Haris Hosseini - 2019 Mitra Scholar

2018-19 Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient Unveiled: The Appropriation of Afghan Women in the War on Terror Haris Hosseini

Unveiled: The Appropriation of Afghan Women in the War on Terror

Haris Hosseini 2019 Mitra Family Scholar Mentors: Ms. Andrea Milius, Ms. Susan Smith, Mr. Joshua Martinez April 12, 2019

Hosseini 2 In January of 2002, photojournalist Steve McCurry and a team from National Geographic arrived in Pakistan with a single mission: “to search for the girl with the green eyes,” as declared by the cover story published in April of the same year.1 Afghanistan was once again at the forefront of the American consciousness: only four months before, on September 11th, the World Trade Center had been attacked; a month later, the United States-led global war on terror began with an invasion of Afghanistan in search of the attack’s masterminds. All along, a conversation brewed across America, from classrooms to Congress, on the subject of Afghan women; their suffering, their plight, their liberation.

The girl McCurry and his team sought was the “Afghan girl,” the subject of a 1984 National Geographic portrait by McCurry that catapulted him into photojournalistic stardom.

The portrait was deemed “arguably the most iconic photograph of all time.”2 For seventeen years, the girl’s identity remained unknown to the millions who saw her face in magazines and galleries; that is, until McCurry returned to Pakistan in 2002. Once there, finding her proved difficult: McCurry’s team spoke to hundreds of individuals in the refugee camp of Nasir Bagh, located in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where he had photographed her years before. They were met with well-meaning but unhelpful locals who were unable to locate her.3 Finally, the team met a man claiming to be the girl’s former classmate, who offered to find her.

1

Cathy Newman, "A Life Revealed," National Geographic, April 2002, accessed December 1, 2018.

Jake Wallis Simons, "The Story behind the World's Most Famous Photograph," CNN, last modified December 2, 2016, accessed December 1, 2018.

2

3

Simons, "The Story," CNN.

Hosseini 3 His reaching the girl’s village in Afghanistan required “a six-hour drive and three-hour hike across a border that swallows lives,” and three days passed before she arrived.4 When, at last, the girl walked into the team’s room, McCurry was instantly certain it was her.5 The “girl with green eyes” was now a grown woman in her late twenties — her precise age was uncertain, explains the author of the National Geographic cover story, because “stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist.”6 Her skin “look[ed] like leather . . . the geometry of her jaw [had] softened,” but her eyes retained the same depth and distinctiveness as they did in the 1980s.7 An ophthalmologist brought by the Geographic analyzed the woman’s iris patterns and eye freckles to confirm that it was, indeed, her.8 The Afghan Girl had been found, and her name was Sharbat Gula.

The ensuing April cover story emphasized the sheer bleakness of Gula’s life. Her parents were killed in a Soviet bombing when she was only six. During her subsequent escape from Afghanistan, she hid in caves and walked through snowy mountains, begging for blankets to keep warm. Eventually, she had four children, one of whom died in infancy. According to her brother, Gula “ha[d] never known a happy day.” It is not hard to see why; her tale was tragic, set in the backdrop of a Soviet invasion and the subsequent Taliban regime. When asked whether she had ever heard of or seen McCurry’s portrait of her, Gula said that she had not. She had assumed the role of the West’s most recognizable Afghan for seventeen years without ever knowing her

4

Newman, “A Life.”

5

Newman.

6

Newman.

7

Newman.

8

Newman.

Hosseini 4 own epic cultural significance. Nevertheless, McCurry photographed a “bewildered” Gula in the long-awaited, inevitable follow-up portraits.9 She was veiled in some, and unveiled in others.10 In April 2002, Gula’s story ran in the Geographic.11 On the cover, she can be seen, covered head to toe, holding up the portrait of her younger self, the contrast obvious. Under the image, a single word: found.

Figure 1. The 1985 “Afghan Girl” cover (left) and the 2002 “Afghan Girl” cover (right), Steve McCurry, National Geographic.

Much like Geographic found Gula, the early war on terror helped many Americans find Afghan women. The war breathed life into the Afghan woman’s story; suddenly, she found herself on magazine covers, in newspaper headlines, and on national radio addresses by then First Lady Laura Bush.

9

Newman, “A Life.”

10

Newman.

11

Newman.

Hosseini 5 12

McCurry’s urgent return to Pakistan and Afghanistan only four months after 9/11 to revive the

Afghan Girl’s story is emblematic of the shift in American attitudes towards Afghan women during the early stages of the war on terror. The sudden interest he and his team took in returning to the region — re-photographing Gula, re-interviewing her, asking for her name, offering her economic aid, and recounting her life’s undeniable tragedies — was not unlike the interest Americans nationwide took in Afghan women. This newfound interest was largely due to efforts by the Bush administration to further the story of Afghan women in the wake of the September 11th attacks; efforts which, in turn, led to depictions in the media of Afghan women as the helpless, burka-clad, rescue-ready victims of an oppressive Taliban regime. Together, the Bush administration and the media — encompassing, in this paper, print media (The New York Times) and visual media (Reuters) — narrativized Afghan women’s plight as a talking point, even when it meant the omission of critical historical context. Thus, as the war on terror began, Afghan women’s liberation was chosen by American media and government alike as a means to reframe, justify, and garner support for the war on terror, by rendering it “also a fight for the dignity and rights of women.”13 This paper will first, juxtapose the Bush administration’s public diplomacy from 2001 - 2002 with prior United States foreign policy regarding Afghan women, and second, examine the extent to which New York Times articles and Reuters photographs relied on Orientalist depictions of Afghan women to propagate the Bush administration’s narrative.

Kim Berry, "The Symbolic Use of Afghan Women in the War on Terror," Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 27, no. 2 (2003): 137.

12

13

Berry, 138.

Hosseini 6 The United States’ Relationship with Afghan Women Before 9/11 The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 precipitated decades of American involvement in Afghanistan’s affairs. At the time, the invasion deeply concerned the United States, who considered it an act of hostile aggression by their foremost Cold War enemy. In the years following, the United States decided to counter the invasion by funneling between four to five billion dollars of military aid into Afghanistan to combat the Soviet Union, an amount quickly matched by Saudi Arabia and other European countries.14 The bulk of this aid went straight to the most extreme Islamist group in the country, known both for their fundamentalist understandings of Islam and staunch opposition to the Soviets: the Mujahideen, an Arabic word for those who pursue jihad against non-Muslim forces.15 Suddenly, Islamic fundamentalists, who had never previously held any real power in Afghanistan, had access to over ten billion dollars in international funding and a clear enemy to fight; a political landscape which “created the material and ideological conditions for the eventual domination of the Islamists in Afghan politics.”16 For nearly a decade following, the Mujahideen fought the Soviets and, eventually, forced their withdrawal in 1989.17 The Afghanistan of the early 1990s was one of feuding tribes, civil war, and lawlessness, in no small part due to the fact that “the pipeline of U.S. military aid to the Mujahideen was never replaced by a pipeline of international humanitarian aid that could

Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 17.

14

15

Rashid, Taliban: Militant, 16.

16

Berry, "The Symbolic," 139.

17

Rashid, Taliban: Militant, 22.

Hosseini 7 have been an inducement for the warlords to make peace and rebuild the country.”18 Out of the chaos, a new group was born and rose to power in 1994: the Taliban.

According to Professor Kim Berry of Humboldt State University, the Taliban aspired for Afghanistan to be an Islamic republic in its purest, strictest form. To realize this, they imposed a harsh and unforgiving brand of Islam onto Afghanistan’s inhabitants; one not unlike the Saudi-born Wahhabism, described by scholars as an ultraconservative, fundamentalist interpretation of the faith.19 The removal of women from public life was an essential part of this doctrine, and the Taliban diligently saw to its implementation. To be sure, women were not the Taliban’s only victims, but they found themselves disproportionately targeted by the Taliban’s cruelty. Women were banned from going to school, studying, working, speaking publicly, or being involved in politics.20 They were not to access healthcare delivered by a male doctor, and were not to interact with men outside their family.21 Perhaps most famously, women were banned from showing skin, and had to wear a burka, a full-body veil, to ward off temptation.22 The punishments for these transgressions were brutal: if a woman was anywhere outside her home without a male chaperone, she could be beaten on sight by a Taliban officer.23 Showing skin meant certain flogging, and adultery, the greatest crime of all, meant death by stoning.24 The 18

19

Rashid, Taliban: Militant, 176.

Berry, "The Symbolic," 139.

"Women in Afghanistan: The Back Story," Amnesty International, last modified November 25, 2014, accessed January 21, 2019.

20

21

"Women in Afghanistan," Amnesty International.

22

"Women in Afghanistan," Amnesty International.

23

"Women in Afghanistan," Amnesty International.

24

"Women in Afghanistan," Amnesty International.

Hosseini 8 Taliban’s name quickly became globally synonymous with the systemic repression of Afghan women.

One would have expected the United States, which deemed itself a champion of women’s rights and equality, to have recognized its mistake in allowing the ascension of such a group, and to have punished the Taliban once its methods of operation revealed themselves to be totally antithetical to Western values. Instead, United States policy for much of the 1990s was one of non-engagement.25 The United States government remained silent when, in 1995, the Taliban forcibly removed thousands of girls from school in Kabul.26 Again, in October 1996, they remained silent when the Taliban had a woman’s thumb removed for wearing nail varnish.27 And they remained silent in December 1996, when 225 women in Kabul were seized and lashed on their legs and backs for violating their dress code.28 Not until October 1999 (three years after the United Nations, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, and Save the Children had each individually condemned the Taliban’s treatment of Afghan women) did U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright officially speak out, albeit succinctly, against the Taliban, declaring that “we [the U.S.] are speaking up on behalf of the women and girls of Afghanistan, who have been victimised by all factions in their country's bitter civil war.”29

25

Berry, "The Symbolic," 139.

