Afghan Women Put Lives on Line To Run for Office

In remote, conservative Uruzgan province, not a single woman signed up to run. And in the past several weeks, 50 female candidates have dropped out.

In Paktika province, a desolate tribal area without a single girls' secondary school, an election monitor told of a village teacher who traveled to the provincial capital to register as a candidate -- and made a second arduous trip there just four days later to resign her candidacy.

The monitor, Peter Murphy of Britain, said the teacher recounted that a group of religious leaders "had seen her sign up and had gone to her village to tell the elders that it would be wrong for her to run. I tried to talk her out of withdrawing, but she was really terrified. She said people in the market were already saying bad things to her husband, and she was convinced that they would be totally ostracized."

Much of the animosity toward female candidates appears to reflect a traditional discomfort with women in public roles, a view that was further entrenched during the 1990s, when the country was controlled first by warring Islamic militias and then by the extremist Islamic Taliban movement.

Officials from the election management commission, which is composed of both Afghans and foreign nationals, said the complaints they receive about female candidates frequently assert that the woman in question should be disqualified because she has loose morals or a "notorious character."

Still, observers said, it is not always clear whether female candidates are being targeted because of their gender or whether that issue is being used by adversaries who oppose them for other reasons.

In Charkhi's case, for instance, opposition to her candidacy may be tangled up in both family and religious politics. She believes the threats have originated with Shah Mohammed Yousafzai Charkhi, a burly, bearded rival candidate and distant relative from her home village.

Yousafzai Charkhi's brother-in-law is the fugitive former Taliban governor of eastern Nangahar province. Noorzia Charkhi and other villagers claim that Yousafzai Charkhi was a powerful Taliban subcommander in his own right. She said relatives told her that at a recent tribal gathering, Yousafzai Charkhi called her candidacy shameful and said someone should kill her.

"He's totally against women candidates," Noorzia Charkhi said. "During Taliban times, he would go after women with a whip in his hand. Now he's still going after us." However, she also acknowledged that her family had a long-running feud with Yousafzai Charkhi that predated her candidacy.

For his part, Yousafzai Charkhi said he had never been active in the Taliban movement. He charged that Noorzia Charkhi was simply trying to get attention by denouncing him.

"I don't have a problem with women running," he said in an interview at a gas station his family owns, just down the mud road from Shah's house. "According to Islam, women are given a lot of rights, including participating in elections."

His expression darkened, though, as the discussion turned to the quotas guaranteeing women seats in parliament.

"The government should let the people decide who they want to represent them," he said with a scowl. "It's very unfair."