News Flash: The Fiery Suicides of Afghan Women

The New York Times article Of Afghan Wives, a Desperate, Fiery WayOut, written by Alissa J. Rubin, illuminates the distressing situation of many Afghan women.  Often in Afghanistan, women in abusive relationships, who are suffering with mental diseases such as depression, or in other troublesome situations will try and escape their sorrows through a painful suicide.  These women set themselves on fire, hoping to elude life rather than deal with their agonizing reality.  This self-inflicted violence is attributed to each woman’s situations in Afghanistan which often times are situations of domestic violence, poverty, and unhappy, arranged marriages.  Thus, like most violence against women, these are ‘sticky situations.’  The suicide is seen as an escape because there is usually no other alternative route for these women.  These suicides can be attributed to Afghan male attitudes towards power and violence, a lack of other alternative escape routes, and the overall inferior position of women in the Afghan societal structure. 

Male power and ideas of masculinity and dominance in Afghanistan are linked to and can be the catalysts of these ‘fiery suicides.’  Many of the Afghan women who commit these ‘fiery escapes’ are suffering from abusive relationships at home.  About 45% of Afghan women are married before they turn 18.  These marriages are usually arranged and often the girls are given in marriage as compensation for a family debt.  These women are thus often viewed and treated as slaves.  They are condemned to a life of servitude and often, to a life of abuse as well.  This can happen because in an arranged marriage, there is usually no love or sometimes even no prior relationship present before the marriage.  Therefore, the husband and his family will often treat their new ‘family member’ as an inferior and make her feel powerless and worthless.  Abuse often also results from this and can be committed by all family members.  “Violence in the lives of Afghanistan’s women comes from everywhere: from her father or brother, from her husband, from her father-in-law, from her mother-in-law and sister-in-law.”  The Afghan women are seen as instruments for keeping house and producing children.  “Her primary job is to serve her husband’s family.  Outside that world, she is an outcast.”  These women are not given the opportunity to receive educations, to hold jobs, or to make an income.  They are in helpless situations where they are made powerless and ultimately hopeless.  This situation parallels Betty Friedan’s argument in the Feminine Mystique.  The Afghan women could be simplified as dissatisfied housewives who feel isolated and yearn for something more.  These women are silenced, cut off from their families, and have no voice in this patriarchal society.  Their domestic life is their fate.  Unlike with Betty Friedan and American women in the late 1900s, however, these Afghan women cannot rebel against their lifestyles.  “It is shameful to admit to troubles at home.”  Oppressed women are supposed to put on a good face and not complain.  Furthermore, their religion and their society dictate that these women do not have a choice.  They cannot leave these situations or complain about them.  Their abuse is to a degree accepted and celebrated as it is not condemned or deemed wrong by society.  It is generally accepted that men can do whatever they want to their wives.  Their wives are their property.  This ideology is a way to keep men in powerful and dominant positions in society.  The women are given from one man (their father) to another (their husband) as property.  Thus, the women have no say and no rights.  This allows for unchallenged male authority.  Men project their own inadequacies on women in cruel and unusual ways.  They beat, debase, and abuse them in order to prove their own masculinity.  Male entitlement and patriarchal oppression allows dreadful acts such as honor killings and suicide by fire to occur at an astonishing rate.  Thus, these situations are ultimately generated to keep Afghan men in powerful and authoritative positions in society.  Furthermore, with the war in Afghanistan, Afghan men could feel demasculinated or overpowered by American troops.  Thus, in order to reaffirm their manhood and regain a sense of superiority and power, Afghan men overpower and subjugate women to whatever they please.

