Suraya risked death to teach girls in secret

By Caroline O’Doherty

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

MARRIED at 14 and a mother at 15, Suraya Pakzad seemed certain to follow the path of most women in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, facing a future without a vote, a voice or a choice in her destiny.

But Suraya had two advantages — her own plucky spirit and a husband who was far more free-thinking than his peers. In between producing five more children, Suraya was able to keep up her education, graduate from college and get a job at the University of Kabul.

As the Taliban’s grip tightened, however, schooling for girls was banned so Suraya began holding classes in her home, eventually creating a network of secret home schools for 300 girls even though she risked death for defying the law.

She looked forward to the US-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime in 2001. "I said, all will change now. Women will be free. And then nothing happened."

Seven years after "liberation", extremists share the Afghan parliament, warlords command the streets and Islamic fundamentalism controls the home. Maternal mortality rates are among the world’s highest, only 21% of women are literate, 57% marry aged 15 or younger and 87.2% report suffering some form of physical, sexual or psychological abuse.

"A woman who is raped will be jailed for adultery, if she can’t produce three witnesses in court to prove she was attacked," Suraya says.

"A woman who asks for a divorce from a violent husband may be refused by the court because it is her duty to stay with her husband until the end of her life. If she does get a divorce, her family will cut her off because of the shame."

Not surprisingly suicide rates among women are high, with many victims resorting to setting themselves on fire. It was against that background that Suraya, 38, founded Voice of Women (VOW), Afghanistan’s first women’s organisation.

She and her small workforce run a shelter for women escaping violence in Afghanistan’s third-largest city, Herat, and offer legal advice and counselling services that easily deal with 250 cases a month. Her shelter is slandered as a brothel and Suyara receives regular death threats but, with the help of donor funding, including some from Ireland which is channelled through Christian Aid, and the support of international recognition, she is determined to continue her work.

"I want to create a new path for women, not only in Afghanistan, but anywhere women are forgotten. That is my dream."

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, November 18, 2008