The taxi driver attempts to drop my Afghan interpreter and me off at Badam Bagh Central Prison for Women Offenders, but the prison guards wave us off repeatedly, shouting that we are not allowed to stop at the entrance. Guards and police are on the front lines of suicide bombings, which are increasing in Kabul, so they are naturally terrified of explosions and view every passerby with suspicion. It is March 2009.1
When we are at last allowed to get out at the gate, the guard squints at my prison admission letter. “You look OK,” he says, and gives us directions to the Badam Bagh commander.
“You chose the right day to interview the women,” the commander says.2 “An NGO has organized Women’s Day celebrations for them. They will all be happy.”3
In May 2008, all women prisoners were moved from the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison to Badam Bagh, whose construction was undertaken by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and United Nations Office of Project Services.4 Ninety-three women prisoners and their seventy-two children are under the commander’s supervision. External security is provided by males, and the ten staff members inside the prison are female.
At Pul-e-Charkhi, “the rooms were overcrowded and conditions were very bad,” the commander says. “The situation is better here. We don’t want to call it a jail. We want to create a home for the women.”
Badam Bagh, a big, rectangular, three-story building, with six rooms on each floor, is hardly homey. Women and children move around freely during the day.5 Each cell has three or four bunk beds. There are shelves against the walls where the women store kettles, irons, and other paraphernalia. Prison food is inadequate—rice three times a day with a few lentils and an occasional piece of fatty meat. The cells have gas stoves, pots, and oil, enabling the women to cook on a small scale. Those who have money can buy items such as bread, biscuits, and tea, which the guards acquire for them. Visiting families also bring food, shared with fellow inmates. Foreign prisoners are separated from Afghans, with the Chinese women—sex workers arrested during raids on bars that front for brothels—all in one cell and African and Pakistani drug dealers in other cells.
A small TV blares loudly in each room. Children share the space, sleeping on the carpeted floors or in their mothers’ beds. Mothers have created hammocks with sheets strung from bedposts for their infants.6 Each cell has a small bathroom with a squat toilet and a basin. Badam Bagh looks and smells clean. There is a large laundry room, with huge basins and two washing machines. Washing is hung in a small yard outside the prison entrance or from cell balconies. On the top floor, a cell serves as a classroom for children five years and older, mostly boys. It is compulsory for the mothers to send their children to classes, though some seem to attend sporadically. A female teacher—aided by a girl of about eleven, who also teaches the younger children—offers basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. Next door is a nursery for children between two and four years old, overseen by a middle-aged warden.
Presently, all activities are organized by non-governmental organizations, funded by international donors, with some supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Education and vocational training is provided by Afghan Women’s Education Center, which also organizes family visits and monitors prisoners’ children placed in orphanages or with relatives. The Italian NGO, Emergency, provides medical care to female prisoners in Badam Bagh and supplements the diets of those who are pregnant or breast-feeding. The UNODC currently monitors treatment of the prisoners. Conditions are slowly improving in Kabul prisons, as well as those in other cities, such as Herat, Jalalabad, and Mazar-i-Sharif. There is little reform in the provinces, particularly in the war-torn south.
Literacy classes for the prisoners are held upstairs and there are six computers for teaching computer skills. The women can learn crafts and some have completed courses in vocational education, English, and tailoring. “Sixty-three certificates were issued last week,” the commander says proudly.7
But some women tell me they’re not interested in improving their educations, because when they are released there will be no opportunities, thanks to lack of employment and social stigma. And there are women here who lie on their beds all day, depressed and lonely.
There is no exercise program, but the prisoners are permitted to sit outside during the day on a patch of grass next to the entrance surrounded by the wall. Badam Bagh means “Almond Orchard” in Dari, yet there is not an almond tree in sight.
The commander keeps a list of the approximately ninety inmates under a plate of glass on his desk. Twenty-six have been convicted for murder, five for kidnapping and killing children. The women I interview tell me these are false accusations by male members of their families.8 Eight women reported that they themselves had been kidnapped, four said they were kidnapped and raped, twenty-six had run away from home and been raped, fourteen admitted they are drug traffickers, and one Pakistani prisoner had planned a suicide bombing. Afghanistan currently has a death penalty for men only. Women convicted for murder are in general sentenced to eighteen years of imprisonment.
