The recently released American Dreamers book features an essay by our very own Shannon Galpin. What is American Dreamers? An initiative of Sharp Stuff, American Dreamers “is for those who believe in brighter futures. Gathering the optimists, mavericks, and mad inventors who believe we can create a better world, American Dreamers is a guidebook for optimism and an art book for inspiration.”
“Remember that being a woman is different in Afghanistan.”
I was getting yet another opinion on my decision to travel to Afghanistan. The statement was made out of love, wanting to remind me that I should be aware of my surroundings and behavior, that just because I was a strong, independent woman, I should remember to respect local culture. But it was also coming from someone that had never traveled to Afghanistan.
In the day and age of the internet and television we can know a lot about the rest of world, without ever leaving our homes, and that gives us the illusion of being informed. Like many of my peers, I too had a certain view of what “women in Afghanistan” meant. Visions of burqas and limited rights came to mind. But I also knew that on the other side of the world, we often only hear one side of the story. We are limited by what mass media feeds us. So I made an effort to go into Afghanistan with an open mind an open heart.
Next spring, after four years working in Afghanistan, Mountain2Mountain will launch it first domestic program, ‘Strength in Numbers’, in the United States, targeting young women at-risk, female military veterans, and violence survivors. Utilizing the bike as a vehicle for social justice, beyond traditional bike donations, instead considering mountain biking as a seed for cultural exchange and self-determination abroad and at home.
‘Strength in Numbers’ is an evolution from our ongoing work with women and girls in Afghanistan and our founder, Shannon Galpin’s, own personal experience as a victim of violence, and her continued push on gender and cultural barriers by becoming the first woman to mountain bike there, a country where women are not allowed to ride bikes. The first program will launch in spring 2013.
September 27, 1996, the Taliban took Kabul. The first thing they did was brutally execute President Najibullah and leave him hanging from a lamppost for all to see.
Exactly 14 years later, today, hundreds of Afghans marched in Kabul to protest the recent assassination of former President, Burhanuddin Rabbani, the leader of the High Peace Council, assassinated by the Taliban two weeks ago. Chanting, “death to the Taliban” “Death to Pakistan”, the protest remained peaceful. Organized by Amerullah Saleh, the former spy chief, demonstrators carried pictures of other key Northern Alliance figures slain by the Taliban in recent months, including General Mohammad Daud Daud, the police commander of northern Afghanistan who was killed in June.
A written statement on the Voice of Jihad stated that revolutions are no substitute for jihad. Guess the Taliban aren’t fans of social uprisings like those seen in the Arab Spring? Can’t say I’m surprised, Afghans marching in the streets, standing up for their rights, using their voices to protest does not bode well for the Taliban. Rather than scaring the populace with their country-wide attacks, roadside bombs, suicide bombs, and assassinations, they are emboldening it to stand up.
Speak with the majority of Afghan citizens about life under the Taliban and their willingness to return to that era and you are typically met with a resounding, “no thank you please”. It was a time of darkness for men and women alike, where fear controlled the country. Fear breeds in silence, the only way to combat this elusive foe is standing up publicly against it. Voicing your opposition. The very freedoms we too often in the West take for granted, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of speech, are those that can inspire change.
Nearly three dozen young women marched in the streets last July to <a href=”http://http://www.afghanistan-today.org/article/?id=138″ target=”_hplink”>protest public harassment</a>. Organized by <a href=”http://http://www.youngwomenforchange.org/” target=”_hplink”>Young Women for Change</a>, an emerging feminist group in Kabul, the women carried signs that stated, “Its my street, too”. Becoming the second such time in recent years that women have organized publicly to voice their rights.
“By holding such marches and campaigns we want to draw the attention of the public, the government and the international community to this problem,” said Noor Jahan Akbar, the 19-year-old founder.
