Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance [Hardcover]

Cheryl Benard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 2002

In Afghanistan under Taliban rule, women were forbidden to work or go to school, they could not leave their homes without a male chaperone, and they could not be seen without a head-to-toe covering called the burqa. A woman’s slightest infractions were met with brutal public beatings. That is why it is both appropriate and incredible that the sole effective civil resistance to Taliban rule was made by women. Veiled Courage reveals the remarkable bravery and spirit of the women of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), whose daring clandestine activities defied the forces of the Taliban and earned the world’s fierce admiration.

The complete subordination of women was one of the first acts of the Taliban. But the women of RAWA refused to cower. They used the burqa to their advantage, secretly photographing Taliban beatings and executions, and posting the gruesome pictures on their multi-language website, rawa.org, which is read around the world. They organized to educate girls and women in underground schools and to run small businesses in the border towns of Pakistan that allowed widows to support their families.

If caught, any RAWA activist would have faced sure death. Yet they persisted.

With the overthrow of the Taliban now a reality, RAWA faces a new challenge: defeating the powers of Islamic fundamentalism of which the Taliban are only one face and helping build a society in which women are guaranteed full human rights.

Cheryl Benard, an American sociologist and an important advisor to RAWA, uses her inside access to write the first behind-the-scenes story of RAWA and its remarkably brave women. Veiled Courage will change the way Americans think of Afghanistan, casting its people and its future in a new, more hopeful light.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Not too long ago, this passionate, partisan book about Afghan women in particular, those associated with RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) might have attracted few readers. Originally planned as a study of a women's organization opposing fundamentalism, the book took on a new and more urgent tenor after September 11: to give "representation to the rural, the uneducated and the female members of the Afghan populace" and to convey the history and present-day role of RAWA, founded in 1977, long before the civil wars, as "the first women's organization whose members are willing to risk their lives explicitly for the issue of women's rights" and "the only group, male or female, to organize an underground resistance against [the Taliban]." Through affecting personal testimony from RAWA's members and supporters (including some men), sociologist and novelist Benard shows "how ordinary people are transformed into resistance fighters." Founded by a charismatic woman named Meena, RAWA's public work has been daring (publishing a bilingual Persian/Pashtu magazine, Payam-e-Zan ["Woman's Message"]) and dangerous (operating schools and medical facilities in refugee camps in the Afghan border area). Their clandestine work has been perilous they've smuggled endangered families to safety, moved survivors of massacres "out of the killing zone" and secretly photographed Taliban beatings, torture and executions. Benard, an adviser to RAWA and the wife of one of President Bush's Afghan advisers, writes with fervor and at times abandon ("Given that level of U.S. air support, a middle-school soccer team could have taken Kabul"). Addressing the physical, intellectual and emotional oppression of Afghan women, this is a powerful though clearly hastily assembled book.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-A rich source of information. The history of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) is told in simple, page-turning prose. There is a biographical sketch of the organization's heroic, charismatic, and martyred founder, Meena, along with a photo of her. Narratives describe how individuals, including indigent refugees, joined RAWA and became strong, clandestine freedom fighters against the oppressive rule of first the Soviet Communist invaders, then the Northern Alliance, and, finally, the Taliban. The descriptions of the organization's mission and its accomplishments in assisting and educating Afghan women and their families are inspiring. Students will read about many people, both male and female, young and old, who have suffered under the rule of violent misogynistic Islamic fundamentalists but have decided to fight for liberation, education, and literacy despite the threat of death, mutilation, and/or rape. Told from the perspectives of ordinary citizens, these stories contribute to an increased understanding of the situation in this country, and readers will come away with a greater respect for the bravery and courage of the women there.
Joyce Fay Fletcher, Rippon Middle School, Prince William County, VA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 293 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 edition (April 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767913019
• ISBN-13: 978-0767913010
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #405,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars When the women speak for themselves, it works....otherwise?!, September 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance (Hardcover)

I was touched by the determination of the women represented in this book towards improving their lives and the lives of their children. Their intelligence, bravery, and desire/hope for a better future shines thru. This is the book's strongest point.

Where this books seriously suffers is in it's gross generalizations concerning Afghan society (men, in particular), a serious lack of the larger cultural context in which this all occurred and is still occurring, and her basic ignorance of these things. In addition, how can one logically, based on three interviews, conclude that "many" or "most" Afghan men feel a specific way about something? Where does the issue of tribalism and tribal conflict play a role in the ever-shifting political landscape, thus the status of women? She doesn't even raise the issue of Shi'a and Sunni Islam in her definitions of fundamentalism. All of these issues play a huge part in the history, present, and future of Afghan women. I also take issue w/ the generalization the "nothing has ever happened so bad in the history of mankind" take...not only is that arguable, but besides the point. It simply distracts the reader from the subject at hand.

While reading this book, I had to constantly remind myself that the Taliban only took power in 1996, yet RAWA existed since 1977. This, of course, means (or strongly implies) that the status of women in Afghanistan was a major concern FAR before the Taliban came into power....in fact, this predates the Soviet era. Why isn't the 19 years of RAWA's history PRIOR to the Talibs given more dicussion, since RAWA itself is supposed to be the books primary subject? This situation in Afghanistan, like every other similar situation, didn't happen in a vacuum, but came about thru a series of events and is based in the history, cultures, and religions of the people in question. Those factors needed to be explored w/ far greater depth for this book to be effective, IMHO.

