Ban the Burka

Ban unAustralian Burka

By Virginia Haussegger

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 27 June 2009

I 've seen it elsewhere around the world, but I didn't expect to see it here. Certainly not on a hot summer's afternoon at the Canberra Centre. But there it was. A ghostly figure walking towards me, clad from head to toe in a heavy black niqab, black gloves and dark shoes. She was trailing along behind her husband and four little children.

The sight of this hideously shrouded figure in an Australian shopping mall is confronting and offensive. And it makes me angry, very angry.

I wanted to stop and ask why she had such disrespect for herself and our culture that she would hide her face and body under all that black cloth, designed to render her shapeless and inhuman. But her husband shot me a glance, and I was silenced. Dumbfounded.

I abhor the burka, and the niqab. I hate what it does to women. I am appalled that women are separated from the world in this way. And I am furious that some women will continue to choose to wear it. But then, throughout history, feeble women who are afraid of modernity have always been complicit in their own oppression.

The burka, with its tiny window of mesh over the eyes, and the niqab, with its letter-slit opening, are tools of patriarchy used to subjugate women. This shroud of cloth thrown over women defies freedom. It is a symbol of control. Wearing it signifies an acceptance of segregation of the sexes. The cultures which demand such segregation are societies in which men are considered the natural superiors to women.

The fact that Western, democratic governments allow this garb to be worn in secular societies is evidence that "gender equality" and the "liberation of women" are still just vague aspirations, mouthed with weak intent. Unless of course you're French.

In an historic address on Monday the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, called for an outright ban on this hideous instrument of control. "The burka is not a sign of religion," he said, "it is a sign of enslavement. It is a sign of subservience." His rally cry has been brewing for years, as the French parliament has watched with alarm the growing number of burkas and niqabs appearing in French cities.

The Urban Affairs Minister, Fadela Amara, who is also a passionate advocate for Muslim women's rights, says the ugly shroud is akin to putting a woman in a "tomb". She's called on France to "stop burkas from spreading". It's a tough call, given there are around five million Muslims in France.

The 2004 ban on wearing hijabs at school, or in public offices, was met with furious protests around the country. A ban on the burka has the potential to ignite riots. Sarkozy knows that. And yet he is still determined to push ahead. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd must do the same.

The burka is not yet common here, but it's only a matter of time. Australia is positioned in a region being transformed by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Radical Islam's plan for domination is utterly incompatible with women's equality. Put bluntly, Islamic fundamentalists view Australia, and all Western democracies, as immoral and decadent - because the women are free. Australia must not allow that radical and overt tool of fundamentalism - the burka - to be worn here. It defies our cherished values of equality and freedom.

Wearing the burka - or niqab - in Australia is an aggressive way of saying "I will not integrate into your society, and I care nothing for the cultural mores and social traditions of this country". Instead, the woman wearing it is demonstrating that she would rather submit to gender apartheid than embrace the social norms of this place. The burka is an arrogant display of disrespect to Australia and the Australian way of life.

Covering women like this, and rendering them sexless and shapeless, is apparently to stop men looking at them. It is to ensure the sexual urges of men are not stirred or tempted. It is also a fierce display of proving a man's power over his woman, and his ownership of her. The Koran calls on both men and women to display modesty. Why then don't men wear burkas? Women too are sexual beings, who may also have their urges stirred and tempted by the sight of a man. But of course that doesn't register in societies that view females only as sexual objects and temptresses.

By covering herself in a burka, a woman is relinquishing the right to express herself as a female. She is agreeing to suppress her own sexuality.

For a woman to argue she feels more comfortable hidden beneath her burka, away from the gaze of men, is unacceptable in modern society. Such a claim represents total submission to sexual subordination. That sort of thing might have been understandable - perhaps even forgivable - when women were uneducated and utterly dependent on men for food, shelter and protection. But women must no longer agree to such secondary status. And most certainly, not when they are in Australia.

There is no place here for the burka. Australians must rally to have the burka banned.

Afghanistan's refugees and asylum seekers

Dress code for refugees

By Virginia Haussegger

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 20 June 2009

I will never know, or understand, why I won the passport lottery and Sedique, or Meena, or Obaidullah, or any other would-be refugee lost out. I just happened to be born into one of the safest, cleanest and wealthiest countries on earth - Australia.