There are many reasons Afghan women are in prison. Their situation and the challenges they face on release cannot be fully understood without reference to their social and economic status and the provisions of legislation and practices that lead to their imprisonment. Most women and girls are non-literate and face poverty, limited access to health care, and continued and widespread violence. Under the Penal Code of 1976, which is still in force, women can be punished for offenses defined as “moral crimes.” Moral crimes are mainly adultery and running away from home. The majority of female prisoners at Badam Bagh are being held for violating social, behavioral, and religious norms.9
Many international and Afghan NGOs strive to defend Afghan women’s rights, but they have little power and no legal staff. Medica mondiale Afghanistan provides lawyers in order to ensure the women get fair trials.10 There are few female defense lawyers in Afghanistan and no public defense pool of lawyers as in the United States.11 At Badam Bagh—where free legal aid is provided by medica mondiale Afghanistan and the Afghan NGO Da Qanoun Goshtunky—prisoners complained that female defense lawyers have little clout in court. Husbands are said to bribe judges to put or retain their women in prison.12
Neither Afghan women nor men have access to lawyers at the police station during their first interrogation and may wait in detention for months before arraignment. Some never get a hearing. Time limits for detentions are rarely applied.13 The Supreme Court in Kabul, which covers the whole country, is responsible for thousands of cases referred from the secondary courts of Afghanistan’s thirty-four provinces, many of which offer no access to legal counsel whatsoever.14 When time limits expire, detainees are not released, as provided by legislation.
The Family Court in Kabul is the only one in Afghanistan with a small number of female judges. Rahima Razai is the head judge of the Family Court. She is assisted by two senior female judges and one male judge. It was extremely difficult for me to set up an appointment with Judge Razai, who fears for her life and therefore did not want to reveal personal information. Judges have been killed outside their homes by suicide bombers or fundamentalists or family members angered by convictions.
“My job is very difficult,” she says. “I have to deal with complex family problems, corruption, and traditional culture.” Judge Razai is not so much concerned with discrimination against Afghan women working in the current judicial system as she is worried about those who are imprisoned for so-called “immoral acts” and those who remain in prison while others who can afford to bribe criminal justice agencies are released. “Many women who have been raped are beaten, rejected, and put in jail,” Razai says. “Those who pay the bribes are released. Illiterate women with no power, connections, or independent means suffer particularly. A national policy to stop moral crime victims from going to jail and to improve the civil laws has not yet been implemented. Various ministries are working on this and it should be complete in six months. The Supreme Court, the Afghan Human Rights Commission, and Parliament will then test it on society. Depending on its success rate, the new laws will be implemented.”
Nabila Naibkhail, a medica mondiale defense lawyer, who, since 2002, has worked as a prosecutor in Kabul, agrees that there has been some improvement in divorce laws, but she complains that “in general most Afghan women have lots of legal problems. For example, when a husband goes abroad to earn money, his family will sometimes treat her badly. In some cases wives are even killed. There is lots of violence toward women. This leads them to become violent. Men aggravate these women to commit crimes.
“The marriage laws also need to be amended,” Naibkhail says. “A man has the right to marry more than one wife. It is difficult for women to accept the new wives and this causes a lot of friction. Democracy doesn’t really exist in Afghanistan. There have been some improvements in Kabul, but in the provinces a woman would not dare utter the word democracy.”
The central government has minimal authority in many parts of the country. “Just try to imagine what is happening out there,” Razai says. “Customary laws rule.”
