Earlier today, reading The New York Times over my coffee, I came across a small AP story about the murder of Shaima Rezayee, a young Afghan woman who was killed, apparently, for being too “Western”.
Ms. Rezayee, 24, had been (until March) the host of “Hop”, a music video show on the station Tolo TV. She was a popular figure who proudly dressed in Westernized garb, a sign of the “new” Afghanistan. But her appearance, and her program, drew criticism from conservative clerics and other Islamic “scholars”, who effectively engineered her ouster two months ago.
Reporters Without Borders says that she is the first journalist to be killed in Afghanistan since the end of the war in 2001.
Most tragically, the main suspects in her death are two of her brothers.
Much more on the flip.
Shaima Rezayee seems to have been an almost perfect example of the positive changes that were made possible in Afghanistan following the removal of the Taliban from power. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion, Ms. Rezayee was denied schooling and forced to wear the burqa in public, but from all accounts jumped into the new society with both feet. While she shed the burqa, she hardly dressed provocatively (at least by our standards). Here she is in a Reuters photo taken from an appearance on an interview program back in February:
At the time, she told Reuters, “Whenever I go out, some people say some [bad] things. But there are more who praise me. Especially my family — and a lot of young people in this country encourage me.” Apparently, her brothers may not have shared those beliefs.
The Chicago Tribune reports:
Women face a particularly tough time if their behavior is seen as too loose or their clothes are perceived as too tight. For a family, such behavior is often taken as an insult to honor. Most marriages are still arranged in Afghanistan, and even a casual chat between a man and a woman can create problems.
For many young people here, Rezayee was an icon. She wore Western-style clothes and the barest of headscarves. She drank alcohol. She had male friends. She joked around with her male counterparts on the “Hop” video program. She was flirtatious.
In this story from AzadiRadio|Radio Free Afghanistan (via Radio Free Europe|Radio Liberty), Reporters Without Borders, the France-based organization, claimed that
TV Tolo Director Saad Mohseni denies the report. He told RFE/RL that Rezayee decided to leave the station because the work schedule did not suit her.
“The conditions were such that she could not work full time; therefore, she wanted to work several hours, several days and both sides agreed that she should leave Tolo. it happened three or four months ago,” Mohseni says.
Mohseni says it is very unlikely that Rezayee was killed because of her former job.
“As far as we know she had never been threatened. There are other people in Tolo who are being threatened every day because of their work, because of the way they present the news,” Mohseni says. “There are people who are not happy about it (the way news is presented) — especially about our news and documentary programs. But we are not aware that Shaima Rezayee had received threats. We have to wait for the police investigation to be finalized then we can comment.”
Such naïveté is not becoming, Mr. Mosheni. As a side note, Tolo TV is the creation of an Afghan who had returned to the country at the end of 2001 after spending the Taliban years in exile in Australia.
According to the full version of the AP story by Daniel Cooney (which can be found at Egypt Election Daily News or at USA Today, among other locations),
It’s doubtful that Ms. Rezayee’s departure that same month was coincidental. Shortly after her departure, she told a radio interviewer that she’d heard rumors that someone wanted to kill her.
Again, from the AP:
“We suspect family members may be involved in the murder,” he said. He didn’t elaborate and relatives could not be immediately reached for comment.
Ms. Rezayee was shot in her family’s home; two of her brothers were present at the time and, according to unconfirmed reports, may already have been arrested by the authorities.
In a somewhat disturbing sign that Afghan society may still not be all that willing to deal with the rampant misogyny lingering in the wake of the Taliban, the RFE/RL story describes this reaction:
Obviously, for some, denial is just a river in Egypt.
Of course, it’s not exclusively women’s rights that are under siege. From the Tribune:
Another “Hop” vee-jay also has been holed up at the television station since Wednesday, fearing for his own life. Shakeb Isaar, 22, the most controversial host on “Hop,” said he has received death threats. He said he is afraid to go home and he believes Rezayee was killed because of being on “Hop.” He said she was famous in Afghanistan for breaking ethical rules.
