Kabul, August 16: Ostracised, threatened with death and her relatives killed — welcome to the life of Afghan councillor Natbibi Omary, a mother in her 40s forced to cover up on the campaign trail.
Guarded by a Kalashnikov-wielding son, her husband and police, Omary turns up at provincial council offices in the Afghan city of Khost and flings off her billowing burka as soon as she gets into the garden.
“The situation is critical. If we don’t deal with it, the country will collapse,” she says, outlining her vision of an Afghanistan where security is guaranteed, women’s rights protected and female illiteracy eradicated.
Her eastern town of Khost is one of the most dangerous in the country, lashed by suicide bombings and assassinations.
Posters threaten the electorate with reprisals if they vote in Thursday’s presidential and provincial polls.
Omary takes pride in her appearance. Her black dress is embroidered and her make-up expertly applied, but the burka means constituents could never pick her out of a crowd. Extremists make her job a matter of life and death.
“Most death threats I get are because I’m a woman. They tell me ‘women shouldn’t work, particularly in government’. Here lots of women are threatened because they work,” she says, her voice soft as she smiles.
Khost is the turf of the powerful militant group controlled by a hero of the 1980s resistance to Soviet occupation who turned Taliban ally, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and son Siraj, an Al-Qaeda cohort and mastermind of bloody attacks.
The province borders part of Pakistan, where Al-Qaeda and the Taliban carved out safe havens after the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Her manifesto for re-election on Thursday focuses on assisting widows after three decades of war and encouraging people to educate their daughters.
“We tell the Taliban that knowledge is the right of women as well as men,” Omary told AFP in an interview.
But these are liberal words in Khost. When she first stood for election in 2005, her family objected. “Even now, one of my brothers-in-law turns off the TV when I’m on.”
“Because of me, two of my husband’s brothers were killed and my nephew had his foot blown off,” she said. They were ambushed en route to her home.
Death threats arrived overnight.
“They said ‘you have to keep your woman in your house and you yourselves not work with the government otherwise your heads will be cut off and put on your chests,'” she said.
Omary is lucky that her husband is supportive. Their son stands guard during the interview — armed. “When I go out, they come with me,” she said.
Campaigning is difficult. As for other candidates, it is too dangerous to leave town. As a woman from Afghanistan’s majority Pashtun community, she is restricted by ancient codes of honour.
“I couldn’t send my campaign posters to my brother’s village. He told me ‘if anyone says something dishonouring you, I’ll have to kill them’.”
Omary has never been to university or outside of Afghanistan. It was her male colleagues who took up invitations abroad.
Prejudice is the name of the game and few think the women candidates are worth it.
“They’ll hardly get any votes and they won’t have any power. The men are the decision makers,” said Said Karim Khaksar, brother of a tribal leader in Khost, referring to three seats on the council reserved for women.
But Omary says the women have pulled together.
“We informed ourselves about everything because they didn’t tell us anything, telling us to sit in a room upstairs,” she said.
She is not frightened, she said. “If I stop politics, the Taliban won’t leave me alone… We are surrounded by insurgents. You have to continue what you’ve started,” she said, smiling.
—Agencies