Hence, debates over the future of the country are never only debates about the model of economic development to follow. The model of gender relations to promote remains a core feature of such disputes because interventions in this domain always indicate a civilizational shift with changes in lifestyles, clothing habits, and ways of being in public (Göle 1996).
Since women’s emancipation has been from the outset enmeshed within unequal power relations between Afghanistan and the various powers trying to assert their dominance over the region, attempts at reforming the status of women have traditionally been perceived as alien to Afghan culture. Now as before, orthodox readings of women’s role in Islam should not be read as reflections of an essentially traditionalist culture but rather as symbolic attempts at preserving sovereignty in a context where imperial domination triggers moral panics over national identity.
Starting with the controversial portrait of Queen Soraya, the chapter builds on archive images of women collected in various official documents. These images bear witness to the centrality of “women” in promoting narratives of progress for the outside world. Their disappearance from the public domain during the civil war and the Taliban regime can be interpreted as a direct reaction to foreign-sponsored emancipation programs. It is because this “swing of the pendulum” (Zulfacar 2006) has shaped Afghan women’s memories and subjectivities in powerful ways that this history needs to be recounted. The present moment, far from representing a radical rupture with the past, is rooted in a long history of imperial interventions justified by feminist arguments anchored in the colonial tradition: what Gayatri Spivak (1988, 296) has identified as the white man’s burden of “saving brown women from brown men.”
Brief Background
The creation of a modern state in Afghanistan is largely the product of competing imperial influences in the region, providing financial subsidies and arms to the ruling elite in Kabul in an attempt at asserting their own control over the country while providing the state with the means to impose its will on the tribes (Dorronsoro 2005). It is unlikely that a centralized state governing a unified territory would have been able to impose itself without external financial and military aid. However, the state always remained rather peripheral in the political life of the country: threatened by frequent tribal uprisings and the growing influence of the ulema, its survival depended on external aid for the financing of its administration, heavy policing techniques to contain rebellions, and the co-optation of the tribes and the religious class to ensure its legitimacy.
During the nineteenth century, Afghanistan was under the influence of two imperial powers: Russia to the north and England in the Indian subcontinent. It was the threat of the expanding Russian Empire beginning to push for an advantage in the Afghan region that placed pressure on British India in what became known as the “Great Game.” The Great Game set in motion the confrontation of the British and Russian empires whose spheres of influence moved steadily closer to one another until they met in Afghanistan. It also involved Britain’s repeated attempts to impose puppet governments in Kabul. Afghanistan gradually fell under British control (1880) and was eventually used as a buffer state to prevent the expansion of Russia until the country obtained its independence in 1919. King Amanullah, whose political legitimacy was strengthened by his victory in the struggle for national liberation, engaged the country in a vast program of reforms aiming at modernizing the country.
Modern Monarchies, 1920–73
Described by historians as the “Atatürk of Afghanistan,” King Amanullah’s entourage was composed of liberal and nationalist intellectuals whose political views were influenced by modernization reforms conducted in neighboring countries such as Iran and Turkey. Amanullah’s modernization program was undeniably inspired by the liberal ideas of Mahmud Beg Tarzi, father of Queen Soraya, Amanullah’s wife. Educated in Syria and Turkey, son of the famous poet Gulham Mohammad Tarzi, Mahmud Beg Tarzi is one of the most influential intellectual and nationalist figures of his time. The Tarzi family was forced into exile by Amir Abdur Khaman Khan after Gulham Mohammad broke with the amir over his strictness and brutality toward his enemies (L. Dupree 1973, 437). The Tarzi family only returned to Afghanistan in 1903. In 1911, Mahmud Tarzi began publishing a modernist-nationalist newspaper, the Siraj-ul-akhbar-i Afghan (Lamp of the News of Afghanistan). His writings, influenced by modern interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence, advocated for modern education while denouncing Western imperialism (L. Dupree 1973, 440).
Exposed to the new gender policies implemented in other Middle Eastern countries where he had traveled during his years of exile, Tarzi became a strong supporter of women’s rights in his own country. He believed in women’s ability to participate in public life, claimed that fully “educated women were an asset for future generations and concluded that Islam did not deny them equal rights” and that women should be therefore entitled to become full citizens. One section of his newspaper, entitled “Celebrating Women of the World,” was dedicated to women’s issues and was edited by his wife, Asma Tarzi (Ahmed-Ghosh 2003a, 3–4). But in spite of his liberal approach toward the position of women in society, Tarzi believed in authoritarian modernism to maintain the monarchy and the creation of a centralized state responsible for the development of the country.
The Reign of Amanullah, 1919–29
As soon as independence was achieved, Amanullah recruited Tarzi, his influential father-in-law, as his minister of foreign affairs. Soraya Tarzi was King Amanullah Khan’s only wife. The decision of the king to present himself to the world in a monogamous relationship and in the company of the queen was intensively commented on by the international press. In an article of the Illustrated London News published March 17, 1928, which displayed a photo documentary of the royal couple’s European tour, the journalist commented:
Queen Suryia [Soraya], who arrived in England with King Amanullah on March 13, is the first Consort of an Oriental monarch to visit Europe with her husband. She is a daughter of the Afghan Foreign Minister, Tarzi Khan, and is the only wife of the King, who firmly upholds the ideal of monogamy. Already she has made an immense impression in Rome, Berlin, and Paris by her personal beauty and her adaptability to Western ways. “It is difficult to realise,” writes Sir Percival Philipps [sic], who accompanied the Afghan royal party from India to Europe, “that this charming lady has, according to our standards, been virtually a prisoner all her life. She lived in the strictest seclusion at Kabul…. The Queen is deeply interested in every aspect of life in Europe, particularly the position of women.” In Paris she was hailed as a queen of fashion, and had some fifty dresses made there. “She bids fair,” it has been said, “to rival Queen Elizabeth in the number of her gowns.”
The photo documentary and the journalist’s report are classic examples of “Orientalism” (Said 1979). As in other representations of the Middle East produced in the West, the photographers’ and reporters’ interest in the foreign “other” was shaped by a number of stereotypical certainties about the Orient: its inherent backwardess, its rootedness in tradition, its treatment of women. The narrative that emerges out of the documentary is marked by a fascination for the queen’s exotic beauty and a feeling of compassion for her status as “an Oriental woman living in seclusion in her country.” Between the lines, and in spite of her presence by the side of her husband in this important diplomatic mission, Soraya’s status remains rooted in the imaginary of the “harem.” She is presented as the domesticated and subjugated “other” as opposed to the liberated, independent, and enlightened Western self (L. Ahmed 1992). The standard for measuring women’s emancipation (and the standards of “civilization” more generally) are those set by Europe, not only in the ways Oriental subjects are to dress but also in the manners they are to adopt.
However, it remains undeniable that Soraya played a central role in redefining the position of women in Afghan society at a major moment of social change and nation building. As in Iran and Turkey, the issue of women was a central concern of the ruling class who predominantly adopted a secularist, rationalist, and universalist Western model of social transformation
