Afghanistan has become home to one of the largest gender-focused aid interventions in the aftermath of 9/11, with foreign aid agencies using Afghan women as a barometer of social change and political progress. Through the lens of gendered aid intervention, this book seeks to understand how the promise of freedom has largely fallen short—for both men and women. Topics include the tenuous relationship between social indicators and aid dynamics; the advancing of the gender agenda through Afghanistan’s 2005 parliamentary elections; and the journey from policy formulation to interpretation to implementation through the voices of policy-makers, policy implementers, NGO leaders, Afghanistan specialists and ordinary Afghan women and men.

Lina AbiRafeh, PhD is a global women’s rights expert with decades of experience worldwide. She is an advisor and former aid worker with a long track record in creating positive change for women in over 20 countries around the world. She speaks and publishes frequently on her experiences. She lives in New York.

Lina Abirafeh

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 232
Bibliographic Info: 27 photos, glossary, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2009
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4519-6
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5431-0
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii
Preface      1

1. An Agenda for Social Change      9
2. Discourses on Chaddari Politics      32
3. Gender and the Aid Apparatus      50
4. Transplanting Democracy      69
5. Afghaniyat and the Gender Order      85
6. Maida, Maida      106
7. This Is Afghanistan      122
8. Violence in the Aftermath      141
9. Insecurities and Ideological Occupations      163

Dari Terminology      189
Acronyms and Abbreviations      191
Chapter Notes      193
Bibliography      207
Index      221