Day: January 16, 2022

NEW DELHI — On a cold winter afternoon in the Indian capital, New Delhi, a group of auto rickshaw drivers huddled outside a metro station hoping to pick up passengers. Since the city shut schools, colleges, restaurants and offices to cope with a third wave of the pandemic fueled by the omicron variant, though, they know their wait could be long and probably futile.

“We work on the streets and depend on people being out,” Shivraj Verma said.

“Now I will not be able to earn enough to even buy food in the city. We get crushed when the city closes.”

This is the third consecutive year that tens of millions of workers in India’s vast informal economy are confronting a loss of livelihoods and incomes as megacities such as New Delhi and Mumbai, which are the epicenter of the new wave, partially shutter.

While India has not enforced a stringent nationwide lockdown as it did in 2020, Delhi has closed offices, imposed a weekend and night curfew and restricted large gatherings. In the business hub of Gurugram, markets shut early as part of measures to curb the spread of coronavirus.

For those that work on the street, though, contracting the virus is of little concern -- their masks hang loosely on their faces, only to be pulled up when a policeman, who might impose a fine, passes by. Their pressing problem is to earn enough money to feed families, send children to school and pay rent for their tiny tenements.

In the lives-versus-livelihoods debate that has posed one of the pandemic’s greatest dilemmas, their vote is squarely with the latter.

“We don’t worry about the virus, we worry about how to take care of our families. I will have to return again to my village if the situation stays the same,” auto rickshaw operator Mohammad Amjad Khan said.

Khan was among millions of migrants returned to their villages when India witnessed a mass exodus in 2020. He only picked up the courage to return to Delhi after a year and a half in September. At that time India had recovered from its devastating second wave.

Its cities were humming, restaurants and markets were packed, and businesses saw a revival. As India’s economy picked up pace briskly, Khan made a decent living from the auto rickshaw he took on hire to ferry customers and could send some money home. The pandemic appeared to have become a distant memory.

The good times lasted for four months. From less than 7,000 new cases a day in mid-December, India has been counting more than a quarter million in recent days. As cities like Delhi hunker indoors, earnings have again plummeted.

“Now I don’t even make enough money to pay for the daily hire of this vehicle. It’s really tough,” Khan said with a despondent shrug.

Indian policymakers have underlined the need to protect jobs.

At a meeting with chief ministers this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that there should be minimal loss to the ordinary people’s livelihoods and related economic activity as the country battles the latest wave.

“We have to keep this in mind, whenever we are making a strategy for COVID-19 containment,” he said.

Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has reassured migrant labor that a lockdown will not be imposed.

On the ground however, even partial curbs hit hard the tens of thousands of vendors who line Indian streets – vegetable and fruit sellers, small kiosks selling chips, soft drinks and cigarettes, and food carts.

Anita Singh is allowed to operate her street cart that sells hot meals and snacks till 8 p.m., but in the last two weeks, there have been very few customers to serve.

“Most of my sales were to college students or in the late evening when people left offices. Now they are shut,” she said.

Employment has not returned to its pre-pandemic level since the Indian economy was battered by COVID-19 lockdowns, according to a recent report by the Center for Monitoring the Indian Economy. The report said that there are fewer salaried jobs, whereas daily wage work and farm labor has increased – a sign of economic distress.

“There has been a drop in average wages and daily earnings across sectors because of COVID stipulations,” said Anhad Imaan, a communication specialist with several nonprofit organizations working with migrant labor.

“Even in the construction and manufacturing sectors which have remained open, there is less work available per worker.”

That means the quality of lives of those in the informal sector has taken a huge hit.

“They used to spend much of what they earned on food and a place to stay and sent home whatever they saved,” he said, “Now they are down to subsistence levels.”

Although estimates vary widely, studies say millions in India have slipped below the poverty line during the pandemic. A study by Pew Research Center in March pegged the number at 75 million. Another one by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University in May after India experienced a second wave put it at 230 million due to “income shocks.”

Whatever the numbers, it is a reality that the group of auto rickshaw drivers waiting for passengers knows too well. As they talked to each other, their top concern was whether there will be a lockdown and whether they should be heading home for a third time.

Source: Voice of America

The widow of an Islamic State fighter, Olima Kamolova had pleaded with the Tajik government for months to help get her out of Afghanistan, where she was imprisoned as the wife of a foreign militant.

Tajik authorities eventually repatriated Kamolova and her four children last summer, just before the Taliban took power in Kabul.

