World Policy Journal: Women’s Rights and Security in Central Asia

World Policy Journal
Volume XX, No 1, Spring 2003

Women’s Rights and Security in Central Asia
Belinda Cooper and Isabel Traugott^*

In the aftermath of September 11, the United States is once again making allies of countries that violate human rights — as it did during the Cold War — this time in the name of fighting terror. But in so doing, Washington ignores the crucial tie between human rights and U.S. security interests. As human rights advocates point out, countries that consistently violate human rights are frequently less stable and more of a threat to peace than countries where rights are protected. When citizens cannot express their opinions, when they experience arbitrary treatment at the hands of an unjust legal system, when they lack basic opportunities for political participation, opposition is more likely to erupt in violent fashion. Repression may appear on the surface to be an effective method of maintaining stability, but it is just as likely to promote instability.

Since September 11, the five culturally Islamic former Soviet republics of Central Asia — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — have emerged as important partners in the struggle against terrorism, despite records of serious human rights abuses. Yet in setting aside concerns about human rights generally, the United States is jeopardizing the support of a key group that could aid its antiterrorism efforts in these countries: women.

Women’s rights have not always been part of the larger human rights discourse. Human rights advocates long overlooked the fact that women’s needs can differ from and even collide with traditional concepts of human rights — as for example, where protecting religious freedom means condoning religious practices that involve subordination or mistreatment of women. This has begun to change, however, and women’s rights to education, employment, political participation, freedom from violence, and equal treatment under the law have been codified in human rights treaties. Yet while policymakers have occasionally recognized the link between stability and human rights generally, they have been slow to recognize the more specific relationship between women’s rights and a stable society.

Washington needs to recognize that promoting women’s rights can further U.S. security interests and lay the groundwork for long-term resistance to terrorism. Central Asian women, in particular, have historical reasons to oppose religious extremism. Authoritarian Central Asian leaders, mean-while, have so far tolerated women’s rights activities to a greater degree than demands for more general political and civil rights, perceiving women’s concerns as less threatening to their own power.

Yet throughout Central Asia, poverty, political repression, and a resurgence of traditionalism are keeping women out of the fight against terrorism and even pushing them into the arms of fundamentalists. As women’s rights advocates who have worked for nongovernmental organizations implementing programs to aid women in Central Asia, we believe that it is essential for policymakers to recognize and capitalize on the role women’s rights can play in advancing democratization and promoting greater security. In the following discussion, we will focus on Uzbekistan, a key partner in Washington’s antiterrorism campaign, although our argument holds true for all the former Soviet Central Asian republics.

Human Rights and Alliances

Human rights have not been high on Washington’s agenda since 9/11. Criticizing human rights violations is largely viewed as counterproductive to securing the alliances required to combat terrorism, and America is now cooperating closely with countries whose human rights record the U.S. government has itself criticized.

Uzbekistan, our "new best friend" in Central Asia, has a dismal overall human rights record. Well before September 11, human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch condemned the Uzbek government for a host of abuses, including fabricating charges against political and religious opponents, holding show trials, and torturing prisoners. These abuses continue despite the increased attention focused on Uzbekistan in the wake of 9/11. In its human rights country report published in 2002, the U.S. State Department called Uzbekistan "an authoritarian state with limited civil rights" and accused its police and security forces of committing "numerous serious human rights abuses." It also noted that "an atmosphere of repression stifles public criticism of the Government." ¹ In late 2002, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture called torture in Uzbekistan "systemic." As many as 7,000 Uzbeks are currently imprisoned for religious or political opposition, often for nothing more than peaceful Islamic religious observance. While nongovernmental organizations do exist, their activities are restricted and human rights advocacy is generally prohibited.

The government of President Islam Karimov — chosen in elections the State Department characterized as "neither free nor fair" — has cited Islamic fundamentalist activity as justification for such oppression, and Uzbekistan does face its own home-grown militant opposition. A radical group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which seeks the establishment of an Islamic state under Sharia law, has ties to al-Qaeda and has carried out terrorist attacks and military operations on Uzbek territory, as well as in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In 2000, in agreement with the Uzbek government, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright designated the IMU a foreign terrorist organization. (One of the IMU’s top leaders was killed during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, which appears to have put the group out of commission, at least for the present.) The United States also began to cooperate more closely with Uzbekistan on security matters. But Washington had also criticized the Uzbek regime’s violations of human rights, and had even cited these violations as one reason for reducing funding to Uzbekistan in the 1990s.

