 So we've really delighted to have a distinguished panel today. Appearing on the short video that we're about to show is Judge Marzia Bazal, who was sworn in as a judge in Afghanistan in 1995, just before the Taliban came to power and eliminated the possibility of women working. She was the founder of the Afghan Women Judges Association, which was subsequently banned by the Afghan Supreme Court in 2007. So she will appear in the video. Then we also have Dr. Sally Kitch, who is the director of the Institute for Humanities Research, professor of women and gender studies, distinguishes a sustainability scientist at Arizona State. She specializes in feminist theory, epistemology, the intellectual history of gender and racial ideology, and a great number of other things. She's written many books. We also have Mr. Jamil Afghani, who is the founder of Newell Educational Center, which became the Newell Educational and Capacity Development Organization in 2009. And it's now serves 15 provinces, more than 1,000 imams. The organization overall works to promote the rights of women and girls working with families to support the acceptance of girls' schooling. And we're also here to celebrate the book that Dr. Kitch has written, which also celebrates the work of some of the panelists today. So we'll show the short video. It's about three minutes. And then we're going to open it up to the panel. After the September 11 attacks, Dr. Sally Kitch, a professor at Arizona State University, felt as though she needed to do something to help in spite of all of the tragedy. Sally quickly realized that most Americans do not understand leadership positions, or something that Afghan women can aspire to, or that female leaders even exist there. Most of what had been portrayed in the media after the 9-11 attacks were Berka Kladd, Silent Women. After a lifetime of work in the field of women's studies, she turned her attention to a group of women whose voice needed to be heard, women leaders, and Afghanistan. Sally listened to the voices of many Afghan women leaders, changing the way women participate in Afghanistan society. Sally wrote a book collecting their experiences and recommendations on what the future of Afghanistan could look like. Two women activists in particular, Jamila Afghani and Marzia Bazal, taught Sally that leadership is an important part of women's lives in Afghanistan, whether in their villages, families, or in the public arena. While the number of women leaders needs to increase, there are women like Jamila and Marzia who lead through their work in women's education, protection, and activism. Recently, Jamila, founder of the Noor Educational Center in Western Kabul, sat down with Ambassador Volcker, executive director of the McCain Institute, to give some insights to the challenges she faces as a women leader in Afghanistan. We start our work from electricity, and now we are working on the issue of domestic violence, child marriage, and other issues. So it is because of the need of our society that the need of society is very vast, the challenges are very vast. Also features in Sally's book is Marzia, founder and director of Afghanistan Progressive Law Organization, who could not join the interview, but wanted to share some of her thoughts on the state of women leaders in Afghanistan. It is not easy to be a woman leader in a country which 70 or 75% of the people are electric, and they cannot differentiate right and wrong. To be a woman leader in Afghanistan, it is a huge challenge. This challenge can come from the political part, it comes from the cultural aspects, it comes from the public also. Marzia also gave insights to the future of Afghanistan, including her concerns about the security of her country. The future of Afghanistan, there is no doubt that Afghanistan political and economical situation is getting worse day by day, and Afghanistan situation is currently a fragile and uncertain as well as weak. Especially the situation got worse while the international community left Afghanistan, the international forces left Afghanistan in 2014. And now Afghanistan is a village that they can call it, that is targeted by different insurgents, such as Taliban, and also the expansion of the power. To learn more about the stories of Jamila and Marzia and the future of Afghan women leaders, read Contested Terrain by Dr. Sally Kitch. Dr. Kitch? OK. Thank you all for being here. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with you about the work that we've done together. But producing the book pales a bit in comparison with the kind of work that Jamila and Marzia have done in Afghanistan, which we want to hear more about. You heard on the video that I changed direction in my research as a result of the US engagement with Afghanistan after 9-11. And one of the catalysts for that change was hearing the Bush administration explain that this fight was about the rights and dignity of women as well as a fight against terrorists. And I thought I really want to know a little bit more about how this engagement is working for the rights and dignity of Afghan women when it struck me. And I was not very well informed about the geopolitics of Afghanistan at the time that bombing did not seem like the best thing to do for women. And so I was curious to know whether there had been any consultation with Afghan women. And if so, with which Afghan women? And who was representing them in the politics of US engagement? And it turned out that I don't think very many people were listening to Afghan women. And so a colleague of mine at Ohio State, where I was at the time, and I decided that what we could do was listen to Afghan women. And so we invited nine of them to come to Ohio State in 2005. It took till 2005 to get it all together. And we spent five days listening to them. And as far as we knew at the time, we were the first Americans to bring that many Afghan women leaders to the US to be heard. And so the results of that conference were pretty profound. And certainly transformed a lot of the ways that I thought about the situation. Among the women who came were Jamila and Marzia. And although everyone there was extremely impressive, the work that these two had been doing, Marzia threw law and her total dedication to legal education of ordinary Afghans. So they know what their rights are under the law. And Jamila's work through education, which is her watch word, and she does education in a number of extremely creative ways. I thought these two had their finger on the pulse of what was going to change Afghan culture and what was going to be the biggest help for Afghan women. So I got lucky enough for them to agree that we could stay in touch. And we did so via email until we met again. We decided in 2009 we would meet again, not in Afghanistan, because they didn't want to be seen with me there. It was too dangerous