Those three happened to be born into one of the most dangerous and deadliest countries in the world - Afghanistan. There, if military battles or tribal warfare don't get you, perhaps drought, poverty and an appalling lack of health care will. Either way, Afghanistan is a hell of a place to live in right now. Which is why so many have fled. One in four of the world's refugees is from Afghanistan. There are nearly three million of them scattered across 69 different asylum countries, including Australia.

Today is World Refugee Day, and therefore a good time to focus on a few simple truths about refugees from war-torn Afghanistan, given they make up the biggest refugee population in the world.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has billed today as being all about "Real People, Real Needs". And the UN Refugee Agency is using the superstar pulling power of Angelina Jolie to plug the message. Given her stratospheric celebrity status, you couldn't get a more "unreal" person to talk about real people. But it works.

Jolie's 30-second video advertisement telling us that "refugees are the most vulnerable people on earth" has already been replayed thousands of times across the United States entertainment media. If you can look past her exceptional beauty - which, admittedly, is pretty hard - Jolie's message about refugees is beautifully simple. "Every day they are fighting to survive. They deserve our respect."

In Australia it's easy to talk about respect and kid ourselves that as a nation we are "respectful" of those who are either disadvantaged or different. But as recent displays of racial hatred against Indians in Melbourne, Sydney and even here in Canberra have shown, we're only a beer or two away from revealing our racist underbelly.

And when it comes to refugees, and those seeking asylum, Australians have proven we're quick to judge, and condemn. Two months ago, when a boat-load of asylum- seekers from Afghanistan was detained off Ashmore Reef - the second boat to attempt illegal entry in a week - the Australian media engaged in debate about how "well- dressed" some Afghan asylum- seekers were. The snide implication was that these desperate people, who risked their lives to try to make it to our shores, were really just untrustworthy frauds. Not needy, persecuted people, but upwardly mobile "queue-jumpers".

This kind of suggestion, and the astounding cultural ignorance it displays, is not new. On this Australia has form. We have long treated asylum-seekers and refugees with cynicism and suspicion. Our policies on detention have been unreasonably tough and void of compassion. And politicians have repeatedly seized on media discussion over illegal entries to whip up racism, and feed our deep- rooted fear of difference. Afghans, in particular, have copped considerable scorn.

Back in 2000, the then premier of Western Australia, Richard Court, spoke about a group of Afghan detainees with unconcealed contempt: "We're not talking about genuine refugees, we're talking about people who are smart alecs." He went on to say they "should be turned around straight away". Back then, anyone fleeing Afghanistan was attempting to escape one of the world's most brutal and undemocratic regimes - the Taliban.

Days before Australia's frenzy over the dress code of asylum-seekers, I returned from a trip to Afghanistan. On my last day in Kabul I spent time with a 33-year-old Afghan called Obaidullah. He works in an orphanage built by the Sydney-based charity Mahboba's Promise. A refugee herself at the age of 11, Mahboba spent years in refugee camps before she made her way to Australia. Since becoming an Australian citizen, she's dedicated her life to helping the widows and orphans of Afghanistan. Obaidullah is one of her tireless foot soldiers.

Before I left, we talked about Australia and Obaidullah revealed that he'd made three attempts to flee Afghanistan and come here. Each dangerous trip in leaky boats ended in near disaster. Some of his fellow passengers died from hunger and exposure when they drifted for days, lost and with no fuel. The closest Obaidullah ever got to Australia - the paradise of his dreams - was Ashmore Reef. There the boat was apprehended and turned back at gunpoint. After three years, 11 days and 20 hours in detention in Indonesia, Obaidullah was sent back to Afghanistan.

Since then the lawlessness and suicide bombings in his neighbourhood have become worse. He still owes more money to people smugglers - despite the failed ventures - than he could ever hope to earn in Afghanistan. And the prospects of peace in his country are hopelessly grim. But Obaidullah says he'll never again try to make it to Australia.

As we politely bade each other goodbye, I noticed his crisply ironed shalwar kameez, with a neat vest on top. Is he just another failed asylum-seeker who's too well dressed? Or a would- be refugee who deserves an apology and our respect?