The 31-year-old housewife, who had left Tajikistan with her husband in 2015, is now serving a 12-year sentence for “fighting as a mercenary in a foreign military conflict.”

She has rejected the charges and told the court she had merely followed her husband.

But Khairullo Habibullozoda, the judge at the city court in Vahdat -- a small town outside of Dushanbe where Kamolova grew up -- said he wasn’t convinced by the defendant’s argument that she was an innocent bystander. Her relatives said Kamolova lost her final appeal at the Supreme Court on January 7.

Tajikistan has rarely arrested women repatriated from conflict zones like Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, instead trying to reintegrate them into society. But in recent months, Tajik courts have sentenced at least five women -- the spouses of suspected IS fighters -- to between 12 and 14 years in prison on terrorism-related charges.

Authorities haven’t released any information about the defendants and their cases. But sources familiar with the matter told RFE/RL’s Tajik Service that all five defendants were repatriated from Afghanistan early last year. The circumstances of their repatriations are unknown.

The news comes as 48 women from Tajikistan are being held in Iraqi prisons after being convicted of “belonging to IS.”

According to the Women and Family Affairs’ Committee, four of the women have been sentenced to death by Iraqi judges. Others were given prison terms ranging from 20 years to life in jail.

Hundreds of other Tajik widows of IS fighters and their children remain stranded in refugee camps in Syria, as Dushanbe’s repatriation efforts have been largely halted by the pandemic and other challenges, Tajik officials say.

'It's Easy To Blame'

Most of the Tajik women who ended up in foreign conflict zones blame their husbands for taking them abroad, often telling them they were going for work.

Kamolova and her defense lawyer claimed she “was lied to” by her husband, who allegedly said they were going to Iran for medical treatment for one of their children.

“As they arrived in Tehran, the husband said that they’ll go to Afghanistan for a religious pilgrimage,” defense lawyer Shabnam Iskandar said. “Kamolova was reluctant to go, but her husband threatened her with divorce. Kamolova then agreed to go to Afghanistan.”

It’s not possible to verify Kamolova’s account of her experience.

One woman in the northern province of Sughd whose close relatives -- a young family -- voluntarily returned from Syria several years ago says that in traditional Tajik families women largely obey their husbands.

“In hindsight, it’s easy to blame those women, but back then in 2015 people were not well-informed,” the woman said on condition of anonymity. “It’s possible that many of the militants’ wives just trusted their husbands when they said they were going for work or pilgrimage.”

The woman said her relatives have been pardoned by the government, resumed their normal lives, and “never looked back.”

Tajikistan has repeatedly said it was committed to repatriating women and children who remain in foreign conflict zones. But the officials acknowledge that not everyone is willing to return.

Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin told reporters last year that “many” of the Tajik women in Syrian camps “want to come back home, but there are also those who don’t want to return.”

Tajikistan estimates that some 575 women and children -- family members of Tajik militants -- currently reside in the Syrian Al-Hawl and Al-Roj refugee camps, which are controlled by Kurdish forces. In 2019, the government repatriated 84 Tajik children from Iraq.

Tajik diplomat Zubaidullo Zubaidzoda, who was tasked with organizing the repatriation of his country’s citizens from Syria and Iraq, said some of the women avoid meeting Tajik officials who visit the camps.

Zubaidzoda said some openly say that they don’t trust the Tajik government and don’t want to return to Tajikistan. Local media reported that out of some 400 Tajik women and children at Al-Hawl, only 260 have applied for repatriation.

Last year, a group of Tajik women in Al-Hawl sent a letter to the government urging Dushanbe to speed up the repatriation efforts.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Tajik woman at Al-Hawl told RFE/RL that her compatriots in the camp are divided into two groups: those who have realized their mistakes and want to go home, and those who have “extremist ideas” and are still loyal IS ideologues.

Copyright (c) 2015. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

In a Kabul neighborhood, a gaggle of boys kick a yellow ball around a dusty playground, their boisterous cries echoing off the surrounding apartment buildings.

Dressed in sweaters and jeans or the traditional Afghan male clothing of baggy pants and long shirt, none stand out as they jostle to score a goal. But unbeknown to them, one is different from the others.

At not quite 8 years old, Sanam is a bacha posh: a girl living as a boy. One day a few months ago, the girl with rosy cheeks and an impish smile had her dark hair cut short, donned boys' clothes and took on a boy's name, Omid. The move opened up a boy's world: playing soccer and cricket with boys, wrestling with the neighborhood butcher's son, working to help the family make ends meet.