for them and probably too dangerous for me. But we would meet in Istanbul, which I hoped would be an easier trip for them. And we spent five days there. And during that time, they asked me if I would write about them and about their perspectives and about their ideas about Afghan women. And I agreed quite readily. But I also realized that I wanted to write about them, their lives, their experience. Because how they got to be who they are is a very important part of what it takes to be a woman leader in Afghanistan. And the book recounts all of that and also talks about the other leaders whom we met in Ohio. So after 2010, I began writing the book. And I realized I had challenges beyond just my own education, which I'd already been engaged in, been working since 2001 really, to immerse myself in Afghan culture in Islam. I studied American history and American and British relationships with Afghanistan, worked from a number of different angles to try to be more informed. And I wanted to both present their lives and contextualize their lives for a Western audience. Because that was the audience they most wanted to reach. But at the same time, I had to deal with my own interaction with them, with who I could be in this book. How could I be a respectful listener and representative of their lives and work? And how could I not do what I understood from my historical work was fairly typical of colonialist societies, which is regard myself as having the best and most perfect life and that everyone else would surely like to have the same life if only they had the opportunity. And to shed any vestige of that imperialist background and to truly open myself up to this relationship with them and to understanding the world from their perspectives was an enormous challenge and one that I strived to do in the book. And at the same time, I didn't want the book to be one of the beneath the burqa sagas that were popular for a while. There was one on every bookstore shelf about interviews with women who live with the veil and how terrible it is and all of that. It wasn't going to be in that genre. So before I could even write, I had to figure out these kinds of roles. And this is what I've attempted to do in the book. There are a number of key points that I'd like to share with you that I try to present in the book. One is to understand what women's rights mean in the context of Afghanistan. That took a while. Jamila and Marzi were very helpful to me. I learned that the way that many Western feminists and people who support women's rights think about women's rights is that it's an individual matter. It's a way of allowing a woman to identify for herself who she is and what she's going to do and not be meshed in other obligations that keep her from self-actualization. That was a big word in feminism for a while here. And I learned very much how those rights in Afghanistan are conceived of very differently. And that is in the context of families and communities, in the context of the roles that these women believe they should be playing in their families and communities. And I think this has big implications for the way Westerners interact and try to promote women's causes in Afghanistan. Because it may be that some organizations, at least those that we've talked about, come to Afghanistan thinking, oh, well, we have to elevate the woman. We have to have programs that are only for women. Whereas sometimes those programs have caused backlash that's worked against women's advancement. So instead of creating the context within which women's civil and religious and familiar rights could be lived, these women are sometimes plucked out of their environments in some of the programs. And that's part of the reason that these programs don't work. I also wanted to understand the historical engagement of the West with Afghanistan and specifically with Afghan women's rights. Since those are what we were claiming was part of what we were fighting for by going into Afghanistan. And what I learned was that there has been a repeated pattern of engagement with women's rights and that women's rights are not necessarily only about women and women's rights. That they are symbolic of other things, other changes that various communities and various men in power, in particular, resist, such as, for example, land redistribution. And there have been some programs from various governments over the years that have said, well, land needs to be redistributed in a different way. Oh, and by the way, women should get to go to school. So women's going to school gets associated with the land reform. And so in order to fight the land reform, the fight might be about women going to school. And that this pattern is something that I think is extremely important to understand as people outside of Afghanistan try to work for its development. I also learned that women leaders in particular, and the two that I've worked with, but also other women leaders, have expressed the importance of international engagement in Afghanistan. And I think a lot of Americans through the regular media that we have thought, oh, the Afghans cannot wait until we get out of there. And I think there are a lot of Afghans who feel that way. But among these women leaders, they've been nervous about the absence of the foreigners. And I'm not sure that our current government is engaging with that difficulty as we are starting this pullout. I also learned that female activism is not a new or a Western idea being imposed on Afghanistan. That there is a tradition within Afghan families and villages of women, especially elder women, of exerting influence over the activities of men and the activities and values of their sons and husbands and villages. And there has also been what we might call a women's movement in Afghanistan for decades. When we invaded Afghanistan in 2001, there were many organizations operating on the ground at that moment, run by women, who were being very effective, even under Taliban rule. Marzia, for example, was running a school for boys and girls, 300 students in a neighbor's home. And she was actually caught by the Taliban one day. And I tell the story in the book of how she engaged with the Taliban who walked in to the school and asked her, what are you doing? And she had the right answer. And eventually, he turned around and walked away. These organizations were among the most trusted organizations in the country during the Civil War and the Taliban period. And yet, the US government did not engage with any of those organizations, did not try to empower them further in their effort to work for women's rights and dignity. And it struck me then and still does as a waste of our efforts not to engage with leaders who had proven themselves to be able to work in a way that respects the sensitivities of the culture that works from within the Islamic