“No one is safe in Afghanistan,” Isaar said. “If you want to talk about me, I’m like an American in World War II in front of Hitler.”
He said he was dragged out of a car about two weeks ago and beaten because of the program. Isaar also has received death threats on his cell phone in the middle of the night. One man said he was just waiting for the right time to kill him, Isaar said.
He said he wants to leave Afghanistan and he is trying to apply for asylum at various embassies.
Isaar also said Rezayee was a very good friend and he missed her.
While there’s no question that the lives of women in Afghanistan have improved tremendously since the toppling of the Taliban, events such as these show just how much further that nation has yet to travel. Of course, this kind of episode is hardly unique to Afghan society, but then, Western forces are not engaged in nation-building in those other places. We must make a stronger commitment to ensure that we do not permit Afghanistan to lapse back toward its recent Dark Age. To paraphrase from one of our own great statesmen, it is for us here to highly resolve that Shaima Rezayee shall not have died in vain.
Thank you. I hadn’t heard anything about this story. So odd it wasn’t on CNN or MSNBC this morning.
I mourn her death. How many generations do you think it will take for women to have a solid foothold in that country?
I don’t think this is an instance where we can be too critical of the lack of U.S. media coverage — a search on Google|Google News turns up a respectable number of hits, and I think it admirable that the Chicago Tribune story was originally reported and not merely lifted from other wire service stories. It seems to have made it into the media, but is taking a back seat to coverage of the Afghan prisoner torture and of the abducted Italian aid worker.
Sadly, though, it seems like this is probably a variant of the deplorable tradition of honor killings. Indeed, the only reason we’ve heard as much as we have is because of Ms. Rezayee’s comparative prominence. I suspect there are all too many occurrences of exactly the same crimes committed against other Afghan women, only their names are not known to us. What cruel irony to have given hope to all these women and girls, only for them to see that their newfound constitutional rights are meaningless in the face of tradition.
Ideally, I’d hope that Shaima Rezayee becomes as well-known as Mukhtaran Bibi/Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani woman who was sentenced to be gang-raped by a tribal court because the actions of her 14-year-old brother had offended a more powerful clan. The reporting on her struggle to find justice was well-covered by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, and also grabbed the attention of the BBC, ABC’s Primetime Live, CNN and other outlets.
To respond to your question, so long as tradition, clan behavior, and beknighted religious-based views toward women are held by more than just fringe elements of Afghan society, I suspect that more and more women there may hold themselves back from their potential for fear that living the life they would like for themselves could lead instead to disaster. Hopefully, Ms. Rezayee’s murder will become a rallying point for the rejection of the worst that the past has to offer.
will impact efforts to establish a secure corridor for pipeline construction.
Corporate media is as usual being overcautious in their hesitancy to cover a story that could influence potential investors.
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Thank you for writing this diary about Shaima Rezayee. I wrote this comment earlier, but I couldn’t find a photo of her. Excellent of you to find one. It’s just sad, and Karzai is not the powerful person we all hoped for. Just a puppet on a string.
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After the recent slayings of NGO employees by Taliban remnants, the Qu’ran Riots and Kubul prisoner torture, the news continues to worsen.
Afghan Woman
© Steve McCurry
KABUL, Afghanistan · A ground-breaking Afghan TV host whose Western style drew praise from youthful fans and condemnation from Muslim clerics may have been slain with involvement from her own brothers, police said Friday.
Shaima Rezayee, 24, who tossed aside her burqa for Western dress and became a host on an MTV-style music show, knew her life was in danger, according to a radio interview she gave not long before she was shot in the head at her Kabul home Wednesday.
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
Silly Oui and Maven. Laura Bush has it all in hand:
US first lady calls for women’s rights in Mideast
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In Jordan it led to her armoured car breaking down!
“Freedom, especially freedom for women, is more than the absence of oppression,” she said. “It’s the right to speak and vote and worship freely.” Mrs Bush hailed progress made in the Middle East and spoke of a “springtime of hope” across the region. But she focused mainly on women’s rights and education.
