Afghanistan

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to address what I believe is an urgent and fundamental issue of our policy in Afghanistan, and that is, what happens to the women and girls when the United States and NATO forces leave after 20 years?

Over the years, as I have talked to my constituents and people around the country, one of the things they have all been united on about our effort in Afghanistan has been the difference that our intervention has made for women and girls.

Before we went into Afghanistan in 2002, girls were not allowed to go to school, women were not allowed to work, and there was no freedom of movement for women and girls unless they had a male escort. They couldn't listen to music. They were required to wear burqas anytime they went out of their homes.

What we have seen has been safety and security for Afghan women and girls as the result of our intervention, but now all of these gains are at risk as we withdraw our forces. The lack of emphasis on the safety and security of Afghan women and girls in the peace process is what has brought us to this point.

We are leaving by September, and there is no plan to ensure that the rights that were achieved for women and girls are actually protected, even though we have legislation that says that in conflict areas like Afghanistan, we have a responsibility to ensure that women are at the negotiating table.

Well, as we rethink the role of the United States in Afghanistan, I want to put a face on what we are talking about, what it means if we don't prioritize women's rights there.

In March of this year, the State Department posthumously honored seven women who were given the International Women of Courage Award. These are all women who were killed in Afghanistan in 2020. They are pictured here. They were murdered--assassinated, really--for choosing to live their lives outside of the narrow confines of what the Taliban and other extremist groups deem acceptable for women, and they reflect the thousands of other women in Afghanistan who have been the targets of violence.

We have seen over the last months of 2020 and beginning of 2021 that women were deliberately targeted for assassination, particularly women in high-profile positions. These women have been murdered for going to school, for reporting the news, for delivering healthcare or running for public office. We talk about them as courageous, and certainly they are, but they should not have to be courageous to do the kinds of things that they were murdered for.

It should not require courage to be a journalist like Malalai Maiwand, who is right here in the lower left-hand corner. It should not require courage to stand up for basic human rights like Fatima Khalil, who is up here in the middle, or Freshta Kohistani, who is right here. Fatima was a human rights official. Freshta was an activist for women rights. Yet both of these women were killed by the Taliban for doing what they believed in, for trying to improve the lives of other women. Sadly, that kind of courage is what is required of all women in Afghanistan today.

I worry that this reality is only going to escalate after our departure. Indeed, we saw this over this past weekend when 85 people, most of them schoolgirls, were killed in a car bomb outside of a girls school in Kabul.

I saw them interviewing one young woman who, I think, was about 14, about why she thought they had been targeted. She said: ``I guess it's because we want an education.'' This is the future we risk if we don't have a plan for how we are going to continue to support the women and girls of Afghanistan.

I also want to talk about the other four women who are pictured here.

Fatima Rajabi, who is in the middle, was a 23-year-old prison guard. She was on her way home from work and was on a civilian bus when the bus was stopped by the Taliban. She was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered, and 2 weeks later, her body was sent to her family.

Then there is Freshta, who is the daughter of Amir Mohamed. She was a 35-year-old prison guard who was killed on her way to a taxi to get to work--again, killed by a gunman.

At the bottom is General Sharmila Frogh. General Frogh was the head of the gender unit in the National Directorate of Security and was one of the longest serving female NDS officers in Afghanistan. She was assassinated when an IED explosion targeted her vehicle in Kabul.

Finally, I think the most horrific and barbarous of all of these murders was of Maryam Noorzad. Maryam was a midwife, and she was killed when the hospital in Kabul was attacked by the Taliban. She was there, helping a woman deliver a baby, and she refused to leave when they were attacked. She didn't want to leave the woman she was helping as a midwife, so the Taliban not only killed her when she refused to leave the woman, but they killed the mother, and they killed the baby. These are the Taliban whom we are being asked to join at the negotiating table.

I can tell you that I don't intend to support any political efforts that will allow the Taliban to continue to commit these horrific acts of violence. The agreement we made with the Taliban has already been breached by the Taliban. They have refused to cut ties with al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. They continue to escalate the violence.

What we are going to see over the next several months and what we do is going to impact the lives of women for generations to come in that country, which is why we must do absolutely everything in our power to support the women and those in Afghanistan who want peace and who want to see the country move beyond the extreme religious rhetoric of the Taliban.

These seven women didn't deserve to die, and those schoolgirls in Kabul didn't deserve to die. We owe it to them and to the generations who will come after them to do everything we can to prevent any more Afghan women from meeting the same fate.

This is not a partisan issue, and it is not a woman's issue. It is a human rights issue, and it is a security issue for the future of Afghanistan because, if women are empowered in that country, the potential for stability is so much greater. So I urge the Senate to do everything in our power to ensure that women are represented at the table in the future of negotiations and that their rights are preserved in Afghanistan.

We must remember these seven women and the thousands of women like them and the schoolgirls in Kabul--the girls who should have the opportunity to grow up in a world with the freedoms that their mothers fought to secure. The women and girls of Afghanistan are watching what we do, and we can't afford to let them down.

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