**

Bad boy Gordon Ramsay

How we love a swine

By Virginia Haussegger

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 13 June 2009

So Gordon Ramsay is a pig. We knew that. He's paid to be. In fact, Ramsay is probably one of the highest-paid pigs on the celebrity circuit right now. And after his most recent piggish act Down Under, he's probably in for a pay rise. He's proven - yet again - that bad behaviour is a ratings-puller.

The public outcry this week over Ramsay calling Tracy Grimshaw a pig and a lesbian reeks of mock indignation. And Ramsay, if he had enough brains, ought to call us on it. But unfortunately he's not that smart. Instead of apologising to Grimshaw, and "anyone else I offended", Ramsay should have told the complaining public to pull its finger out. The faux outrage over his comments is hypocritical in the extreme.

First, let's be clear about what is and isn't an insult here. Being called a pig is an insult. Being called a lesbian isn't. Although Ramsay says he's been misquoted.

"On my children's life, I never ever called Tracy a lesbian," he told a reporter. But sheepishly he admitted that using "innuendos [and] a picture of a pig, was not clever".

The Prime Minister was so incensed by the attack on Grimshaw, a highly respected television presenter, that he called Ramsay "a new form of low-life". The Deputy PM also weighed in, suggesting Ramsay should curb the comments and stick to the kitchen.

Naturally, each instalment to the week-long story caused hits to websites and blogs, and television ratings to shoot up.

It began last weekend, when Ramsay was doing his usual thing in front of a live audience of 3000, at a Melbourne cooking event. Ever cocky and crude, the master chef was in full flight when he put up a rather revolting image of a pig on the screen behind him. With a human-like head and numerous teats, he told the audience it was Tracy Grimshaw, the very woman who had only recently interviewed him on A Current Affair, politely smiling and tolerating his ballsy humour.

As the public got wind of the celebrity spat, which was well stirred by tabloid media coverage, the theme of the TV beauty and the bad-boy-beast took hold. Suddenly it seemed everyone was shocked and horrified that Gordon Ramsay could be so rude to such a pleasant and professional person as Grimshaw. Prominent Australians scoffed, "He's no longer welcome here." Talk-back callers insisted that Ramsay was the real pig in this story. A brute. A boof-head. And so it rolled on. Tut-tut.

But in all the noisy indignation, we have failed to 'fess up to our own complicity. We're pretending we're rather prudish and feigning offence. Just who are we kidding?

Gordon Ramsay is famous because he is obnoxious and offensive. That is his "brand". He doesn't have television executives banging on his door and begging him to sign a contract to appear on their network just because he is a chef. The world is full of great chefs. They want Ramsay because he yells and screams and berates people. He spits into saucepans, he smashes dishes on the floor, throws food at plates and he terrifies his young apprentice underlings, as he bellows in their ear to "shut the f--- up".

Gordon Ramsay is an atrocious bully who seems to get off on his own hideousness. And so too does his drooling audience. They can't get enough of him. In Britain, the United States and of course here in Australia, a Ramsay cooking class will pull thousands, and his television series is watched by millions. Let's be truthful. We like humiliation. We like to watch others berated and belittled. Offence is a kind of modern-day opiate to the TV- watching masses. Reality shows are full of it.

It began years back with The Weakest Link. When it first screened in Australia audiences were mesmerised by the cruelty of Cornelia Frances, as she scorned the "losers" and kicked them off the show with a tart "goodbye". Before long, kids were playing it in school yards. Whoever could be nastiest, got to be the TV star - the host.

Ever since, cruelty and intimidation have become key ingredients in reality shows. From Big Brother to The Biggest Loser, with Ladette to Lady somewhere in the middle, program-makers have zoomed in on a public lust for nasty stuff. We're glued to the box when housemates are picked on, or ostracised, then double-crossed. We revel in the fat and frumpy struggles of others as they parade their naked humiliation on screen. We watch wide-eyed as the hapless and the meek are berated.

It would seem humiliation has become our favourite form of entertainment.

But what kind of sustenance do we get from watching others verbally abused and demeaned? Perhaps it's a fleeting sense of smugness. A whiff of power - when in our own dreary daily lives we in fact feel powerless.

