RAWA - The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
RAWA
In the year 2000 I went to a talk at our downtown library given by two women from Afghanistan. I’d heard about the oppression of the Taliban` and my friend Toni said she was going, did I want to join her? I stood at the back, ready to leave if it was boring or an obvious come-on for funds to a sketchy non-profit.
I stayed the entire time, listening to these young women tell of the horrors of Taliban oppression and the heroic acts of their comrades, women who had organized to fight the fundamentalist warlords and the Soviets after a period of Western-style reform with a king who had modernized Afghanistan. We saw pictures from before, of women in tailored suits wearing hose, high heels and make-up, no coverings on their faces – women at the university who were studying to be doctors and lawyers. This was contrasted with the ghostly women of contemporary society, completely obliterated inside their head-to-toe burkas, a small embroidered grill their only view out. The destabilization of Soviet invasion had led to the Taliban, the most powerful group of fundamentalist warlords, taking their country back to the stone age.
The women of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, were devoted to the work of creating a secular, democratic society. They revered their martyred leader Meena, who had been tortured and killed by the Afghan branch of the KGB in 1987. They had mounted resistance campaigns over decades and gotten some international help. With the expansion of the internet they had connected globally to other groups fighting totalitarian regimes. The two women at our library were raising funds and awareness about women’s subjugation in their country and their work to overcome it.
RAWA women ran a kind of underground railway. Some women were in Afghanistan, some helped across the border in refugee camps in Pakistan. They used their burkas to smuggle supplies from Pakistan to Afghanistan to women who could not go out of their homes because all their male relatives had been killed or conscripted. Without a man, no woman could be on the street. In public women’s bodies had to be completely covered; inside their houses they had to paint their windows black, in keeping with the idea that the sight of a woman’s body is an irresistible temptation for men. RAWA members risked their lives to smuggle supplies to women so they could work, and then they smuggled out the crafts they made– embroidery, jewelry, and other small items. In the refugee camps RAWA ran hospitals and schools that treated everyone equally.
As I was listening to this stark picture I had this thought: “Either these women are lying or I have to do something.” I signed up to “do something” and that began my friendship with Briana Lawrie.
Briana was an unlikely person to run an organization dedicated to helping revolutionaries. She was rigid and controlling. Her hair was like a helmet, sprayed into a solid shape that moved as one piece, almost independent of her head. But she loved to travel, dress in colorful clothes, and buy tchotchkes. Her house on Portesuello was so cluttered with souvenirs it was impossible to move or sit unless she cleared off some of her hundreds of figures from Bali and Thailand, India and Pakistan. Most everything was red – I got the feeling she was rebelling against her somber German mother who lived in the Milwaukee. She smoked, and had a growly voice and a smoker’s cough. Once she started communicating with the women of RAWA a few of us joined in, originally thinking we would write op-eds or do some kind of consciousness-raising. We did a bit of that and then, because Briana liked to shop, we decided to have a bazaar and raise money selling the craft items produced by women imprisoned in their houses or refugee centers.
For ten years I hosted this RAWA Christmas bazaar in my yard. The first year we made something like $400, mostly because we bought embroideries and earrings for our own friends. Not many people came. Americans cared little about Afghanistan - America was just beginning to get involved militarily so it wasn’t high on anyone’s radar. Then came 9-11. In the aftermath, when stories about the horrors of the Taliban were constantly in the news, people like Laura Bush were raising money for women in Afghanistan. Children were collecting pennies at school to help those “poor women.” Never mind President Bush had given the Taliban $40 million just months before the 9/11 bombings, telling us they were helping win a war for freedom and democracy. RAWA members risked torture and death to smuggle out a film showing what a lie that was. In the film we see a truck drive into a stadium, a stadium that had been built with UN money to bring soccer to the war-torn region. The truck roars in and dumps a woman in a black burka on the ground. Armed men execute her as the crowd jumps to its feet cheering. Her crime? Adultery. The footage was smuggled out under a burka to Pakistan and then to England. Once on the internet it could not be kept from Americans, and helped turn the tide against US support for the Taliban.
That year, 2001, we made thousands of dollars for RAWA. Asked if we knew where it went, we said no. To work with them we had to trust - they were always at risk, and kept their work secret like any underground railway. We kept doing our bazaars for eight years more. Each year the interest and profits fell as Americans turned to other issues. Finally we quit and our group disbanded.
Two incidents come to mind from those years. After 9-11 some Americans went off the rails and attacked people who they thought were suspicious. A man who lived two doors from us attacked an Indian cab driver as the driver pulled up to his house. The man pulled out a gun to shoot the driver, who ran away and hid in our bushes. I was out of town but people in my house heard gunshots. We suspected the shooter might be the person who wrote “DIE” in the dust of our station wagon window, or the person who left a filled condom on the handle of our front door.
After the latter incident we talked as a family and I asked my kids if they thought we should cut back our involvement with RAWA, which, besides the bazaars, now included hosting RAWA speakers when they came to town. These tiny young women were always hunted. We never knew their names – they had pseudonyms. They were picked up by drivers who took them to safe houses to broadcast on the radio. Or one car would take them to a place where another car would pick them up to get to the TV station where their voices were changed and their faces pixilated. Afghan warlords knew of their work and wanted to crush them. They were young, but either didn’t marry or couldn’t live with their husbands or their families because of this deadly harassment. My kids knew this; they’d met and talked to RAWA representatives and been impressed with their courage. My kids said no, they didn’t feel they were in anything like the danger these young women were in. After man who shot the taxi driver got arrested and we had no more scary incidents.
Our final visitor was Malalai Joya. She was the youngest member of the Loya Jurga, the Afghan Parliament, and she was a public figure so we didn’t need the cloak and dagger stuff when she came. Her first stop on the West Coast had been UC Berkeley, where thugs from the Northern Alliance had shown up halfway through her talk and stormed the hall. Her handlers tried to get her off the stage to safety but she said she didn’t come all this way to be intimidated by them and stood her ground. All 4’11” of her.
When she got to our house she was bleeding and at risk of losing the child she was carrying. I got her a physician, an Indian woman because she wouldn’t consider a male gynecologist. She wouldn’t let this gynecologist examine her either – the doctor had to feel under her burka as best she could. Advised bed rest, Malalai refused and didn’t cancel any speaking engagements or change her itinerary. She lost her baby after she left here to fly to Boston.
Sitting at our kitchen table, my young son Eliot and I talked with Malalai at lunch on the last day of her visit. When she left to get her papers together for her next interview, I looked across the table at my son, who spent his days playing “Warhammer” and reading about the bravery of Robin Hood and Jim Hawkins. His world revolved around the heroic tales in “Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars.” In the hush after our intense visitor had gone upstairs I said, quietly, “She’s the only real warrior you’ve ever met.” His eyes met mine and he nodded.