Safia Amajan


The killing by the Taliban of Safia Amajan, the head of the department of women's affairs in Kandahar, has plunged Afghanistan into despair. It was the first contract killing of an older woman. The 63-year-old was respected among Afghans and foreigners alike as a leader of Pashtun women's emancipation.

The women from Kandahar in Afghanistan's south-west can be as free-spirited as the dry, rocky landscape in which they live. If their horizons expand, through education or a taste of the world beyond, they soon challenge the extreme male chauvinist society of Pashtun tribesmen, who, therefore, do not allow them to study beyond primary school, and keep them tied to domestic chores. Gender conflict is always simmering below the surface, ready to erupt, as in the 1970s, when the Kandahari women were the only ones outside the capital city Kabul to throw off the veil to sing and dance.

At that time Safia was teaching in Zarghuna Ana high school; a slender woman of unassuming appearance, she ignored the "frivolous" revolution that was then confused with "democracy". She was concerned with the proper education of 2,000 girls studying at her school, of which she soon was to become head teacher.

Born into a liberal family, her father, a textile merchant, was from the Persian-speaking Baluch minority that had emigrated from Iran at the end of the 18th century. Her mother was a Pashtun from the Nurzai tribe, which has always been denied power by the stronger Mohammedzai, Barakzai and Popolzai tribes, who consider themselves the natural rulers of Afghanistan - Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is Popolzai. Having had the "misfortune" of having five daughters in a row - Safia being the last - her father decided they would receive a good education.

Still, Safia's fate could have resembled that of her older sisters, who were married off one by one, were it not that her father suddenly died when she was 15. She then had to provide an income for herself, her mother, her grandmother and her little brother, so she started working as a kindergarten teacher. She simultaneously finished high school. The decision to continue in the teaching profession came naturally as it was one of the only career paths for women. Inspired by her father, education became a lifelong passion.

She refused to accept an arranged marriage. But when communism opened a window of freedom in the 1970s she married a colonel who shared her ideals. She had one child with him when she was well over 40. He always gave her unflinching support, even when conservative religious forces again came to power in the early 1990s.

Outside Afghanistan one cannot imagine how hard the road of self-fulfilment is for an Afghan woman: the criticism of her parents or their family members who blame her for upsetting time-honoured tradition; the insults hurled by street urchins for venturing outside without male accompaniment; the discriminatory work environment; and finally the resentment of other women who have not followed their calling.

Safia suffered the social opprobrium bravely, but also intelligently. She did not confront the oppressive male establishment head-on: as a Kandahari woman she knew better. Change comes piecemeal. For most Pashtuns, their tribal code, the Pashtunwali, still prevails over religion or law. The woman is considered a male possession, to be married as an infant, given to the family of a victim in compensation for crimes committed by her relatives, freely beaten when rebellious. However horrible and dissonant with human rights, this kind of society does not change overnight. To improve the destiny of these women, their male family members also need to be convinced. Safia followed this reformist, or realist, approach successfully.

Her family name was Warasta; but by the late 1980s, when she was the inspector of all girls' schools in Kandahar province, she had become so popular that everybody called her "Amajan" (dear aunt) and this name stuck to her in later years. In the dark days of the Taliban, who seized power in 1996, she illegally continued teaching girls privately. But as a Hafiz (one who has memorised the whole Qur'an), she could placate the Taliban, who allowed her to play one of the few community roles open for women: as a prayer leader. Unlike so many other emancipated Afghan women, she did not flee abroad in this period. This increased the respect the disempowered Kandahari women felt for her.

Immediately after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, she volunteered to work for the new Afghan government, and that is when she acquired international fame as director of the provincial department of women's affairs, which she established herself. I worked with her closely from April to June 2002, when I was responsible, as United Nations political affairs officer, for the conduct of the first elections in the south-west.

In Safia I found a kind, older, thoroughly disciplined and principled person. Her ability to convoke large gatherings of politically active women - not only in Kandahar, but also in Helmand - was impressive, given that in other, less conservative parts of the country women had not raised their heads yet. These women had never participated in politics in their lives, but Safia had prepared them wonderfully well. They held speeches and then proceeded to elect their representatives by secret ballot. This was one of the most emotional moments I experienced in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

I met Safia several times after that, in Kandahar and in Kabul. I witnessed how she quietly but effectively led one programme after another: donations to the poor, support for women in prison, income-generation for war widows, literacy classes for rural women, and political awareness courses. I admired her for staying her course, remaining among the Kandahari women despite the deteriorating security situation and not giving in to the pressures to play a greater political role at the national level.

For rather than a women's rights activist, she was a true public servant, which is rare in today's Afghanistan. That earned Amajan deep respect among Afghans. But for the Taliban she committed three grave faults: working for the Afghan government, emancipating Pashtun women and fighting for the right of girls to go to school. They assassinated her in front of her house, within reach of her husband and her 19-year-old son.

· Safia Amajan, teacher and public servant, born 1943; died September 25 2006