v An Afghan business leader who employs hundreds of women on her saffron fields has pledged to speak up for the rights of her workers, and”not remain silent”under Taliban rule.
The hardliners have decreasingly barred women from public life since sweeping to power inmid-August, pushing numerous womanish entrepreneurs to flee the country or go into caching.
Numerous sweat a return to their severely rough rule from 1996 to 2001 when women were effectively banned from going to academy or work, and only allowed to leave the house with a manly relative.
“We’ll raise our voice so that it reaches their cognizance,” said Shafiqeh Attai, who started her saffron company in the western megacity of Herat in 2007.
” No matter what happens we will not just sit at home, because we’ve worked veritably hard.”
‘We’ll not remain silent’
Attai’s business, the Pashton Zarghon Saffron Women’s Company, produces, processes, packages and exports the world’s most precious spice with an nearly simply womanish pool.
Further than women pick the brightly coloured crocuses across the company’s 25 hectares (60 acres) of land in the Pashton Zarghon quarter of Herat Province, which borders Iran.
Another 55 hectares are singly possessed and operate under the collaborative that Attai set up for women saffron selectors, who are represented by union leaders.
Employing women allows them to be breadwinners for their families, Attai said, enabling them to shoot their children to academy, and to buy them apparel and other rudiments.
“I worked hard to establish my business,”the 40- time-old said.”We do not want to sit still and be ignored. Indeed if they ignore us, we won’t remain silent.”
Indispensable to opium
The ousted, Western- backed government encouraged growers to grow the spice– used in dishes from biryani to paella– in a shot to wean them down from Afghanistan’s huge and problematic poppy assiduity.
Still, the country remains by far the world’s biggest patron of opium and heroin, supplying between 80 and 90 percent of global affair.
During their former stint in power, the Taliban– who used the trade of opium to fund their insurrection– destroyed much of the crop presumably to annihilate it, though critics said it was to drive up the value of their huge stashes.
The civilization of poppies has again surged in recent times, as poverty and insecurity increased. Afghanistan’s product area is now roughly four times larger now than in 2002, according to the United Nations.
‘ Red gold’
Herat Province produces the vast maturity of Afghanistan’s saffron.
At further than$ per kilogram (2.2 pounds), saffron is the world’s most precious spice, and Attai’s company produces between 200 and 500 kilos each time.
The pistil of the flower has for centuries been used around the world in cuisine, scents, drugs, tea and indeed as an aphrodisiac– and because of its high price has been dubbed” red gold”by those who calculate on its civilization.
Stylish grown in the baking hot sun, the bright grandiloquent saffron flowers are gathered in October and November by armies of workers, numerous of them women in their fifties and sixties, who start picking at dawn before the shops wilt latterly in the day.
Labourers also prise piecemeal the delicate lilac leaves, pictorial red spots and pale unheroic stamens– meticulous work that demands attention and skill.
‘ Hard work’
Attai is concerned not just about the future of her business, but also for women across Afghanistan who are living in limbo, uncertain about jobs, education and representation in government.
” Now that the government of the Islamic Emirate is then we’re veritably upset that they will block our work,”she said.
“They’ven’t given girls the authorization to go back to academy and university, and they have not given any women posts in the government– I’m upset about what will be,”she added.
“I am not just allowing about myself, I am allowing about all those that this business supports to run their homes,”she said, noting that some of her workers are the sole breadwinners in their families.
“I’m upset that 20 times of hard work by these women will go to waste.”
‘Can not be ignored’
In the 20 times between the US- led ouster of the Taliban in 2001 and the Islamists’ return, numerous women came business leaders, particularly in metropolises like Herat.
Long a crucial marketable mecca near Iran and Turkmenistan’s borders, the megacity has in recent months suffered from the flight of numerous businesswomen.
Younes Qazizadeh, head of the megacity’s chamber of commerce, told AFP that he hoped the Taliban would make an sanctioned advertisement to indicate that” women could come back and do business under this government as well”.
For now, the fate of businesses like Attai’s hangs on a thread.
“It’s our stopgap to start women’s businesses again in our country,”Qazizadeh added.
Attai said that for now, she’s staying in her motherland because she has”some stopgap”that her business can survive.
Ahead of the US retirement, a mammoth airlift saw people vacated from Kabul field.
“I could have left as well. But I did not leave because all the hard work and trouble that we put in shouldn’t be ignored,”Attai said.
“I do not suppose they will block our work,”she added, pertaining to the Taliban.