26

Berry, 139.

Michael Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind: Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, and the Holy War, rev. ed. (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 159.

27

28

Rosemarie Skaine, The Women of Afghanistan under the Taliban (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002), 145.

Madeleine Albright, "Albright Warns Taliban on Women," BBC News, October 6, 1999, accessed January 21, 2019.

29

Hosseini 9 Many argue that the United States’ years-long silence during the Taliban regime was, in fact, strategic. For one, the Taliban’s dominion over Afghanistan united the nation in opposition to Iran, a sworn enemy of the United States, offering a regional counter force more robust than a nation of “feuding warlords.”30 Moreover, a strong, centralized Taliban regime set the perfect stage for the construction of a pipeline by Texas-based oil company Unocal, which would deliver highly-sought natural gas from Afghanistan to Asian markets while avoiding Iran, a project impossible in an Afghanistan of disjointed factions and feuds.31 In 1998, Dick Cheney, then-CEO of Texas-based oil company Halliburton, justified this type of diplomacy by offering that, “we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go . . . we go where the business is.”32 As posited by Berry, the United States stayed quiet about the Taliban’s routine abuse of women throughout the 1990s because it meant geopolitical advantage in a decades-long feud with Iran, and the construction of a highly lucrative pipeline.33 Simply put, the Taliban was where the business was.

Everything changed, however, on September 11th, 2001. Within a month, President George W. Bush announced that the United States had invaded Afghanistan in search of the terrorists who had masterminded the attack on the World Trade Center. No sooner had American boots touched ground in Kabul, than First Lady Laura Bush addressed the nation during her husband’s weekly presidential radio address on November 17, 2001. So began the

30

Berry, "The Symbolic," 140.

Seth Stevenson, "Is the Afghan War All about an Oil Pipeline?," Slate, December 6, 2001, accessed January 21, 2019.

31

32

Stevenson, "Is the Afghan.”

33

Berry, "The Symbolic," 140.

Hosseini 10 Bush administration’s public diplomacy campaign, which demonstrated a sudden and newfound interest in the rights, safety, and humanity of women in Afghanistan, an issue the United States chose to overlook for nearly a decade prior.

The Bush Administration’s Use of Afghan Women in Public Diplomacy On November 17, 2001, in what The New York Times deemed a part of an “unusual international offensive to publicize the plight of women in Afghanistan,” Laura Bush became the only First Lady ever to take over the presidential radio address.34 In her address, Mrs. Bush drew a plain and important equivalence: that “the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”35 With those few words, Mrs. Bush made clear that in the eyes of the Bush administration, the “war on terror” was also a “war for women,” and she was not alone: her radio address was only the opening act in a two week-long media blitz to educate Americans about the horrific plight of Afghan women.36 The mastermind of the media offensive was presidential adviser Karen P. Hughes (who shared a close relationship with the President) among other “high-ranking women at the Pentagon, State Department, and White House.”37 In the following week, Hughes instructed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to address the plight of Afghan women in interviews, briefings, and press appearances.38

Elisabeth Bumiller, "First Lady to Speak about Afghan Women," The New York Times, November 16, 2001, accessed January 21, 2019.

34

"Radio Address by Mrs. Laura W. Bush, Crawford, TX, November 17, 2001," audio file, George W. Bush Presidential Center, February 1, 2013, accessed January 21, 2019.

35

36

Bumiller, "First Lady.”

37

Bumiller, "First Lady.”

38

Bumiller, "First Lady.”

Hosseini 11 Ensuing public statements from high-ranking officials in the administration followed an eerily similar structure and pattern, one identical to the First Lady’s address: first, an acknowledgement of the Taliban’s brutality against women; second, a declaration of military victory against a retreating Taliban and a celebration of the women who were able once more to roam the streets, unveiled; and finally, an appeal to Americans to maintain support for the war on terror, given its new humanitarian dimension. Secretary Powell, for example, during a November 19 press briefing (only two days after the First Lady’s radio address) stated that “denied education, denied health care, denied the opportunity to work and feed their families, denied the most basic forms of self-expression, the women of Afghanistan were made prisoners in their own country,” then subsequently illustrated “what a pleasure it was for [him] in the newspaper this morning to see [a] woman come out with all of the children she had secretly been teaching over all those years, at such great personal risk,” before finally urging Americans to “come together as an international community to feed the people of Afghanistan with such desperate need.”39 Secretary Rumsfeld, too, followed this formula: he first mentioned that the Taliban “brutally enforced restrictive dress codes and even beat women for the crime of laughing in public,” but that American military victories had “served to free women from this oppression,” before imploring that Americans “maintain their resolve in the fight against terrorism.”40 The point is not that President Bush’s highest-ranking cabinet secretaries hired the same speechwriters, but that the narrative put forth by the Bush administration was united and simple: that Afghan

Colin L. Powell, "Afghan Women," address, November 19, 2001, U.S. Department of State Archive, last modified November 19, 2001, accessed January 21, 2019.

39

Donald Rumsfeld, "Women's Rights a Priority; Humanitarian Aid Improves" (address, Department of Defense, November 19, 2001).

40

Hosseini 12 women were abused by the Taliban for many years, that American soldiers were liberating them, and that (most importantly) the American public’s continued support for the war was vital. Each of these assertions require further scrutiny.

While true, the assertion that the Taliban was abusing and had been abusing Afghan women for years prior lacked historical context. Namely, it ignored the United States’ role in “nurturing the environment in which the Taliban grew and thrived.”41 It was a strange reversal, after all, to swear opposition to a group whose very existence and power was thanks, in large part, to U.S. political support and monetary aid in the 1980s. One could argue that without the billions of dollars in American funding, the Mujahideen would never have been effectively mobilized. Had the United States refrained from funneling five billion dollars to a group they knew to be fundamentalist in nature to defeat a Cold War enemy, the Taliban may very well never have come to be. Furthermore, in 1994, once the Taliban had gained power, the United States quietly allowed its ascent and domination over Afghanistan: a lucrative oil pipeline and a hostile Iran made it strategically advantageous for the United States to look the other way, even as women in Kabul were being beaten for showing skin.42 In her address, Laura Bush asserted that “long before the current war began, the Taliban and its terrorist allies were making the lives of women in Afghanistan miserable.”43 She was right, technically. But her sentence excluded the crucial fact that “long before the current war began,” the United States hadn’t cared enough to speak up about Afghan women’s rights until immediately after September 11th, when it

41

Berry, "The Symbolic," 141.

42

Berry, "The Symbolic," 141.

43

"Radio Address," audio file.

Hosseini 13 became politically strategic to care about. The notion of an America long-horrified and disgusted by the Taliban’s abuses of women was little more than fiction; the crimes that outraged the administration in November 2001 were the same crimes they had ignored just two months prior.44 The Taliban’s treatment of women hadn’t changed for nearly a decade. But American interests had changed, and with them, American attitudes toward Afghan women.

The secondary assertion that American soldiers were liberating Afghan women also omitted the context of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan during the October 2001 invasion. The picture painted by administration officials was one of a celebratory Afghanistan, where unveiled women stood in the sun, free for the first time in decades.45 The truth, however, was far more complicated, and hardly as rosy. For one, the Northern Alliance (the name given to the Afghan military allies aided by the United States during the October 2001 invasion) had a documented history of grave human rights abuses, and held many of the same anti-women, fundamentalist, Islamist views as the Taliban, the very group they were working so hard to defeat.46 Consequently, Afghan women openly expressed that they continued to experience a sense of danger, insecurity, and invisibility, even as American media outlets celebrated their liberation and as Laura Bush spoke of how “the people of Afghanistan, especially women, are rejoicing.”47 A report from the Human Rights Watch in May 2002 details the continued insecurity of Afghan women, some of whom were “still reluctant to abandon their chadari

44

Berry, "The Symbolic," 141.

45

"Radio Address," audio file.

46

Berry, "The Symbolic," 141.

47

"Radio Address," audio file.

Hosseini 14 [burka] or to travel unaccompanied and independently in the city.”48 To be sure, Afghan women did express that the retreat of the Taliban was a welcome development, but most qualified any happiness with their persistent fear of persecution.49 One Afghan woman, a forty-five year old school administrator, shared that “after the Taliban, there is still abuse of the rights of all people and of women. I am free inside the house but not outside in the city. All women still wear the chadari because of this.”50 Thus, any notion on the part of the Bush administration of an Afghanistan where women were free, jubilant, and unveiled was more than just an oversimplification of the situation on the ground; it was a fabrication.

The final facet of the administration’s narrative suggested that the American public’s continued support for the war on terror was a vital prerequisite for Afghan women’s freedom, therein demonstrating the true motive of the media blitz, and, by extension, the entire narrative itself. Sameena Nazir, the coordinator of the Women's Rights Advocacy Program at the International Human Rights Law Group, put it best after the First Lady’s address, when she offered: “We welcome this initiative as a good sign that the United States administration has decided to pay attention to the demands of Afghan women leaders. But it’s about time, and I regret that it has not happened in the past.''51 The official purpose of the administration’s public diplomacy in November 2001 was, as stated by the Department of Defense, “to bang the drum in support of Afghan women who have been brutally repressed in Taliban-held Afghanistan.”52 If Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper: Taking Cover; Women in Post-Taliban Afghanistan, 6, May 2002, accessed January 22, 2019.

48

49

Human Rights, 7.

50

Human Rights, 7.

51

Bumiller, "First Lady.”

52

Rumsfeld, "Women's Rights."

Hosseini 15 that were true, however, why had it taken so long to elicit support for Afghan women from the U.S.? One has to question, given the historical context of the preceding decade and complexity of the 2001 on-the-ground situation in Afghanistan, whether the media blitz was intended, rather, to further public support for the war on terror. It was easier, after all, to support a humanitarian intervention for an oppressed people than it was to support a vague political war against “terror.”

