VZCZCXRO4144
OO RUEHIK RUEHPW RUEHYG
DE RUEHBUL #4141/01 3520703
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 180703Z DEC 07
FM AMEMBASSY KABUL
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 1937
INFO RUCNAFG/AFGHANISTAN COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RHMFIUU/HQ USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL PRIORITY
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUEKJCS/OSD WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 KABUL 004141 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR SCA/FO DAS CAMP, SCA/A, PRM 
STATE PASS TO USAID FOR AID/ANE, AID/DCHA/DG 
NSC FOR JWOOD 
OSD FOR SHIVERS 
CG CJTF-82, POLAD, JICCENT 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREF PREL PHUM AF
SUBJECT:  STILL A HARSH WORLD FOR WOMEN IN WESTERN AFGHANISTAN 
 
¶1. (U) Summary.  Despite Herat's status as the most modern Afghan 
city, western Afghanistan remains deeply conservative and women are 
still forced into arranged marriages, suffer beatings and abuse at 
the hands of family members, and resort to self-immolation as a 
means of escaping their plight and exerting the last measure of 
control over their lives.  Womens' non-governmental organizations 
(NGOs) provide islands of sanctuary and hope, but traditional 
values, lack of education, and poverty continue to severely limit 
women's rights and safety.  End Summary. 
 
Full House at the Women's Shelter 
--------------------------------- 
¶2. (SBU) Herat has only one safehouse/shelter, which was established 
in 2003.  The shelter is now run by the Voice of Women (VOW) NGO at 
the request of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 
(UNHCR) and funded by the Danes.  The shelter offers sanctuary and 
tries to negotiate solutions for anywhere from 25-50 short-term and 
long-term residents.  The women and girls are referred to the 
shelter by the police, immigration authorities, the Ministry of 
Labor, the Department of Women's Affairs, UNHCR, or other assistance 
organizations.  So far in 2007, the shelter has assisted 151 women: 
29 deportees (six remain in the shelter); 19 victims of domestic 
violence (four remain); 35 runaways; 11 homeless; 19 prison release 
(three remain); five voluntary returnees from Iran; 28 family 
conflicts (two remain), and five internally displaced persons.  The 
shelter currently has 13 long-term and 12 short-term residents.  The 
long-term residents sometimes stay as much as 18 months while 
waiting for a court to decide if they can divorce their husbands. 
The short-term residents can stay as briefly as a few hours, often 
just needing help in defusing a family problem or finding relatives 
after being deported alone from Iran. 
 
Death by Dishonor 
----------------- 
¶3. (U) The stories are depressingly similar.  Most girls were 
between the ages of 14 and 18 when their families forced them into 
arranged marriages, often with elderly Afghan men living in Iran 
with several wives and grown children.  The girls either escaped 
before the wedding and were beaten, or escaped after the wedding and 
were beaten.  The girls are generally from western Afghanistan and 
are often Hazara; all were illiterate and from poor families.  One 
girl was beaten and tortured by her brother-in-law.  He is now 
serving time in prison, but her family would still kill her for 
dishonoring them if she returned home.  Another resident who 
recently returned to her family was beaten to death by her father 
and brother. 
 
¶4. (U) The girls live in two large rental houses separated by a 
broad, clean courtyard, but the gate is locked between the rear, 
long-term resident house and the street-side, short-term resident 
house.  Children, three of whom were born in the shelter, played in 
the courtyard amidst laundry and scraggly trees.  The shelter has no 
outward identifying sign, and residents generally keep or are kept 
to themselves.  A few are allowed to go to the bazaar in groups if 
accompanied by a supervisor, but others are kept inside for fear 
they will be kidnapped or killed as soon as they step outside. 
 
Harshly Judging Each Other 
-------------------------- 
¶5. (SBU) The girls seemed generally happy and well cared-for, but 
they do not seem to trust each other.  None of the girls would tell 
us their stories unless all other residents and even staff had left 
the room.  The director said many girls came to the shelter 
initially claiming they had been trafficked for prostitution, but 
social pressure and criticism from the other women soon caused them 
to recant and fabricate a traditional forced-marriage story.    This 
pressure to remain "good" may be at the heart of allegations of 
sexual abuse at Pol-e-Charkhi prison made by female inmates to a 
visiting Afghan parliamentary delegation in October.  The inmates 
denied these allegations to subsequent parliamentary and Ministry of 
Justice delegations soon afterwards. 
 
What the Future Holds: Marriage, Marriage, and Marriage 
--------------------------------------------- ---------- 
¶6. (SBU) Even if the girls could wait out the mandatory three-year 
period required to obtain a divorce, they must marry again for 
protection.  Being a single woman in Afghanistan and living outside 
your family circle is simply not an option.  The shelter director 
 
KABUL 00004141  002 OF 003 
 
 
contacts the families and pursues the only three possible 
alternatives:  1) return to the girl's family to be married off 
again;      2) return to the girl's husband; or 3) an immediate 
arranged marriage to another man.  The girls seemed to accept this 
future, and had no other ideas of what they could or would do with 
their lives if allowed to choose. 
 