framework and is still able to be effective in promoting, for example, girls' education, but many other things as well. So those are some of the things that I learned that I didn't know before in engaging with these two women over the years. I also learned the mistakes that international donors and governments had made in the country. Among them is the belief, which I think still exists from some of the interviews that we've been having this week, that things having to do with women are things that are cultural and are taboo for others to engage with. And both of these women point out that, yes, you can say these things are cultural, but they can still be engaged with. Custom should not prevail over principle. And just because something is customary does not mean that it's right and definitely does not mean that it's Islamic. Although many of these practices are engaged in with the name of Islam attached to it. One of the most brilliant things that I think Jamila has done in her life that she almost never tells anybody is that she learned Arabic. When her family was in exile in Pakistan during the Civil War, she not only educated herself or got herself an education over her family's objections in a way that I recount in the book, but she also learned Arabic. And her primary motivation for learning Arabic was so that she could actually talk to people about what the Quran said. When they were telling her it said X, she could say, well, no, actually it says Y, Z, Q, and T. And that became a very powerful weapon which she uses today in her work. And she encounters very few others who have the same level of understanding. And I think being able to understanding that these things can be engaged from these sorts of knowledge frameworks is very important. And I hope she'll tell us some stories about how she's used that. So I give a list of suggestions for how our governments and our NGO organizations can engage more productively with Afghanistan, but I'll only mention one right now. And that is that all of our aid should be tied to women's rights programs. That we shouldn't give money in a country like Afghanistan unless some portion of it, and not one-tenth of it, but maybe half of it, is engaged with programs that will benefit women and that the women of Afghanistan believe will benefit women. And if we did only that one thing, I think we would be in much better shape than we are today. So with that, I'd like to turn the mic over to Jamila to hear what she wants to say. Well, it's very great honor and pleasure to be among you today. And almost everything was mentioned by Professor Sallikage. I'm very thankful to her that she made our voices to be heard, not only in the book, but also through this trip that I'm physically here in USA and Washington, D.C., and we will go to New York for some other meetings. The reason that we were very interested to have a product like the constant train, the book she has written on our life and on our experience, we were noticing that big sum of money is coming in Afghanistan and the people of United States and many other countries, they are paying their taxes to support Afghan women. But what was on the ground, it was a little bit, a little bit or more, it was different because the project more was going to to male partners or maybe to male organization to have project for women. And due to corruption and some other issues, most of the project was not going for the benefits of women. And from the other side, the projects for women were a very short time project. And Afghan women who were facing decades of war and instability, they need stable and continuous support. The activity that I started, it was literacy, the literacy program we started with a group of 2,000 women and today we have reached 250,000 women. And the activity we started with 25 imams and Kabul for promotion of women's rights. Today we are working with 6,000 imams in 22 provinces. We are also working on the issue of child marriage, sexual harassment and we are also working on the advocacy issues on elimination of violence against women. And all of these activity that I'm doing in the past almost 15 years, it has mostly have been based on the very local and simple methodologies. And I assure you that projects with hundreds, thousands of dollars could have not that much benefit that even our project with small community mobilization and engagement of people, engagement of youths and women to the process made the project very successful. When you're engaging women and youths in the process, they feel ownership because when their voices are heard, their needs will become up and they will be looking forward to solve their needs and they will be active agents in their society to work for themselves and for their children. So through this methodology, we have done some of the activities for a country like Afghanistan, it is so small, but hopefully with these small candles, we will be in position to make a lighter Afghanistan in future. Great, thank you very much. Quick question for the room. Has anybody ever seen an interview with Mrs. Kazai or a photograph of her? Put up your hand if you have. No, I'm talking about Mrs. Kazai. Okay, well, I think that's the fact that sort of speaks for itself. So, you know, Mrs. Ghani has made a point of being out in public and Mrs. Abdullah was on the campaign trail with Dr. Abdullah. And so what does that mean, if anything? Well, unfortunately, always our leadership could not do the things which were very much needed. Wife of President Kazai was a female doctor. She is a gynecologist and she was a very active woman. When she got married to Mr. Kazai, so she became a housewife. And most of the time when we were inviting her to attend some of the occasions and sharing our problems with her, but we couldn't get to her. And of course, wife of Mr. Abdullah Abdullah is having some health issues. I think that's why she's not that much active, but still she up to some extent taking part. And of course, the position and status of Mrs. Laura Ghani is very different. She is well educated. She is coming from the life background staying in the United States. And she is very cooperative up to the moment what we are saying and what we are, they are so low-ganzara. As you know, the National Unity Government has its own complications. Still they are fighting on many issues between themselves. How many women are there in the cabinet? We have four women. What are their jobs? They are occupying different ministries such as Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Women Affairs, Ministry of Norcotics and Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. And what's the percentage of women in Afghan Parliament now? What's the percentage of women? 