This book is best when the women are allowed to speak for themselves w/o the author's "spin". From the women themselves, one can get some idea of the frustrations and complexities that these particular women are living w/ on a daily basis. Benard's take on the situation is emotional and feminist w/in the "Western" context which prevented her from exploring some of the more culturally subtle aspects of her subject. For example...most of the women she interviewed were over 30 (which means that they were theoretically allowed to attend school legally in their youth), yet only now are they learning to read and write. Obviously one takes into account that wars have interrupted studies, but what of their families and their husbands? Did it escape her notice that most of these women were married as teeangers (ages of oldest children indicate) and that it would have been their husbands that made or highly influenced these decisions? That at this point, the wives/daughters husbands were STILL only receiving eduication because the husbands allowed this? Several women mention that their husbands were in sympathy and supported their RAWA work. What does this imply and what of those RAWA women whose husbands/families DON'T support them? This doesn't indicate, nor does she supply, proof of her claims that "most"/"many" Afghan men are in sympathy for RAWA's aims.

All in all, this book is far too lacking in background facts about the various cultures, political history, religious schisms, and based on far too may of the author's (unsupported) generalizations, etc...for one to get a clear idea as to how this happened, how to improve the present situation, and most importantly, how to prevent it from happening again. In short, this author was blinded by the burq'uah.

I would recommend reading the RAWA site itself rather than (or perhaps, in addition to) this book. It answers many of the questions left unanswered in this book (including the American/Coaliiton's impact on the situation) and many more. One can get a much broader idea of the complexities of the situation facing Afghan women and the hopes/fears for the future. This book paints a very simplistic and largely biased impression.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars strange, May 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance (Hardcover)

I very much sympathize with the feministic enthusiasm of the book and share the authors' view that RAWA is probably the only Afghan organization which truly fights for women's rights.

However, the book suffers from a certain "vacuum" of information on one particularly interesting point: What is RAWA's attitude towards the developments after September 11th? Although the book, even its German original version, did not appear before 2002, the authors succeed in avoinding this point almost completely. The answer to the above question can easily be found out on RAWA's web site and other items under the link "RAWA documents" on their home page. The omission of this aspect of RAWA's political identity makes the book somewhat incomplete. The fact that one of the authors' husband is a member of the National Security Council, according to the book's description on amazon.com, may provide an explanation for this strange vacuum.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Benard see's the light, hopefully the world will listen!, April 30, 2002

By 

scott shadian (Poway, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance (Hardcover)

...In the events that followed the September 11th attacks, the world was not only challenged by a growing threat from international terrorism, it was also faced with alarming reality: the gross inequality of women around the world. As a voice that has been virtually silenced since the late 70's, the plea of Afghan women have been, to a great extent, ignored by the international community.
In one of the first groundbreaking accounts about the plight of Afghan women under fundamentalist rule, Cheryl Benard - popular academic and a member of the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice - sheds an inspiring light on the Afghan women's movement. Known as RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), the women (and men) of this "post-modern" resistance movement have waged a clandestine attack on religious fundamentalism in Afghanistan, which has been responsible for some of the most brutal subordination of women that the world has ever seen.
Using the burqa - the very garment which was supposed to delegitimize, desexualize, and essentially dehumanize the Afghan female - the women of RAWA secretly filmed Taliban atrocities, risking torture and execution, in efforts of exposing the terror that was forced upon the people of Afghanistan. Working mainly out of Pakistan, the organization is decentralized but maintains a high degree of structure in order for RAWA to sustain its covert operations in and out of Afghanistan. As a result, these graphic images forced policy makers to rethink their approach to Afghanistan and, as well, it forced the world to respond to a tragedy, which had been hiding under the silence of the burqa.
"How could the most backward country in the world have produced one of the most daring women's movement in the world?" Benard proposes that the Taliban's implementation of "Gender Apartheid" was a direct factor in sowing the seeds of resistance. What Benard found, was not only a visceral female hate for the Taliban, but also a large dissatisfaction amongst the male citizenry whom, in many cases, were disgusted with the actions of the Taliban government as well. It was clear that the yearning for resistance existed throughout Afghan society, however the only trouble was keeping the resistance at a level of secrecy that could not be penetrated by the ever watchful eyes of the Taliban.
As Bernad explains, this was the genius of RAWA. Operating in autonomous cells, RAWA has created a vast network of underground channels of resistance. Embracing the technology of the internet, RAWA has also marketed their cause to the world, gathering massive support from Vladivostok to Vermont, even scoring an hour on Oprah.
This quote from an Afghan woman, sadly sums up what RAWA is so intent on fighting,
"Each one of our days is more bitter than you can imagine. Under the fundamentalists, a women is less than a bird in a cage. A bird at least is allowed to sing, but according to them, it is a sin for anyone even to hear our voice."
Through this book, Benard has "done a major service to Afghan women and women everywhere by letting the caged bird sing."...