Beyond Vassar

With All Our Strength

By Anne E. Brodsky ‘87

In 2002, while members of my class were gathering for our 15th reunion, I was on my way to Afghanistan, for the third of six trips to the region to date, as part of my ongoing qualitative study of the resilience of Afghan women. My first visit had taken me to the Afghan refugee camps and urban enclaves of Pakistan in the months before September 11, 2001, when the world knew relatively little and seemed to care even less about the lives of Afghan people.

I had gone to discuss if and how my research might serve both scholarly and activist goals to aid the cause of these women. As an academic and community clinical psychologist, I envisioned academic journal articles as the natural publication route for the scholarly side of this work. (Although I didn’t believe academic journals held much utility for applied activism, they are the accepted avenue for reporting research findings in my field.) But the Afghan women activists, who were my hosts and guides, convinced me that I should write a book. They introduced me to scores of Afghan women, who served me hot tea and sweets in the 110-degree summer heat of Pakistan while sharing stories of unimaginable oppression and remarkable strength. Amidst the squalid refugee conditions, where millions of Afghans had escaped the oppression, destruction, and war that swallowed their country, they argued that their lives deserved to be documented in a broadly accessible form, so that even if they didn’t survive, there would be documentation of their existence.

In post-Taliban Afghanistan many women continue to wear the burqa.
In post-Taliban Afghanistan many women continue to wear the burqa.


In post-Taliban Afghanistan many women continue to wear the burqa.

I left convinced that we in the West needed to know about Afghan women’s lives and resilience—not only as a testament to their existence but as a lesson and inspiration for our lives and struggles as well. Back in the U.S. I found that publishers were not so convinced that readers would be interested in women in this small country 7,000 miles away. But by mid-September 2001, Afghanistan and women in blue burqas were suddenly of great interest to Western readers, and many of those same publishers wanted to know if the book could be written today and published tomorrow.

More important than whether or not a particular book found its way to publication is the tragic fact that, had the terrorism that held Afghans hostage for years not been experienced on U.S. soil, it is likely that all Afghans might still be living under Taliban rule today. Still, progress in the region has been limited, at best. During my visit to Afghanistan in summer 2002, and in three subsequent trips, I saw not only the incredible dedication and hope of a people struggling to rebuild their lives, but also the heart-wrenching failure to keep the promise implicit in the language of “liberation.” I’ve now interviewed close to 200 Afghan women, men, and children—half during the Taliban and half post-Taliban—and unfortunately for many, their stories remain essentially the same.

In a refugee camp outside Peshawar, Pakistan, an Afghan woman shares her strength and love with the next generation.
In a refugee camp outside Peshawar, Pakistan, an Afghan woman shares her strength and love with the next generation.

In a refugee camp outside Peshawar, Pakistan, an Afghan woman shares her strength and love with the next generation.

For many, returning to school, work, or public life has been impossible, due to fears of what Human Rights Watch described in March 2005 as the “widespread rape of women and children, murder, illegal detention, forced displacement, human trafficking, and forced marriage.” Yet I continue to hear a commitment to a peaceful, secure, lawful, egalitarian Afghanistan: “As a woman with many family problems ... when I found there was a way I could struggle for the rights of others ... it made me sacrifice my personal life as well and care for [those] others.”

Here in the West, our image of Afghan women is still one that swings wildly between silent, burqa-shrouded victims and beneficiaries of triumphant liberation at the hands of U.S. and allied troops. But life in Afghanistan is much more complex than either of these snapshots. My objective remains to make sure that Afghan women’s stories continue to be heard—that their visions for their country are finally seen as deserving and are respected and supported, not only within Afghanistan, but by concerned people around the world.

Anne E. Brodsky ‘87 is associate professor of psychology and affiliate associate professor of women’s studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (Routledge, 2003) explores the resilience and resistance of Afghan women.