Following September 11, the United States signed a "strategic partnership and cooperation framework" agreement with Uzbekistan. Washington more than tripled its military and economic aid to Tashkent (which totaled $173 million in 2002), while Uzbekistan has allowed the United States to use its Khanabad airbase as a staging ground for military operations in Afghanistan. Washington continues to admonish President Karimov to improve his human rights record and has even acknowledged the link between violations of human rights and support for terrorism. Indeed, Congress conditioned the provision of supplemental aid in 2002 on improvements in human rights. Yet in certifying those improvements, the State Department accepted superficial actions by President Karimov as proof of change. The relaxation of institutionalized media censorship, for example, was offset by informal government pressures on journalists and editors. ² Nor does the State Department include Uzbekistan on its list of serious violators of religious freedom, despite Tashkent’s crackdown on peaceful religious observance. ³

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funds civil society programs and nongovernmental organizations in Central Asia. Some monies have been earmarked for programs that support democratization and rule of law as well as the empowerment of women. But most of the additional assistance that has been designated for Uzbekistan since 9/11 has been driven by the Uzbek government’s demands for military aid and punitive anti-drug and anticorruption efforts that target suspected terrorists’ funding sources. Funds for humanitarian assistance are primarily aimed at addressing health and education needs, rather than broader human rights issues. ⁴

September 11 raised awareness of the disastrous human rights situation in Afghanistan, particularly with respect to women’s rights. Women’s rights activists had been criticizing the Taliban’s treatment of women for years. In the name of a radical reading of the requirements of Islam, women in Afghanistan were completely segregated, forced to shroud themselves in the all-encompassing burqa, and denied education, employment, and even the right to appear in public in most cases. Women could not wear makeup or high-heeled shoes. They could not be treated by male doctors, which often left them without access to health care. They were whipped, beaten, and sometimes stoned to death for infractions of these rules. But it was not until the United States embarked on the antiterrorism campaign that led to the bombing of Afghanistan that the U.S. government and the media began to high-light the regime’s abuses against women. This attention to the plight of Afghan women became part of an apparently coordinated campaign by the media and the U.S. government to justify and gain support for the war.

This heightened awareness has been positive for women in Afghanistan, and some tangible progress is already visible. Several women were included in the negotiations to create a new government, which includes female members, and a Women’s Ministry has been established. The United States supported the creation of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council, a public-private partnership that promotes a range of programs to improve the lives of Afghan women, and the U.S. government recently contributed $3.5 million for the construction of women’s resource centers and for training and education programs for women. Preparations for the war on Iraq displaced interest in the rebuilding of Afghanistan, however, and government and media interest in Afghan women has largely faded. The few reports from Afghanistan that address women’s concerns indicate that in areas outside of Kabul where, with Western support, traditional warlords have returned to power the situation for women has improved little.

Yet Washington would be ill-advised to turn its attention from women’s needs. Support for women is not only a moral imperative but improvements in the conditions for women may have a significant positive impact on long-term security. Serious, sustained support for women’s rights and dignity, not only in Afghanistan but through-out the surrounding Central Asian region, could win the U.S. much-needed allies in the struggle against fundamentalist-sponsored terrorism.