In all regions of Afghanistan disputes and crimes are tried and resolved by councils of elders composed exclusively of men. Afghans regard jirga (tribal council) decisions as the law and condemn those who refuse to accept these decisions.15
Najiba, head of the Kandahar Central Jail for Women, confirmed that 80 percent of cases are solved by jirgas or shuras (tribal councils) in the provinces, although the AIHRC visits prisons once a month to inspect cases and to inform women and men of their basic human rights.16
“It is the women who suffer the most when crimes and disputes are settled by the shuras,” she says. “Especially in the practice of retribution (qissas) and blood money (diyat).17 Forced marriages occur for the settlements of feuds (badal), restitution for a crime, by giving a young girl to the victim’s family (baad), and forcing widows to remarry someone from her deceased husband’s family. Rape may be treated as adultery and punished according to the Shari’a (Islamic law), if a settlement cannot be reached between the two families concerned.
“Honor crimes are still happening in the provinces,” Najiba says. “These are committed by male members to cleanse the honor of the family. It is very difficult to determine how many women are being affected by this. Women simply disappear.”
There are ten women in Kandahar prison. Some have been there for two years without legal representation and their cases are pending.18
Officially, criminal procedure is governed by the Interim Criminal Procedure Code of 2004.19 According to this code, a person can spend a maximum of ten months in detention, from the moment of arrest to the end of the period in prison, before a final sentence is passed.
“But this law is not followed in Afghanistan,” says Najiba.
Women mill around, some dressed up for Women’s Day, while the children run back and forth. The noise quiets down as the celebrations commence. The UNODC has organized the event, including speeches about women’s rights, but the prisoners look a little bored. In lieu of flag waving or cake, I am becoming the main attraction. Word has spread quickly that I’m here to record the women’s stories and a queue forms outside the wardens’ observation room, where I’ll conduct my interviews. Within an hour the room is crowded with upwards of twenty-five women, talking, weeping, laughing. They range from late teens to late fifties, some heavily made up in tight-fitting tops and pants, others in traditional Afghan dress, with white or black lace-bordered pantaloons peeping from under long, full skirts. The young girls are unveiled; the older women, especially those from tribal areas, bear dark blue tattoos on their faces and deep orange henna on their fingernails, toes, and feet.
Zarmina, a petite twenty-six-year-old, is nervous and shy. She stares at her tattooed hands and twists her ring. The tattoos are the names of her six children, living with her mother-in-law in Ghazni, in Central Afghanistan.
I was very small when my mother died. When I was thirteen, my father sold me to a forty-five-year-old man. I was exchanged for his daughter, who was married to my brother. My husband was an opium addict. I told my father I wanted a divorce, but he didn’t care about me. My husband brought another woman into the house and had sex with her. He told me I should do the same. “Find a man and have sex with him,” he said. I was with my husband for twelve years. He beat me and often attacked me with a knife. Look at my scars.
Toward the end of their marriage, the couple moved to Iran, where Zarmina’s husband contracted HIV/AIDS. When they returned to Afghanistan, he at last agreed to a divorce.
I thought my life would change, but it got worse. I went to live with my brother in Kabul, but he beat me all the time because I was divorced. I then left for Mazar-i-Sharif to be trained as a police officer.20 I wanted a job. My sister followed me to Mazar and tried to convince me to return to my brother’s house. She said, “If you refuse, I will report you to the police and tell them that you tried to kidnap me.”
Nevertheless, Zarmina refused to return to Kabul. Her brother had her arrested on charges of kidnapping. She was imprisoned in Mazar-i-Sharif, where she spent a few weeks, before attending a court hearing in Kabul, where a male judge chose to believe her brother and sent her to Badam Bagh.
I’ve tried to commit suicide three times: once when I was a child and twice while I was married. Every day I pray to Allah to let me die. A few days ago, I pushed a burning cigarette into my upper lip to kill the pain I feel in my heart. No one has come to visit me here. My brother threatens to kill me when I’m released. I don’t have a future.
In prison, Zarmina is safe from her brother, and there are a few women’s shelters where she can be taken in secret to stay a few months while attempts are made to reconcile her with her family and/or find her a job.21 She makes full use of the prison literacy classes. She has met only once with a defense lawyer during her ten-week stay. She says the lawyer has no information on her, “doesn’t care and isn’t helping me.”
Shahpari, a thirty-year-old tribal woman from northern Afghanistan, is soft spoken with thick black kohl lining the lids of her light green eyes. She clutches her seventh child, a month-old baby born in her cell.
