ISLAMABAD, Nov 14: Seema, a widowed Afghan doctor, who provides medical relief to Afghan refugee women in Quetta, demanded a share for women in the future government set up in Kabul.

Seema made this demand at a discussion programme on ‘Peace, Gender and Conflict’ arranged by Rozan, a NGO, on Tuesday evening.

Director Operations, International Migrations Commission, in Geneva, Dale Buscher and three working Afghan refugee women, Dr Seema, Rakshanda, and Afifa Vardar participated in the discussion.

Dr Seema said Afghan women studied and got degrees along side their male counterparts from universities and colleges. They were elected as members of parliament and held various positions in the government.

Following the new developments in her country, she said this was the time to talk about women’s share in the formation of the new government.

‘Women are half the country’s population and could not be left out from the government’. “Taliban, followed a different culture which was not shared by the Afghan people and it was not even Islamic”, she maintained.

Narrating her story, she said, she came to Quetta in 1984, after her husband got killed. The culture of Quetta was very similar to that of Kandahar from where she had come.

She, however experienced harassment by the police just like other Afghani women. She had to visit the IB office every week and was forced to appeal for help to the then governor, late General Musa Khan.

She thanked Pakistan for its generosity towards three million refugees and said Pakistan was faced with economic problems of its own and it was time refugees returned home.

She complained that everyone used her country for their political interests. Mujahideen government was set up by Pakistan with the assistance from Saudi Arabia. Even UN agencies acted like political parties in Afghanistan.

Ms Rakhsanda, who is working at Peshawar with NGO ‘Aurat’ said 80 per cent of Afghan professionals including doctors, engineers and PhDs suffer from mental trauma. They worry about the harassment of their women at the hands of the police and other officials.

She was pained to hear that Afghan women have brought a bad name to the Pakistan society. She said young girls were working in Jhelum, Chakwal and Gujrat as labourers in the fields and served as objects of pleasure to friends by the feudals.

It was common knowledge that women between the ages of 18 and 21 were forcibly kidnapped from Nasir Bagh and Warsak refugee camps.

She claimed that both men and women refugees had to bribe the authorities concerned at every step or else their men were locked up under any charge. The current rate was Rs2000 per household but even the payment was no guarantee against sexual abuse of women.

Afifa Vardak, an educated young woman, who works on legal rights for Afghan women said eversince she arrived in Pakistan in 1993, she had been subject to sexual harassment.

She always found a termination letter awaiting her at the NWFP local government department, on return from Mardan, which she had to undertake 25 days in a month.

Her Pakistani counterparts went only for two or three days. She received protection from a German consultant,Ingmar. When he returned home, she had to leave the job.

Mr Dale Buscher, who has worked in Bosnia with women victims of war presented a global picture of how women were made subject to demeaning behaviour in situations of conflict.

He said, he found in Bosnia and Croatia as well as in East Timor that women could be an asset in peace negotiations and reconstruction of society, particularly in the situation now developing in Afghanistan. —Jonaid Iqbal