25% of women are in the Parliament. What's the percentage of women in the US Congress? Less than what we have on the summer. But they're mandated to have the 25% so, yeah. And we fought for that in very early days when there was work on constitution was going, we women activists, we pushed that. And it was great achievement for us to set beside the Mojahedin leaders and the new government and lots of other actors that we put on them with support of international community. We made them to agree on 25%. I thought you said something very interesting, Dr. Ketch, about women's rights. About women's rights, there's a lot of poll on this. Women's rights being sort of a stalking horse for other issues as well. And I mean, I can't remember my Afghan history in great detail, but was it King Amanullah who his family, the females members of his family were not wearing the veil. And that caused a huge, and he wanted, that was a leading indicator of westernization that he wanted to bring in. That caused a lot of problems to him, right? Didn't work for him, eventually. I mean, how did it end for him? Badly, he was run out of town on a rail, actually, but his wife, he had gone on a European tour, 1927, I think it was, and when he came and he'd been hailed as a great modernizer, sort of like Ataturk, he was in that sort of mode. But when he got home, he had some very unhappy people. And by 1928, he was in exile. He had four wives, I think I have got this right, he had four wives, he dismissed three of them or something and just stuck with the one and then she took off the veil in public. But again, okay, that was hard for people to take in and of itself, but it was part of a much larger modernization, so-called modernization scheme that had already had the hackles up and to realize that a central government in Afghanistan has always been a tentative thing, a tenuous thing, and Karzai found it out and we watched him sort of disintegrate a little bit because the powers in the provinces are pretty strong and they wanna keep what they have and so there's always gonna be a battle between the two. So everybody's seen the pictures of 1970s Kabul and women wearing mini skirts and the like and clearly it was much more liberal than neighboring Pakistan in a sense, women. So I mean, what happened? How did that change? What's the history there? How real was that? Was it just located in Kabul? Outside in the countryside it was very different and always has been, always will be or how does that all play out? Before coming to this question, I would like to mention that always in our history, women has used as a political tool and women has remained as a strong political tool. Different government by different strategies have used this power. So you mentioned about the King Aman Allah and the reason that Karzai was not that much in position to take a strong whole stand for the position of women, although in international conferences and he ratified the Convention of Sida without any argument and other issues. But when the statement of Shura Yoloma came up about women to have mahram with them and mahram, a male company member of family, so he never said anything. When the issue of Yivav Lok came on the parliament and parliamentarian said this is a law against Sharia, like the elimination of violence against women. Which President Karzai signed it on 2009 by himself and it was implemented on different level on our legal system. But when parliamentarian came and reject and said, so there was no sort of communication coming back from the government. And also about the Shia family law, which is very, like for us, it is very difficult situation, but he supported the stand beside the Shia community and said I'm supporting what you are saying for your women. What was the law? It was almost in 2011. So. What did the law say? It is a personal, as you know Afghanistan is made up of different tribes and community. We have Shia and Sunni and Shia community decided to have their own personal law based on their jurisdiction school of thought, which is a little bit different from Sunni, a little bit not much more different from Sunni. So, and they had some of like issues which might be in big clash with the women's right issues. So the reason that today, possibly, that today we see that peace talks are going on, recently we had peace talk in Qatar. And it's going to, it's in China and Iran is also working on that to have a meeting there. And in the beginning, like, there was no representation of women when the communication was going inside Kabul and also sometime high peace council, when we contacted them, they were saying if we bring women agenda on the table, maybe Taliban goes back. They cannot come on the table. Had the Taliban ever said what their attitude to women working or being educated will be in the future of Afghanistan? Through the current position of Taliban in Qatar, like three women attended the conference and we did not hear anything, any rejection from their side. There was no opposition from their side. And they are saying that women can go for education but within limitation of Sharia. What does that mean? Well, it depends on different interpretation and everybody, we cannot say that this and that. So these are the things, these are the challenges that still our government and our people are facing. So it looks like the Taliban have shifted their position on women education a little bit? Whatever I can see as an Afghan living inside Afghanistan that this is the war of power. Now everybody wants to have a little bit power in the government system. So in order to have a little bit power you have to compromise a bit. They haven't shifted at all. They haven't shifted at all but they have shown some green light. But our tension is that if the government with ratification of international convention with all the laws inside country is not honest but how we can trust other parties. What do you and President Obama's plan to reduce American troops to effectively zero on December 31st, 2016? I believe it's an immature decision. A mature decision? An immature decision. Immature. Immature decision. Because like you have invested a lot in Afghanistan and like the foundations are built but going back, leaving everything and even we are in middle of it. Of course yes, of course yes. And besides that we don't have strong central government so far. So Hillary Clinton is going to be the democratic nominee unless there's some huge upset. Shouldn't she put in her running platform that we should extend our presence past 2016 for this issue? Yeah, of course. Amongst others? Of course, yes. Do you think that might happen? I mean, any? I don't know if she's even thinking about Afghanistan. She's meeting with people in cafes and upstate New York. She made a big issue of it when she was Secretary of State? She did. She did. And she went to Afghanistan and women heard her and they had a lot of hope from her. Janet Napolitano, there were different politicians who