International
Women's Day - 2002
Tear Off Every Veil
of Oppression!
By the Committee
of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
"Let us once again on this day turn our fury into a fighting force
and continue our struggle with perseverance and firmness against the oppression
of women and all other oppression…" - at an earlier International
Women's Day programme of Afghanistani women in Pakistan
The emancipation
of the international proletariat is inseparable from the liberation of
women, just as the oppression of women cannot be ended without remaking
society on a new and different basis - without exploitation or social
classes. As has been starkly shown once again by the US war in Afghanistan,
which the US threatens to expand by invading other parts of the world,
the links in the chains of women to their oppressors are links in the
chains between the oppressed world-wide and the imperialist system.
After the recent
exposure of the Taliban's brutal treatment of women under its fundamentalist
religious rule, the Western bourgeois media suddenly spread the myth that
one of the US rulers' goals was to "liberate" the women of Afghanistan.
The captains of the empire itself, Bush and his junior partner Blair,
had their wives give speeches about the importance of "ending tyranny"
and even "stopping women's oppression" there. This supposed
discovery of the oppression of women in Afghanistan turns hypocrisy into
crime, for this is coming from the mouths of those who created and brought
the reactionary Taliban forces to power through the CIA and the US puppets
in Pakistan. These imperialists never raised a single objection to the
Taliban stripping women of public posts and placing them under "house
arrest" or beating or executing them for defiling "vice and
virtue" laws. They never withdrew a single bloody dollar of the millions
they used to prop up the Taliban government and other "traditional"
reactionary warlords and woman-hating Mujahedeen forces over the past
15 years - whether such money was delivered by Osama bin Laden, himself
at one time on the CIA payroll, or other Saudi collaborators.
It was in truth the
US-backed Mujahedeen who opposed women's education and public activity
and who made the burka, the suffocating head-to-foot veil, obligatory
in 1992 when they took over the government. The new US stooge Karzai and
the whole circus line-up of reactionary feudal rulers the imperialists
put in place in Bonn are more similar to the Taliban than they are different.
When reporters ask about their policy towards women, today Karzai says
"we are Muslims" and thus will apply Muslim principles and practices.
Even if some of the most outrageous anti-women rules are modified, such
changes will be minor and cosmetic, and will tend to benefit a relatively
small number of professional women in the largest cities. They have no
plan to fundamentally change the situation of the overwhelming majority
of poor and rural women. The underlying social relations between women
and men, between oppressed sex and oppressor, are clear to anyone who
looks. The subjugation and oppression of women in Afghanistan is deeply
woven into the backward semi-feudal fabric of the society itself. While
American bombs, backed by British special forces, have killed thousands
of the women they profess to "liberate", they could not eliminate
semi-feudalism even if they had the slightest intent or interest in doing
so - which they do not. This unbearable tissue of relations stifling women
can only be destroyed and new liberating relations created by the masses
of women and all the new-democratic forces in Afghanistan themselves overthrowing
the semi-feudal system altogether and kicking out the imperialists, who
will sustain it as long as it furthers their global aims.
It is a dangerous
lie that imperialism, despite its repugnant ways - like this brutal war
of terror against those seen as opposing the US empire - can at least
bring some "progress" to oppressed women. Such illusions only
tighten the chains on women by obscuring reality and strengthening the
hand of Bush and company. In truth, clear evidence of just how concerned
the US (and other) imperialists are with improving the lives of women
around the world can be seen in their long and bloody trail of tyranny,
in the way they overthrow regimes not to their liking or that interfere
with their plans, in their murderous exploitation of extremely low-paid
women workers in the pursuit of super-profits in the Third World, as well
as in their military's practice of "rest and recuperation" wherever
their troops are stationed - meaning the massive sexual assault of women
from places like Korea, Panama, Thailand or even Japan's Okinawa. Ask
Filipino women whether they welcome the return of US troops!