I was twelve when I was married to a forty-year-old man. Six months ago I was kidnapped by two of my male relatives during the night at gunpoint. I was pregnant. They brought me to Kabul, where I was raped repeatedly for four to six days. The men told me they were going to sell me. I managed to escape and immediately reported them to the police in Kabul.
Shahpari was sent to prison, she says, because “the rapists said bad things about me to the police.” She originally received a sentence of one- and-a-half years, but for reasons she does not know, the term was increased another six months. A Supreme Court judge disregarded her plea for release. “My husband has told me that when I’m free I can come back home, but he will not accept me as his wife, because I’ve been raped. ‘I will keep you to take care of my children,’ he said.” The prisoners listening to Shahpari’s story all shake their heads in sympathy. “We are being kept here for no reason at all,” one says.
The door swings open and a feisty redhead bursts in.
“God bless you!” Soraya says in English. “I’m a Christian, you know.” She pauses to wink at the other women before she adds: “Don’t believe all the stories you’re told.” And promising to bring us tea, she dashes off.
“She’s a drug trafficker, from Pakistan,” the prisoners inform me.22
While we wait, nineteen-year-old Mariam tells us that she ran away from her thirty-year-old rug-maker husband to live with her young boyfriend, who owns a cosmetics shop. The couple’s liaison didn’t last long. A night watchman reported them to the police. Mariam was sentenced to two years and six months. Her boyfriend is serving two years in Pul-e-Charkhi.
“My boyfriend’s family has accepted me and they visit me here,” Mariam says. “We are hoping to get married when we’re free.” Both Mariam’s parents are dead. Although it may prove impossible, Mariam believes fervently that she will get the divorce she seeks.
Soraya returns with tea. “I’m guilty,” she says. “I got involved with the wrong people and took the risk to smuggle heroin across the border.” She was sentenced to seven years, most of the time already served in Pul-e-Charkhi.
“There is a lot of bribery in the judicial system,” she says. “A woman who murdered her husband was with me in Pul-e-Charkhi for only eight months. The family paid a bribe of 1,000,000 Afghanis (US $20,000) and she was released.”23
Soraya leans forward confidentially: “Women are paying other women for sex,” she whispers. “And I know of a few others who are close with one of the female wardens, who arranged to have sex with the male wardens. They pay them money. Some of the prisoners try to build up cash to bribe their way out of jail. The male wardens also bring in hashish and opium for the women, to support their drug habits. Some really need it and can’t go without it.”24
The women ask me to take their pictures to send to their families, and Farida drags me into her cell. While she changes into traditional Afghan dress for a photo, she tells me that she set her sister alight when she caught her having sex with her husband.
Farida is twenty-seven. “I want to keep these photographs so that when I’m released, I can look back at how young I looked today,” she says.
She changes clothes again, for another shot, this time wearing her prayer shawl. She sits on the ground holding a small, leather-bound Qur’an. “This photograph is for my husband. I’m going to send it to him.”
The following day, a fight breaks out. Women scream on the first floor as the battle moves downstairs. The two prisoners pull hair and bite, then one removes her sandal and hits the other on the head. “You are a criminal,” she shouts.
“We’re both criminals, you fool,” the other yells. The wardens pull them apart and send them to their rooms.
Most of the female wardens here have worked in prisons for an average of twenty-five years. Pashtoon earns 3,250 Afghanis (US $65) a month and receives no benefits. “I don’t like my job,” she says, “but I don’t have a choice. I have to work.” She recently completed a two-month course on how to treat prisoners, with the promise that she will get a salary increase.25
Salia was recently among a group of Afghan lawyers and judges, sponsored by the United States Corrections Sector Support Program, to observe prisons in the United States. “The jails in Afghanistan are better than the ones in the States, which are too strict,” Salia says. “But law enforcement is better there.” She was impressed that American wardens are able to watch the prisoners on monitor screens. “We also need such a system. We don’t know what is happening inside the women’s rooms and cannot observe the use of drugs and other violations.”