Whatever it is that makes us tune in to bad, bullying behaviour, that dummy Gordon Ramsay has worked it out. And it's making him rich.

**

Afghanistan's RAWA spokeswoman

Brave voice for freedom

By Virginia Haussegger

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 30 May 2009

What a strange place Australia must seem to Shazia Shakib. She arrived in Adelaide on Wednesday, having flown from war-torn Afghanistan, via Pakistan. She's 25 years old and has never been to "the West" before.

By the time this petite, young Afghan stands to face an audience at the University of South Australia, on Thursday night, she looks positively overwhelmed. This is to be her first public speech and the words she's about to say could get her killed back in Afghanistan.

I can't tell you what Shazia looks like because that would betray her identity and place her at risk. But I can tell you what she sounds like. Shazia's voice is soft and small. Yet there is a fierce strength in her words. She means it when she calls the Taliban "poisonous germs", and refers to members of the Afghan Government as "criminal warlords" and "jehadi fundamentalists".

But it's when she gets talking about the United States and NATO occupying forces that Shazia's pitch rises. When I ask about Australia and its involvement in her country, this young revolutionary steadies the nervousness in her voice and remains firm. "Yes, Australia too," she says. "Australia must get out of our country. They are following bad US policy and Australian troops are attacking and bringing suffering to our people. They must go."

They're fighting words, and Shazia knows it. She is here to pick a fight. And now is the time to bring it on.

This November it will be eight years since US troops stormed into Kabul, raised the US flag, and President George W. Bush declared, "Today women are free." It was a grand and pretentious claim, which now looks like nothing but an empty slogan. A cynical bit of political spin to help drag the doubting public over the line, and get broad voter support for the billions of dollars and tens of thousands of troops that would be poured into Afghanistan.

The women of Afghanistan are not free or liberated.

We all know life under the Taliban was atrocious, but to hear Shazia say that Afghanistan's women are now living through a "catastrophe" that is even worse is startling.

Although accurate statistics are difficult to determine in Afghanistan, there is a lot of research on women that indicates record high levels of domestic violence, acid attacks, rapes, forced marriages and self- immolation. The rate of females attempting suicide by burning themselves has never been as high. Shazia puts that down to extreme depression and despair. "Life is too hard for women."

Yes, they are no longer confined to the home, as they were under the Taliban. And, yes, women are permitted to work and study. But a toxic cocktail of poverty, massive unemployment, rampant corruption and a desperate sense of frustration has led to what Shazia says is a major "violation of basic human rights and women's rights that has no parallel in the history of Afghanistan".

With warlords and drug barons now occupying government seats and positions of power, and enjoying immunity from prosecution, thanks to a "national reconciliation law", passed in 2007, the strong have grown stronger and the weak - the women - even weaker.

Shazia is a spokesperson for the clandestine underground movement known as RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. Hated and banned in Afghanistan, RAWA operates through a well-organised network of women throughout Afghanistan and in Pakistan. The group is fiercely anti- fundamentalist, and abhors the use of Islam as an excuse for the continued persecution of women. For the past 30 years it has called for a democratic and secular government in Afghanistan. But it's a call that continues to fall on deaf ears.

Now Shazia and her fellow revolutionaries are feeling particularly pessimistic. "After the US attack on the Taliban back in 2001 and the arrival of Hamid Karzai everyone was hopeful that there would be change," she says. "There was so much hope." But that hope has now turned to deep cynicism. RAWA believes the presence of more than 70,000 troops from more than 40 countries, and the billions of dollars spent, has only driven Afghanistan into the hands of the terrorist groups, including the Taliban.

Shazia isn't alone in arguing that Afghanistan's official ranks have been deeply infiltrated by self- serving corrupt individuals, including Taliban and those who RAWA calls "jehadi fundamentalists": men who are stuck in a misogynist mire. "They do not believe in women's rights," Shazia says. "They have old and ancient ideas about women."

Although the last election in Afghanistan ushered 68 women into parliament, only three of them have ever spoken out strongly in defence of women's rights. Each has received several death threats.

So what does Shazia make of Australia? It's almost too embarrassing to ask. But I do. "There is so much freedom for the people here - we should be like this," she says almost in a whisper. "But no country can grant freedoms or democracy to us. It is the responsibility of our people to bring peace and security to our country."