It’s hard to say exactly whether the Bush administration genuinely empathized with the women of Afghanistan and meant to aid them, or whether they co-opted their plight as a means to justify and garner support for the global war on terror. In all likelihood, both were true; after all, advocating for Afghanistan’s women was both a strategic and moral stance. However, given the evidence, there is little doubt that the primary goal for the public diplomacy between 2001 - 2002 was to justify and garner support for the war, even while humanitarian concern for Afghan women was a welcome, collateral benefit.

Visual and Print Media: Developing the Narrative In 1990, W. Lance Bennett, a professor of political science at the University of Washington, developed his “indexing theory,” which was later considered to be “perhaps the most important foundational political communication theory in contemporary research on media coverage of foreign policy.”53 Bennett’s theory stated that the “range of debate on public affairs appearing in the news is indexed to the range of debate present in mainstream government discourse.”54 In essence, Bennett argued that media coverage of foreign affairs is

Sean Aday, "The US Media, Foreign Policy, and Public Support for War," The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication, July 2014, 317, accessed February 2, 2019.

53

Jill A. Edy, "Indexing Theory," in Encyclopedia of Political Communication, ed. Lynda Lee Kaid and Christina Holtz Bacha (SAGE Publications, 2008), 330, last modified 2008, accessed February 2, 2019.

54

Hosseini 16 “indexed” to include the commentary, analysis, and interests of governmental elites — those who work in Congress and the White House — due to their constitutionally-derived authority to debate and legislate foreign policy.55 As a result, the media often communicates the narratives outlined by those in power as truth, even in the absence of legitimacy. Accordingly, those with elite authority become more than the legislators or executives of our nation; they become the storytellers and framers of contemporary issues, the media their proxy. And their narratives are widely spread, after all, in the words of Bernard Cohen, the mass media is “stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.”56 Bennett’s indexing theory can be applied to the relationship between the American news media of 2001 and 2002, limited to The New York Times and Reuters, and the Bush administration elites. In the following section, the media’s role between 2001 and 2002 in conveying the contemporary story of Afghan women will be scrutinized so as to determine how closely its narrative coalesced with the Bush administration’s.

Examples of print journalism (The New York Times articles) and visual media (Reuters photographs) reveal the Orientalism rooted in post-9/11 American coverage of Afghan women and its accordance with the Bush administration’s agenda of garnering public support for the war on terror.

Orientalism In simple terms, Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, born in his 1975 work of the same name, argues that the collective Western understanding of the Middle East, South Asia and Islam are skewed by the interests of European colonial powers.57 Said posits that the West’s history of

55

Aday, "The US Media," 317.

56

Aday, 317.

57

Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House US, 2014), 21.

Hosseini 17 colonizing Eastern lands, and its subsequent cultural construction of an Arab world inferior and in service of Western people, leads to implicit biases in Western understandings of Eastern people, whether Arab or South Asian.58 Thus, the Orientalist view implicitly misunderstands the East, leaving depictions of Eastern people prone to appropriation, exaggeration, or distortion.

Such depictions range in nature, and become gendered when applied to Arab women; typical Orientalist stereotypes often exoticize Arab women and vilify Arab men, so that Eastern people can be beautiful, dangerous, or both, but are always inferior in relation to the West and its cultures.59 Said’s theory will be applied in the following section to further contextualize American understandings of Afghan women, specifically during the clash of civilizations caused by the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan.

The New York Times The New York Times is amongst the most reputable newspapers of all time: it has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other journalistic institution in the world.60 Its coverage of Afghan women during the early war on terror, however, was prone to clichés in its depiction of the Afghan woman’s plight. Quantitative data and excerpted examples of Times articles after September 11th, 2001 reveal a journalistic tendency to rely on Orientalist tropes, among which include the singular focus on the burka and the promotion of a “white savior” narrative of Afghan women’s liberation by American forces. Together, these assumption-based depictions

58

Said, Orientalism, 21.

59

Said, Orientalism, 21.

"The New York Times Wins 3 Pulitzers, Bringing Its Total Wins to 125," The New York Times, April 16, 2018, accessed April 4, 2019.

60

Hosseini 18 served to propagate the Bush administration’s narrative of the contemporary Afghan woman’s situation, ignoring past or present context and complexities.

Belaboring the Burka A brief analysis by the author of The Times Machine, the New York Times’ official online archive of all its issues from 1851 to 2002, reveals fascinating insight into the newspaper’s interest in Afghan women pre and post-9/11. Between September 18, 1851 to September 11, 2001, over the span of 150 years, the word “burka” appeared in 127 New York Times articles; only 16 of them were about Afghan women.61 From September 11, 2001 to December 31, 2002, over the span of just 15 months, the word “burka” appeared in 122 additional articles in the paper, its frequency nearly eclipsing 150 years of journalism.62 Of course, the burka had been worn by Afghan women for many years prior to September 11, 2001, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.63 In fact, the burka’s origins date back to pre-Islamic times in Afghanistan.64 Saher Amer, author of What is Veiling?, explains that well before the Qur’an existed, the burka was worn by women of high social class as a sign of status.65 Thus, the burka had never specifically been a religious or Islamic garment, and any such definitions had to be imposed onto it. Indeed, in 1996, the Taliban did just that: they were the first government to ever require women to wear the burka on the grounds of religion in Afghanistan.66

61

"TimesMachine," The New York Times Times Machine, accessed February 2, 2019.

62

"TimesMachine," The New York Times Times Machine.

63

Sahar Amer, What Is Veiling? (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 120.

64

Amer, 120.

65

Amer, 120.

66

Amer, 120.

Hosseini 19 Before the Taliban ascent to power, the burka was not required, though some women, typically in regional villages and small towns outside of Kabul, made the personal choice to wear it.67 It could be expected, then, for the Times’ usage of the word burka to have increased substantially after the Taliban overtook Kabul in 1996, and even in the few years before, since that era truly marked a dark turn in the burka’s history. Strangely, however, from January 1, 1990 to September 2001, the word “burka” (or “burqa”) appeared in only 35 articles.68 Only after 9/11 did “burka” begin to appear consistently and frequently: 122 articles in the span of fifteen months, in fact.69 Thus, one conclusion could be that the Times’ interest in the burka was catalyzed not by its imposition onto Afghan women in 1996 but rather by the terrorist attacks of September 2001, American troops’ subsequent presence in Afghanistan, and the frequent mentions of the garment in the Bush administration’s public diplomacy.

Titles of articles published in the newspaper between September 11, 2001 and the end of 2002 include, but are not limited to: “The Rifle and the Veil,”70 “The Veiled Resource,71 “The Fear Beneath the Burka,”72 “Behind the Veil,”73 “After the Veil, a Makeover

67

Amer, 120.

68

"TimesMachine," The New York Times Times Machine.

69

"TimesMachine," The New York Times Times Machine.

Jan Goodwin and Jessica Neuwirth, "The Rifle and the Veil," The New York Times, October 21, 2001, accessed February 2, 2019.

70

71

Nicholas D. Kristof, "The Veiled Resource," The New York Times, accessed February 2, 2019.

72

Rina Amiri, "The Fear beneath the Burka," The New York Times, March 20, 2002, accessed February 3, 2019.

73

Isabel Hilton, "Behind the Veil," The New York Times, accessed February 3, 2019.

Hosseini 20 Rush,”74 “The Burkas Come Off, But Equality Falters At the Edge of Kabul,”75 and “The Women, Veils Shed, Demonstrate.”76 The burka frenzy was a national phenomenon: burkas became the easy, de-facto symbol of the war on terror, and were used to illustrate both Afghan women’s years-long oppression and imminent liberation.

Unveiling, specifically, became an irresistible metaphor for American journalists. It was used in each of the aforementioned statements by Laura Bush and high-ranking Bush administration officials, with multiple allusions to Afghan women walking, uncovered, in the streets and under the sun once again.77 This usage is evident, too, in The New York Times’ coverage. The titles, it turns out, were only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the recurrent use of the burka motif. A December 2001 article illustrates a woman’s unveiling as follows: “she strode up the steps tentatively at first, her body covered from face to foot by blue cotton. As she neared the door, she flipped the cloth back over her head, revealing round cheeks, dark ringlets of hair and the searching brown eyes of a student.”78 Another article, titled “The Veiled Resource,” mentions in passing that “every woman on the streets in Kabul . . . looks like a shrouded ghost.”79 A third, written in December 2001 by Amy Waldman, offers that “it can be

David M. Halbfinger, "After the Veil, a Makeover Rush," The New York Times, September 1, 2002, accessed February 3, 2019.

74

Amy Waldman, "The Burkas Come Off, but Equality Falters at the Edge of Kabul," The New York Times, September 11, 2002, accessed February 3, 2019.

75

David Rohde, "The Women, Veils Shed, Demonstrate," The New York Times, November 21, 2002, accessed February 3, 2019.

76

77

Bumiller, "First Lady.”

David Rohde, "After Years Away from Campus, a Joyful Return," The New York Times, December 2, 2001, accessed February 3, 2019.

78

79

Kristof, "The Veiled.”

Hosseini 21 difficult to feel compassion for a beggar in a burka, because you see only a hand jabbing at you.”

80

She writes that it is difficult to interview a woman in a burka, because you are “faced with an

impenetrable wall of pale blue polyester where a human being should be . . . sobs can pass through the wall, just as a voice can, and often does, tell of grief.”81 The burka was ubiquitous, and wherever an Afghan woman was mentioned, whether in newsrooms, classrooms, briefing rooms, or living rooms, so too was her burka. The problem is not necessarily that the Times articles mentioned the burka, or criticized its omnipresence in Afghanistan: the problem is that they only criticized the burka, and only considered the burka in assessing whether Afghan women were, as the Bush administration claimed, “finally free.”82 The burka, once the American public’s prevalent metric for their oppression, quickly became the metric for Afghan women’s liberation: veiled equaled oppressed, and unveiled equaled free. Of course, this equation was tragically facile in the face of a political situation as complex as that of Afghan women in 2001. The singular focus on the burka meant little else was addressed in regards to Afghan women’s safety, security, and peace: their access to quality health care and shelter, their education, and their economic stability, each ignored in favor of an irresistible Orientalist motif. Perhaps no article is a better example of this than the one published on September 2, 2002, titled “After the Veil, a Makeover Rush,” which follows the story of Debbie Rodriguez, a hairdresser from Michigan who volunteered in Afghanistan on a relief mission.