In these situations, Afghan women turn to suicide because they believe it to be their only chance of escape from agonizing lives.  These women believe they have no other possible ‘escape routes.’  Similar to other situations of domestic violence, it is extremely hard to get out of a violent relationship.  Often these women live in poverty and thus do not have the financial capacity to leave their spouse.  Also, if they have children, they need money in order to leave safely with their children and still be able to provide housing and food.  These women have to keep their children safe which can often be improbable if they left their spouse.  Furthermore, many times the abusive spouse makes the abused spouse dependent on him.  In Afghan society, it is extremely frowned upon for a woman to leave her husband and return to her own family.  She also is often forbidden from seeing her own immediate family once she moves into her husband’s house.  Thus, she becomes dependent on her husband as she is cut off from any outside support and family.  Furthermore, most of these women are not allowed an income.  Thus, they are extremely dependent monetarily on their husbands and ultimately cannot leave the relationship due to this dependency and reliance.  In the Islamic country of Afghanistan, it is generally interpreted from the Qur’an that men have the power of life and death over their wives.  Thus, religious literature and principles can be construed to dictate that these women cannot leave their husbands or, if they do, they deserve to be heavily punished or killed.  Social stigma also keeps these women in these appalling relationships.  In Afghanistan, women who leave their husbands are seen as tarnished or ‘marked.’  “Returned runaways are often shot or stabbed in honor killings because the families fear they have spent time unchaperoned with a man.  Women and girls are stoned to death.  Those who burn themselves but survive are often relegated to grinding Cinderella existences while their husbands marry other, untainted women.”  Often, burn cases will be “homicides masquerading as suicides.”  Several cases have been documented where “women were beaten by their husbands or in-laws, lost consciousness and awoke in the hospital to find themselves burned because they had been shoved in an oven or set on fire.”  These women live in constant fear and apprehension.  They have no control over their lives or their situations.  If they try to leave and make a better life for themselves, they could be killed or marked as a tainted, fouled woman.  These Afghan women are trapped in unfortunate situations of which there seems to be no escape except for death.

These situations are accepted and almost conventional in Afghan society for appalling reasons.  Women are viewed as subservient; an inferior gender.  Society by and large believes that these women are supposed to do exactly as men say, no questions asked.  These women are given at young ages in arranged marriages and are supposed to accept and even be thankful for this life.  They are put in extreme situations where they are belittled, beaten, and abused by their in-laws for years.  They are not supposed to complain and cannot easily escape to new realities or lives because Afghan women have severely limited options.  Furthermore, as previously stated, their faith and religion can be interpreted to ordain that they follow this lifestyle.  In the Qur’an, it states in Sura 4:34 “men have authority over women because God has made one superior to the other, and because men spend their wealth to maintain them.  Good women are obedient.  They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them.  As for those among you who fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.”  One could infer that Islam preaches that violence towards noncompliant women is the appropriate punishment.  Honor killings are carried out with an astonishing frequency.  These killings occur when a woman has been disobedient or has sexually misbehaved and they are carried out by male family members who usually avoid sentencing or penalties.  Killers who are found guilty typically receive only a couple months in jail and are regarded as champions or heroes.  Honor killings include murders of women who have been raped and thus ‘tarnished’ even though the sexual act was forced upon them.  There have also been documented scenarios of girls killed because they went for walks without asking their father’s permission.  These women have absolutely no rights or respect in society.  Anything they do without male permission is penalized.  These women are surrounded by a massive ‘birdcage.’  They are valued only for their ‘slave labor,’ sex, and as progenitors of children.  They are treated as property and until attitudes change, ‘fiery suicides’ will continue to occur with a frightening frequency and an even more frightening societal acceptance. 

The fiery suicides of Afghan women are appalling and sickening.  These women feel as if their lives are so miserable and painful that their only escape is to set themselves on fire.  Women are forced into these situations due to the superior attitude of men, their lack of alternative escapes, and their own position in society.  Change can only occur if Afghan views on female equality and decency change.  However, it has become an extremely accepted and established belief that women can and should be treated with disdain and violence.  Thus, to change this custom and ideology, the youth has to be educated on gender equality.  Change has to start from the bottom up.