Killings, kidnaps and threats but Olympian still standing

Published on Friday 17 September 2010 15:30

In a land where women's faces are often hidden behind burqas, it is little wonder the heavily made-up eyes and carefully lined lips of an athlete turned aspiring politician are attracting attention.

• Robina Jalili campaign posters are plastered across Kabul, and the 100m runner says she's not afraid, though insurgents say they'll kill candidates Picture: Getty Images

Robina Jalali's campaign posters are plastered across Kabul. "Of course people recognise me," admits the 25-year-old. "I was a champion athlete for ten years."

In her last big competition - a 100m sprint at the Beijing Olympics - she finished last, but was hailed a hero for getting that far.

Today, she's hoping for victory in Afghanistan's parliamentary elections. "I am more nervous about this than about my races," she said. "But mentally, I am prepared, just the same."

The Taleban kidnapped at least two candidates and 18 campaigners in the 24 hours before polls opened this morning. Three candidates have already been killed and insurgents have threatened to attack polling stations and murder election staff. Security has been increased across the country. Observers fear the whole process could yet be undermined by fraud, but Robina insists she is not afraid.

The record number of female candidates - at least 399 are still in the election - has been hailed as a triumph for women's rights. Robina is an obvious poster girl for the new freedoms they enjoy. Yet this "victory" is not as clear cut as it might seem.

Women's activists have accused female candidates of acting as proxies for the warlords and businessmen they claim to reject.

The president's recent overtures to the Taleban, combined with President Barack Obama's plan to start drawing down his soldiers in July 2011, have raised fears women's rights will be sacrificed as part of a hasty political settlement with the insurgents.

"Brothers are fighting brothers," said Robina. "We are worried about losing our freedoms, but if the Taleban accept the constitution, if they let women work and play sport, and go to school and university, we don't have any problem with them."

Research by The Scotsman suggests mediaeval attitudes towards women's rights remain well entrenched among ordinary people, irrespective of their support for the government or the Taleban.In interviews with more than 110 men across three provinces in the north, the south and the west of Afghanistan, almost half of the men supported the recent punishment of a woman whose ears and nose were sliced off by her husband for the so-called "sex-crime" of running away from home.

Photographs of Bibi Aisha's scarred face caused international outrage when they appeared on the front cover of Time Magazine.

The Scotsman's findings suggest violence against women enjoys much wider support than anyone cares to admit and nine years after the US-led invasion women are still prey to unspeakable cruelties often meted out in the name of Islam and honour.

A third of the people surveyed said Bibi Aisha should have been killed for spending a night away from her abusive husband. Only a quarter of them condemned her punishment, around half of the men said her mutilation was too severe, but 40 percent advocated some form of corporal punishment - usually whipping, beating, or non-fatal stoning - to deter other wives from running away.

"We don't want Afghanistan to become like western countries, with everyone having more sex and love affairs," said Qayumgul Shah, 45, a tribal elder in Kunduz. "If someone in my family did this and I would kill her."

The Scotsman asked a cross section of men, aged 17-55, in Kunduz, Oruzgan and Badghis provinces about Bibi Aisha, who was mutilated and left for dead in Oruzgan, as well as the execution of a pregnant widow in Badghis and the stoning of a couple who eloped in Kunduz.

"Taleban should have not killed the pregnant widow," said Mullah Khalid Nawabi, 48, from Oruzgan. "First they should just whip her, then let her give birth to the baby, then they should have stoned her."

"We have a beautiful constitution and we even have a women's affairs minister, but it's just for show," said a spokeswoman for the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, an underground civil rights movement.

"The problem is our government is full of fundamentalists. Justice only exists on paper. In the villages it's up the the mullahs and commanders and they have their own laws."