In Ghor, ‘no value’ and no justice for women
Afghanistan’s lawless province may be the country’s capital of gender-based violence and abuse
There are three versions of how Tabaruk, a mother of six, died this spring during a journey through treacherous snow-covered mountains in Afghanistan.
She and her family had been expelled from their village in Ghor province because her teenage daughter, Mah Yamsar, was said to have brought dishonour by becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
The police in Ghor say Tabaruk fell off her horse and died.
Members of the provincial council and human rights activists say she was pushed off a cliff, and then tied to a horse and dragged around until dead.
A third version of the story was told to Mah Yamsar by her 8-year-old brother, who was travelling with Tabaruk at the time. “They killed my mother with the bullets of a gun,” the brother recounted.
If Afghanistan is one of the worst places to be a woman, then Ghor, a province so lawless that people often wonder if there is a government there at all, may be the country’s capital of gender-based violence and abuse. Week after week there are reports of women killed in Ghor by men who never face justice.
“There have been 118 registered cases of violence against women in Ghor in the past year, and those are only cases that have been reported,” said Fawzia Koofi, head of the women’s rights commission in the Afghan parliament, who recently visited Ghor to raise awareness about the lack of justice. “And not a single suspect in these 118 cases has been arrested.”
“There is no value for women there,” Ms Koofi added. “It is as if she deserves to die.”
With a population of more than 700,000 and located in west-central Afghanistan, Ghor is considered one of the most deprived provinces of the country. It has received little government attention over the years, and the rule of law is almost nonexistent in certain parts of the territory. Ghor also shares borders with some of the most violent provinces with strong Taliban presence, making it vulnerable to the insurgency.
Some of the cases in Ghor briefly shock the nation before fading into its long history of abuse.
A teenage girl, Rukhshana, who was forced into an arranged marriage, was later caught fleeing with a lover. She was buried waist deep in dirt and stoned to death in October 2015 by a gang of men the government said were Taliban. The male lover was flogged and set free.
Ms Koofi, the lawmaker, said the violence had its roots in tribal feuds and the pervasive practice of marrying off girls at a very young age for large dowries. By the time the husband-to-be comes up with the money, often after years of labour in Iran, the girl has grown up and developed feelings for someone else.
Also playing a crucial role in the violence, Ms Koofi said, is the absence of the rule of law and a complete sense of impunity.
When security officials are pressed on the situation in Ghor, Ms Koofi said, they say they have to balance justice with security — and that if they go after the perpetrators, they will side with the Taliban who are already gaining ground in the province.
Mullah Saadyar, one of the militant leaders listed on police documents as ordering the stoning of Rukhshana, recently came for treatment for an illness in Ghor’s provincial capital, Chaghcharan, but the government did not arrest him.
No one has yet been prosecuted for the death of Tabaruk, either.
In the months before she died, Tabaruk, who, like many Afghans used only one name, was focused on protecting her daughter from her own almost certain death.
The daughter, Mah Yamsar, says she was at home last year when a neighbour, Sayed Ahmad, raped her. She hid the episode from everyone, until her body started changing, and she realised she was pregnant. Her mother become her secretbearer and helper. In rural Afghanistan, it is common for such pregnancies to end in honour killings.
Mr Ahmad had pills delivered to Mah Yamsar that would help her have an abortion, which occurred in the seventh month of her pregnancy. Mah Yamsar went to the hospital and stayed there for eight nights, needing two blood transfusions.
When she was discharged and returned to her village in the Dawlat Yar district of Ghor, elders gathered for a council to decide the family’s fate. Tabaruk and her husband were in attendance, as was Ahmad, the accused rapist, but Mah Yamsar was not.
“He said, ‘I won’t swear on the Koran, but I did not rape her’,” Mah Yamsar said her mother told her about Mr Ahmad’s words at the meeting.
The village council, swayed by Mr Ahmad’s powerful relatives, said Mah Yamsar’s family had brought dishonour on the village. “Load up, and leave this place,” the family was told.
Mah Yamsar, still recovering from the abortion, was put on a motorcycle. Her mother rode a horse, while her father, her brother and two village elders, both men, followed behind.
Mah Yamsar arrived before her family in Kharsang, also in Ghor, where the family planned to start a new life. Her mother never made it.
At first, her father said Tabaruk would come. Then he said she had fallen off the horse and died.
But her brother said their father was lying. His father and the two village elders took Tabaruk off into the distance, telling him to stay behind. When they returned, his father said Tabaruk had fallen off the horse.
But the child told Mah Yamsar he heard gunshots.