went and but they became very disappointed at the outcome. Well, so presumably now you're on a book tour, right? So are you going to, I mean this is something, a concrete step that you could sort of in terms of preserving what women's rights have. I mean, obviously that's the situation on the Taliban. If we say that was zero, it's not perfect now, but things have definitely had advances been made, right? Yes, things are better than they would have been without organizations like Jamilis. And there are also things that foreign donors have done, not only the United States, but Sweden and Germany. There are all kinds of governments active there in effective ways, Canada. And these are important, as Jamilis likes to say. These are foundations. But now we need to build on those foundations. And the building means not bringing in more Canadians and Germans and Swedes and Americans, but working with effective local organizations to implement these important. Is the National Solidarity Program sort of a model for that? I don't know. What do you think? Well, yeah, it was one of the very good and successful project, which was implemented in Afghanistan and it's still it is going on. But I... Describe what it is. Oh, okay. Actually, we start to work on community mobilization through different mechanism and through development, community sure us and this community consoles was from women side and from men side and in some of the part of Afghanistan we had combined male and female sure us. And it was taking different projects, small project and it was divided between every 300 family they had to come together and design a project for their community and do some activity. And the leadership of each sure was turned out within every six months by election of their own representative by their own choice. So it was very successful project and it's also going on. The other issue that I would like to mention that nowadays in security is getting very bad condition in Afghanistan. Where do you live? I live in Kabul, very confined and main city. Yeah, and how do you assess the security situation there right now? Because every time I was lost everywhere, just yesterday in the morning when I was talking with my daughter, she was crying and she was saying I don't want any gift, I want my mama. And I said why you're crying? She said it was big explosion, I was sleeping. And whatever in media you can see that is not representing 10% of the reality on the ground. Meaning? Meaning government might be more afraid than before. They are much more protective for their own gains. But in reality, people are suffering. You might have in the media that Northern provinces of Afghanistan which was much more peaceful in the past decade. Now they are in a very bad condition Do you think the Taliban will take kundus? According to local saying it has already taken. I was sharing with Dr. Sehli we are working in 22 provinces and we have village and province some team leaders. And now it's very difficult to get to them even for two, three days we are calling and we cannot get. After two, three days then sometime they are calling and saying that the fighting is going on that's why all the signals are cut off. So that's not, they are not able to be connected. I'm going to mispronounce the name but the woman who is lynched in Kabul, Fasconida. Farhonda. Was that a turning point or was this just an indicator of just this is how Afghan society is? It is both. Yeah. It is very serious and very shocking and very bad part of our history that a woman who was physically, apparently, much more religious with her chadar and with her clothing she's killed with such a human behavior of a group of youths in Kabul city which we consider that they are very moderate and they are open minded. This is a big alert for us that the issue of women are very sensitive like in Afghanistan men are doing lots of bad things. Nobody is talking about that but if a woman just by gossip somebody says that she has done this nobody goes to see whether that is reality or not and they are starting to killing her and with that mission. How would you assess the government's reaction? The government took very symbolic and very urgent action to close the mouth of international community and women activists in Afghanistan. The real criminals are out of the clutches of rule of law. They are even living in the house of some of the high political leaders but those who are secondary perpetrator now they are going to be killed and they are going to be hanged and the position they took with the police they gave the punishment of one year for them. For God's sake, I think first of all police should be responsible for all these. Yeah, the police to buy, right? That's the issue, the police did nothing when she was being- Police was there and even police said that we also become under emotional slogans of people and we were also joining the same. What does that say about Afghan society in general? They are more complicated than before. It's Afghanistan, it's complicated. And it gives alert to international community that be very, very conscious and be careful in future when you're doing some activities in Afghanistan. Yeah, well let's open it up to anybody in the audience who has a question if you could raise your hand, wait for the microphone and identify yourself and we'll start with this gentleman right here. Hi, my name is Taub Malikzad. I'm from Voice of America. I have a quick question. Throughout your time in Afghanistan, have you seen, since 2001 let's say, have you seen any change in the violence against women because now you're involved in like 22 provinces and you're involved with imams? Have you seen any decrease, increase, or is it the same? And also here we have been talking about the rights of women outside, like what they can do. What's happening with the Taliban, the husband? I mean, there is violence against women but there are these stories, like horrific stories of husbands cutting their wives' nose, beating them up. What is the government and what are the families doing to prevent that? I mean, ignore the Taliban. There's a Taliban in the house. What do you do with that? Thanks for your very good question. You know the chain of violence in a society is not because of one element or other element. It is a chain of history that comes from generation to generation. And in Afghanistan, in a society of patriarchal and tribal system with customary and traditionalism has made the situation very difficult for women. Of course, there is big sum of reduction. When you hear in the media, it means that is level of awareness has raised up. Now the cases does not kept underground. We take out the cases. When you hear in the media, it means that there is better level of awareness. Now people follow with the issues domestically they have. I can give you example of a man who was