Psychologist Zarghona Ahmed Zia, who is trained in trauma, sexual violence, and rape, provides individual and group counseling to women and girls in prisons and rehabilitation centers.
“We create a safe space,” Zia says. “They have been stigmatized by their families and society and feel helpless and lonely. The women are guided to identify their problems and needs. We encourage them and give them the power and ability to move on in life.”
The bigger issues involve coping with why they are in prison. “When the women arrive, they have many problems,” Zia says. “Step by step we first sort out the small problems and then deal with bigger issues. The women have conflicts with each other. We teach them how to resolve the conflicts.
“If a prisoner’s children are with the family, we try to find a way for her to meet with them. Recently we made an arrangement so that an imprisoned mother could send her veil to her children,” Zia says. “Now they have something tangible to remind them of their mother.”
“My children are illiterate and picking up bad habits here in jail,” says Shirin Gul. “But what can I do? My husband was hanged during Ramazan last year.”26 Three of her six children—including a baby born in prison—share her room, and the other three are on the street, begging.
A notorious murderer, Shirin Gul is thirty-five, originally from Jalalabad, an eastern provincial capital of Afghanistan. She was convicted for killing twenty-eight men in collaboration with her husband and his in-laws. She has served five and a half years of her twenty-year sentence and claims she is innocent. The story broadcast on Afghan national television goes that Shirin Gul lured taxi drivers to her house for sex, then she, her husband, and in-laws robbed and killed them. Shirin Gul’s husband was accused of being part of a gang that kills for money, moving from province to province. Shirin Gul said she was living in Peshawar, Pakistan, unaware of her husband’s activities. But it is rumored in the prison that Shirin still runs a mafia-style operation from her cell.
Extensive work is ongoing to implement legislation to reform existing laws in line with the constitution, Afghanistan’s international human rights obligations, and Islamic law.27 Meanwhile, equal rights for women—especially those in prison or accused of crimes—are not yet reflected.
The failure of the judiciary, police, and the wider society to treat forced marriage as a criminal offense appears to stem from the deep-seated acceptance of customary over statutory law,28 ensuring consistent failure by the state to initiate criminal proceedings against perpetrators. Their interpretation varies according to different judges, prosecutors, and legal experts.
The UNODC recommends that prison-based activities and post-release support activities be regarded as part of a comprehensive package of measures to address the issue of social integration in holistic and sustainable ways. It therefore covers many areas that may affect the success of social reintegration measures directly and indirectly from the moment women come in contact with the criminal justice system.
With the support of the United Nations, other international agencies, and donor nations, penal legislation is being reviewed and revised, judges and prosecutors are receiving training, access to legal counsel is improving, courthouses and prisons are being constructed, and the capacity of justice institutions is being developed. Varying degrees of progress have been made in all these areas, though much remains to be done.
“Only two basic points will solve the current situation in Afghanistan where women to a great extent are still regarded as ‘commodities,’ ” says Judge Razai. “Teach the men about human and women’s rights at the mosques; and teach boys and girls at school that they are equal.”
1. I live in Kabul, Afghanistan, where there are no libraries for research. Thus, my primary sources included staff members of medica mondiale Afghanistan, the Badam Bagh prison commander, female prison wardens, prisoners, and the head judge of the Kabul Family Court. I also conducted telephone interviews with members of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, who regularly visit women’s prisons throughout the country.
In 2009, I visited Badam Bagh for two days to interview the prisoners for this chapter. A few months later, I visited for a photo assignment for medica mondiale Germany. I interviewed many women, but space limitations prevent my using them all. It is difficult to gain access to Afghan prisons and involves numerous visits to the Ministry of Justice to obtain letters of permission, after which the guards outside the prison must be convinced to let you in, followed by an informal interrogation from the commander. Once in, the trust of the female wardens must be gained. Each prison official seems to have a separate set of rules, making it hard to move around the prison.
Dr. Husn Banu Ghazanfar, Minister of Women’s Affairs in Kabul, was not available for comment though I tried to contact her numerous times. MoWA is notorious among journalists for refusing interviews.
2. Most of my sources asked to be anonymous, so I changed their names. However, some women welcomed their real names in print, a small act of defiance. Many Afghans use only one name.
