WUNRN
AFGHANISTAN ELECTIONS - RECORD
NUMBER
OF WOMEN CANDIDATES FOR PARLIAMENT
Despite everyday prejudice and Taliban death threats a record number of
female candidates are standing in September polls
A record number of women are
running in Afghanistan's critical
parliamentary elections next month despite many being inundated with
threatening phone calls, including death threats from insurgents.
Amid ever-rising violence, which
some people fear could foster a repeat of last year's catastrophic presidential
election, women are struggling to campaign at all outside a few areas, poll
monitors say.
Even in
With voting billed for 18
September,
"I've told my team that we
just have to expect this sort of thing," said Fareda Tarana, who had just
been told another batch of her expensive posters had been torn down on
Tarana does not just owe her
prominence to her trademark long eyelashes pictured on billboards but also to
Afghan Star – the country's Pop Idol – in which she came eighth in 2005.
"I cannot run in
Relatively speaking,
Nonetheless, Tarana still gets 10
calls every day from anonymous men angry at a woman standing for MP.
For Najila
Angira the calls are more serious. During one recent call, a Taliban commander from Wardak,
a province just a short drive south of
"He had read my biography,
which said I lived outside of
For the Taliban, Angira stands
for almost everything a woman should not be. Not only is she standing for
election, the 30-year-old is also a businesswoman, running a successful
logistics firm out of her family flat in
"The Taliban time is
finished," she said. "We are making the new
Other female candidates have had
to deal with the more general male prejudice, including Hamida Ameri, a teacher
whose attempt to campaign in a mosque prompted male worshippers to walk out.
"The mullah was a good man and had invited me to talk in his mosque,"
she said. "But when I did, the men started shouting that I had destroyed
the holy environment of the mosque. Some people stayed … but most of them
left."
The situation is worse in more
dangerous provinces outside
It said that women candidates
were "inundated" with late-night threatening calls both from
insurgents, political rivals and even some ordinary people.
"Women's campaigns were
barely visible in the most insecure provinces in the south and south-east of
the country, and female candidates complained of government indifference to
their security concerns," Fefa said in a recent report.
Despite the dangers the number of
women seeking representation in parliament has risen sharply, from 328 in 2005
to 406 across
The issue of women's seats in
parliament has long been a bugbear of conservatives. In recent interviews with
senior members of Hizb-e-Islami, a party once linked to one of the main
insurgent groups and which is expected to greatly increase its share of power
this year, the reserved seats were repeatedly cited as an example of foreigners
imposing a practice alien to Afghan culture.
One candidate in
Her own posters are dominated by
a pear – the symbol she chose from a random selection of three pictures each candidate
puts on the ballot paper to help the largely illiterate electorate vote.
"I'm trying to encourage
people to think about policies but a lot of people are treating this like a
beauty contest, simply voting on who looks best."
Everyone is all too aware that
the stakes are far higher than a fashion contest, not least businesswoman
Angira. "If I win I will serve the people in parliament," she said.
"But if I lose I might have to leave because I will be in danger. No one
is going to give me security to protect myself from the Taliban."