The Islamic Context

Islam is far from monolithic, of course, and women’s experience within Islam, as well as their response to it, differs from country to country. Islamic feminists have long maintained that Islam itself is not oppressive toward women, but that it has become so in many places as a result of incorrect interpretations of the Koran by men, as well as through the assimilation of non-Islamic cultural traditions. The type of fundamentalist Islam that has engendered terrorism in Central Asia is particularly hostile to women. This fundamentalism — in part a reaction to modernization and westernization — emphasizes control of women and their subservience to men. Considered the repositories of family honor, women are isolated within the home and denied any public role; in the family, their rights are severely restricted. At the extreme, as in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, women become all but invisible, subject to violence both within the home and if they venture outside it. Yet this repression, as women’s rights activists point out, is "not about religion; it is a political tool for achieving and consolidating power." ⁵

Women themselves at times support fundamentalist movements, particularly where they oppose secular systems seen as equally repressive, as in Iran in the 1970s. But in places dominated by fundamentalist regimes that particularly restrict women, they often find themselves in opposition to the established order. Their modes of resistance may be more or less visible, but even if they may not want or be able to rebel overtly, they frequently seek and find ways of circumventing restrictions and gaining greater freedom. ⁶ Afghan women under the Taliban, for example, not only operated clandestine schools for girls, but also defiantly, if less spectacularly, wore makeup under their burqas. Once the Taliban was defeated, they flocked to beauty parlors and eagerly returned to school and to work, at least in areas where the men in control permitted them to. This response is not a rejection of religious belief, but rather a reaction to manipulations of religion that systematically deny women dignity and rights.

Thus women make up what might be called a ready-made antiterrorist potential. While it is certainly wrong to equate all fundamentalism with terrorism, terrorism today is closely linked with religious fundamentalism. Hence in pursuing its antiterrorism efforts, the United States could find long-term support among women, whose interests naturally conflict with those of radically fundamentalist regimes. Because of their unique history, such support could be particularly forthcoming from women in the Muslim countries of former Soviet Central Asia. At present, however, women in these societies are caught between the repression of the secular regimes in power and the dearth of realistic alternatives other than equally repressive fundamentalist movements.

The Uzbek Context

The former Soviet Central Asian republics differ in some important respects from more traditional Islamic societies, both generally and from the perspective of women. Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Uzbekistan — our focus here — has defined itself culturally as an Islamic country, though the exact contours of that identity remain unclear. Before Central Asia was absorbed by the Soviet Union in the 1920s, the Uzbek brand of Islam was of the more liberal Sunni Hannafi variety, and the region had experienced the liberalizing influence of the jadid (renewal) movement within Islam, which among other reforms advocated greater freedoms for women. In the decades that followed the Soviet take-over, Moscow repressed religious expression, with the result that Islam’s hold on the population was diluted.

The Soviet presence also changed the situation for women in Central Asia. Lacking a traditional proletarian base in the region, the Communist leadership adopted women as what one scholar has termed a "surrogate proletariat." ⁷ Soviet revolutionary efforts were in part directed at women’s emancipation, which was seen to mean release from the Islamic oppression of the past. This emancipation was accomplished, in part, through the brutal khudjum (offensive) campaign of the 1920s. Such practices as the marriage of underage girls and bride-price (payment to the bride’s family by the groom’s family) were abolished, and women were encouraged to discard the veil. This campaign, paradoxically, had disastrous consequences initially for some women. Those who unveiled were in some cases killed by family members; others who refused to unveil were persecuted by the Communists. ⁸ But these reforms led ultimately to a female population that was literate, able to seek professional employment, and politically involved. True, the persistence of traditional cultural and social attitudes kept women from achieving full equality with men under Soviet rule. Relationships in the home failed to change along with women’s entry into the workplace, so that women remained responsible for child care and traditional household duties as well. The upper reaches of power remained closed to women. Nevertheless, they did improve their position in society.

Women in Uzbekistan attained close to 100 percent literacy, in sharp contrast to many Islamic countries outside Central Asia, such as Pakistan where less than a quarter of the female population is literate, or Saudi Arabia where the literacy rate for women is 50 percent. Although Central Asian societies remained more traditional with respect to gender roles within the family than other parts of the Soviet Union, 47 percent of women were employed outside the home, not only as agricultural workers and teachers, but also as scientists, lawyers, and professors. Women generally enjoyed decent educational, health, and other state-provided benefits, independent of marital status. Polygamy was legally prohibited and women gained, among other things, the right to initiate divorce and take an equal share of marital property, as well as equal rights to inheritance. They thus achieved at least formal equality with men, even if the persistence of traditional structures and attitudes, particularly in the private sphere of home and family, meant women did not always reap the full benefit of these laws in reality. Divorce continued to be discouraged, for example, and domestic violence, though criminalized, was rarely prosecuted because of pressure on women from families, communities, police, and judges. Still, over the years Central Asian women came to expect a significant degree of social, legal, and economic equality. In our discussions with women in Uzbekistan, many recalled the 1980s, in particular, as a period of relative freedom and opportunity.

