Veiled Courage
Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance

by Cheryl Benard

Area: Women's Studies Publisher: Random House published 05/2002 315 pages ISBN-13: 978-0767913010 ISBN-10: 0767913019

Paperback $11.95 (USA)

About the Book

In Afghanistan under Taliban rule, women were forbidden to work or go to school, they could not leave their homes without a male chaperone, and they could not be seen without a head-to-toe covering called the burqa. A woman's slightest infractions were met with brutal public beatings. That is why it is both appropriate and incredible that the sole effective civil resistance to Taliban rule was made by women. Veiled Courage reveals the remarkable bravery and spirit of the women of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), whose daring clandestine activities defied the forces of the Taliban and earned the world's fierce admiration.

The complete subordination of women was one of the first acts of the Taliban. But the women of RAWA refused to cower. They used the burqa to their advantage, secretly photographing Taliban beatings and executions, and posting the gruesome pictures on their multi-language website, rawa.org, which is read around the world. They organized to educate girls and women in underground schools and to run small businesses in the border towns of Pakistan that allowed widows to support their families.

If caught, any RAWA activist would have faced sure death. Yet they persisted.

With the overthrow of the Taliban now a reality, RAWA faces a new challenge: defeating the powers of Islamic fundamentalism of which the Taliban are only one face and helping build a society in which women are guaranteed full human rights.

Cheryl Benard, an American sociologist married to an Afghan expatriate, uses her inside access to write the first behind-the-scenes story of RAWA and its remarkably brave women. Veiled Courage will change the way people think of Afghanistan, casting its people and its future in a new, more hopeful light.

Review by Mark Davis, books editor of the Daytona Beach News-Journal

Their motto is "Freedom, democracy and social justice." They fought for women's rights in Afghanistan years before the Taliban took power in 1996. And when the radical Islamic fundamentalists began abusing women on a fanatical level, this group fought even harder. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) defied the Taliban and years of negligent injustice through clandestine activities that make the Underground Railroad during the Civil War look like a stroll through kindergarten. Their bold efforts only have recently gained international attention after the U.S.-led war in the poverty-stricken nation last year toppled the Taliban and ushered in a more promising era of peace and civil liberties.

Cheryl Benard chronicles the rise of RAWA and the plight of women in Afghanistan in Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance. Benard is a sociologist and expert in women's issues. She has traveled to Afghanistan extensively and has worked alongside RAWA for 10 years. Her husband is an Afghan refugee who is one of President Bush's Afghanistan advisers.

Benard constructs a mind-boggling account of the subordination that women faced under brutal regimes and how they struggled to oppose male leaders bent on dehumanizing them. In spots, the book reads like a cloak-and-dagger tale, full of life-endangering moves. But the book mostly has a scholarly feel to it. It takes a by-the-numbers approach to telling RAWA's story and seems a bit rushed, considering it was released in April, only a few months after the Taliban were run out of the country. The Afghan women are only beginning to flirt with freedom, and their story is far from being complete.

Veiled Courage may be the most complete record of their struggle, at least in the West. It offers the first behind-the-scenes look at RAWA, who attempted to create a civil society by establishing literacy classes, employment projects and schools for girls. Americans will be simultaneously shocked and amazed at how women persevered in one of history's most draconian regimes. The story of RAWA's founder, Meena, is particularly gripping. She struggled to get the movement off the ground before she was brutally murdered 15 years ago.

Benard smartly includes plenty of first-person accounts of women who endured the Taliban. And RAWA's work even included Afghan men who didn't like the way their country was headed. "To women ... who might read (this) book, I want to say this: Whatever you have heard about Afghanistan is only a fraction of what we go through,"writes Nooria, a 48-year-old Afghan refugee. "Each one of our days is more bitter than you can even imagine."

Thanks to Veiled Courage, women and men will get a much better appreciation and awareness of what women like Nooria have experienced and the hope they have for a better future.