Tea Rooms and Tea Cosies 
------------------------ 
¶7.  (SBU) While the girls wait for their fate to be decided, they 
occupy their time with educational and simple livelihood programs 
(e.g., knitting).  Some also worked in the shelter's Finnish 
Embassy-funded tea rooms "for women, by women."  The most successful 
tea room is in a curtained but airy little restaurant in Herat's 
central park, where female university students cram in to study and 
gossip and men stand at the door to order takeout.  The employees 
make $80 per month (teachers make $60), and are escorted, 
burqa-clad, by male shelter guards to and from work.  The girls said 
the students often befriend them and they enjoy this one break from 
their relative isolation at the safehouse. 
 
Self-Immolation Is Still Seen As The Only Way Out 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
¶8. (U) When they cannot escape continued violence or forced 
marriage, some girls attempt suicide by self-immolation. We visited 
the 36-bed Herat Burn Unit, which was created partly to cope with 
the high numbers of self-immolation victims.  Cases are decreasing 
slightly; the hospital treated almost 150 patients each year in 
2003, 2004, and 2005; 98 patients in 2006; and 62 patients so far in 
the Afghan year of 1386, which ends March 31.  Nevertheless, the 
women's ward was full, and women and girls between the ages of 12 
and 30 lay in various ghastly stages of treatment and recovery. 
Some were disabled along with being disfigured, and doctors feared 
they would attempt suicide again.  Family arguments, desperation, 
and extreme mental distress were present in all the cases.  One 
twelve-year old girl was horrifically burned from the waist down and 
claimed her skirt caught fire in the kitchen but the U.S. Air Force 
medic accompanying us said the severity of her wounds was 
inconsistent with her story. 
 
¶9. (U) While the women were receiving the best burn treatment 
available in Afghanistan, the unit still lacked basic pressure 
garments, clean bandages, and enough supplies.  Only seven 
well-trained professionals worked at the burn unit, including two 
plastic surgeons.  While the USAF medic noted the high quality of 
the skin graft work, we could not watch, or listen, as an unskilled 
nurse roughly stripped off the caked-on bandages of the twelve-year 
old instead of soaking them first.  According to the doctors, 
Americans built the building, the French supplied it and trained the 
doctors, and the Afghan government funds the salaries.  But the 
doctor said the government salaries were only $50 per month, and 
money even for that was running out.  He feared the unit would close 
in less than a year without a substantial new funding source. 
 
U.S. Military Often Provides The Only Medical Care Available to 
Women 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
¶10. (SBU) U.S. military medical personnel at Camp Stone, a Forward 
Operating Base near the Herat Airport often offer the only medical 
treatment available to women in the area.  Their "medcap" (Medical 
Community Assistance Program) missions often see evidence of sexual 
abuse, self-immolation, and physical abuse such as blown eardrums 
and skull deformities from victims being hit repeatedly in the head. 
 Kuchi women - often married at 14 and seen as mere reproducers and 
workers - suffer the most severe abuse.  The medical personnel said 
most village elders show more appreciation for the veterinary 
clinics than the medcap missions. Only American units conduct 
medcaps; the Italian and Spanish units in the area focus on other 
assistance goals, and medical NGOs like Doctors Without Borders have 
pulled out of Herat due to security concerns. 
 
Women's Council: A Hope for the Future 
-------------------------------------- 
¶11. (SBU) The Herat Women's Council is one Afghan-run women's NGO 
dedicated to raising awareness about self-immolation and women's 
rights in general.  The Council was formed by 200 former female 
principals and intellectuals shortly after the Taliban's fall.  At 
that time, self-immolation cases were extremely high, and the 
 
KABUL 00004141  003 OF 003 
 
 
Council produced a magazine and public service television programs 
about the rights of women and the danger and senselessness of 
self-immolation.  The director noted that self-immolation did not 
exist in Afghanistan before the wars, but was brought from Iran when 
refugees began returning.  The Council is supported entirely by 
donations and what they earn from their livelihood classes.  Local 
contacts said some friction existed between the Council and the 
Department of Women's Affairs (DWA).  The Council's director 
declined to comment on this, but she did suggest the DWA could do 
more to protect women.  We tried to meet with the DWA but were stood 
up twice. 
 
Iranian Women are the Vanguard? 
------------------------------- 
¶11. (SBU) Interestingly, two of the women at the leading edge of 
women's rights were either Iranian or Iranian-educated.  One Iranian 
woman, now a British citizen and married to a Frenchman, runs the 
international five-star hotel in Herat, aptly named, "The 
International Five-Star Hotel."  Arriving in the dining room without 
a headscarf, she said she has been harassed, threatened, and 
discriminated against both because she is a woman and because she is 
a foreigner.  She says she refuses to be intimidated and will 
continue to build her hotel's business in the face of the local 
Chamber of Commerce's open hostility.  (We also heard rumors that 
the hotel was Iranian-government run and stocked with Iranian secret 
agents.)  The young woman who headed the Women's Council was 
Iranian-educated, and seemed to be an independent thinker and not 
easily intimidated.  Her conviction and straight-forward approach 
were refreshing, and she is a bright spark amidst so much misery and 
oppression. 
 
¶12. (SBU) As Herat and western Afghanistan continue to develop, 
women will face an increasing clash of cultures.  Internet cafes, 
opulent new houses, satellite television and, lest we forget, the 
International Five-Star Hotel, are all impacting Herat's 
conservative community.  Whether the region becomes a beacon of 
progress or a place of continued oppression remains to be seen, but 
women's rights face a long uphill battle in either case. 
 
WOOD