So what do we do? Just wish them well?

* Shazia Shakib is not her real name

**

Chic's topless chicks

Summernats? Get it off

By Virginia Haussegger

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 23 May 2009

There's a beaut line in the film Annie Hall, when Rob, who's just moved to LA, is taking Alvy and Annie on a car tour of the ritzy Beverly Hills. Rob loves the place and can't stop boasting its charms. "And the women, Max, they're like the women out of Playboy magazine, only they can move their arms and legs."

Annie laughs. But Alvy groans. He comments on the absurd architecture, and its mish-mash of pretentious style.

Fast-forward, and this could be a scene in Canberra, as a bunch of excited blow-ins motor down Northbourne Avenue in early January, here for the National Capital's biggest spectacle of the year - Summernats.

Out there at EPIC the women are also like Playboy Bunnies, but without the ears and the air-brushing. They're a little more earthy, a little more dusty and dirty. Their arms and legs certainly move. Arms go up as tops come off. And those legs strut, stretch and sprawl.

But while Woody Allen's take on bare-breasted bimbos who can walk and talk always makes me laugh, the Summernats real-life versions never do.

It's an odd thing to stand in the crowd watching the Miss Summernats contestants purr to the chanting mob, and listening to the pudgy young boy beside me yell "show us ya tits". It was even odder to hear his mate call out "Ah, ya stink down there". Odd because the women on stage, with the arms and legs that moved, were lapping it up. They were smiling, waving, and smiling some more. An odd response to vicious insults.

Later, backstage, with the crowned winner alongside Miss Second and Third, it was fascinating to learn that the women felt adored. Flapping the sort of eyelashes that would make a drag queen proud, Miss Third told me that all that adoration was good for her self-esteem and "personal development". She was dead serious. "It makes you feel beautiful when everyone is calling out." The fact that they were shouting at her to get her gear off didn't seem to be a problem. Miss Third thought that was "Just all part of it".

And she's right. Lewd, bawdy and bad behaviour is part of Summernats. It's famed for its celebration of topless girls and tit action. Girls who have perhaps never stripped in public before suddenly turn into breast-flashers, goaded by mobs of blokes who trawl the grounds looking for signs of skimpy clothing. The standard greeting is "get it off!". And women do. Repeatedly.

Last year the drunken mob chant of "tits or rubber" got so loud and overbearing that the Miss Summernats parade was halted - for a moment.

For newcomers to Canberra who venture out to Exhibition Park, drawn by the "family fun" publicity, Summernats can be quite a shock. It's rough, tough and dirty. You've got to watch where you walk, and where you look. It may be billed as a "Mecca for the totally committed revhead" but you'll get plenty more than screeching tyres and low-slung cars.

In fact, what you get is a hyped-up mob on heat, dizzy with petrol fumes and sexual tease. Some come for the cars, others for the publicly sanctioned smut fest. All here to have fun in the Canberra sun.

Just how Summernats made its way into the national capital's social events schedule is hard to fathom. Canberrans are proud libertarians. But is endorsing an event like Summernats an expression of liberty verging on stupidity?

This week we heard that Summernats is up for sale. Its popular and hard-working chief, Chic Henry, says he's keen to keep the event in Canberra. And why not? The ACT Government has generously supported the car-fest for years, and watched it pump money back into the local economy.

While Summernats' reputation as a misogynisticMecca has grown, and the crowds swelled, no Canberran has dared stand in the way. Or in judgment.

Perhaps now is the time.

Chieftain Chic knows he's long been on to a good thing here in Canberra. He's well aware that the heady cocktail of hot cars and girls can be a recipe for deep trouble.

This week on his offical blog, Chic thanked his lucky stars that Summernats is in recess right now, given the current media attack on sex- crazed footballers: "Thank goodness we aren't just about to open the gates at this time. The media would be on my case."

He sounds a warning to his patrons. "Boys there are women who will nail us for everything that sounds like the slightest sexist remark or sign of disrespect of women" (sic). Then, reflecting a befuddled morality, Chic makes the following observation: "We have all done stupid stuff in our lives, but we live in dangerous times made worse with the invention of camera phones."

Perhaps for some, the greatest danger in life is getting caught on camera.

