Nestled in a small corner in a secluded back room of a nondescript, one-story stone building, Jamila Abbas waited. She patiently listened, headphones fitted snugly over her ears, for her name. Through the thin scarf that covered her dark hair and draped just below her shoulders she could hear a slightly muffled version of the radio host’s baritone voice. He announced the week’s upcoming programs—all male-centered talk focused on the much-anticipated Afghan elections. Sitting across from him, Jamila watched his lips quickly move as he rattled off the radio station’s call-in number and followed that with a message encouraging Zabul’s men to express their views. They could call in every day, the host explained, but that day. That day, for the first time in the station’s history, was reserved for Zabul’s women.
Although this was the first time the feminist was delivering her message to Qalat City’s young mothers, wives, and teen girls on the local radio station, Jamila knew that the booth she sat in was regularly occupied by the American military to send targeted messages meant to intimidate the Taliban. Members of Smoke’s unit periodically took over the airwaves to push out propaganda to the province’s insurgents. And she also knew that if those same insurgents heard her voice over their radios—telling women to register to vote and encouraging abused wives to leave dysfunctional homes for safety in other provinces—they would immediately seek her out.
Her first crime, in their eyes, was working with the American military. This was the fifth month of her partnership with Smoke, and the Army captain had used Jamila as a bargaining chip to get her on the air. During an afternoon meeting with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, Smoke heard details about an upcoming radio mission. The combat team used programming to, among other things, get a better sense of what the local community was saying about the Taliban. Smoke immediately saw an opportunity. She approached her commander after the meeting to pitch an all-female radio program, with Jamila at the helm. Radio was the perfect medium, she explained, to reach rural women—many of whom are stuck at home all day without their husbands and had no form of entertainment other than what is pumped out over the air waves. Part of the FET mission is to ensure that information reaches as many women in the province as possible. Jamila, she assured her command, could do that.
Smoke also had to convince the men in her unit who were already using several radio slots to step aside and make room for a female talk show. The mission would be the same—to rid the area of insurgents—but the methods for accomplishing the mission would be very different. Instead of pumping out messages intended to instill fear in the enemy, Jamila’s approach would empower women to turn against the enemy and toward their own interests.
Afghan officials and station executives were already working with American and coalition forces to produce radio ads that supported the FET mission, which was, in part, to train more women to be police officers. “The elections are coming,” the ads said, “make sure that your women stay safe when they go to the polls, and support the training and development of female police.” But the success of these ads, in the face of Taliban threats and violence, was meager. What coalition forces needed was an activist like Jamila who could speak directly to women about their fears, push the importance of education, and lead by brave example. Smoke appealed further to coalition forces and radio managers operating in the area who needed access to government officials. Jamila, who worked closely with the government in Qalat City, would bring them. “Help us get on the radio,” Smoke negotiated, “and we’ll bring you officials.”
Getting on the air was a bold move. But for the Taliban the feminist’s larger crime was—and had been for years now—the message itself. She was telling women that they had rights in a world where the actions of husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons—supported by the militancy of the Taliban—told women that they didn’t. And since her return to Zabul, the province of her birth, Jamila kept finding more meaningful ways to slowly move women from complacency to action and break with the Taliban’s extreme version of traditional law. In 2010 she and dozens of other women marched through the dusty streets of Qalat City in a demonstration against the Taliban’s ongoing mistreatment of female workers and mothers in the province. Jamila organized the rally, during which women covered themselves with extra care to avoid detection. Jamila, who normally wore just a scarf, covered her entire face, revealing only her eyes. That year the Taliban had beheaded a woman for daring to step out of her home and work for Zabul’s government. Another woman was shot for working with an American development company. Insurgents talked of a hit list with the names of women who were next to be killed if they continued to defy authority.
So by the time she sat next to the radio host in a small booth in Qalat City just ten minutes outside of FOB Apache, threats from insurgents, for Jamila, were nothing new. She had to keep working. Her activism was the only means she had of facing down the militancy that had killed her husband.
The last time she fled was thirteen years ago, she was desperate for a place where she could finally put down roots. She left Tajikistan early one morning, after she had remained there long enough, she thought, for the men who killed her husband to have forgotten about her existence. She left the home she had built for her family with her daughter on her left hip, her three sons walking on her right, each holding the next’s hand, with the youngest holding hers. They traveled for several days by car, by horse, by donkey. They stayed in the homes of strangers. Walking into the unknown terrified her. Most of her children were too young to understand the consequences. She didn’t know whether she would be greeted by friend or insurgent. She looked for homes where there were women and children. When they finally reached Zabul she and her four children showed up at her brother’s doorstep—family, comfort, stability, and the chance to begin again is what she was looking for. All those things, plus a room where she could lay her head down at night, is what he provided for as long as she needed. After a year she and her children were smiling again. Jamila stopped feeling sick and nervous all the time. She had also saved up enough money to purchase her own home. Eventually she and her children moved out, making the decision to remain in Zabul province.
And as she fought to rebuild her life, she also fought to save the lives of other women who were, she quickly learned, even less empowered than she was.
The morning of Jamila’s first radio program, Smoke, along with another member of the captain’s FET, met her and the manager of the local women’s center outside the gates of FOB Apache. Just as they had for so many local missions, they snuck Jamila into the backseat of a military truck. Traveling through the streets of Qalat City for the activist, even for just ten minutes, wasn’t safe. Smoke encouraged Jamila to wear body armor. As always, the woman refused. “If it’s time for me to die,” Smoke remembered Jamila saying, “hopefully I’ve done enough.”
Sitting in a small booth in a tiny radio station on the outskirts of the Army’s FOB, the activist heard her name.
“Jamila runs a local women’s center,” the host’s muffled baritone hit her ears. “This is the first of what will be many appearances. Jamila, welcome. Why don’t you tell the female listeners out there about yourself?”
Confidently the plump woman leaned toward the microphone. Her voice, with its wavering timbre, crackled slightly: “My name is Jamila,” she said. “I am here to tell women about their rights.” With a few short words she began her latest act of defiance.