80

Waldman, "The Burkas.”

81

Waldman, "The Burkas.”

82

Bumiller, "First Lady.”

Hosseini 22 Ms. Rodriguez, a hairdresser . . . quickly found that the need for medicine, dental fillings and counseling was nothing next to the pent-up demand for a makeover. As burkas come off and salons closed by the Taliban reopen, one consequence of two decades of war and repression is becoming poignantly clear: Afghan women have held onto their desire to look beautiful, but they face a woeful shortage of beauticians. Also, they have no one to teach them and nowhere to lay their hands on a decent comb, let alone the panoply of gels, rinses, powders, liners and colors that spill from the shelves of the average American drugstore.83 The article exoticizes Afghan women and offers a deeply Orientalist suggestion: that Afghan women’s primary concern — in the midst of wartime — was beauty, despite reports from organizations like the Human Rights Watch which delineated that Afghan women continued to fear for their security long after the Taliban had retreated.84 Indeed, the disproportionate attention given to Afghan women’s unveiling frequently meant that attention was not given to that which mattered most: Afghan women’s safety and freedom. Makeovers were likely far down the list of Afghan women’s concerns in September 2002, and yet newspapers as reputable as the i peddled a rosy narrative not unlike the Bush Administration’s of women liberated, unveiled, beautified. This tendency to oversimplify the on-the-ground situation of Afghan women was not the only similarity between Times articles and the Bush administration's aforementioned three-point narrative. Consider the editorial published on November 24, 2001, one week after the First Lady’s address, titled

83

Halbfinger, "After the Veil.”

84

Human Rights, 7.

Hosseini 23 “Liberating the Women of Afghanistan,” which begins with phrases that, at first glance, easily could have been copied and pasted from the First Lady’s address: America did not go to war in Afghanistan so that women there could once again feel the sun on their faces, but the reclaimed freedom of Afghan women is a collateral benefit that Americans can celebrate. After five years of Taliban rule, women in Afghanistan are uncovering their faces, looking for jobs, walking happily with female friends on the street and even hosting a news show on Afghan television.85 The correlations between the two statements, and, by extension, between the media’s narrative and the administration’s narrative, call into mind once again Bennett’s theory of journalistic indexing. How else could American media and government, two seemingly separate entities, churn out such parallel stories with such similar emphases?

Damsels in Distress: Protection Scenarios The additional problem with the veiling frenzy, as posited by Vera Mackie of the University of Wollongong, Australia, is what unveiling symbolizes. She articulates this best in her analysis of how the “icon of the veiled woman” in Afghanistan is ultimately a gendered, Orientalist symbol meant to juxtapose first world masculinity with third world femininity: The icon of the veiled woman stands for the people, the land, and the nation-state of Afghanistan. The deployment of a female figure as a metonym for the nation, however, means that any narratives of the invasion of the nation, attacks on the nation, defeat of the nation, and what has been termed the “liberation” of the nation, are also expressed in terms of gendered metaphors. The veiled woman stands in for the mystery of the Middle

85

"Liberating the Women of Afghanistan," The New York Times, November 24, 2001, accessed February 3, 2019.

Hosseini 24 East; the desire to unveil the woman stands in for the desire to achieve full knowledge of her nation. [He] who reveals the face of the unveiled woman is a metaphor of the ‘saving’ of the nation from the oppressive Taliban regime by the armed forces of the United States and its allies. Such representations also, then, construct first world masculinity in opposition to third world femininity.86 Thus, the rampant allusions to “unveiling” Afghan women, which occupied many discussions concerning Afghan women in the U.S. during this period, were inherently Orientalist and propagated a narrative by which Afghan women needed to be unveiled, and thus saved, by the white man. The veil and its ubiquity, after all, was really only part of the scenario. The Bush administration’s narrative often began with the decades-long oppression of Afghan women, and the image of the burka embodied those years perfectly. The real story, however, the climax of articles and press briefings alike, was who had made unveiling possible. According to that narrative, that hero was, without fail, the United States.

In their article, “Unveiling Imperialism: Media, Gender, and the War on Afghanistan,” Carol A. Stabile and Deepa Kumar argue that one narrative tradition dominated wartime American coverage of Afghan women in 2001 and 2002: the Orientalist “protection scenario.”87 In such a scenario, women, “like the penetrable, feminized territory of the nationstate, must be protected from the predatory advances of some real or imaginary enemy.”88 This scenario is established in a cast of three crucial characters: the threat, the victim, and the hero.89

Vera Mackie, "The 'Afghan Girls': Media Representation and Frames of War," University of Wollongong Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 26, no. 1 (2012): 7, accessed August 29, 2018.

86

Carol A. Stabile and Deepa Kumar, "Unveiling Imperialism: Media, Gender, and the War on Afghanistan," Media, Culture, and Society 27, no. 5 (September 1, 2005): 770, accessed February 3, 2019.

87

88

Stabile and Kumar, "Unveiling Imperialism," 770.

Hosseini 25 Stabile and Kumar elaborate that examples of this scenario, in which women are utilized as the pawns of geo-political war, are plentiful throughout history.90 For example, in 17th-century America, the genocide of Native Americans was justified by the fact that Native American men had been kidnapping white women.91 The 19th century colonization of Egypt by British forces was justified by the claim that British men would protect Muslim women from barbaric, villainous Muslim men.92 In 2001, history repeated itself: Afghan women became the victims of the protection scenario, the Taliban their villain, and the United States — its military, its government, its media — their hero.

The scenario’s usage was prevalent in coverage of the war. A USA Today article from November 16th, 2001 depicted a moment of Afghan women’s liberati in the following terms: “Six of them shed the enveloping burqas that the Taliban force[d] all women to wear, threw them on the fire and lit the way for their rescuers.”93 Or an article by Time Magazine ten days later, which quoted the “grinning” commander of an armed unit after the Taliban’s retreat: “I knew we'd beat the Talibs, but I never thought it would be this easy.”94 The same article enthuses that the American defeat of the Taliban meant that “female faces, shy and bright,

89

Stabile and Kumar, 770.

90

Stabile and Kumar, 770.

91

Stabile and Kumar, 770.

92

Stabile and Kumar, 770.

93 J. Kelly and P. Wiseman, "Woman's Escape Was Straight out of a Movie," USA Today, November 16, 2001, accessed February 3, 2019.

94

Nancy Gibbs, "Blood and Joy," TIME Magazine, November 26, 2001, accessed February 3, 2019.

Hosseini 26 emerged from the dark cellars of house arrest . . . a teenage girl with her veil off laughing and waving at the crowds could at last see without a scrim . . . women walked the streets without chaperones; they looked up and felt the sun on their skin.”95 The author finishes by proclaiming that the American liberation of Afghan women was “the greatest pageant of mass liberation since the fight for suffrage.”96 The protection scenario relied also on the vilification of the Taliban. Furthermore, the protection scenario required the deifying and glorifying of U.S. military forces as the hero of the story. This, however, was another mischaracterization. Because, after all, it was U.S. military forces who, upon their heroic entrance into Afghanistan, decimated aid routes (which reached vulnerable women and children), risked thousands of civilian lives, and nearly precipitated a famine with an unrelenting bombing campaign targeted at the Taliban.97 The U.S. military “steadfastly refused to grant even a temporary halt in the bombing campaign in order to allow essential winter stores of emergency food aid to be delivered to regions of the country that remain cut off throughout the winter by snow-covered mountain passes.”98 To be clear, it is not that there were not also benefits to the American assault on the Taliban. The albeit brief retreat of the Taliban was a welcome occurrence, for Afghan men and women alike, and would not have been possible without American intervention. But the means by which U.S.

95

Gibbs. “Blood and Joy.”

96

Gibbs. “Blood and Joy.”

97

Berry, "The Symbolic," 145.

98

Berry, "The Symbolic," 145.

Hosseini 27 military accomplished such a goal, and the motivations for accomplishing it, signify something far more complex than the all-American, “good guy vs. bad guy” heroism found in the era’s newspaper articles.

Visual Media Accompanying many of the aforementioned Times articles were images of Afghan women taken by photojournalists stationed in Afghanistan between September 11th and the end of 2002. Since photographic technology first became widely available to news agencies after World War II, photographs have played an essential role in narrativizing and visualizing wars for the general public, and the war on terror was no different.99 Michael Griffin, author of Picturing America’s “War on Terrorism” in Afghanistan and Iraq, asserts that in the past half-century, “purveyors of journalism have increasingly relied upon the camera to promote news presentations as unproblematic reflections of events occurring beyond viewers’ direct experience.”100 Thus, photographs themselves are assumed to be more neutral and authentic, not as vulnerable to media’s many biases. However, Griffin elaborates that during the early war on terror, “despite claims of ‘live’ coverage . . . news-magazine photographs primarily serve[d] established narrative themes within official discourse: published photographs most often offer[ed] prompts for prevailing government versions of events and rarely contribute[d] independent, new or unique visual information.”101 In essence, the photographs taken of Afghan women by photojournalists stationed in Afghanistan often told a very similar story to the one

Michael Griffin, "Picturing America's 'War on Terror' in Afghanistan and Iraq," Journalism 5, no. 4 (2004): 381, accessed February 3, 2019.

99

100

101

Griffin, "Picturing America's," 1.

Griffin, "Picturing America's," 1.