3. During my first prison visit, all seemed relatively well. But on my next visit, I found quite a few prisoners lying listlessly with blankets covering their heads, complaining of illness. “Feeling sick” is a phrase commonly used by Afghan women to disguise feelings of despair and depression.
4. Pul-e-Charkhi was begun in the 1970s by order of then president Mohammed Daoud Khan. Construction was completed during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979–1989. The prison was notorious for torture and other abuses. Living conditions were brutal. Afghan communists executed 27,000 political prisoners there. A mass grave was discovered in 2006 and is believed to hold some 2,000 bodies.
The UNODC, with financial support from the Italian government, undertook the rehabilitation of a number prison facilities, including parts of Pule-Charkhi prison.
5. This casual situation poses potential problems. There is little control inside the prison and the wardens might easily be overpowered by the prisoners. Serious criminals live in the same cells as innocent women and children. There are many fights over seemingly petty issues. One woman tried to commit suicide by cutting the arteries on her right leg, leading me to wonder why she was allowed to have a knife in her cell.
6. Many women are pregnant when they are convicted. If there is not enough time to get laboring women to hospital, they give birth in their cells. Hospitals and doctors sometimes refuse to attend prisoners because of the social stigma.
The law allows women to keep their children in prison up to the age of three, but there are children at Badam Bagh who are older. Not all women have their children with them in prison. Some families are broken and scattered. Some children are on the street with no one to care for them. In some cases, fathers want the children to be in jail with their mothers and in other cases they will take the children back, without their mothers.
7. Dressmaking is a skill that provides women with real prospects for income and is work that can be conducted at home.
8. According to the head judge of the Kabul Family Court, medica mondiale Afghanistan, and AIHRC, many women have been imprisoned because they have had no legal assistance, have been used or framed by male relatives, were forced to confess, or blamed because they happened to be with their husbands or fiancés when the crime was committed. Very occasionally a desperately impoverished woman will kidnap a child, usually to sell for money.
9. Other chapters in this volume address the constitution; discrimination in the areas of marriage, divorce, and inheritance; equal rights; and customary law versus statutory law, which often lead to women’s imprisonment. See also “Adultery, Pederasty and Violation of Honor,” Penal Code, Official Publication of the Government of Afghanistan, Issue 13, Serial no. 347, October 7, 1976, Section iii, chapter 8, 127. Available at http://aceproject.org/ero-en/regions/asia/AF/Penal%20Code%20Eng.pdf/view.
Rape as a crime is not clearly defined within the Penal Code but is covered under adultery, as is prostitution.
The German NGO, Frauen die Helfen, is among the groups working toward human rights for women traumatized in post-conflict situations In her book, Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), Ann Jones describes her work in Afghan women’s prisons in conjunction with Frauen die Helfen.
10. In numerous cases—through interventions with legal authorities and judges and conversations with the families—medica mondiale staff members have been able to obtain releases or substantially lesser sentences than those demanded by the state prosecutor. Since May 2007, medica mondiale has had its own counseling center in Badam Bagh, where families and imprisoned women can work with counselors to find ways to manage conflicts. Medica modiale’s psychosocial project supports women affected and traumatized by violence in war and conflict zones and assists women with mental health problems and illnesses in prisons and rehabilitation centers throughout Afghanistan. This NGO, founded in Germany by Dr. Monika Hauser in 1995, provides specialized training for defense lawyers, psychologists, midwives, social workers, and medical staff in Gardez, Jalalabad, Kabul, and Herat. “Medica mondiale Afghanistan: Project Information,” medica mondiale, http://www.medicamondiale.org/fileadmin/content/07_Infothek/Projektinformation/Projekt
information_Afghanistan_-_englisch_-_09-2008.pdf.
11. The constitution and the Interim Criminal Procedure Code provide for legal assistance to indigent defendants. In practice, detainees in most parts of the country rarely have access to legal representation. Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Chapter Two: Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens, Article 31 http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/The_Constitution_of_the_Islamic_
Republic_of_Afghanistan.pdf.