It is still unknown if protests like the one today may become more commonplace in Afghanistan, lesser known still, if they will remain peaceful or be railroaded by those wishing to create more chaos. Could it signal an Arab Spring like movement, seen throughout the Middle East this year, or the start of another civil war? Only time will tell. But the right to assemble publicly, to demand equality, peace, and justice are rights worth taking to the street.
(originally published on Huffingtong Post September 27, 2011)
This October, the Panjshir Tour rolls into several cities – grassroots, community bike rides that supportMountain2Mountain’s work with women and children in conflict zones. This is the second year of the Tour, based off my experiences mountain biking in Panjshir province of Afghanistan. Yup, Afghanistan.
Countries like Afghanistan don’t culturally allow women on bikes right now, and while our project focus is targeted towards women and girls, its not about getting them on bikes, Rather, its about using the bike as a vehicle for social justice and change for women’s rights. It’s a subtle difference, but a powerful one. Mountain2Mountain’swork is advocacy, education, training, and cultural outreach. We aren’t trying to rashly push on cultural boundaries unnecessarily over there, but we can use the bike back here as a tool to affect change in increments that are sustainable.
Thus the Panjshir Tour was born when I rode across the Panjshir Valley last October, and riders in eight communities rode with me in solidarity for women’s rights, using their sweat equity to help raise awareness and funds for our projects. Rides like the one in Saratoga Springs, New York which was spearheaded by 11-year-old Reese Arthur around her neighborhood with her fellow students, or the one in Washington DC that started at ended at previously designated women’s prisons during the suffrage movement. The deaf university, Gallaudet University in Washington DC hosted a campus ride knowing it would benefit our work with the Afghan National Association for the deaf as we work to build a school, and cruiser bikes hit the beach path in LA in an impromptu ride.
Countries like Afghanistan don’t culturally allow women on bikes right now, yet my experience riding across the Panjshir Valley, as a foreign woman, on a bike was met with friendly curiosity and often incredulity, but never animosity. The interactions created by their curiosity led to endless conversations and questions about my purpose there and my work in the area, and often concluded with requests to visit their village, or offers to join their family for dinner. The gracious tradition of Muslim hospitality to travelers firmly in place even in a country enduring nearly forty years of conflict.
It was my goal to challenge perceptions and invite conversation on both sides of the equation. Challenging the stereotypes of women and Americans in Afghanistan, while challenging parallel stereotypes of Afghans as a people and as a nation in the United States. Bridging cultures and communities on two wheels.
Women that I know that lived and worked in Afghanistan in the 60′s as part of the Peace Corps rode their bikes daily to and from work – a far cry from the security lockdowns and convoys required today. Women like Dervla Murphy pedaled solo across the entire region prior to the Soviet’s invasion. We all know the power of the pedal. Connecting communities, reducing our carbon footprint, improving our health, exploring new cultures, and in third world countries the list grows to social issues like increasing access to education and healthcare, and decreasing violence against women. Pedal power indeed.
It is this pedal power that sparked the Panjshir Tour in cities like Los Angeles, Denver, Minneapolis, Saratoga Springs, Santa Rosa, Portland, and Washington DC.
Actor and bike advocate Matthew Modine expressed his support of the Panjshir Tour as honorary co-chair of this year’s event stating, “The women and girls of Afghanistan deserve our attention and support. This is not a women’s issue or an Afghanistan issue. Its a human rights issue. I want to encourage everyone with a bike to use it as a vehicle for social change by coming out and riding with us and showing your support for gender equity and opportunity for women and girls all over the world”
By coming together with our bikes, we can fight for justice, we can battle for change, and we can do it one pedal stroke at a time.
Come join us this October, or start your own grassroots ride in your community. Get pedaling and get involved!
(originally published in Huffington Post - September 9, 2011)
Its midnight on Friday in Kabul, a few hours before the polls open. The walls start shaking, and it seems an earthquake has struck the Hindu Kush a hundred miles northeast of Kabul. The rattling does little to soothe my nerves as I worry about safety for all the voters and election officials tomorrow.
