No Taliban, No Empire

Feminism in Afghanistan has never looked quite like its Western counterpart — and has often suffered at the hands of those claiming to act in its name. 

This is according to Mariam R., a long-time activist and member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, or RAWA. (Mariam’s full name is being withheld to protect her safety). Founded in 1977, RAWA members seek to create a secular, progressive movement independent of the imported ideologies of liberalism and Maoism on one hand, and the domestic strains of Islamism and nationalism on the other. 

RAWA’s founder, 20-year-old law student Meena Keshwar Kamal, was inspired by socialist-feminist leader Nawal el Saadawi in Egypt, as well as anticolonial and feminist movements in places including Algeria and Iran. Kamal argued that equality for women was integral to any just society, and saw secularism as a necessary safeguard to extremism. With a group of fellow intellectuals, Kamal launched RAWA with the aim of “involv[ing] an increasing number of Afghan women in social and political activities” and establishing “women’s human rights” and “a government based on democratic and secular values.” 

Read full story, and see original art by at [Lux] Latifa Zafar Attaii