Hosseini 28 constructed nearly 7,000 miles away in the White House; despite their unmatched access and proximity to Afghan women, photojournalists told their story in a manner similar to print journalists stationed in the United States, by placing disproportionate emphasis on the burka, falling into clichéd Orientalist tropes, and depicting Afghan women in a manner that systematically denied them agency. A quantitative analysis of the Reuters photographic archive and a visual analysis of two visual tropes reveal, together, the correlations between the Bush administration’s narrative and the story being told by photojournalists in Afghanistan.

Reuters Many of the photojournalists stationed in Afghanistan reported for Reuters, an international news agency based in over 200 locations around the world.102 Reuters is considered one of the world’s big four news agencies. Together, these four agencies contribute 90% of the world’s foreign news printed by newspapers.103 Reuters’ massive influence, extensive department of 600 photojournalists, and accessible, thorough online archive merit its focus in this section as an ideal platform for international wartime photojournalistic work.

The Reuters online photographic archive features over 13 million images dating back to 1896.104 A quantitative analysis features a number of comparisons, most of which were retrieved using the archive’s “date adjustment” and Boolean “keyword” mechanisms. For example, the archive makes possible the search of all photos tagged with the keyword “Afghanistan” taken by Reuters photographers between September 11th, 2001 and December 31st, 2002.

102

"About Us," Reuters Pictures, accessed February 6, 2019.

103

“About Us," Reuters Pictures.

104

About Us," Reuters Pictures.

Hosseini 29

Figure 2. By the end of 2002, 836 photographs tagged “Afghan women� could be found in the Reuters database. Before September 11th, 2001, this number never exceeded 164 images. (Hosseini, Feb 2019)

The year 1996, during which the Taliban took formal control of Kabul and began the imposition of its oppressive, anti-woman regime, saw an uptick in the quantity of images of Afghan women by Reuters photographers, though by marginal increments; by 1998, only 52 images of Afghan women existed in the archive, even though two years of Taliban rule had passed. The events of September 11th, however, catalyzed a new level of photographic coverage.

Within a mere fifteen months, 917 images tagged with the aforementioned keywords could be found in the archive, marking a 600% increase since pre-9/11 photo frequency. Moreover, this

Hosseini 30 number excludes any images of Afghan women which were not tagged by archival organizers with the aforementioned keywords; in all likelihood, additional images exist.

Figure 3. An analysis of 100 photographs chosen randomly from the Reuters archive tagged “Afghan women,” “Afghanistan women,” or “Afghan woman” between September 11th, 2001 and December 31st, 2002 reveal the prevalence of images of Afghan women in domestic, maternal positions or as beneficiaries of aid. (Hosseini, Feb. 2019)

Additionally, as evidenced by the sample tested in fig. 3, the photos of Afghan women between September 11th, 2001 and the end of 2002 typically depicted Afghan women with their children or as beneficiaries of humanitarian aid, while photographs in which Afghan women exhibited autonomy and agency, outside the sphere of domesticity — i.e. during schooling or work — appeared far less frequently. Popular, too, were images whose central composition was the burka, despite reports of Afghan women’s mass unveiling. To be sure, the disproportionate

Hosseini 31 focus on the burka (noted in fig. 2 and 3) was prevalent in photojournalistic work outside of Reuters. The unveiling of the Afghan girl was the entire premise of Steve McCurry’s aforementioned April 2002 National Geographic cover story, in which two images were juxtaposed side by side: one of Gula veiled, the other unveiled.105 Newsweek ran an end-of-year pictorial review of its content in 2001, and found that images of covered women were the 10th-most popular type of image pertaining to the war on terror, listed just below images of firefighters at the World Trade Center and of President George W. Bush.106 In December 2001, Time magazine ran a special report titled “Lifting the Veil” whose cover (see fig. 4) featured a light-skinned woman in a hijab, and, underneath, a byline that promised “the shocking story of how the Taliban brutalized the women of Afghanistan,” as if the Taliban’s brutality was breaking news and hadn’t punctuated the previous decade.107 The cover story inside, written by Richard Lacayo, references Afghan women’s being “trapped” in burkas, which he likens to “body bags for the living.”108

105

Newman, "A Life.”

106

Griffin, "Picturing America's," 390.

107

Stanmeyer, Lifting the Veil.

108

Richard Lacayo, "About Face," TIME Magazine, December 3, 2001, accessed February 3, 2019.

Hosseini 32

Figure 4. The December 3rd, 2001 Time Magazine cover, titled “Lifting the Veil,� John Stanmeyer, Time Magazine.109

Multiple visual tropes found in work by Reuters photojournalists stationed in Afghanistan between 9/11 and the end of 2002 further reveal the tendency to depict Afghan women in positions lacking agency. The first such trope is the image of the Afghan women, usually begging, with her hand outstretched toward a male figure for aid. The following four images were each taken by different Reuters photographers on separate days. Nonetheless, they share eerily similar compositions and tell nearly identical stories; that of the women in need of aid.

109

John Stanmeyer, Lifting the Veil, December 3, 2001, photograph, accessed February 3, 2019.

Hosseini 33

Figure 5. A December 2001 photo of an Afghan woman “plead[ing] with the guard to let her receive food at a World Food Programme WFP distribution point in Kabul's orphanage.� Damir Sagolj, Reuters.

Figure 6. A September 2002 image showing an Afghan woman begging for money as her child lies on the street. Romeo Ranoco, Reuters.

Hosseini 34

Figure 7. An Afghan woman “leans to take money from a driver on November 15, 2002 as she begs on one of Kabul’s streets.” Radu Sigheti, Reuters.

Figure 8. An Afghan woman, surrounded by children, “reaches out for her arm to be marked to get donated coal for heating and cooking at a camp for displaced people.” Claro Cortes, Reuters.

The trope of the outstretched hand reveals two narrative assumptions: the first is that Afghan women, above all, were in need of aid. The images confirm the notion established by the Bush administration that Afghan women were not only awaiting, but eager to accept — hence the outstretched hand — the aid of external forces. The other assumption relies on the

Hosseini 35 aforementioned allusions to gendered Orientalism. Rather than depict the exchange as one of an independent mother providing for her child, the photographers opted instead to emphasize the exchange between the woman and man who is helping her. This is consistent with the Bush administration’s narrative, which omitted any allusions to Afghan women as autonomous caregivers or workers in favor of highlighting Afghan women’s desperation in the face of oppression. They were, before anything else, the oppressed, their hands outstretched in anticipation of whatever the viewer of the photograph imagines, most likely the promised “liberation” of Afghan women. Most striking about the previous four images, however, is that they were taken in entirely different contexts, in different months, by different photographers.

Barring any unlikely cooperation, the photographers in question — Cortes, Sigheti, Ranoco, and Sagolj — each interpreted a similar visual scene and decided, individually, not just to click, but to frame the image in such a way that establishes a clear power structure between the female helped and the male helper. The dominant narrative established in the United States had likely already implanted biases into the global media, as Bennett’s theory of indexing suggests, despite the journalists’ presumed detachment from government.

Fig. 3 illustrates that the use of children in images of Afghan women was popular, most likely to cast Afghan women in a maternal light and emphasize their role as caregivers. A second trope, however, furthers the role of children in the images. These images typically feature an uncovered child as the focus of the photograph, accompanied by multiple veiled Afghan women in the periphery or background, so as to suggest a certain hope for Afghanistan’s youth, and also so as to equate being unveiled with being young, modern, and hopeful. The following four

Hosseini 36 photographs are the work of three photojournalists on different dates (fig. 9 and fig. 11 were taken by the same photojournalist), yet they convey a similar theme.

Figure 9. “An Afghan girl joins refugee women as they queue to receive blankets distributed by the London-based Salvation Army in Kabul, December 2, 2002.” Radu Sigheti, Reuters.

Figure 9. “Afghan women wait for free food to be distributed in central Kabul, November 25, 2001.” Damir Sagolj, Reuters.

Hosseini 37

Figure 10. “Afghan women wait for food in a refugee camp across the Pakistani border, in Jallozai.”

Reuters.

Figure 10. “An Afghan girl peers from between women wearing burqas as they wait for humanitarian aid to be distributed by United Nations workers in Kabul, December 1, 2001.” Damir Sagolj, Reuters.

The juxtaposition of a veiled mother and her unveiled child evokes a contrast between past and present, oppression and liberation, and Eastern and Western beauty ideals. In this interpretation, the images are exercises in Orientalism, specifically in their implicit suggestion

Hosseini 38 that to be considered a beacon of hope by an American reader or viewer, the child must be visually digestible for the American reader, and thus must be unveiled. It is as if the child’s hopeful future is dependent on their embracing of what the West deems acceptable for them.

Notably, this interpretation is not randomly contrived or baseless in the ways in which the photographs were actually used. Consider the headline that accompanied the image in fig. 10 after The New York Times bought and featured it in their December 2nd, 2001 issue: “Hope for the Future, Blunted By a Hard Past,” suggesting the veiled women in the periphery are little more than testaments to a painful, difficult past yet unaltered by the heroism of the U.S. military.110 Or consider the following words by highly-regarded Reuters photojournalist Yannis Behrakis, which appeared in a 2002 Reuters photographic book titled (predictably) Lifting the Veil about a photograph he took of a young, unveiled Afghan woman dressed in red and white surrounded by a “sea of burqas”: It was November 14, a day after the Taliban fled Kabul. I was walking through the city in the early morning looking for signs of change. A group of about 100 women waited outside a bakery for food coupons. It was an extraordinary moment. I saw an unveiled face of a woman in a sea of burqas and shot a single frame. Then I put the camera down and stared at her. She had a mysterious smile; she looked back at me with a brave and resolute face. The morning sun seemed gently to stroke her cheek for the first time in five years. I was suddenly overcome by a feeling that I was witnessing colossal change.