In closing, Chic insists, "Summernats cannot be compared". He's right. But it can be cleared out of town.

**

Rugby's homoeroticism

Narcissism and the NRL

By Virginia Haussegger

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 16 May 2009

Rugby league is the most tactile game on Earth. Men fly through the air to belly flop on top of other men. They hug and grab flesh; fling arms around hips; thrust their face against another man's groin. They grunt, pull and poke at each other's bodies. Then nosedive into their opponents' buttocks.

Later, when the play is over, the victors hug and kiss. Big, beefy shoulders lock onto others as they slap backs, and pummel flesh some more. Once inside the club-room most can't wait to strip off their shirts, flex those rippling muscles, well-oiled with sweat, and huddle together to sing, clap and beat out a tuneless tribal chant.

When the slapping and clapping is over, and the group panting has stopped, they'll all take a shower together. Still smiling, some will even urinate together. Then, they preen together.

There's plenty of preening in rugby league. Hair and skin products, even perfume products, rattle around in those big bags. And why not? These men are acutely aware of their star power. They're shiny, strong and sexy. They feel good, and boy do they love to look good.

Then for days after each win, we will hear endless media discussion about groin injuries, shoulder strains and Achilles pain, as the players' body parts are afforded celebrity status. Frankly, I find it embarrassing to make mention of a man's groin, injured or otherwise. But in the context of men's sport, groins are apparently serious public business. Which is odd really, given we're talking about a young man's nether regions.

But I guess that's the point. There really isn't any need for coy privacy when it comes to rugby league players. Those pumped-up bodies are their instrument, and they are fully focused on how every part of it is working, looking and performing.

It's stating the obvious to say that rugby league is intensely physical. However, what's also obvious - but never stated - is how much the game fosters a culture of homoeroticism.

Matthew Johns regrets the group sex that took place with his Cronulla Sharks mates on that fateful February night in New Zealand seven years ago. But it's not the sharing of sex, the nudity, the erections and masturbation in front of one another that he regrets. It's just that the only female at the party - then a 19-year-old girl - has gone public and complained. Now, caught out, Johns regrets the "anguish" and "embarrassment" it has caused his wife and family.

Far from expressing any embarrassment about a group "gang- bang" - with a dozen aroused males - and the homoeroticism implicit in that kind of activity, Johns has defended it. "At no point did she object to what was going on," he insisted this week. His defence has always been that the sex was consensual.

Listening to "Clare" on Monday's Four Corners program, it's abundantly clear to me that while young, drunk and dreadfully foolish, she hated every moment of a situation that quickly spiralled well beyond her control. While the men paraded their nakedness, joked, laughed, drank and took turns at her body, not one of them spoke to her. "I was nothing," she said.

Indeed, that's true. She was incidental to the fun and laughter. This party, where most of the boys dropped their pants, wasn't about the girl. It was about them. Clare says that at one point two of the males were rubbing their penises against her face at the same time, while another was "doing things" elsewhere on her body.

What other code of sport not only enjoys watching each other get aroused and ejaculate, but considers it some kind of sporting right?

While most rugby league players are refusing to talk about the practice of group sex, one unnamed player shot back on Thursday, telling The Sydney Morning Herald that his colleagues were "stunned by [NRL chief] Gallop's hardline stance" against group sex sessions. "We already have so many rules," the nameless player complained. "I don't know how a chief executive can come out and say we can't have group sex if it's consensual."

But the issue of consent seems deeply confounding for some players. The same nameless bloke suggests that being "polite" to the girl after a gang-bang with your mates, and paying for her cab fare home means "you usually don't have any problems".

The NRL clearly has a big problem. But it's known that for years, which is why it introduced gender awareness programs for players over four years ago. The fact that those programs don't seem to be changing the culture isn't a fault of the programs. Rather the fault lies with the code's inability to understand that the game itself fosters a physical narcissism, which for some players may develop into homoerotic tendencies.

A delight in group sex is not new. The ancient Romans were doing it. But why rugby league players want to engage in this kind of sex - when most modern heterosexual men wouldn't dream of doing it - is something the NRL needs to take a hard look at.

An erotic fascination with watching your team mates in the intimate act of sex suggests a fondness that goes well beyond the playing field.