Since independence, Uzbekistan, like the other Central Asian republics, not only has failed to progress economically, socially, or politically but has regressed on many fronts. The country is ruled by a former Communist boss whose regime has evolved more in form than in substance. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan redefined itself as a constitutional republic but retained many of the repressive features of communism. Political oppression, coupled with economic misery, has resulted in less, rather than more, freedom. Elections are rigged, free speech is almost nonexistent, and corruption is rampant.

President Karimov has encouraged Islamic observance as a means of promoting an independent national identity. However, this observance is circumscribed and regulated by the government. Among the Uzbek population at large, Islamic practice survived underground during Soviet rule, and during perestroika and after the breakup of the Soviet Union there was a resurgence of interest in Islam.

Although most Uzbeks do not practice rigid forms of Islam, this renewed interest in religion led to the revival of certain customs associated with Islam that have adversely affected women’s status. The marriage age for girls is falling, as is the level of female literacy. Polygamy, although outlawed, continues to exist in practice. The status of women in Uzbek society has also been adversely affected by the official promotion of an idealized role for women as self-sacrificing wives and mothers, a patriarchal concept of women as people in need of protection, and the de-emphasis of women’s public role. Thus, the division of gender roles that persisted to some extent even under communism has returned under state sponsorship and is forcing many women into a state of resignation and passivity.

Dramatically worsening economic conditions have further exacerbated the decline of the position of women in Uzbekistan. As in the other former Soviet republics, Uzbek women were the first to lose their jobs as the economy collapsed. Cuts in health- and child-care benefits have affected women directly, as they are still most likely to be responsible for the home and child care.

Not surprisingly, many Uzbek women resent this change in their status. Rather than accepting it as part of a new emphasis on important cultural values, they experience it as a form of oppression. This was apparent in discussions we held while working in Uzbekistan for Western nongovernmental organizations. While defining themselves as Muslims and frequently voicing support for President Karimov, women consistently expressed regret that the changes since independence had reduced opportunities for them in the professional and social realms.

Discussing the increasingly common marriage of girls as young as 15 and 16, women spoke of economic necessity, dread, and social pressure, not of love, desire, or anticipation. They spoke of arranged marriages and the onerous duties imposed on new brides in caring for the husband’s extended family as greatly resented deprivations of freedom, not as important socially or religiously defined roles. Women who grew up during the Soviet era, accustomed to access to education and the opportunity to work outside the home, made it plain that they saw such things as their right. Female university professors bitterly decried the loss of support for women in academia, where downsizing means firing the women first. They complained about the lack of opportunity for their daughters and female students in general.

Avenues of Dissent

Although dissent is anathema under the current Uzbek regime, opposition has inevitably arisen to Karimov’s authority. Because the government’s repressive measures are so harsh and fear so prevalent, however, little political space exists for moderate opposition. Instead, the main resistance to the Uzbek regime comes from religious extremists influenced by movements in neighboring Pakistan and Afghanistan. The government’s response has been to brand as a potential terrorist anyone believed to be worshiping in ways not officially sanctioned. This has meant indiscriminate arrests of suspected "Wahabists" ⁹and the routine persecution of men with beards, people who pray frequently, and others who exhibit outward signs of strong religious dedication or practice not authorized by the government.