12. As is well documented, bribery is rampant in Afghanistan. See, among many others, Dexter Filkins, “Bribes Corrode Afghans’ Trust in Government,” New York Times, January 1, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/world/asia/02kabul.html?hp. The issue is also addressed in the 1976 Penal Code, “Bribery,” section ii, chapter 3, 75. Adding to the corruption are judges unqualified for their jobs, appointed through powerful family connections, a common practice in the Afghan government, where entire departments might be run by one family alone.
13. Tomris Atabay, Afghanistan: Female Prisoners and Their Social Reintegration (Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, March 2007), 23. Available at http://www.unodc.org/pdf/criminal_justice/Afghan_women_prison_web.pdf.
14. In the absence of lawyers, there nevertheless are police and prosecutors in all provinces, thus arrests and investigations can continue.
15. Ancient tribal codes, such as Pastunwali and Islamic law, or Shari’a, are discussed at length in other chapters in this volume.
16. In a telephone interview, March 2009.
17. Qissas is based on Islamic jurisprudence and refers to retribution, applicable to physical injury, manslaughter, and murder. Diyat refers to compensation. The laws of qissas and diyat provide that the punishment must be commensurate with the offense committed.
18. Atabay, Afghanistan, 27.
19. As of this writing, the 2004 Criminal Procedure Code is being redrafted. “Interim Criminal Procedure Code for Courts 2004,” International Committee of the Red Cross, http://www.icrc.org/ihl-nat.nsf/6fa4d35e5e3025394125673e00508143/
2ee7715e48bfca37c1257114003633af/$FILE/Criminal%20Procedure%20
Code%20-%20Afghanistan%20-%20EN.pdf.
20. The total Afghan police force is about 80,000, with no more than a few hundred women. “As Afghan women seek a balance between new opportunities and tradition, the Kabul Police Academy is a unique proving ground. In a profession dominated by men, it offers both the first glimpses of independence and a frustrating lack of opportunity.” Mark Sappenfield, “Female Cops Test Traditional Gender Roles in Afghanistan,” Christian Science Monitor, January 7, 2009, http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0107/p01s03-wosc.html.
21. If their families refuse to take them back or if they are in danger of being killed, released prisoners are referred to shelters. Safehouses are few and far between, and women can stay in them only until they get married, reunite with their families, or in the unlikely event they find jobs. When they leave, they drop off the radar. Officially, post-release support for women prisoners in need of shelter is the responsibility of the women’s ministry, assisted by various NGOs, including the Afghan Women’s Education Center, Humanitarian Assistance for Women and Children in Afghanistan, and medica mondiale. Atabay, Afghanistan, 36.
22. As a non-Afghan, Soraya was shunned as a foreigner in the prison. She was reared by missionaries in India, married a Pakistani man when she was fifteen, divorced him, and, since her release from prison, is back in Pakistan.
23. As of this writing, fifty Afghanis equals one U.S. dollar.
24. The UNODC estimates that 509,000 Afghan households—or 14 percent of the total population—are involved in opium cultivation. Of the 920,000 drug users living in Afghanistan in 2005, 120,000 were women. “Afghanistan Opium Survey,” (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, November 2005), http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afg_survey_2005.pdf, 85.
25. All the female wardens I spoke to were unhappy with their small salaries, no extra benefits, and long work hours. The United States Corrections Sector Support Program conducts training on the treatment of women prisoners. Female wardens indicate that they need training in basic and mental health issues.
26. Ramadan—an Islamic religious observance of fasting that takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, the month in which the Qur’an, according to tradition, was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad—is called Ramazan in Dari, Farsi, and Turkish.
27. United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Afghanistan’s Justice Sector Overview, November 2006), 1.
28. Abject poverty, armed conflict, and draught are cited as reasons for the increasing practice of marrying girls at pre-puberty level; it serves to reduce the number of dependents within a household and to raise cash through the receipt of a bride price. M.A. Drumbl, “Rights, Culture, and Crime: The Role of Rule of Law for the Women in Afghanistan,” (Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 42, no.2 (2004). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=452440, 359.