**

Doing it Tough, Kabul style

Doing it Tough, Kabul style

By Virginia Haussegger

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 2 May 2009

I’d never seen such filthy hands. I know it's rude to stare. But I was trying to work out what on earth this wide-eyed little boy had been doing to blacken his hands like that. Just then he caught me staring, and quickly hid his fingers under the folds of his tatty tunic. It was an embarrassing moment for both of us.

His name was Tamin and like many orphan kids in Afghanistan he doesn't know his age. He's probably about eight or nine. I met him a couple of weeks ago, when his widowed mother brought him to Hope House, an orphanage in Kabul run by Australian charity Mahboba's Promise.

In what highlights the primary role of men as income providers, children in Afghanistan are considered destitute orphans if their father is dead, even though they may still have a mother.

Tamin's father was killed two years ago by a bomb blast in Kabul. Since then, he's been supporting his mum and three sisters by working the streets as a shoe-shiner. But business is bad, and they're not coping on his piffling income. His mother is here to ask for money, flour and cooking oil. She says she wishes her girls were boys, so that they too could polish shoes. Suddenly she's overcome by the uselessness of her daughters, and starts gulping back loud tears. Then everyone in the room is crying. Not because we agree that girls are a curse. We're just exhausted by all this misery.

Outside the office door at Hope House there's a long queue of weeping widows. Every day they just keep coming. Covered in dirty blue burquas, they pour out their stories of loss, grief, despair and hunger. Always hunger. Some beg the staff to take their children and keep them, because they can no longer feed them. I watched hopelessly as one woman pushed her tiny, bewildered children into the office, and tried to dash away. An uncle left three kids at the orphanage gate saying, ''You take them, or I'll dump them in the bin.''

This is the war we are not seeing. This is life in Afghanistan.

As Australian troop numbers, deployment, and exit strategies dominate our media headlines, I can only wonder why it is that we rarely talk about the ordinary people at the centre of this war. What about the Afghans? Do we care? Perhaps we can't. Maybe we're suffering sympathy fatigue?

Sadly, it seems the only Afghans getting prime-time media space are those ''queue jumpers''. They may have risked their lives to escape unimaginable trauma, yet with breathtaking stupidity some political commentators suggest these asylum seekers are too well dressed to deserve our sympathy. Perhaps compassion has its own dress code.

The battle against the Taliban has turned more than one million women into widows. Most are illiterate, unskilled and without any means of an income. There are no regular government welfare hand- outs, no Centrelink payments, and there's no Salvation Army.

In Kabul, more and more of these women, with their dazed and hungry little kids, are finding their way to Hope House. There they sit. And wait. And hope.

Over recent weeks the queues have been longer than normal. Word has gone around that Mahboba Rawi is here. ''Mother Mahboba'' as they call her, is visiting from Australia, where she now lives and works like a tyrant to raise money for the orphans and widows of Afghanistan.

Knowing what it's like to be hungry, lost and traumatised, Mahboba has dedicated her life to making a difference to those she left behind. At the age of 11 she fled Afghanistan on foot, and made it to the refugee camps of Pakistan. Marriage eventually brought her to the safety of Australia. But clearly her heart is in her homeland.

Through her Sydney-based charity, Mahboba has raised $2.5million over the past 10 years. Which, in the scheme of things, may not seem like a huge amount. Certainly not after Wednesday's announcement, that the Australian Government will spend more than $1million a week trying to prop up the corrupt and incompetent Afghan army. Nevertheless, with a small amount Mahboba has been able to make big strides.

Her two orphanages in Kabul and her various support programs outside the capital, including a school for 200 girls in the Panjshir Valley, have not only changed lives and saved lives, they have set an example of what is possible.

Just before I left Afghanistan I attended the graduation ceremony of widows from a tailoring course run by Mahboba's Promise. Each widow was given her own sewing machine, material and cutting tools. To see how the women lovingly clutched those parcels was to realise what it must be like to receive a gift for the first time in your life. The faces of gratitude were priceless.

So too was little Tamin's response when Mahboba cleaned his hands, and said there would be no more shoe-shining. She would try and find a sponsor to send him to school. His eyes filled up with tears, and his grubby face started shining.

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