A Sociological Review of the movie "Osama"

Osama
Director: Sadigh Barmak

The background is all indicative of death and destruction. People walk out of half destroyed houses. Everything is squalid and neglected. You can see an expression of fear and desperation in the faces of the passers-by. A young boy is burning “espand” – an herb whose smoke is believed to keep the evil eye away when burned. He seems to be burning the espand for a photographer who has dared to come out and film what is going on. Soon a group of burqa-clad female demonstrators appear, who are demanding jobs and food. Their placards read, “We are not political; we are hungry; we want jobs.”

Before long, shots echo in the sordid streets followed by the bearded Taliban, who disperse the crowd of women by opening water on them. In the midst of all this, a young girl of about eleven and her mother, who used to be a nurse, are returning from the mother’s last day on the job. The hospital has been shut down due to lack of funding. Besides women are no longer allowed to work as nurses. The girl’s father has been killed in the fighting against the soviet occupation.

Afghanistan is a horticultural/pastoral country north of Pakistan and East of Iran with no access to the ocean. Maybe it is this lack of access to free waters that has historically isolated this nation and has limited its exposure to modernization. When India and Pakistan were still colonies of Great Britain, Afghanistan had a strategic role for Britain who did not want the Russians and later the Soviets to gain access to the south. With its rugged and unfriendly mountains and hostile terrain, Afghanistan was a natural impediment keeping the Russians away from India and Pakistan.

The Soviets, who had never given up their desire to control Afghanistan, staged a coup in 1978, which resulted in the ousting and murder of the entire royal family. The communist takeover of Afghanistan lasted for 10 years during which an Islamic resistance, secretly armed and aided by the United States and its allies, specifically Saudi Arabia, engaged in fierce fighting against the USSR, eventually forcing the communists to withdraw.

Though the western media would give you a dark picture of the communist years of Afghanistan, the fact is that during the reign of the communists, education was declared free and mandatory for both boys and girls. Women and girls were literally emancipated and encouraged to attend schools. Poverty was brought under control. Farming and agriculture was improved; existing roads were repaired and many new ones were constructed; warlords and tribal heads were contained and their power was limited. Opium plantations were burned down and farmers were encouraged to switch to alternative crops that were just as profitable due to the subsidy policies. The age-old patriarchy was curbed.

So when the United States decided to turn Afghanistan into the Vietnam of the USSR, it found quite willing allies in the warlords and tribal patriarchs whose powers had been curbed by the communist regime. The plan was simple. For years, communism had been introduced as the fiercest enemy of God and religion. Therefore the most effective way of containing communism seemed to be the rise of fundamentalism in the Islamic countries. Some people still talk about a CIA plan called the Green Belt, which aimed at creating fundamentalist Islamic Regimes South of the Soviet Union to bar the communist access to the warm waters of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. This Islamic Belt was supposed to include Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. Sure enough they succeeded in two out of three – Iran and Afghanistan – and by the time they had to start working on the Third, the USSR had already collapsed. Mission accomplished!

Aided by the United States, the patriarchy in Afghanistan set out to undo every achievement that women had made during the Soviet occupation. They tied the noose so tight that this time women had to depend on men for their mere existence. Polygamy became the most prevalent form of marriage in the face of the high sex ratio caused by the many years of fighting. Those women that resisted the polygamous marriage were left to die of hunger.

It was in this setting that the mother in the movie “Osama,” who had lost her job and her breadwinning husband, decided to dress her 11-year-old daughter as a boy and send her out to work and make money.

The young girl who was dressed as a boy was then forced along with the rest of the boys in the city to attend the madrassa – the Islamic school – and learn the Quran to become Taliban later. This is where she came to be called “Osama.” When her secret was finally revealed, she awaited the most savage punishment in jail along with many other women and girls. She had violated the strictly defined gender roles of the most fiercely patriarchal society on earth.

The Islamic court convened in a city square. A crowd of men stood in the square waiting for the judge, who was half lying on a bed on a platform, to decree the punishments. After a short indictment spoken by a bearded prosecutor, the old judge ordained that the female correspondent – a foreigner – who had been arrested filming the demonstrations was an infidel and had to be stoned. The woman was then put in a hole that had been dug in the middle of the square with only her head out of the ground and was stoned by the Taliban. When Osama’s turn came, the prosecutor told the judge how blasphemously she had violated gender roles and how she deserved to die. But the judge decided to have mercy on Osama and wed her to an old man that already had a few wives.
The sad story of girls and women in Islamic societies such as Afghanistan was best portrayed when Osama’s husband directed her into the room which was to be hers, and presented a few padlocks telling her that she could choose her own padlock, giving her a choice as to which one she wanted to be locked up by.