attending one of the sermon in the mosque that we were working. And when Imam was talking about women's right from Islamic perspective, the old man start crying and came to the Imam and told him that why you were not telling all these before? I never allowed my daughters to go to school. My sister in law died. I did not allow her to visit a male doctor. I first really married my children, my daughters and now they are suffering everyday problems. And I thought that time it is part of my manhood. It's part of my religious responsibility towards my female member of family. And now you are saying it was all sin and I am going to die. How I will answer my God? And of course the Imam says we have to start from the point we come to know that it was wrong. And believe me that man has become the most active advocate in Hogyani village, which is one of the very tribal, very difficult. This man is knocking doors of each and every door of the village to send their daughters to school. He has five sons and every son has two, three daughters and he's sending all of them to school. If there is the issue of vaccination or any campaign, like he's the first person there to help and support other women. And this way he wants to compensate the wrongs he have committed. And from the other side he is benefiting a larger number of people in the community. So we have such a beautiful examples. It means that there is a reduction. But in some of the provinces still we have very huge problem, such as northern provinces of Afghanistan because of the child marriage and the issue of poverty economically, people are in a very bad condition and now the civil war or the fighting is going on. So all these are making the situation very worse that people are selling their daughters in early ages by the name of marriage. So we are struggling and positive change cannot be happen in one day or two day or one generation, two generation. If a history of violence in many, many generations and our blood has come in order to reduce that, it will take time. If not that much, at least half of it, at least quarter of it. This is a difficult question, but to what extent is the treatment of women, the treatment of women that we saw under the Taliban essentially Pashtun culture. And to what extent is Tajik or Uzbek or Hazara kind of culture more accommodating to women and having a role outside the home? Yeah. Actually different tribes and different the tenacity group have their own culture. When you go to the house of Pashtun, you will find very good family environment. Within the relationship of husband and wife, but there are some other actors around like mother-in-law, father-in-law that they want to, they have their upper-handedness over the daughter-in-law. And usually according to the custom, son has to be obedient to his father and mother and to elder brother or elder sister. In Uzbek community and Hazara community, most of the issues are coming up majorly because of two issue. One is poverty. The other issue is they are very confined cultural practices. For example, like in Hazara community, if a girl becomes 16 or 17 years old and she is not married until 17 years old. So, they will say, no one marry her. She is left no one marry her. So, because of this competition, even very young boys are getting married. And the other issue around marriage in Hazara community, it's because of having huge amount of marriage money to be exchanged within the families. So, families are trying, 10 people are working in a family to collect some money to do the marriage. So, as much quickly they are getting rid of this burden so they are happy to do it. And that's why they are doing. And mostly the young brides, they are not aware of the family relationship, health issues and other, most of the time conflict comes up of that. And in Uzbek community, up to third category, they are much better. You can say they are much better. They are very confined in their own community. Their marriages, everything becomes very confined in their own tribe. And they don't have that much issues. Or if there is any issue, it is very much suppressed. It does not come up. So, is there a community within Afghanistan that treats women better in general? Well, up to second extent, due to our awareness and the activity we are doing, especially we are mobilizing imams to talk about that and from Islamic perspective to talk about that. So, up to some extent it is improving. But at the same time, larger volume of other actors are working in Afghanistan that all these women right issues are coming from western community. And who is pushing that agenda? So, of course there are some opposition groups inside our community. And one thing I should mention that sometimes our, the women activists, lack of coordination, lack of cooperation and lack of understanding between themselves. It's also one of the element creating such a signals for the people. I will give you an example when the issue of Eve of Law come up. So, it was really shocking because it was the greatest achievement of us in the past one decade. And one of the network, by the name of Afghan Women Network, they organized a round table on a very famous TV channel which is to law and they brought two, three women activists with two imams to discuss about the issue of Eve of Law. And this three two women activists, they had very limited knowledge of Islam. They could not continue discussion after one minute with imam. And remaining nine minutes were spent on the discussion of the imams. Instead of having good impression, it had very bad impression that women do not anything and they are out of Islamic circle, they don't have any knowledge. And that's why the Kabul University youths came on the street, they started march and said that it's an Islamic, we do not accept and some other actors come on. You mentioned totally TV, obviously there's been an explosion of media in Afghanistan, there are dozens of TV stations, dozens of radio stations. Has that been basically a good thing for women's rights? Well, I don't know. Yeah, it is sometimes good but it's also sometimes bad because the TV companies still, they do not have that capacity to produce something by their selves. Usually they are copying Indian, Turkey and other cultures. And sometimes instead of decreasing problem, they are increasing. Hi, I'm Kim Weichel, I'm CEO of a women's peace building organization. And I'm wondering if there are ways that we as NGO leaders can be supportive of Afghan women, the organizations you've mentioned, especially with the imminent US pull out, whether it's through the McCain Institute, whether it's directly with organizations initiatives you've mentioned. I think that is the only way a lift out. When international community, international forces are going to leave Afghanistan, we trust on our sisters. We trust on our friends outside Afghanistan. I'm very hopeful that they should not leave us alone. Already we have got some experience and through your professional support, we can be in a better position to continue our cause. And of course it should be done and I think it's the only solution. Elizabeth. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Weingarten, I work here at New America. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the progress of the National Action Plan. I know the plan is to launch it soon, but how much of a difference do you think it's actually going to make? I know that there are a lot of questions around implementation, but what's your sense of it? Yeah, actually you might know better that the initial National Action Plan which was launched, and we have almost completed the period of five years, but there is no report back of that. What is it? National Action Plan is a strategy, a national strategy that they have different components inside and they have some indicators that they have to reach after five years to that goal and objectives. What percentage of females are in school now? According to the reports of Ministry of Education, it is almost two, three million, but due to insecurity it might be a little bit less. Under the Taliban it was what? Under the Taliban it was very few, it was 100, 500 something. Coming back to your question, and the issue of National Plan that currently it has worked lots of international community, different organizations, different government institution has worked and developed the plan. So the big challenge is the stability of the new cabinet because for the past six months we had not the cabinet. Now we have the cabinet, but there is issue with deputies. And every minister has to have four deputies. The previous deputies they are stuck in their position because of the past relationship and new deputies are coming due to the new. So now we are in such a process of conflict and Ashraf Ghani has given them time duration of 40 days, which is almost a month's past. And hopefully with next 10 days or at least one, two months they come to conclusion. So there will be two things important. That National Plan of Action for each and every country is very important and especially for Afghanistan. And there should be a follow up mechanism from the previous one in order to have better lesson learned for the upcoming one. Other questions? This lady here. Hi, my name is Carly Fabrian. I'm from the Public International Law and Policy Group. And my question is sort of about your writing process and storytelling process. As I've been writing on counterterrorism and gender, I've been struggling to kind of find my role in the story and to highlight stories like your own. So I'm wondering if you could elaborate a little more on how that process went and how you kind of overcame those struggles. Well, I talked a little bit about sort of the context within which I was writing and understanding the mistakes that I could make in terms of myself. But there was another complication as well. And that was that my relationship with them transformed over time. So the book covers approximately, not in terms of live time, but in terms of the lives of these women from about 2002 to 2014. And during that time, I decided that the way I had to understand myself was that at first I was a witness that when I met them in Ohio and I was listening to them, I could only look from the outside in like a store window. Then as I got to know them and as we became correspondents and then we met again, I saw that I was going to become a narrator and an interpreter of their lives. And so I had to sort of transform the way I thought about that part of the book. And then as time went by and as their situations became way more complex, I became kind of a participant in their lives. And so I felt that I had to be aware of these changing roles in terms of the way that I set the tone of what it was I was writing. But it was also very dedicated to presenting their stories in their own words. So I made a distinction between the time that I was talking and the time that they were talking. Every interview that we had, I recorded and they were all transcribed. So I was always talking through their words. And at the end of each chapter, I have a section that I call Reflections. So I kind of keep myself out of the narrative except for my interactions, like I asked them this or they told me this. But I was doing a lot of comparisons in my mind. I was very interested in the things. For example, there are two chapters in the book about marriage, both their feelings about Afghan women marriage practices in general and their own marriages because when I first met them, they weren't married, which made them very unusual Afghan women to be hovering around the age of 30 and beyond and not be married. And so that made them, that marriage had to be a topic that we talked about. And I started thinking about the kinds of marriages that they entered into and the way I had thought about marriage and my own marriage and the way I thought about my selection of my partner. And I thought, these aren't as maybe not as different as I thought they were. So I wanted to think about how the concept of arranged marriage, which certainly fits their situation to an extent, they being the exceptions to a rule, which is so arranged that the girl may not even know who she's marrying until the day of the wedding. And our idea that we are choosing partners totally freely. When in fact, we're choosing our partners based on religion sometimes and social class and educational level and maybe even geographical location. So there are things that circumscribe what we think of as our free choice, which I think actually work in all areas of our lives, but in the case of marriage, I think we feel strongly that we married for love and that's it when there is a lot else going on. So I just tried to keep that separate in as I was going through and framing how I was going to approach the book. Does that speak to your question? Oh, good. This gentleman and then this lady. Thank you. My name is Michael Albin. I'm an independent researcher. I'm very curious about the issue of Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. That was a terrific opportunity for progress and attention on the situation of women in Afghanistan. And I'm curious about how exactly disappointment resulted from her tenure as secretary of state. And now that we have a woman as director of USAID, I wonder if the tone of aid will be a little different going forward. It's quite a leading question because it presumes that there is disappointment. Yeah. Well, I think maybe it comes from what I said earlier, which is Hillary Clinton was in Afghanistan several times and Janet Napolitano and so on. And in the end result, they didn't see a whole lot coming from it. And I sound like