By Susan Domowitz
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Empowering ordinary Afghans and providing them with the necessary skills to rebuild grassroots civil society will be the key to rebuilding Afghanistan, according to Sima Wali, an Afghan-American woman who directs Refugee Women in Development, Inc.(RefWID), a non-profit organization helping women in conflict areas.

In a recent interview with the Washington File, Wali said Afghan women face "the most oppressed situation for women anywhere in the world." But she said Afghan women and men are working together to keep civil society alive in Afghanistan and in the refugee camps in neighboring countries, to prepare for the day when they can reclaim and rebuild their country.

Wali called the Afghans she works with "the neglected cadre of civil society," the silent majority of Afghans whose voices are not heard in the West.

"These are the silent majority, the unheard voices in the Afghan community, the people who are currently rebuilding the shattered lives of traumatized women, the elderly, the handicapped and land-mine victims, and they're doing it at grave risk to themselves. Against all odds, they form institutions, they form organizations, with no assistance from the international community. This is a group of people who have already demonstrated remarkable leadership and ability. They are our link to democratic-minded civic institutions in Afghanistan. They are our hope for Afghanistan," Wali said.

Describing the grassroots efforts of these Afghan women and men who have decided to take matters into their own hands, Wali said, "They provide major services in their communities. They run the institutions that provide education, health, social services, and they also conduct human rights work. They work across ethnic, gender and sectarian affiliations. And their voices must be included in the peace process, in the reconstruction dialogue."

Wali said her organization tries to ensure that the Afghan refugees she works with are committed to an eventual return to Afghanistan. "We have not had a central government for almost 22 years, but we have these community-based activists, who are providing these services. Afghanistan desperately needs people like that."

Wali told about meeting with Afghan tribal elders in remote areas who "ferociously defend the rights of women." One elderly man told her, "Afghan society is like a bird with two wings. If one wing is cut off, then society will not be able to function."

Because women, under Taliban rule, are prohibited from working, Afghan men have taken on the responsibility to provide assistance to women, to be their counterparts in civil society initiatives. Wali told about a training session for Afghan community leaders that she did last year in Peshawar, Pakistan which had been planned with gender-segregated training sessions, to conform to local tradition. But the women and their male escorts, coming from Afghanistan for the training session, said they preferred to train together, because they did their work in partnership in order to be effective.

Entire communities - men and women - inside Afghanistan support the clandestine schools that provide skills training, secular education, and even English classes for their children, says Wali. Although these schools are forbidden by the Taliban, members of the community offer their homes for holding classes, and if the Taliban close down one center, the community opens another one nearby. This indomitable spirit, the commitment to volunteerism, and the hunger for education are hallmarks of Afghans' homegrown civil society initiatives.

Turning to a post-Taliban Afghanistan, Wali said Afghan women's aspirations in the dialogue for peace must be taken seriously. Afghan women, she says, will definitely demand a seat at the table for discussions about rebuilding Afghanistan. What's needed, Wali says, is long-term help -- a sort of Afghan "Marshall Plan" -- for Afghanistan. The help of the United Nations will be needed, too, Wali says. "We are absolutely sick of the war; we have had enough."

"For the past 22 years," Wali said, "the story in Afghanistan has been about empowerment, but it has been the empowerment of the Communists, and then the empowerment of the mujahideen, and now unfortunately the empowerment of the Taliban, the warriors. But nowhere in this history has the empowerment of the Afghan people taken place. The international community must empower war-affected Afghans. It's time to finance Afghan-led efforts to promote and the rebuilding of institutions. You have to rebuild Afghanistan with the help of Afghans. So I would like to see a peaceful, tolerant Afghan society in which democracy and its institutions are functional, a society which respects the rights of all -- men and women."