With all other means of dissent closed to them, however, some segments of the population have defiantly adopted such unauthorized forms of worship as a means of resisting oppression. For small numbers of women, the most visible sign of such dissent — and of a shift toward fundamentalist belief — has been the donning of the veil. The number of women who have taken up the veil remains low, but there are signs that it is on the rise. Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a banned fundamentalist organization that aims to create an Islamic state throughout Central Asia through peaceful means, is increasingly attracting women radicalized by poverty and repression. Women members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir have demonstrated openly for the release of male relatives imprisoned, in some cases, for simply belonging to the organization. According to Acacia Shields, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, many of these women are highly educated and formerly supported the repressed pro-democracy movement in Uzbekistan. The .fact that they have been attracted by a fundamentalist group, says Shields, "has to do with the narrowing of options." At the same time, the exodus of women from the public spheres of employment and education may also contribute to this development, as they lose contact with more secular influences. While Hizb-ut-Tahrir has not been associated with any violence, its members "come from the same recruiting base...as the IMU" and could become radicalized should peaceful avenues of dissent remain unavailable. ¹⁰

The government response to veiling has included fines, harassment by local citizens’ committees, and exclusion from access to universities. This punitive response has seemed to be as much linked with the general desire to limit women’s place in society as it is with fear of fundamentalism. When veiled women were excluded from universities, university administrators welcomed the edict because it would open up more university spots for men. ¹¹But the government has also begun to take women’s protests more seriously as a political threat, and has convicted women as well as men of unsanctioned Islamic observance.

Drug mafias tied to fundamentalist groups, meanwhile, have involved and exploited women in the drug trade, the profits of which go to fund terrorist operations. Jobless, impoverished women are being used as "mules" to transport drugs, sometimes within their bodies, and the number of such women in Central Asian prisons is increasing. ¹²These women are triply victimized — by the government’s economic and social policies that result in reduced job and educational opportunities, by extremist groups that threaten and exploit them, and by law enforcement and judges who send them to jail while the men who reap the profits from drug running remain free.

The role of women in the drug trade, and the connection between the drug trade and terrorism underlines the link between security and the empowerment of women. But the ideological and economic oppression of women, and the waste of resources it represents, is a far more general societal problem. Women in Uzbekistan are well served neither by the authoritarian rule of the current regime, nor by the fundamentalist alternative. While the decades of Soviet rule appear to have left Uzbek women relatively resistant to the appeal of extremist Islam, they lack non-fundamentalist avenues to work toward change.

Avenues of Change

For those who would promote a rights-based concept of security in Uzbekistan, the issue of women’s rights could prove a useful jumping off point. This is because even though the Uzbek government has had a dubious record with respect to women’s rights over the past decade, the regime has sought to divert international criticism of its overall human rights record by pointing to its positive treatment of women.

President Karimov clearly views calls for free speech and free elections, and respect for human rights in general, as an impediment to his campaign against fundamentalism and a threat to his hold on power. In contrast, although his record on women has been ambivalent — reflecting the tension between the demands of a society turning toward traditional values, the attempt to establish a moderate Islamic identity, and the expectations of the international community — he has offered at least token support for women’s rights. Uzbekistan signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1995. That same year, the government installed a female deputy prime minister to head the national Women’s Committee and required female deputy mayors to head up women’s committees at all levels of regional and local government. While they have little power and few resources, some of these women have made substantive efforts to improve conditions for women.

Foreign donor organizations, meanwhile, have encountered little resistance in establishing projects dealing with domestic violence and women’s economic empowerment. Women’s nongovernmental organizations have been active in Uzbekistan, as in other Central Asian countries, since the 1990s, with the support of grants from the United States and Europe. While some of these organizations are actually government sponsored, and the government monitors independent organizations closely, it has permitted women’s groups to operate with relative freedom. Foreign donors have assisted them in training police and judges about domestic violence, establishing women’s centers and hotlines, and designing microcredit initiatives for women starting their own businesses. President Karimov declared 1999 the Year of the Woman, saying, "The way society treats women shows the level of the culture and the spirituality of a given society, and the results of society’s movement toward democracy."

Certainly, the Uzbek government is no staunch defender of women’s rights. It permits women’s rights activists to work relatively unimpeded because they provide the regime with a useful fig leaf when confronting foreign critics and because it does not view such activism as a direct threat to its authority. But whatever the reasons behind it, the regime’s relative tolerance for such work provides the chance to expand support for activities aimed at empowering Uzbek women and building their organizational strength. This would give them a chance to develop greater influence within their society, create possible new avenues for democratic change, and further decrease the attractiveness of fundamentalism as an alternative.