Today, two candidates and eighteen election officials and campaign workers have reportedly been kidnapped in three separate incidents today.
Election violence is notorious in Afghanistan, intimidation, kidnapping, and murder of candidates, campaign workers, and election officials makes campaigning a near impossibility in Taliban controlled provinces.
Election related violence started back in July when a shopkeeper in Logar province was killed when he put up a campaign poster in his window, and a warning was delivered to local residents not to participate in the upcoming elections. In nearby Khost province, Sayedullah Sayed, a candidate for parliament, was fatally wounded – losing both his legs – when a bomb planted in the mosque he was attending exploded.
The past few weeks have seen more of the same across the country, with the worst still focused in Taliban controlled Pashtun provinces. This morning, fifteen districts have declared their polling stations would be closed due to an inability to secure them.
Al Jazeera English has posted an interactive map to track electoral violence. It breaks down threats into three categories related to the source of threats. The map also contains blue markers for each of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, indicating whether the number of female candidates has increased or decreased since the last parliamentary election in 2005. Though the total number of female candidates has risen from 335 to 413, this gain has been largely limited to Kabul Province where security is strongest.
Under President Karzai’s amendments to the electoral law made earlier this year,68 seats are reserved for female candidates. That would make you think that there would be little point in intimidating women for running as they are technically running against each other for guaranteed seats. Yet the reserved seats in provinces that do not have female candidates will go to male candidates under electoral law, thereby increasing the risk as intimidation could equal an extra male seat.
Female candidates are accused of being prostitutes and Un-Islamic, their campaign workers kidnapped, and their families threatened. This increased risk hasn’t deterred women like Naheed Ahmedia Farid, a 24-year-old in Herat. ”I want to be a voice for women,” she says when asked why she is running for office by an ABC reporter yesterday. “Because there was about 30 years, 31 years that women didn’t have any voice. I think we have to change the situation for women and I want to be a member for that reason.”
According to journalist, Alexander Lobov, “At this point, hopes aren’t high and all parties are concerned with maintaining the status quo. As long as both corruption and violence are kept in relative check, the elections will still serve as a moderate PR victory and the country will continue on its present course.”
It’s a lot of risk to take for a so-called moderate PR victory, but in Afghanistan, continuing on its present course is actually a step forward, especially for women’s rights. Countrywide security has deteriorated over the past 5 years, and yet more female candidates are taking part in this election than the one in 2005, people are coming out to vote, and there is the feeling that the elections, however flawed, must continue if Afghanistan is to survive.
Asking price: $20,000
Sunday, January 3rd. The start of the New Year finds me reading a heartbreaking, but not uncommon, story of a young Afghan woman who has been put on the auction block for $20,000. Just one of the estimated 80% of Afghan women that are forced into marriages, her story is not uncommon, but her circumstances are unique and worth sharing as a reminder that these woman are worth advocating for.
This girl was lucky to be part of a growing number of Afghan girls that are encouraged by their fathers to get an education. Unique enough when men not only tolerate, but encourage their daughters to become educated. More unique still, when fathers refuse or postpone marriage proposals for their daughters in order for their education to be completed.
In this particular case, the father died and the girl’s care fell to the eldest brothers. They viewed her value as little more than dollar signs and set up her engagement to distant relative for $20,000. This uncle lives in a Taliban-held province that would mean requiring her to wear the burqa, abandon further education, stay in the home, and give up any dreams of a career other than a mother to a large family.
The likely outcome? She’ll be sold as the ‘happy bride’, or she will choose the route of many young girls and take her own life in an effort to excise some control over her own fate and avoid a life condemned. Either way its a tragic ending to a woman who was born with the support of her father to follow her dreams.
As tragic as this story is, it solidifies our efforts with Mountain 2 Mountain to help empower Afghan women and children. To help girls have access to education, and to ensure that the men in their families and communities understand how much more valuable their female counterparts are when educated and employed. Building schools is just one step. Scholarships, community support, vocational training, advocacy, and microfinance are all part of the cycle towards empowerment, opportunity, and equality.
Stories like “I am for Sale” about the young women above and others written by Afghan women telling their stories can be found at The Afghan Women’s Writing Project: http://awwproject.wordpress.com/
On October 3rd this year, my birthday coincidentally, I became the first woman to mountain bike in Afghanistan. The irony of accomplishing something like this was that it started out so simply….each trip I’ve spent in Afghanistan I’ve longed for my bike. The goat trails, the dirt roads, and the incredible mountains scream out to me to get pedalling!
The non profit I founded, Mountain to Mountain, is focused on women and children’s education and empowerment in remote mountain communities, in particularly in Afghanistan. Yet a large part of our ethos is connecting communities and cultures. I have come to realize that being the founder of a non profit and a mountain biker is not necessarily mutually exclusive.
So this trip, I made the decision to lug my trusted steed on the arduous journey from Colorado to Kabul. Mountain to Mountain becoming quite literal as my Niner biked its way through Singlespeed World Championships in Durango, Colorado on a Saturday, only to be packed up, still dirty, to join me on a series of flights to Afghanistan the following week.
It wasn’t intended to be any sort of record creating, being the first at something, kind of excursion. It’s simply a way for me to do what I do, in a country that I love, and perhaps change a few perceptions about what women can and can’t do in the process. After some googling and researching, we discovered that no other woman had done this. Not really surprising as this is Afghanistan we’re talking about. Women don’t ride bikes here. Foreign women try to stay relatively low key. For good reason. Between the land mines, suicide bombers, the Taliban, and the usual crap against women that exists in many Islamic countries, mountain biking isn’t high on anyone’s (male or female) priority list.
I decided to ride my bike in two provinces of Afghanistan, which happen to be two of the provinces that Mountain to Mountain is working in…connecting our mission with our ethos. Education and cultural exchange. Couple that with my desire to break barriers and crack open the long held stereotypes that pigeon hole women in many regions of the world, it was a no brainer. The long term vision being that this trip I challenge perceptions and stereotypes on both sides of the coin.
Westerners assume Afghan men won’t accept women on bikes, because no women do it. Truth, many won’t and don’t. But the majority we encountered not only tolerated it, but chatted with us, joked and supported it.
Afghans expect that Westerners are too scared and too closed off to come out of their NGO and military compounds to interact with them and their country. Westerners (including many that live and work in Afghanistan) assume you’ll be shot dead or kidnapped the moment you leave the confines of your secure car or compound. I try to do my errands on my own whenever possible via walking or motorbike. I walk in the markets, stay in residential neighborhoods, and often conduct my daily errands alone so that I can take the time to connect with shopkeepers and security guards. I buy my naan bread from a local baker round the block, have learned where to buy fresh yogurt measured out into a plastic bag and sold by the weight.
Mountain biking is just another extension of that desire to interact with Afghans more fully by doing what comes naturally.
Now this is not to say, it is without danger, or that all men would tolerate this. There are men, especially in other, more conservative provinces, that wouldn’t. I am fully aware of security concerns and am not ignorant of the risks I take by exposing myself on a bike. I chose and discussed my location choices carefully. Baby steps were taken on remote mountain paths and dirt roads before riding my bike through a village. There are still areas of this country where I couldn’t step out of my car without a burqa on. Areas where foreigners of either sex, are at risk, simply by trying to do their work. Assassinations and kidnappings still occur and foreigners are not trusted. But there are areas where genuine human interaction and cultural exchange are not only possible but desired.
