, is not reconciliation and will not last".