This is a thread about photographer Shah Marai, democracy and women's rights in Afghanistan.
As the Taliban are trying to make everybody forget democracy and women's rights ever existed in Afghanistan, I will take every opportunity to remind everybody that democracy and women's rights in Afghanistan have a long history, and also share Shah Marai's photos. So it will be a long thread.
If you're short on time, after the next post you can hit the eject button before the slideshow begins, ok?
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If you want to cut to the chase, here it is.
Women have had rights and have participated in society and in democracy in Afghanistan for a long time. They first won the right to vote in 1919. That's a year after women in the U.K. and a year before women in the U.S.
The Taliban's brutal repression of women's rights has nothing to do with Islam, traditions or Afghan values. It's misogyny, plain and simple.
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The name Shah Marai is not well known outside photography circles, but if you read any news articles on Afghanistan since 2000, you will have definitely seen his work. He first started taking photographs in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1998. Afghanistan was under Taliban rule and photography was viewed with great suspicion. Photographing living beings, human or animal, was forbidden. Shah Marai would sneak his camera out and try to document what was happening in Kabul at grave risk to himself.
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Shah Marai was very much a press photographer. He covered all the news stories. It was mostly a depressingly regular routine of foreign politician's visits and suicide bombings.
While he took lots of the much needed press shots, when he wanted to, he could take documentary shots that were up there with anything you would find in a Magnum photographers portfolio.
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The first photo I saw that really stopped me in my tracks and made me remember the name Shah Marai was this one from 2009. The Bird Cages at Kabul Market. It's breathtaking. The sunlight breaks through onto the birds in the cages as the old man walks away, to me it encapsulates the whole political landscape of Afghanistan at that time.
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Shah Marai's work helped him support his large extended family, many of whom suffered from a genetic defect that led to blindness. He was always laughing and joking, a kind and generous man who liked to help everybody, he even paid to have a mosque built in his home village.
Shah Marai loved all children, and in 2018 he was completely overjoyed that with the birth of his sixth child, he had finally been blessed with a daughter.
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18 days after the birth of his sixth child, he was at the site of yet another suicide bombing in Kabul, photographing and looking for survivors. It was then that a second suicide bomber detonated their device. Shah Marai died instantly.
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I could talk about Shah Marai, his life, his death, his photographs,his Afghanistan, for hours.
But we're here to talk about what he and I consider to be some of his finest and perhaps most important work. In 2010 Shah Marai travelled all across Afghanistan to photograph boxes. Yes, that's right. Boxes.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes in government buildings in Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes on the backs of lorries in Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes on the backs of donkeys in Afghanistan in 2010.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes on the backs of people in Afghanistan in 2010.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes being carried through the streets of the city in Afghanistan in 2010.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes being carried through the villages of Afghanistan in 2010.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes being carried on dusty roads through the countryside of Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes being carried through the desert plains in Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes being carried up the mountains in Afghanistan.
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Agreed fully. But also, misogyny is totally baked into the Abrahamic religions and so they are a vital tool in this program. When people can invoke an invisible, silent sky god to back up their prejudices it becomes a powerful tool. And also infinitely flexible, of course. "God" can say anything the men in charge want him to.
No expert either, just my opinion 😉
Any good sources?
The claim that Afghan women had "won/had the right to vote" in 1919 is widely circulating on web pages, but I can't find any serious sources. Art 16 of the 1923 constitution [1] says "all subjects ... have equal rights ... in accordance with sharia and the laws of the state". Arts 40+41 refer to elections. But there are no details. Amanullah Khan's 1919-1929 rule did attempt modernisation [2].
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20010609023011/http://www.afghan-web.com/history/const/const1923.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanullah_Khan#Administrative_and_political_reforms
@boud
This is the kind of thing I've been drawing on. Dr Nina Ansari of Cambridge University, England says the year 1919 in this speech. It's a credible enough source for my purposes, but maybe not the kind of proof you're looking for. Sorry I can't be of more help. Good Luck.
Did you give the wrong URL? [3] is by Nina Ansary, not Aminira Khan.
Evidence for me personally doesn't count for much; evidence for the openly peer-reviewed encyclopedia is needed [4]. Feel free to add something there if you come across a good source. Even a source stating that elections took place during Amanullah Khan's rule (apart from the 1922 constitutional Loya Jirga) would be (indirectly) useful.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Women_in_Afghanistan#Women%27s_suffrage_in_1919%2f1921
Cool :).
The LSE Public Policy Review is an open-access, refereed journal which is published quarterly. Each issue is thematic and concentrates on a key topic at the heart of current debates in public policy. Public policy challenges bring to the fore cross-cutting questions which require a global perspective and a focus on their interconnectedness. Because of this, articles in each issue take different disciplinary perspectives, encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration and analysis at the forefront of current thinking. As a result, each issue presents a comprehensive approach to the specific theme and an analysis that is academically rigorous but also readily accessible to all readers. The LSEPPR publishes original research papers, conceptual articles, review papers written for a general readership, in non-technical language aimed at a wide audience including government, business and policy-makers, as well as academics and students. LSEPPR seeks to actively contribute to the study and development of public and social policy, public administration and public management.
And there was Queen Soraya. It is always incredible to compare Afghanistan in the 1920s to the 2020s.
LONDON/KABUL: Born in exile, she died in exile. But during the 10 controversial years she spent as queen of Afghanistan, Soraya Tarzi gave the women of her country a tantalizing glimpse of an emancipated future which, a century on, has yet to be fully realized. Barely remembered in the West, where she was once greeted by vast crowds during a triumphant tour of European capitals in 1927-28 with her husband King Amanullah Khan, earlier this year Queen Soraya was celebrated by Time magazine, in a series honoring the forgotten female pioneers of world history.
A great, poignant thread.
D'Arcy
ProjectFearlessness
Margaret
JD
KristFist
MylesRyden
Boud
Margaret McGaffey Fisk
Kriszta Satori
Prof Prachi Srivastava
Ambigram Art
Unholy Ordnance