Journal Issue 4.1
Spring-Summer 2012
Edited by Agatha Beins, Jillian Hernandez, and Deanna Utroske
Editorial Assistant: A.J. Barks
Editorial Intern: Vera Hinsey

Teaching Afghan Women: A History of Struggle
continued

By Shoba Rajgopal

   When I taught the course International Women's Grassroots Movements, we spent about one third of the semester working with issues brought up by Afghan Women. At the beginning of the segment on women's movements in Afghanistan I screened clips from the award winning Afghan film Osama (2003) by filmmaker Siddiq Barmak who won the Golden Globe, as well as The Kite Runner (2007) the film version of Afghan American novelist Khaled Hosseini's best seller. We also read excerpts from Hosseini's two books (The Kite Runner [2003] and A Thousand Splendid Suns [2008]). I also found it useful to incorporate mainstream Hollywood productions like Charlie Wilson's War (2007), which depicts the story behind the CIA's arming of the mujahideen with weapons to the tune of $40 billion. After the class has some exposure to the daily challenges Afghan women face, I ask students to write a general short reflection based on these and other news reports that discuss the abuse of women under the Taliban. 
   However, further exploration of women's lives is important. What these films and books have in common is their representation of Islamic fundamentalism and the horrors inflicted by the Taliban. But what they fail to admit is that the current rulers, placed in power by the United States, are little better. Therefore, I wanted to show Afghan Women only after giving some background about the conditions Afghan women have faced over the past century. Thus we read the articles on how the Taliban came to power and the specific conditions involved, and then I divided them into groups to discuss questions based on the articles. To further complicate the portrayals shown in fictional works I added excerpts from a few important works of nonfiction, starting with the memoir of outspoken former Member of Parliament, Malalai Joya titled A Woman among Warlords (2011). Another key work is Anne E. Brodsky's study of RAWA, With All Our Strength (2003), from which I use excerpts. I also utilized parts of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (2000), Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid's study of the movement. At the end of this segment of the class, their final essay was a reflection on how their own awareness had changed through their exposure to the films and the readings.
   Afghan Women, therefore, has allowed me to build a lesson plan that sustains a multi-week exploration of the gendered history, politics, and present of Afghanistan. Though the film offers no easy answers, it raises a lot of questions, and that is what makes it most useful for teachers who want their students to delve into the complexities of Cold War politics and the grim tussle for supremacy between the then world powers--the US and the USSR--upon the war-ravaged landscape of yet another third world nation.