I'm bashing Hillary Clinton, which I don't mean to do, but I think that there were limitations on what any cabinet member would have been able to achieve on behalf of the US government in those kinds of situations. And I think that cabinet members don't always have the backing of the president that they think they do. So they may say something in an audience like Hillary Clinton said in 2010, something like, we will never allow women's rights to be compromised. We'll make sure no US program compromises. Well, that was probably a little grandiose that it might not be possible for anybody to actually ensure that that kind of thing would happen. What strikes me, and I wanna hear Jamila's view of this, what strikes me is that people like that are operating on a level, you know, 30,000 feet above what's actually happening on the ground. And they may never have the opportunity to understand deeply what the situation is. They have to represent their government. They have to say certain things. And they may mean them quite sincerely, but their capacity to translate that hovering kind of observation into actual programs on the ground, my guess is it's pretty limited. So what do you think? Almost the same. Yeah. Yeah. Kate Howard, thank you for visiting, we appreciate it. I wanted to ask you how you find the Civil Society framework, the legal framework for operating for the various organizations, and particularly your organization. I know that a new association law was passed in fall of 2014. The NGO law has, there's been efforts to write and change a new NGO law, working with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Economy. And I wondered if you could speak just how, how engaged the women's groups are, or your group is in affecting a more permissive or just a workable framework or how you find the current framework. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. To be honest, I'm very pleased that friends have such a good knowledge about Afghanistan, very current knowledge about Afghanistan. That's the lighting for me, that people are still interested in Afghanistan. We have a ministry by the name of Ministry of Economy that usually NGOs have to have get registration there. And networks and social activity, if they are working under a framework, they have to get registration with Ministry of Justice. Currently, lots of national and international organizations that working in Afghanistan gets their registration from Ministry of Economy. And Ministry of Economy is also working on the issue of tax, and we are also responsible to give them each six months' report. Of course, we are registered, even my organization was registered in 2002. When Karzai was doing his internal session, it was not, he was not selected as a president, he was just acting at that time. There we had Ministry of Planning and we were registered there. And after the changes in 2004, they announced that there should be a re-registration with Ministry of Economy and we did this in 2004. Currently, we NGOs see that there are some complications with the code of conduct, with NGO laws, and it creates big sum of problem for us. I can give you one example. For example, when we are registered with Ministry of Economy, I have to work with Imams, I have to work with women. Then I have to get registration with Ministry of Religious Affairs, with Ministry of Women Affairs. I have to provide each six months' report to Ministry of Economy, to Ministry of Religious Affairs, then to Ministry of Women Affairs. And new encounter terrorism law and banking system, like it has complicated the situation. More you have to make big sum of documents and even sometime the work of a local NGO becomes too much, like we are project based on organization and we don't have a specific person to work on documentation and reporting to this department, that department. So we are also part of this collaboration of civil society, that we are working to at least make a little bit reliable policies and articles and the code of conduct. Unfortunately, before I told, that still we are not in place with deep tears and hates and it will take time. Charmin and this lady. Hello, my name is Nadia. I'm a broadcast journalism student from Norfolk State University and I'm interning with VOA. First of all, thank you ma'am for telling her story and thank you for allowing her to tell your story. My question is for the younger women activists, how would you like your story to be told in order that we get information about what's going on with women around the world? So how would you like, how would you want us to tell your story? For my own people or for international community? For the international community. So let's say if I wanted to do a piece on women activists, how would you like for us to tell your story so that we're more informed on how to get the information out? Yeah, so we were very limited in that part so far because unfortunately due to lots of problem in Afghanistan, voices of every women is not heard. Like only a special group of women have access to media, to government, to different policy makers and only their voices have been heard so far. And also it is limited. They are not giving a good value to the voices of women. That's why we requested Professor Ketch, a good friend of us, that she with her scholarly knowledge and experience should write our story. And I appreciate her work, the way she developed the book and now we are doing this book tour. This is the way that we are telling our stories to you. Maybe as an example or maybe as a case study for those women who are coming to a bigger platform of feminism and women activism. But is there any here? And that will be our last question because we're running out of time. My name is Eleanor Bakrak. I have worked for USAID in Afghanistan from a few years back. And I know that USAID is now working on a large program for women. One of my good friends is involved with it. I don't know whether you have plans to meet with USAID but I'd be happy to give you his information after the program. I think your views would be very helpful. We met with him yesterday. That's great. It was great, it was wonderful. Yeah, I know Promote is one of the historical support of United State of America for our women. We yesterday had a meeting with USAID and we shared that it's something very positive and we are very happy for that. Only we are a little bit concerned on the best utilization of that money because we cannot see such an opportunity again in the near future. So that's why when it talks of leadership of women, empowerment of, economic empowerment of women, it should be best utilized. And that's why we are trying to be involved around, we had meeting with Tetra Tech and USAID and hopefully to continue. Well, thank you for this really brilliant presentation. We wanna thank you, Dr. Kitsch and Mrs. Afghani.