Yet as I’ve said many times before, if no one ever does it, it will never change. Its my own version of: ”Just because that’s the way things are, doesn’t mean its the way they should be.”
photo by Travis Beard
This story is taken from another blogsite - Dry Mouth – Kabul Life. http://drymouth.tumblr.com/
It is an inspiring example of brave Afghan women taking on leadership roles, carving out a life for themselves and their families, and how occasionally they are lucky enough to be doing so with the support of their husbands. Unusual? Yes. But definitely the story we should be striving to spread as we work to gain more support to create opportunity and education for amazing women like Lisa Nooristani. If this doesn’t warm your heart and make you pull out your wallet to support more women like this, I don’t know what will. Help Mountain to Mountain make a difference with women like this in remote areas of Afghanistan, so that women can continue to take on these roles of business and leadership and change the perception of women as smart, economically important, and deserving of respect. It starts with education and microfinance – all of which is simpler than one would think. To learn more about how to get involved – visit www.mountain2mountain.org
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During the week in which we had arranged an interview, Lisa Nooristani, CEO of Mutaharek Construction Company, received a death threat letter from the Taliban. It warned her not to continue in her successful construction building and absolutely not to appear on any media. Nonetheless I am publishing a photograph of her face and will shortly be producing a short video piece on her as part of a series on Afghan Businesswomen. Why? Because she insisted. I asked her several times if she would like to call off the interview and told her that any film I took would be broadcast not only all over the web and potentially picked up by major broadcasters like CNN and Sky, but also likely be picked up by Afghan media.
I met her at the gates of the US military run Provincial Reconstruction Team base in Nurestan. She had wanted to drive through the gates in her car, but as their scanner was down, the gate guards wouldn’t let her so she stomped up the steep hill to meet me smiling as she huffed and puffed. I later learned she had recently had a C-section to deliver her sixth child.
We had a pre-interview chat with a local interpreter providing the bridge that her sparse English and my even sparser Dari lacked. Open-faced with features that at once were younger and older than her 28 years, her voice was quiet and her eyes fixed on mine with a firm kindness.
“I have visited countries like Iran and Pakistan. I even went to America. I saw how these countries are, how they’re developed, how women are developed. And I was happy because I saw how we are all human. But then I was sad because I didn’t know why my country couldn’t be like that. Why is my country destroyed?”
“Those threat letters I received, they obviously upset me because these people are my people, they’re not Iranian or Pakistanian, they’re Afghan. They’re my brothers and I still respect them. But I’m not afraid of their threatening letters.”
She added, “If they kill me, then at least my children will be proud of me”.
She was married at 14 and told me how she didn’t stop crying all day. A couple of days later, sitting in her home, surrounded by her children, I looked at photos of her wedding day. Her young face caked in make-up, she was the only one not smiling.
Yet, her marriage has been successful. Her husband supports her completely and tells her he regards her as his ‘brother’. As un-romantic as this may sound to western ears, to an Afghan woman, this is a high compliment. Lisa laughs as she tells me how people talk about her husband, saying ‘he isn’t a man. He allows his wife to talk with foreigners. Look! She talks with them, she sits with them’. She smiles as she says, ‘he doesn’t listen to this kind of talk. He knows his wife is working for her homeland’.
I can’t emphasise enough how inspiring this sweet, kind and determined woman is. And how brave she is for talking to me. ‘I want to improve the condition of Nurestani women’, she says several times during the interview. She tells me how bad conditions are for these women: how they’re not allowed to even wash without asking their husband for a piece of soap; how they’re expected to keep on working even while they’re giving birth; how they deliver babies in the middle of the forest while gathering wood, cutting the umbilical cord with a blunt chopping knife.
“I just want support. Not only for me but for all women and especially Nurestani women.”
Visiting women’s prisons in Afghanistan is a sobering affair. At the prison in Mazar i Sharif, women and men share the same prison compound but the women’s section is behind a locked metal door just off the main courtyard. Behind this door are forty women and fourteen young children. Inside is a small courtyard and two small rooms where these convicted prisoners and their children spend their days. This multi-purpose communal space is all these women will see for the duration of their sentence. It serves as their sleeping quarters, daycare, dining hall and classroom.
We walk through a small doorway out of the rain and into the larger of the two rooms where a sea of multi colored headscarves fills up the entire space. Women of all ages and several young children and babies are learning to read and write. The sea turns to see who has arrived and miraculously parts to allow us space to enter.