Her face sent back to me a wave of hope for the people of Afghanistan.111

Barbara Crossette, "The World: Afghanistan's Women; Hope for the Future, Blunted by a Hard Past," The New York Times, December 2, 2001, accessed April 7, 2019.

110

Hosseini 39 As explained by Vera Mackie in her article, The 'Afghan Girls': Media Representations and Frames of War, the image of the unveiled woman in a sea of veiled women became a “convention of the genre” of Orientalism during this time frame.112 Furthermore, Behrakis’ words transform a random woman he came across — who, for all he knew, could very well have not yet been of age to wear a veil — into an icon, onto whom he projects his own fantasies and desires of the sun “stroking her cheek” and the “colossal change” he felt he’d just witnessed.113 The woman, dressed in red and white and surrounded by blue burqas, evokes images of the American flag and unknowingly becomes a symbol of American patriotism and, by extension, the war on terror.114 Such is the mechanism by which Orientalism functions, in subconsciously distorting and exaggerating the object of attention (in this case, an Afghan woman walking on a street) so as to ascribe her a certain narrative consistent with Western norms and ideals. The woman unwittingly becomes a symbol, one easily manipulated for political purposes and easily appropriated into the narratives of those in power.

So, too, did Sharbat Gula become a symbol in 1985, as did countless other Afghan women after the September 11th attacks, whether they were written about by columnists at The New York Times or photographed by Reuters photojournalists or discovered by teams from National Geographic. Together, print and visual media developed the narrative set in place by

111

Yannis Behrakis, Free to Lift the Veil, 2001, in Afghanistan: Lifting the Veil (n.p., 2002), 196.

112

Mackie, "The 'Afghan," 6.

113

Mackie, "The 'Afghan," 6.

114

Mackie, "The 'Afghan," 6.

Hosseini 40 the Bush administration, offering up-close reports and images the likes of which the administration could not produce, and ultimately telling the same story of veiled damsels in distress, the heroism of the U.S. military, and the liberation of a people long-oppressed.

The commencement of the U.S. war on terror catalyzed a national fascination with Afghan women. Suddenly, a people so accustomed to being ignored became the subject of innumerable profiles and portraits, even championed by the First Lady herself. The Bush administration’s decision to frame the war on terror as a fight “for the rights and dignity of women” meant that American media, too, would frame the war as a fight for the rights of Afghan women.115 the narrative of the Afghan women was cyclically perpetuated, begun by an administration dealing with the trauma of the September 11 attacks and continued by a media deeply drawn to all that Afghan women symbolized in the war on terror. In fairness, the two entities did make Afghan women relevant on a global scale, focusing unprecedented attention on their years-long plight and paving the way for decades of humanitarian support by NGOs.116 However, the year following the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan saw the U.S. government and media utilize Afghan women as pawns in a larger game. Afghan women’s plight was co-opted by the Bush administration to rally support for the war on terror, as evidenced by the dozens of speeches and interviews in which administration officials began, suddenly, to tell Afghan women’s stories to the American public. In turn, the American print and visual media found in Afghan woman a suitable victim on which American consumers of news could focus. Orientalist depictions of Afghan women, as 115

"Radio Address," audio file.

116

Berry, "The Symbolic," 155.

Hosseini 41 found in articles by The New York Times and photographs by Reuters, overemphasized the burka, glorified the U.S. military, and relied on facile tropes to tell their story. Furthermore, they upheld an Orientalist protection scenario in which the heroes were American, the villains Afghan men, and the victims Afghan women.117 Together, the government and media’s coalescing narratives, supposedly meant to better Afghan women’s lives, told a far too simple story of Afghan women’s complicated plight.

A more thorough and considerate approach to improving the plight of Afghan women would have been multifaceted. First, the U.S. could have avoided endorsing Afghan military groups with histories of human rights abuses. The U.S. partnership with the Northern Alliance meant that upon U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, those left in charge would be just as hostile to advancing women’s rights as were the Taliban.118 Human Rights Watch reports from the era reveal that Afghan women’s concerns during the early war on terror were complex and numerous, not at all singularly focused on the burka (as politician’s speeches and news articles had one believe).119 Energy spent on facilitating Afghan women’s “unveiling” and “liberation” would have been better spent initiating tangible, authentic change.120 Establishing co-ed primary schools, renovating clean water and sanitation systems, securing stable access to food and water,

117

Stabile and Kumar, "Unveiling Imperialism," 770.

118

Berry, "The Symbolic," 157.

119

Human Rights, 7.

120

Berry, "The Symbolic," 156.

Hosseini 42 reestablishing female health facilities, and implementing anti-discrimination policy would have offered far greater value to Afghan women.121 Afghan women deserve to be heard on the international stage, free from the motives of Western governments or the caricaturizations by Western media. Their desires for security, economic stability, and access to food, shelter, and medical care must be addressed. Despite their continuing plight, Afghan women maintain hope for a better future, however distant it may be, contingent on their voices being heard. Such are the hopes of Malalai Joya, an Afghan women’s rights activist and politician who was recognized by the BBC as the “bravest woman in the world.”122 In 2008, Joya communicated the weary hopefulness felt by Afghan women in her book, Raising My Voice: “I say to those who would eliminate my voice . . . you can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.”123

121

Berry, "The Symbolic," 141.

Malalai Joya and Derrick O'Keefe, Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of the Afghan Woman Who Dares to Speak Out (Macmillan 2010), 218, accessed April 11, 2019.

122

Joya and O'Keefe, Raising My Voice.

123

Hosseini 43 Bibliography "About Us." Reuters Pictures. Accessed February 6, 2019. https://agency.reuters.com/en/products-services/products/news-photos.html.

This page gives background information on Reuters' "Pictures" Department, including statistics of how many journalists currently work for Reuters Pictures, how many photographs are featured in their archive, and how to navigate their archive.

Aday, Sean. "The US Media, Foreign Policy, and Public Support for War." The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication, July 2014, 316-25. Accessed February 2, 2019. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199793471.001.0001/oxf ordhb-9780199793471-e-025?print=pdf.

Sean Aday is an Associate Professor of Media, Public Affairs, and International Affairs at The George Washington University, where he also works as the Director of the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication and Director of the Global Communication MA program. He has been involved in training projects on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. This article provides valuable insight in delineating the relationship between the United States government and the United States media as they both affect public support for war efforts. The section utilized in this paper focuses on Michael Bennett's indexing theory of journalism, wherein news agencies limit the range of their analysis and coverage to fit the range of discourse among governmental elites in Congress and the White House.

Albright, Madeleine. "Albright Warns Taliban on Women." BBC News, October 6, 1999.

Accessed January 21, 2019. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/466739.stm.

This brief article appeared in the BBC News in October of 1999, after then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright addressed the California Governor's Conference for Women.

The article does not elaborate on the delicate geopolitical situation of the moment, but instead focuses on summarizing the Secretary's remarks, which condemned the Taliban's treatment of women. The article was written amidst a brief flurry of public support for Afghan women, a cause which included the endorsements of celebrities and politicians alike.

Amer, Sahar. What Is Veiling? Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Sahar Amer worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when she wrote What Is Veiling? Afterwards, she moved to the University of Sydney (Australia), where she is currently working as a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies and as Chair of the Department. This book focuses on the cultural background behind veiling in Islamicmajority countries, specifically in Iran and Afghanistan. In the section utilized in this paper, Amer explains in detail the non-religious origins of the burka. She elaborates that the garment was, before anything else, a cultural commodity meant to suggest status or wealth in pre-Islamic times. Her book adequately separates the burka's history from the religious discourse it often becomes enmeshed in.

Hosseini 44 Amiri, Rina. "The Fear beneath the Burka." The New York Times, March 20, 2002. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/20/opinion/the-fear-beneath-the-burka.html. Rini Amiri is has contributed to MSNBC, PBS, CNN, and CSPAN and has been published pieces on Middle East socio-political matters in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Al-Jazeera America and the Los Angeles Times. This brief article from March 2002 speaks to the insecurity of women in Afghanistan after the Taliban's retreat in 2002.

Amiri, a native of Afghanistan, makes clear that the absence of the burka in Afghanistan did not equate the absence of fear on the part of Afghan women. This was a distinct departure from most other New York Times articles, which heavily relied on the symbolism of the burka and celebrated its "removal" as a "liberation" for Afghan women.

Behrakis, Yannis. “Free to Lift the Veil.” 2001. In Afghanistan: Lifting the Veil. Reuters, 2002.

Yannis Behrakis’ section in this Reuters coffee-table photographic book includes commentary on some of his most recognizable photos. Behrakis offers context, setting, and background for his images, and divulges to the reader or viewer what was going through his mind as he took the photographs. This proved helpful in understanding motivations and biases of photographers, specifically those stationed in foreign nations during wartime.

Berry, Kim. "The Symbolic Use of Afghan Women in the War on Terror." Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 27, no. 2 (2003): 137-60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23524156. Kim Berry is a professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This source deconstructs the public diplomacy of the Bush administration during the early war on terror as it pertained to Afghan women. She includes analysis of what she deems "omissions from the past" and "omissions from the present," essentially contextualizing the administration's policy with a decade of contradictory policy. Her analysis delineates the Taliban's early relationship with the United States, the United States' interest in an oil pipeline in Afghanistan, and the on-the-ground situation during the American invasion of Afghanistan during October 2001. Most helpful, however, are her juxtapositions of 1990s foreign policy with 2001 Bush-era foreign policy, specifically as it relates to Laura Bush's public advocacy for Afghan women.

Bohn, Lauren. "'We're All Handcuffed in This Country.' Why Afghanistan Is Still the Worst Place in the World to Be a Woman." Time Magazine, December 8, 2018. Accessed April 11, 2019. http://time.com/5472411/afghanistan-women-justice-war/.