Foreign donors must strive to avoid the pitfalls experienced in the past in providing aid to Central Asian women. All too often, women’s nongovernmental organizations have sprung up solely in response to the agenda — and the money — of outside donors, which have offered funding for projects they consider important, such as programs on domestic violence and trafficking in women. This does not mean Western concerns are irrelevant to Central Asia. It is instructive that one Uzbek woman, asked if our questions on the legal treatment of domestic violence were an imposition of Western values, asked indignantly in return whether we thought Uzbek women liked to be beaten. But donors must take care to consider the specific experience and concerns of Central Asian women, who have been influenced by both Islam and the Soviet system. ¹³

While women throughout the world face oppression at the hands of religious fundamentalists, Central Asian women, given their history of relative freedom under Soviet rule, are particularly likely to oppose this type of oppression. At present, Central Asian governments still view women as a benign force; thus the moment is particularly auspicious for Western governments to dedicate significant resources to support for women’s organizations. Programs aimed at making it possible for Central Asian women to become economically self-sufficient, continue their education, understand and assert their legal rights, and participate more fully in their societies can give them the tools they need to create alternative means of influencing societal change and counteract the pull of fundamentalism. Women can be powerful players in the shaping of local sentiment, and the United States ought to recognize that investing in them will reap significant returns in the battle against fundamentalism- inspired terrorism.

Endnotes

Note *: Belinda Cooper is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, and the coauthor of a report on domestic violence in Uzbekistan for a USAID-sponsored project (2000). Isabel Traugott, an attorney, was a gender specialist for the American Bar Association’s Central and Eastern European Law Initiative in Central Asia in 2000–01. Back.

Note 1: State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2001 (March 4, 2000), Uzbekistan, available at www.state.gov./g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2001/eur/8366.htm. Back.

Note 2: Human Rights Watch, "Uzbekistan: U.S. Rubber Stamps Human Rights," news release (New York, September 9, 2002), available at www.hrw.org/press/2002/09/uzbek0909.htm. Back.

Note 3: Human Rights Watch, "State Department Fails to Designate Partners as Violators of Religious Freedom," news release (Washington, D.C., March 5, 2003), available at www.hrw.org/press/2003/03/ us030503.htm. Back.

Note 4: See, for example, U.S. Department of State fact sheet, "U.S. Assistance to Uzbekistan—Fiscal Year 2002," June 6, 2002, available at www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/fs/11038pf.htm. Back.

Note 5: Jan Goodwin and Jessica Neuwirth, "The Rifle and the Veil," New York Times, October 19, 2001. Back.

Note 6: For examples of women’s responses to such treatment in a number of countries, see Jan Goodwin, The Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World (New York: Plume, 1995). Back.

Note 7: Gregory J. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–1929 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974). Back.

Note 8: See, for example, Marfua Tokhtakhodjaeva, Between the Slogans of Communism and the Laws of Islam, trans. Sufian Aslam (Lahore, Pakistan: Shirkat Gah Women’s Resource Center, 1995), esp. pp. 56–66. Back.

Note 9: Wahabism is the deeply Puritanical form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, but the word is used by the Karimov government to refer to any form of unsanctioned religious observance. Back.

Note 10: Ahmed Rashid, "The Fires of Faith in Central Asia," World Policy Journal, vol. 18 (spring 2001), p. 54. Back.

Note 11: Human Rights Watch, Class Dismissed: Discriminatory Expulsions of Muslim Students, October 1999. Back.

Note 12: For a discussion of the gender aspect of drug trafficking, see Nancy Lubin, Alex Klaits, and Igor Barsegian, Narcotics Interdiction in Afghanistan and Central Asia: Challenges for International Assistance (New York: Open Society Institute, 2002), pp. 16–20. Back.

Note 13: For an in-depth discussion of these and other problems in building civil society in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, see Sarah Mendelson and John Glenn, eds. The Power and Limits of NGOs: A Critical Look at Building Democracy in Eastern Europe and Eurasia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Back.