In Afghanistan's heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, bacha posh, Dari for "dressed as a boy," is the one tradition allowing girls access to the freer male world.

Under the practice, a girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, with all the freedoms and obligations that entails. The child can play sports, attend a madrassa, or religious school, and, sometimes crucially for the family, work. But there is a time limit: Once a bacha posh reaches puberty, she is expected to revert to traditional girls' gender roles. The transition is not always easy.

It is unclear how the practice is viewed by Afghanistan's new rulers, the Taliban, who seized power in mid-August and have made no public statements on the issue.

Their rule so far has been less draconian than the last time they were in power in the 1990s, but women's freedoms have still been severely curtailed. Thousands of women have been barred from working, and girls beyond primary school age have not been able to return to public schools in most places.

With a crackdown on women's rights, the bacha posh tradition could become even more attractive for some families. And as the practice is temporary, with the children eventually reverting to female roles, the Taliban might not deal with the issue at all, said Thomas Barfield, a professor of anthropology at Boston University who has written several books on Afghanistan.

"Because it's inside the family and because it's not a permanent status, the Taliban may stay out (of it)," Barfield said.

It is unclear where the practice originated or how old it is, and it is impossible to know how widespread it might be. A somewhat similar tradition exists in Albania, another deeply patriarchal society, although it is limited to adults. Under Albania's "sworn virgin" tradition, a woman would take an oath of celibacy and declare herself a man, after which she could inherit property, work and sit on a village council - all of which would have been out of bounds for a woman.

In Afghanistan, the bacha posh tradition is "one of the most under-investigated" topics in terms of gender issues, said Barfield, who spent about two years in the 1970s living with an Afghan nomad family that included a bacha posh. "Precisely because the girls revert back to the female role, they marry, it kind of disappears."

Girls chosen as bacha posh usually are the more boisterous, self-assured daughters. "The role fits so well that sometimes even outside the family, people are not aware that it exists," he said.

"It's almost so invisible that it's one of the few gender issues that doesn't show up as a political or social question," Barfield noted.

The reasons parents might want a bacha posh vary. With sons traditionally valued more than daughters, the practice usually occurs in families without a boy. Some consider it a status symbol, and some believe it will bring good luck for the next child to be born a boy.

But for others, like Sanam's family, the choice was one of necessity. Last year, with Afghanistan's economy collapsing, construction work dried up. Sanam's father, already suffering from a back injury, lost his job as a plumber. He turned to selling coronavirus masks on the streets, making the equivalent of $1-$2 per day. But he needed a helper.

The family has four daughters and one son, but their 11-year-old boy doesn't have full use of his hands following an injury. So the parents said they decided to make Sanam a bacha posh.

"We had to do this because of poverty," said Sanam's mother, Fahima. "We don't have a son to work for us, and her father doesn't have anyone to help him. So I will consider her my son until she becomes a teenager."

Still, Fahima refers to Sanam as "my daughter." In their native Dari language, the pronouns are not an issue since one pronoun is used for "he" and "she."

Sanam says she prefers living as a boy.

"It's better to be a boy...I wear (Afghan male clothes), jeans and jackets, and go with my father and work," she said. She likes playing in the park with her brother's friends and playing cricket and soccer.

Once she grows up, Sanam said, she wants to be either a doctor, a commander or a soldier, or work with her father. And she'll go back to being a girl.

"When I grow up, I will let my hair grow and will wear girl's clothes," she said.

The transition isn't always easy.

"When I put on girls' clothes, I thought I was in prison," said Najieh, who grew up as a bacha posh, although she would attend school as a girl. One of seven sisters, her boy's name was Assadollah.

Now 34, married and with four children of her own, she weeps for the freedom of the male world she has lost.

"In Afghanistan, boys are more valuable," she said. "There is no oppression for them, and no limits. But being a girl is different. She gets forced to get married at a young age."

Young women can't leave the house or allow strangers to see their face, Najieh said. And after the Taliban takeover, she lost her job as a schoolteacher because she had been teaching boys.

"Being a man is better than being a woman," she said, wiping tears from her eye. "It is very hard for me. ... If I were a man, I could be a teacher in a school."

"I wish I could be a man, not a woman. To stop this suffering."

Source: Voice of America