This article follows the story of Khadija, an Afghan woman who tried to burn herself to death in 2018. The author focuses on the contrast between the promises made to Afghan women in the early 2000s and the reality they face today. Her portrait of Khadija (which includes profiles of her family members and husband) and of Afghan women in general, calls into question why their plight has remained unaltered so many years after U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

Bumiller, Elisabeth. "First Lady to Speak about Afghan Women." The New York Times, November 16, 2001. Accessed January 21, 2019.

Hosseini 45 https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/us/a-nation-challenged-shaping-opinion-first-lady-t o-speak-about-afghan-women.html.

Elisabeth Bumiller is an author and journalist who is currently the Washington bureau chief for The New York Times. This article briefly announced the First Lady's November 17th, 2001 radio announcement on the subject of Afghan women. Bumiller includes analysis of the Bush administration's upcoming media blitz, which was intended to increase the American public's awareness of the plight of Afghan women. She also helpfully quotes multiple female Afghan advocates and NGO heads, who vocally appreciated the administration's gestures but also wondered why they hadn't come sooner.

Cortes, Claro. An Afghan woman reaches out for her arm to be marked to get donated coal for heating and cooking at a camp for displaced people in Mazar-i-Sharif February 7, 2002.

Photograph. Reuters Pictures. February 8, 2002. Accessed February 6, 2019.

Crossette, Barbara. "The World: Afghanistan's Women; Hope for the Future, Blunted by a Hard Past." The New York Times, December 2, 2001. Accessed April 7, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/weekinreview/the-world-afghanistan-s-women-hop e-for-the-future-blunted-by-a-hard-past.html.

This article, written by a staff writer two months into the American invasion of Afghanistan, contrasts Afghan women's past with their future. The author expresses hope for Afghan women's futures, citing newfound liberties and opportunities, but qualifies them with an understanding of the hardship and difficulties endured over the previous decade.

Edy, Jill A. "Indexing Theory." In Encyclopedia of Political Communication, edited by Lynda Lee Kaid and Christina Holtz Bacha, 330. SAGE Publications, 2008. Last modified 2008.

Accessed February 2, 2019. http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/politicalcommunication/n295.xml.

Gibbs, Nancy. "Blood and Joy." Time Magazine, November 26, 2001. Accessed February 3, 2019. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001286,00.html. Nancy Reid Gibbs is an American essayist and former managing editor for TIME magazine.

This article paints a brief but descriptive picture of what "liberation" looked like for Afghan people, men and women alike, after the Taliban's retreat in 2001. Gibbs describes the scene in Afghanistan: one of women shedding their burkas, men shaving their beards, and children playing in the streets once more. She neglects to complicate the narrative with any details of the difficult situation on the ground in Afghanistan, opting instead to quote American soldiers and village leaders in expressing their mutual jubilee.

Goodwin, Jan, and Jessica Neuwirth. "The Rifle and the Veil." The New York Times, October 21, 2001. Accessed February 2, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/19/opinion/the-rifle-and-the-veil.html.

Jan Goodwin is a journalist who has written for publications including O, The Oprah Magazine and Harper's Bazaar. Jessica Neuwirth, meanwhile, worked for Amnesty International and the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs before becoming head of an

Hosseini 46 organization dedicated to the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. This article begins by delineating the plight of Afghan women, but quickly turns to providing historical context for the Taliban's occupation of Afghanistan. They elaborate that the oppression of women in Afghanistan was no new phenomenon with the Taliban's arrival - years prior had seen the systematic denial of women's rights, a situation which eventually reached its crescendo in 1996 upon the Taliban's overtaking Kabul.

Griffin, Michael. "Picturing America's 'War on Terror' in Afghanistan and Iraq." Journalism 5, no. 4 (2004): 381-402. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884904044201.

Michael Griffin is Acting Chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. In this article, he offers a comparative analysis of American news photo coverage during three US military invasions into Asia: the 1991 Gulf War, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Griffin ultimately reaches the conclusion that despite claims of live coverage, the visual media of the three wars ultimately did little more than confirm the narratives of those in power -- namely, governmental elites -- and further contextualize, through visual evidence, opinions, commentaries, and analyses of those who instigated the war.

Halbfinger, David M. "After the Veil, a Makeover Rush." The New York Times, September 1, 2002. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/01/style/after-the-veil-a-makeover-rush.html.

This article, written by the Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, describes the shortage of beauty products in Afghanistan, and elaborates on the absence of a beauty industry in the nation in the wake of the Taliban's retreat. Beauty is described as a newfound interest for Afghan women, who, for the first time in years, were allowed to leave the house when, how, and with whoever they pleased. Halbfinger describes the work of American volunteer groups who offered their "beauty advice" and help to Afghan women, to whom makeup and vanity were alien notions.

Hilton, Isabel. "Behind the Veil." The New York Times. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/books/behind-the-veil.html.

Isabel Hilton is a UK-based journalist and broadcaster. This article excerpts and summarizes parts of the book Zoya's Story, which tells the story of a young girl's childhood under the Taliban regime.

Hosseini, Haris. Keyword searches, Reuters Photo Archive, from 9/11/01 to 12/31/02. Chart.

February 2, 2019. Digital file.

———. Pictorial Themes of Afghan Women, Reuters Archive, 9/11/01-12/31/02. Chart.

February 2, 2019. Digital file.

Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper: Taking Cover; Women in Post-Taliban Afghanistan. May 2002. Accessed January 22, 2019. https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/wrd/afghan-women-2k2.pdf.

Hosseini 47 This report by the Human Rights Watch describes in great depth the persistent fears and insecurities of Afghan women in the wake of the Taliban's retreat. The report is divided into sections which analyze sexual violence against Afghan women, their continued sense of insecurity, and, finally, recommendations towards ameliorating their on-the-ground situation. The report provides a stark contrast to the rosy pictures painted by American government and media alike of a nation liberated whose women were rejoicing in the streets, celebrating the Taliban's defeat. Specifically, it mentions that many Afghan women continued to refuse to remove their chadaris and feared to leave their homes, even as international reports claimed they were finally free.

Joya, Malalai, and Derrick O'Keefe. Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of the Afghan Woman Who Dares to Speak Out. Macmillan 2010. Accessed April 11, 2019.

This memoir is written by an Afghan activist, writer, and former politician. Joya served as a member of Parliament in Afghanistan's National Assembly from 2005 to 2007, but was ousted after publicly criticizing warlords who held power in the country. She was described as the "bravest woman in the world" by the BBC, and has written two books.

This memoir documents her experiences as a woman in Afghan politics.

Kelly, J., and P. Wiseman. "Woman's Escape Was Straight out of a Movie." USA Today, November 16, 2001. Accessed February 3, 2019.

This USA Today article describes the scene of an Afghan woman's unveiling and “liberation” during the early war on terror. The article includes descriptions of six women symbolically setting fire to their veils in the wake of the Taliban’s retreat and marching away.

Kristof, Nicholas D. "The Veiled Resource." The New York Times. Accessed February 2, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/opinion/the-veiled-resource.html.

Nicholas Kristof, a world-renowned author and journalist, offers this article as further context for the situation of women post-Taliban. He admits that women still wore the burka (even though they were no longer required to) and that women remained "fifth-class citizens" despite their alleged liberation from oppressive forces. The article still relies on the symbol of the veil, as many articles did during this time period, but makes an effort to consider the situation in its complexity and look, if not behind the veil, then beyond it.

Lacayo, Richard. "About Face." Time Magazine, December 3, 2001. Accessed February 3, 2019. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001344,00.html.

This article was the cover story for TIME Magazine's "Lifting the Veil" issue. Lacayo, an American journalist and current editor-at-large for Time, describes the liberation of Afghan women, before delving into a more nuanced background of Afghan women's history and cultural practices. Lacayo speaks of Afghan women "being trapped" in an oppressive regime as a thing of the past, celebrating a more hopeful future for a group who, for so long, were forced to wear what he calls "body bags for the living."

Hosseini 48 Mackie, Vera. "The 'Afghan Girls': Media Representation and Frames of War." University of Wollongong Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 26, no. 1 (2012): 115-31. Accessed August 29, 2018. https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir= 1&article=2217&context=artspapers.

In this paper, Vera Mackie, a Senior Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Wollongong, compares three images of Afghan women and analyzes their rhetorical significance, compositional structure, and symbolism. She utilizes a Reuters photograph, the image of the 'Afghan girl,' and the 2010 image of an Afghan woman which was on the cover of Time magazine. The specificity of her research is its strength: Mackie is able to analyze, in great detail, each image and what it represented. Of particular interest is her inclusion of "photographer testimonials," which lend a crucial perspective otherwise unavailable in photographic analysis. Ultimately, Mackie concludes that the images served Orientalist narratives, purposefully or inadvertently, and used Afghan women as pawns in a "greater cause," denying them agency and autonomy.

Newman, Cathy. "A Life Revealed." National Geographic, April 2002. Accessed December 1, 2018. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2002/04/afghan-girl-revealed/.

This cover story follows the rediscovery of the "Afghan Girl" by Steve McCurry and National Geographic. The article begins with background describing Sharbat Gula and the massive fame of her 1985 portrait, before detailing McCurry's trip and efforts to find her again. This story ran in April 2002 as the cover story of the magazine.

The New York Times. "Liberating the Women of Afghanistan." November 24, 2001. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/24/opinion/liberating-the-women-of-afghanistan.html.

This article, written by the Editorial Board and found in the New York Times archive, offers a brief statement of support for the "liberation" of Afghan women, as it was described by Laura Bush. The article, in fact, was released on the final day of a week-long media blitz by the Bush administration to garner public support for efforts to free Afghan women from the oppressive Taliban regime. Mentioned in the piece as important are the health, education, safety, and political representation of women in Afghanistan.

The New York Times. "The New York Times Wins 3 Pulitzers, Bringing Its Total Wins to 125."

