Support for Afghan Women / Activists are dedicated to helping out locally and overseas
Newsday; Long Island, N.Y.; Feb 5, 2003; Lavina Melwani. Lavina Melwani is a freelance writer.

"Afghan women are an emerging force and a vastly untapped resource," said Sultan, a Queens College graduate who lives in Flushing and is Women for Afghan Women's program director. "They've been spoken about by so many other groups of people, so it's really time that they speak for themselves."

These days, the seven board members of Women for Afghan Women are working in the Afghan community in Flushing, looking for partners in the struggle to win a meaningful role for women in Afghanistan.



Photo by Michael Ross Wacht
Afghan Women's members (front, left to right): Orzala Ashraf, Manizha Naderi, Wazhmah Osman, Afifa Yusufi, Esther Hyneman, Sunita Mehta; (back, left to right): Mary Lu Christie, Kelly Dolak, Latifa Woodhouse, Masuda Sultan, Hangama Anwari and Homaira Mamoor.

They were only children when their families fled Afghanistan, propelled by the Soviet invasion and ensuing war. Masuda Sultan, now 24, was 5 years old then. Afifa Yusufi, 26, was 2.

In the years since, they and other Afghani-born women grew up and attended college in New York. But the now well-publicized plight of their former countrywomen has rarely been far from their thoughts.

Their concern about human rights abuses led some of them to create, and others to join, an advocacy group called Women for Afghan Women.

The Manhattan organization, which was founded in April, 2001 and gained additional impetus with the fall of the Taliban, seeks to assist the members' former countrywomen by staging rallies, raising money for a school for women in Afghanistan and holding conferences. It also has a Web site (www.womenforafghanwomen.org), on which it makes its central case that women's rights are intrinsic to Islamic beliefs and that the empowerment of women is a key to solving many of the war-torn country's problems.

"Afghan women are an emerging force and a vastly untapped resource," said Sultan, a Queens College graduate who lives in Flushing and is Women for Afghan Women's program director. "They've been spoken about by so many other groups of people, so it's really time that they speak for themselves."

Among the group's many goals is the cultivation of a sense of community among Afghani women in New York, helping more recent immigrants understand American culture and better acquainting them with the concept of legal rights and discrimination, one-on-one and through occasional seminars. The Afghani population in the city is small, so much so that the U.S. Census Bureau does not keep track of its size. For now the organization's most active participants are dozens of Afghani students and an Indian-American activist, Sunita Mehta, 34, of Brooklyn, the director of the Sister Fund, a feminist organization, as well as activists of Jewish and Christian faiths.

They all share a commitment to improving the existence of women who live in some societies as second-class citizens, faced with grossly inadequate medical care and unequal access to education, to name just two extremely widespread conditions.

The organization's first of two conferences so far, held in 2001, led to the publication of a book by Palgrave Macmillan, "Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future." The book includes essays and poetry by, among others, feminist Gloria Steinem, as well as the first and only Afghani beauty pageant winner, Zohra Yusuf Daoud (the pageant was staged only once, in the 1950s, during a brief period of peace). The book was edited by Mehta.

One member of the group is Wazhmah Osman, 24, a filmmaker who fled Afghanistan with her family to Pakistan and then came to America when she was a child. Osman, who now lives in Brooklyn, has returned several times to Afghanistan over the years to volunteer with her father, the medical director of International Orphan Care.

"I've experienced Kabul under all the different occupying regimes, from the Northern Alliance to the Taliban," she said.

Another member, Manizha Naderi, 26, who arrived in Astoria when she was six, now lives in Elmhurst and attends Hunter College. She plans to go to Afghanistan for a year to work as a teacher and, perhaps, start a school.

"Anything you do there is going to have a great impact - even little things, like becoming a teacher," she said.

She has not seem her homeland since she left it.

"I don't know why, but I have this deep connection to Afghanistan, a deep connection that is pulling me and it's telling me to come back, come back," Naderi said.

These days, the seven board members of Women for Afghan Women are working in the Afghan community in Flushing, looking for partners in the struggle to win a meaningful role for women in Afghanistan.

"It means involving key members of the community so that we continue to be seen as a part of the community rather than an imposing outside voice," Sultan said.

The demise of the Taliban after the post-Sept. 11 U.S. invasion has been one impetus for the organization's stepped-up activism.

"There's a huge step being made in Afghanistan toward women's rights," Sultan went on. "And our goal is to make sure that the promises that are made are followed through, and that the world pays attention to Afghanistan and what's going on with Afghan women. Just because it's off the front pages of the newspapers, it's not off our minds."

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sub Title:  [QUEENS Edition]
Edition:  Combined editions
Start Page:  A23
Companies:  Taliban-Afghanistan  NAICS:813940
  NAICS:813940