The new governor sounds like a typical politician, promising paved roads, electricity, jobs and water, just like the last governor.
But the new governor of Bamiyan is anything but ordinary. Habiba Sorabi is a woman, the first female provincial governor in Afghanistan’s tortured history. Her appointment by the president marks a step forward for Afghan women, oppressed even before the Taliban forced them to stop working and beat them for showing skin.
“Thank God a thousand times,” said Massoma, a woman of about 40, who like many Afghans does not have a last name, as she sat near an unpaved road in Bamiyan, hoping that someone would give her a ride.
“Women are more powerful than men in this country,” added her daughter, Marzia, 22. “If God wills it, they’ll do better things.”
Long way to go
Although the Taliban regime fell in late 2001, women still suffer in Afghanistan. Most, like Massoma and Marzia, are illiterate. Many die in childbirth. Teenage girls are still forced to marry old men. Many women are not allowed to work. One educated woman in Kabul recently complained to a visitor that her husband never let her leave home, even to visit family.
But the new constitution declares the sexes are equal, and several women in Kabul have been pushing for more rights.
In Kabul, women broadcast the news and run for political office. Three of the 30 Cabinet members are women, in charge of minor ministries.
More Top Picks Best Flexible Seating For Classrooms
“I want women to have confidence that they can have high positions in the government,” said Sorabi, a former women’s affairs minister. “Women in Afghanistan have been isolated. Men don’t allow women to do things. Men want to have all the power.”
Sorabi, 48, will be the first woman to leave relatively progressive Kabul to run the remote province to the west. She hails from the same ethnic Hazara minority as most of Bamiyan, but she still faces a huge challenge. She worries that some people will expect too much, believing that her international appeal will bring more aid to one of the poorest provinces in Afghanistan. She also faces problems from people who expect too little. They do not think she can do the job.
“You say women’s rights are equal to men’s,” said Ziauddin, 25, a farmer in Watapor, a village in Bamiyan province. “But it’s not happening outside the cities. Men are losing their skin to work hard. Women are just sitting at home.”
“For men, it’s shameful to see our women work,” added Hafizullah, 26, another farmer.
If Sorabi does not deliver on her promises, this will have bigger implications than on her political career. Some people will blame any shortcoming on her sex.
After she was appointed, about 200 people showed up in the town of Bamiyan to protest her selection. Three Afghan newspapers ran editorials questioning whether the country was ready for a woman governor. One suggested that the government would be better off fighting violence against women than naming a token woman governor.
Why not a woman?
But Bamiyan province has been friendlier to women than most. A few days after the anti-Sorabi protest, a few hundred people rallied in support of her.
Almost half the Bamiyan voters in the presidential election last fall were women. A couple dozen women were seen walking on a recent afternoon on the main streets of Bamiyan town–many more than in other provinces. Some even wear simple head scarves, instead of the burqa, which covers a woman’s face and is worn through much of the countryside.
Many men in Bamiyan also welcome the change. They complain about the past governor, a former militia commander who they say did nothing. These men are also practical, reasoning that the international community will be more likely to send money to the country’s first female governor than to a minor warlord. Nothing else has worked–why not a woman?
“Women are very kind, very nice,” said Mohamadullah, 50. “Maybe they can bring lasting peace.”
Since the fall of the Taliban, this central province has been relatively peaceful, except for security problems with drug traffickers.
But the people demand a lot. Many like to say they have lost everything. Scores were killed by the Taliban and buried in mass graves. Even the giant Buddhas that once brought tourists here were destroyed.
The town of Bamiyan is nothing but dusty, bumpy roads, small beige homes and sleepy stores. Fields are plowed by cattle dragging large pieces of wood. Farmers travel on the backs of burros. Much of Bamiyan looks as if the 19th Century never arrived, let alone the 21st.
“Anything that people need to live, the people of Bamiyan do not have,” said Abdulkhalegh Zaligh, the deputy governor. “We don’t have roads. We don’t have schools. We don’t have electricity. We don’t have doctors. We don’t have engineers.”
Sorabi will live in a modest home of three rooms, plus a room to wash herself, an outhouse and a guard house. There is no running water, no electricity. Many other provincial governors live in nice homes, even mansions, with manicured lawns.
She has spent only a week in Bamiyan since being named to the post early last month. Now, Sorabi is in Kabul, getting ready to move and waiting for her house to be finished.
Her two sons and husband will stay in Kabul. Her daughter is in college in India. “Gender equality,” Sorabi said.
———-