April 16, 2018. Accessed April 4, 2019. https://www.nytco.com/press/the-new-york-times-wins-3-pulitzers-bringing-its-total-win s-to-125/.

This article announced the newspaper’s additional Pulitzer wins in 2018. Among the yearly accolades mentioned is the claim to the most Pulitzers won by any journalistic institution in the world.

Powell, Colin L. "Afghan Women." Address, November 19, 2001. U.S. Department of State Archive. Last modified November 19, 2001. Accessed January 21, 2019. https://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2001/6229.htm.

Hosseini 49 This statement was given by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell during November 2001. The structure of the statement follows that of Sec. Rumsfeld and First Lady Laura Bush, both of whom made similar statements during the same week. Sec. Powell gave this brief statement at the Eisenhower Building, on his way to a cabinet meeting with the President, to assure reporters that he was fully on board with the President and First Lady’s plan to prioritize the safety and security of Afghan women.

"Radio Address by Mrs. Laura W. Bush, Crawford, TX, November 17, 2001." Audio file.

George W. Bush Presidential Center. February 1, 2013. Accessed January 21, 2019. https://www.bushcenter.org/publications/articles/2013/02/radio-address-by-mrs-laura-wbush-crawford-tx-november-17-2001.html.

This radio address, the first such address by a first lady, marked the beginning of American humanitarian efforts meant to better the plight of Afghan women. In the address, the first lady calls for public awareness of the dire situation faced by Afghan women, before urging those listening to support the war on terror and consider it also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.

Ranoco, Romeo. An Afghan woman begs for money as her child lies on a street in Kabul on September 27, 2002. Photograph. Reuters Pictures. September 27, 2002. Accessed February 6, 2019.

Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.

This book remained on the New York Times Bestsellers list for 5 weeks, has been translated into 22 languages, and has sold over 1.5 million copies since its release.

Written by Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, the book is regarded by many as the definitive history of the Taliban, tracing back to pre-Cold War roots. Rashid focuses on the geo-political events which made the Taliban's rise possible, including the aid and interest of foreign nations. Thus, he contextualizes the Taliban and their power, rendering any ensuing "vilifications" of the group by the U.S. government untruthful by omission.

Reuters. Afghan women wait for food in a refugee camp across the Pakistani border, in Jallozai.

Photograph. Reuters Pictures. December 2, 2001. Accessed April 11, 2019.

Rohde, David. "After Years Away from Campus, a Joyful Return." The New York Times, December 2, 2001. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/world/a-nation-challenged-afghan-women-after-ye ars-away-from-campus-a-joyful-return.html.

David Stephenson Rohde is an American author and journalist who is currently the online news director for The New Yorker. This short article links Afghan women's liberation with their joyful return to school, which they were banned from attending under the Taliban regime. Utilized in this paper are the descriptions of women unveiling themselves and returning to school.

Hosseini 50 ———. "The Women, Veils Shed, Demonstrate." The New York Times, November 21, 2002.

Accessed February 3, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/world/a-nation-challenged-rights-the-women-veilsshed-demonstrate.html.

This article, as brief as Rohde's previous, makes brief mention of a protest organized by Afghan women in Kabul, which was ended abruptly after their security could not be guaranteed. The article quotes multiple Afghan women, as well as the head of the Northern Alliance.

Rumsfeld, Donald. "Women's Rights a Priority; Humanitarian Aid Improves." Address, Department of Defense, November 19, 2001. http://archive.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=44432 This statement was given by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in November 2001 during a press appearance. Rumsfeld begins by lamenting the hardships Afghan women were facing at the time, before commenting on their newfound liberty and the importance of continued public support for the war on terror. He notes that the era marked a significant change in American humanitarian approaches to Afghanistan.

Sagolj, Damir. An Afghan girl peers from between women wearing burqas as they wait for humanitarian aid to be distributed by United Nations workers in Kabul. Photograph.

Reuters Pictures. December 1, 2001. Accessed April 11, 2019.

———. An Afghan woman, with the sign on a hand allowing her to get humanitarian aid, pleads with the guard to let her receive food at a World Food Programme WFP distribution point in Kabul's orphanage. Photograph. Reuters. December 10, 2001. Accessed September 2, 2018.

———. Afghan women wait for free food to be distributed in central Kabul. Photograph.

Reuters Pictures. November 25, 2001. Accessed April 11, 2019.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Random House US, 2014.

Forty-three years after its publication, Edward Said's Orientalism remains a seminal work of massive importance in studies of West-East relations. Said, a former professor at Columbia University, is recognized as the father of the academic field of post-colonial studies. In Orientalism, he delineates the Western world's patronizing representations and understandings of the East, and the West's subsequent tendency to exoticize Eastern peoples and cultures. Said argues that imperialist invasions of Eastern countries is inextricably linked to degrading or cultural images of the East, in academia and beyond.

Sigheti, Radu. An Afghan girl joins refugee women as they queue to receive blankets distributed by the London-based Salvation Army in Kabul. Photograph. Reuters Pictures. December 2, 2002. Accessed April 11, 2019.

Hosseini 51 ———. An Afghan woman leans to take money from a driver November 15, 2002 as she begs on one of Kabul streets. Photograph. Reuters Pictures. November 15, 2002. Accessed February 6, 2019.

Simons, Jake Wallis. "The Story behind the World's Most Famous Photograph." CNN. Last modified December 2, 2016. Accessed December 1, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/style/article/steve-mccurry-afghan-girl-photo/index.html.

Jake Simons is a novelist, journalist and graphic artist. This article describes the background of the famous "Afghan girl" portrait, including its themes, connections, and story, but ultimately focuses instead on Steve McCurry's accomplishments as a photojournalist. The article mentions the profound effect of his work on humanitarian organizations, its enduring cultural relevance, and his technique for taking his famous portraits. The article was published while McCurry had an art exhibition open to the public in Italy.

Skaine, Rosemarie. The Women of Afghanistan under the Taliban. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002.

Rosemarie Skaine is an American author and sociologist known for her nonfiction works.

This book delves deep into the lives of Afghan women during the Taliban regime, analyzing the harsh punishments, strict dress code, and stringent behavioral rules instituted by the fundamentalist group. Skaine ultimately addresses the "religion, revolution, and national identity of Afghan women" in an effort to offer a basis for their eventual rehabilitation and recovery from such a traumatic period. The section used in this paper mentions the specifics of a punishment doled out to 225 women in Kabul after they were found violating the dress code.

Stabile, Carol A., and Deepa Kumar. "Unveiling Imperialism: Media, Gender, and the War on Afghanistan." Media, Culture, and Society 27, no. 5 (September 1, 2005): 765-82.

Accessed February 3, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443705055734.

Carol Stabile is a professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland, while Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of media studies and Middle Eastern studies at Rutgers University. This article argues that the brutal oppression of Afghan women went ignored by U.S. media outlets until it became "rhetorically useful" for the U.S. government to utilize in justifying the war on terror. Kumar and Stabile include quantitative analysis of the frequency of news articles mentioning "Afghan women" before and after the September 11th attacks, as well as analysis of several articles featured in Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, and USA Today. Ultimately, they apply the lenses of Orientalism and the "protection scenario" to the way in which Afghan women were regarded by U.S. elites, both by the media and government, before finally disproving any notion of long-lasting peace and freedom for women in Afghanistan.

Stanmeyer, John. Lifting the Veil. December 3, 2001. Photograph. Accessed February 3, 2019. http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20011203,00.html.

Hosseini 52 Stevenson, Seth. "Is the Afghan War All about an Oil Pipeline?" Slate, December 6, 2001.

Accessed January 21, 2019. https://slate.com/culture/2001/12/is-the-afghan-war-about-an-oil-pipeline.html.

Seth Stevenson, a contributing writer for Slate, has also featured work in the New York Times, New York magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and other publications. This article is one of a small handful from 2001 which dared to examine the connections between the American government, their treatment of the Taliban, and their interest in a huge oil pipeline located in the region. Stevenson even attests to his argument being little more than a "theory being passed around," listing each and every mention of the pipeline in small online blogs and media companies. He does point out the Guardian's persistence in proving his claim, but also points out other organization's persistence to dismantle the notion that an entire war would be driven by oil-related economic interest.

"TimesMachine." The New York Times Times Machine. Accessed February 2, 2019. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser.

The Times Machine is the New York Times' online archive, which features every page of every issue since 1851, when the newspaper began printing. The archive is searchable by date, word, author, topic, or issue, and features a user-friendly mechanism for navigating PDF's of issues.

Waldman, Amy. "The Burkas Come Off, but Equality Falters at the Edge of Kabul." The New York Times, September 11, 2002. Accessed February 3, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/11/us/the-battlefront-the-burkas-come-off-but-equalit y-falters-at-the-edge-of-kabul.html.

Amy Waldman worked for the New York Times for eight years, three of which were spent as the co-chief of the South Asia bureau. This article briefly describes the contrast between Afghan women's perceived "liberation" and their continued battle for equality and dignity. The article's strength is undoubtedly its numerous quotes from Afghan women, rural or urban, each of which testify to the "growing pains" involved with finding their footing in a "new" Afghanistan which, in many ways, still felt old. Waldman utilizes anecdotes from Afghan women's lives to bolster her point as well.

"Women in Afghanistan: The Back Story." Amnesty International. Last modified November 25, 2014. Accessed January 21, 2019. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/womens-rights-afghanistan-history.

Amnesty International has functioned for over 60 years and boasts over seven million members worldwide, making it one of the most reputable humanitarian organizations in the world. This Amnesty International webpage gives the "back story" to the human rights abuses of Afghan women under the Taliban. Given the nature of the organization, the article focuses solely on the Taliban's treatment of Afghan women and not the geo-political history or the treatment of Afghan women in previous decades, though it does make mention of Afghanistan "before the 1979 invasion." The article was most helpful in its exhaustive listing of the Taliban's "rules" for women, which forbade a huge number of everyday activities.

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