Liz Cheney, the state department official in charge of the program, told the BBC that the US was committed to a dramatic change in its policy after 60 years of supporting the status quo in the region.
Ordinary Jordanians are still deeply skeptical of those commitments, says the BBC’s John Leyne.
Many see this conference as merely a way to improve access for western business and to increase American and Israeli influence across the Middle East, our correspondent says.
[Emphasis mine]
Never before understood BBC’s conditional note: “Not responsible for its content ….”. But now I do. Please add Liz to Laura’s back to the classroom for History class! She has no idea what ruined the development in the Middle-East these past 60 years.
(AP) – Liz Cheney Runs $100m State Program
Other News Sources on Jordan Visit
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
And if others will be more inclined to buck tradition such as she did, or whether they will fade back into the burqa. It’s sad about this woman, thanks for bringing her to attention.
Things are still very bad in Afghanistan, especially for women, but for many people. A friend just spent a week in Kabul recently, and he said it’s just terrible there… very unsafe. He mostly stayed in the house of his friends (who are there with some NGO or another) and only left to go to very specific places, and with security.
Then there is the whole mess with the warlords, and in the rural and mountain areas, people selling their children for food (which may be alleviated some now, because of the bumper crops of poppy).
in a way that would be conducive to such a development.
Consider, to begin with, that all the colorful aspects of subjugation of women in Pashtunistan and environs that have been Talibranded since the Taliban turned down a lucrative US-proffered financial deal a few months before the 911 events did not originate with Mullah Omar and his followers in the 1990s, but go back thousands of years.
The only difference in Afghanistan with the Tban was that they imposed pre-Islamic rural customs on the cities, and because of US financial interests and subsequent media attention, westerners who had never even given a thought to the lives of women in that part of the world were suddenly and dutifully scandalized.
The crusade in Afghanistan has done little to popularize western values either in the rural areas, nor in the several square blocks of Kabul “secured” by Dyncorp and ceremonially administered by old UnoCal hand Karzai.
Thus, Shaima may have been killed because she was viewed as a painted harlot by wacko mullahs, or she may simply have been executed as a collaborator, because the US has virtually assured that no one, male or female, can do anything that appears to bear the taint of the west without being a collaborator with a foreign occupying horde or torturers.
women and the Taliban treatment of them. I can’t count how many have said to me “Yeah? Well where was the Left when the Taliban was oppressing women? They were nowhere, and said nothing!”. Thing is, they still say that, no matter how many times you point out RAWA and various articles in left leaning mags (including mine) dating from the 90’s and so on. There is some sort of mental disconnect there.
There is the collaborator thing, which I hadn’t thought of… makes it difficult to move in any direction that seems “Western”, no doubt. It seems to me that I remember reading that Kabul, at least, pre Soviet invasion and subsequent Taliban takeover, was more westernized… with women attending university and working in various professions, and wearing western clothing and such. Or maybe that was even long before the invasion, I can’t remember. Maybe I should say more Easternized, as none of that has really been specific to the West, over the centruies.
Anyway, all sorts of deals are reported being made with the Taliban now, in an attempt to bring some sort of order to the country… which is where they came in in the first place, I think.
under the Russians, though it was still an occupation, in a land from which Alexander ran screaming and that has not ever been sucessfully occupied for long.
But for the rural areas, Islam is about the closest thing to a new-fangled contraption that has ever come slogging over the mountains, and you can see just how thoroughly that has been adapted.
(For those who may not know, I mean that it has not made a dent in pre-Islamic customs)
All sorts of deals have been made with the Taliban ever since, as you correctly mention, Mullah Omar rode into a lawless Kabul and stopped a fight between two Pashtuns who had come to blows over the question of which one of them would sexually assault a little boy. First.
Like Saddam’s famous “Republican guard,” the Taliban “fled” as the bombs started, presumably including those who had been working for the CIA.
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re-Visit My Diary —
Afghan Stone Age ¶ German troops …
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité