Rina Amiri Expert Spotlight
 Rina Amiri has been preparing since she was a child for her present dynamic role as a peace builder and reconstruction strategist in her devastated homeland, Afghanistan. It is a role she has longed for, and to which she has been passionately committed for as long as she can remember. Yet before the events of September 2001, it seemed inconceivable that she could return to her country, devastated by decades of invasion, clan warfare, drought, and famine.
She was only five years old when her family fled Kabul after the King was overthrown and exiled, and she vividly recalls the terror, confusion, and hardship her family and others endured as they scrambled for shelter in other countries.
“As a child in this climate of fear, I was confused and felt anger," she recalls. “From a secure, warm and loving family life, I suddenly learned that the world could lack any element of control."
Her family's path led through Pakistan, then India, and they finally settled near San Francisco. “There were only about one hundred Afghans in the Bay area back then," she recalls. “Yet we had a strong national identity."
Rina felt obligated to use her intelligence and experience toward her goal of one day helping to heal her devastated country. After college, she focused on developing conflict resolution skills, and began working for the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. During her time there, Rina was a central participant in the Women Waging Peace program's annual colloquium, which gathered peace activists from conflict areas around the world. Yet in her own homeland, she could see only despair, as the Soviet withdrawal in l989 gave way to Afghan civil war, followed by the rise of the Taliban extremists.
In the shock of the World Trade Center attacks, she had only one thought: “We are going to be refugees again." She was afraid that she and her fellow Afghans would be feared and hated, and forced to leave the only home she had known for a quarter of a century. She felt compelled to speak out, emphasizing that not all Muslims think the same or hate America.
Overnight, she became a spokesperson for her country, advocating for women's rights and refugee assistance. She wrote opinion pieces, spoke publicly on national radio and television, and was increasingly quoted across the nation.
With the startlingly rapid fall of the Taliban, and the formation of an interim government, she was invited to take part in the citizens' parallel conference in Bonn in 2001. She also played a key role in convening Muslim women and others for a conference titled, “Transition Within Tradition: Restoring Women's Participation in Afghanistan." Its message: “To create sustainable change and prevent a backlash from highly traditional elements, changes in women's roles must be couched within Afghan culture and its historical and religious framework."
The group examined women's potential participation in the political, educational, and economic sectors from Islamic and Afghan points of view, and made recommendations; the report issued from this work is being made available to Western policymakers and also used to support moderate Islamic points of view.
Early in 2002, Rina Amiri left the United States to go home to Kabul to work for reconstruction, a courageous step in a still highly unsettled political and military climate. Once in Afghanistan, she helped to mobilize and prepare women to participate in the Emergency Loya Jirga, (the traditional Afghan Grand Council) and was one of the monitors during the elections in which more than 1,500 delegates elected former interim leader Hamid Karzai as Head of State for Afghanistan's Transitional Administration.
Rina is now working as an adviser to UNESCO and the Ministry of Women's Affairs in Kabul. She has been working with the United Nations as a Gender Adviser, setting up consultations with women activists throughout the country. “I am learning from the heroic women here," she reports. “They are seizing this moment in history and finding ways to access opportunities to gain employment and an education after six years of being confined to their homes. I am transformed as a result of my work with them, and I feel privileged to be here now, to pay a debt to my homeland and to be part of that critical mass that could push the country into a period of peace and stability."  |