Even if the Western
imperialists send more blood-soaked dollars to repair the glass their
bombs have shattered in the public schools of Afghanistan that some girls
(in a few cities) may be able to attend, the imperialists are no more
interested in equality for women today than they were yesterday, when
they belittled the deaths of hundreds of Afghanistan's women and children
and the devastation of civilian villages as so-called "collateral
damage". The US is intent on bringing this and other unstable regions
of the world under its control, and as crass and naked as their warmongering
has become, they will continue to stoke the illusions of anyone who will
listen - to pretend that they can bring democratic rights and genuine
progress to the same oppressed masses who every day are subjected to brutality
and savage repression by the very workings of the imperialist system.
For those who genuinely
want to support the struggle of the Afghani women to shed their veils
- along with many other shackles and reactionary traditions - for good,
their first contribution should be to actively oppose and expose the hypocrisy
of the imperialists and their war of aggression against the world's people,
and to refuse to allow their righteous anger to be used by the likes of
Bush and Blair to cover up their bloody crimes in the name of women's
"liberation".
Note the similarity
between the Christian fascist fanatics advising Bush and the feudal Islamic
fundamentalists - both of whom, in or out of government, treat women like
property and sexual objects, using their religion as an excuse for the
most degrading forms of social and patriarchal subordination.
The Maoists say,
"Break the chains, unleash women as a mighty force for revolution!"
This means breaking all the chains holding back women from liberating
society. It means the chains of the world's wealthiest imperialist countries
directly strangling the life of the poor countries in a thousand ways,
as well as the visible and less visible chains reinforcing men's domination
of women in particular, whether in modern Western metropolises or the
most backward of the world's villages, whether through widespread but
intolerable social practices and the control of women's labour, or within
the male supremacist strongholds of family and marriage.
The People's War
in Nepal is proving what has already been shown in Peru and other revolutionary
movements - the tremendous outpouring of the revolutionary potential of
women. Women are discovering what it is like to be equal fighters in the
struggle for liberation. No longer humiliated for being uneducated and
poor, they are welcomed and trained, including with weapons, and are participating
in transforming their poor villages into base areas of people's power.
Led by the proletarian party, they are fighting for a new kind of society;
they will never be satisfied to return to the semi-feudal degradation
and misery the system has reserved for the millions of people like them
throughout Nepal. They are changing and so are their soldier-brothers
in the course of this historic people's war. Together they are aiming
for political power so as to uproot all of the oppressive relations of
the old society from the top of the Himalayas to the lowest plains, as
part of the international struggle to emancipate the people of the world.
Women's oppression afflicts women of all social classes, and rebel sisters
all over the earth are building movements to fight against every kind
of stultifying veil. The workings of the system are further impoverishing
the feminine population. At the same time, growing numbers of women are
filling the ranks of the international proletariat, better enabling our
class to wage fierce battle, together with others, against all aspects
of women's oppression and male chauvinism and to carry out its revolutionary
task of remaking the world.
Tear Off Every Veil of Oppression!
8 March 2002
The excerpted statements
of Afghanistani women below are taken from an interview conducted by the
Eighth of March Organisation (Iranian and Afghanistani) in the autumn
2001 issue of March Eighth. -AWTW
"Today our
work is to struggle against this imperialist invasion and raise the consciousness
of women and mobilise them for this struggle. Despite the great pressure
of the present situation, the ground is more favourable for our activities."
- Fatemeh, midwife.
"We must struggle against family pressure, but social chains prevent
this. It is the society that has to change. I am a 15 year-old girl. I
want nothing short of total liberation for the women of Afghanistan and
all the women of the world. And I am struggling to get it."
- Sadaf, born in exile.
"We don't want to live under a veil. This is called prison. A
Cage. Or worse. In Afghanistan women don't even have the right to visit
a doctor. And everybody has a Mullah Omar at home. Every man has become
a Mullah Omar. And every woman has to struggle against this… If we
struggle and unite, our strength will be greater to fight against this
government. We don't want the future generation to be so backward. That
is why I think there is no way but to struggle against this system."
- Kolsum, 19, painter and primary school teacher, five years a refugee.