These women comprise the entire female population for the whole province. They are convicted of murder, robbery, prostitution, and the ever-ambiguous crime of adultery. We are offered one of the few floor cushions and one of the prisoners brings us tea and a small plate of cookies, Afghan etiquette firmly in place, even in prison.
As we begin to talk, one woman emerges as the leader de facto of the group. A fiery woman, with an easy a laugh in a white headscarf, sits at the front of the class. Maidezel freely admits that she is guilty of murder and says she is sentenced for 18 years. A fellow prisoner nudges her and asks, “Why did you say that, you should have lied!” Maidezel just laughs and makes her way through the crowd to sit directly in front of us. Her 12-year-old daughter lives with her husband but neither come to visit her in prison. Dr. Fazee says she is charged with the murder of her son, but Maidezel won’t elaborate further. When asked about the conditions, she says they are happy that the government gives them food and that she is learning to read and write. “I must be happy here or I will not be released.”
A young woman, Armeene, sits down next to me with her tiny three-month-old daughter, Suyafa. Both her and her husband are in jail and her young daughter will be raised here until Armeene is released or Suyafa reaches age six. She is one of fourteen children being raised in the prison. Once they are school age, they will either join their other siblings at home or become temporary wardens of the government at an orphanage set up for children of prisoners. Either way, their early years are spent in the same crowded and sparse confines as their mothers.
Forty women sleep in these two small rooms side by side, a few choosing space in exchange for the chill of sleeping outside in the courtyard. These women spent 24 hours a day within a few feet of each other and rather than turn against each other, they build a community of sisterhood, taking care of each other and the children. As if to prove the point, Maidezel is passed one of the younger babies, which she places in her lap as though it’s her own. As we continue to talk more and more women from outside join us and soon it is though we are facing a female jirga. The room is filled to capacity with women sitting cross-legged, many with children in their lap.
Many don’t have any idea of the length of their term, and Dr. Fazee says that’s because many asked not to know. They seem to be the ones with the longest potential sentences, those in for murder. The majority of the women here are charged with murder and adultery. Nineteen-year-old Sayra gets released tomorrow. With vibrantly dyed red hair, she sits snapping chewing gum in the back of the group. She has spent 3 months in jail with a vague charge of runaway. She says her husband is also in jail, which seems to set up a squabble among the women, many saying that he’s not her husband. Prostitution seems the likely offense, especially given the short sentence.
We move into the smaller room which doubles as the vocational room during the day, two sewing machines set up in the middle of the small space. Sleeping blankets piled up in the corner, with an older woman resting on the pile. Here the women learn handicrafts and tailoring in the hopes that they develop a useable skill that they can use when they are released. Maidezel follows us in, taking a place behind one of the sewing machines, asserting her authority as it were. A beautiful woman sits behind another in the corner, smiling kindly at us occasionally while she works. Several more children join us and when the camera comes out the mood in the room shifts and suddenly the children are clamoring for photographs to be taken, jabbering to us in Dari, and all smiles when we show them their photo.
The woman in the back, 30 year old Shakeela, smiles broadly at the children. Her youngest, 4 year old Hujasta, is in the photo-centric group and has been hamming it up for the camera. Shakeela is one of several women in here convicted of murdering her husband. Many of these women were sold, or forced into marriages with much older men, beaten and raped. Divorce is not an option, neither is simply running away. Some of these women are charged with adultery, which is often a false crime as the women are most often raped by a male family member or friend and to save face the blame is placed on her to bear. These women are often disowned by their families and as convicted criminals, outcasts by Afghan society. The handful of social workers that are working with the prisoners focus their work on liasioning with the families to educate them and build sustainable bonds so that these women don’t end up on the street. At the same time, literacy and vocational programming is the key to giving the women the tools they need to build a better life for themselves when they are released, and the children a decent start on life despite spending their young lives behind bars.
photo by Travis Beard
