That "culture of impunity" didn't materialize from thin air. Nor was it a necessary consequence of the "culture of violence" instilled by the long wars. Rather, it had been cultivated for a decade by a government that simply took no notice of the slaughter of women. Indifference amounted to policy and was implicitly affirmed by the United States in 2011 when Washington's aid agency, USAID, dropped "gender issues" to the bottom of its list of priorities, while an anonymous State Department spokesman joked about jettisoning aid projects intended to support and defend women. "All those pet rocks in our rucksack," he said, "were taking us down."
Within months, President Karzai had signed into law a medieval "code of conduct" for women, drafted by the Ulama Council, that in its key points directly contradicted the Afghan Constitution, Afghan criminal law, and CEDAW, the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, to which Afghanistan (though not the United States) is a signatory. From that moment on, the pace of the assassination of women in public life picked up rapidly, while the incidence of violence against ordinary women increased at an extraordinary rate. In 2014, it jumped by more than 24% percent over the previous year. A culture of impunity had become so ingrained in Afghan life during the last several years that it seemed as if anyone could assassinate a woman, claim credit in public for the hit, and walk away free, a little taller than before.
Imagine, then, the dismay of Farkhunda's killers when they were arrested for the very sort of thing other men had routinely gotten away with for as long as they could remember. Soon after, the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs raised the dead woman's status to "Sister-Martyr," officially converting Farkhunda from a symbol of women's rights to a martyr for the cause of Islam. What could it possibly mean that the principal figure in this public battle had been flipped from the secular domain to the religious one? What would her status as a martyr imply for the legal defense of her killers who had set themselves up as defenders of the Holy Quran? Would they be hanged and then, on second thought, hailed as ghazi, warrior-martyrs for Islam?
On May 2nd, as the trial of the accused killers began, questions and rumors multiplied, while the arena of contestation shifted from the streets and mosques to a televised court of law. That in itself was a milestone: seemingly a triumph of judicial transparency. Any Afghans with access to a television set could see for themselves the band of handcuffed men packed together in the dock and hear the names of the suspects still in hiding read out in court by order of the presiding judge. Anyone could listen to the questions put to the prisoners in turn and take in the extraordinary answers. The tall man admits he dropped the big rock on Farkhunda's head and says he is sorry. Others are less forthcoming and less repentant. Some say unconvincingly that they were never there at all.
Several years ago, a journalist colleague of mine witnessed in Kabul an impressively orderly criminal trial that proved to have been staged only for his benefit. But this televised trial seemed to be the real thing, hasty and disorderly: an intentional process in what you might call, if you were wondrously optimistic, the rule of law. But the trial was most notable for its speed. Like the crime itself, the trial was a rush to judgment aimed at ending things. The court heard testimony on the first day from 10 men charged with murder, and after only one more day of proceedings judge Safiullah Mojadedi was able to pronounce sentence on all 30 men charged with taking part in the crime. He sentenced four of the men to hang, including the tawiz peddler who had accused Farkhunda and an official in the Afghan intelligence service who had boasted on Facebook of taking part in the killing. He sentenced eight other defendants to 16 years in prison, though everyone knows that long sentences are usually dramatically reduced on appeal and shorter terms can be bought. He acquitted 18 defendants variously charged with assault, murder, and inciting violence. He separated and postponed the cases of the 19 police officers charged with neglect of duty. At least four of the principal killers, photographed in the act of murder, remain at large.
Predictably, the judgment satisfied no one. Too light for some, too heavy for others, and too fast to be fair. But it coincided perfectly with a prediction heard often in Kabul well before the trial began: they'll hang a few and let most of them go. This was not the first time a controversial case was settled not on the evidence, but on the relative power of the contenders, giving something to both sides and justice to neither. You want rule of law? You've got it.
Well, maybe not quite. And that certainly won't be the end of the story. When Afghans bury their dead, they put a stone on the grave so that an occupant who tries to rise will bump into it and be reminded to keep still. But that Farkhunda, the Sister-Martyr, she will not stay put.
