SIGAR

AFGHAN WOMEN
CORRUPTION BLOCKS WOMEN’S ADVANCE
The second biggest challenge the women identified was corruption. Najiba
Ayubi said the media organization The Killid Group had extensively investigated
corruption within the government. “The ongoing corruption is
damaging everything,” she said. She described a system in which every position
and every government service has its price. She and other women said
the United States bears some responsibility for exacerbating corruption in
Afghanistan. “The U.S. and the international community came in and gave
money without asking a lot of questions and it created a lot of corrupted
people.” 65 (SIGAR this quarter published a Lessons Learned Program report,
Corruption in Conflict, on the U.S. response to corruption in Afghanistan.
See Section 2 for more information.)
Partly because of corruption, Afghan women are often cut out of the
political and economic system. “This is a big problem for women because
men run the system, and it is hard for women to be part of this,” said
Shinkai Karokhail, a member of parliament from Kabul Province. “Men
bring people into the system that they want, and because of warlords
who have a lot of power, they do not support women. Political parties
also have big challenges. They have their own very tight power base.
This occupies the entire system.” 66 When women do succeed in gaining
power, interviewees said, they sometimes become just as corrupt as their
male counterparts. 67
USAID and other U.S. agencies have often relied on Afghan nongovernmental
organizations (NGO) to implement their gender programs. However,
Helena Malikyar, an Afghan-American scholar and journalist who has also
worked on international aid projects, said many of the NGOs were not truly
independent, but relied on donors for money and project ideas. She also
said U.S. agencies fail to hold NGO implementers accountable for the funds
they receive.
SECTOR CHALLENGES
The interviewees also discussed progress and challenges and provided
insights on improving the status of Afghan women across the six sectors
of gender initiatives: security, justice, politics, the economy, health,
and education.
Women in Security Forces Face Engrained
Cultural Stigma and Harassment
The Afghan women interviewed by SIGAR identified several barriers to
recruiting, training and keeping women in the Afghan National Defense
and Security Forces (ANDSF). Namely, the women cited the cultural
stigma associated with women serving in that capacity, the ubiquitous
sexual harassment and abuse of these women, and the male opposition to
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SPECIAL INSPECTOR GENERAL I AFGHANISTAN RECONSTRUCTION