2014 Isra Ali All Rights Reserved

249 Pages·2014·5.1 MB·English

by  Isra Ali

©2014

Isra Ali

All Rights Reserved
HAVE FREEDOM, WILL TRAVEL: GENDERED DISCOURSES IN THE WAR ON
TERROR

By

ISRA ALI

A dissertation submitted to the
Graduate School – New Brunswick
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Program in Communication, Information and Library Studies
Written under the direction of
Deepa Kumar
And approved by
________________________
________________________
________________________
________________________
New Brunswick, New Jersey
JANUARY 2014
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Have Freedom, Will Travel: Gendered Discourses in the War on Terror

By ISRA ALI

Dissertation Director:
Deepa Kumar

This project examines how women traveling from North America and Western Europe to
Afghanistan in the era of the War on Terror go about making media about Afghan
women, and considers the experience of contemporary travelers alongside those of
European women who traveled to the Muslim world in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
This work expands on and revises existing cultural studies scholarship on the
representation of brown bodies in a post 911 world, using an anti-colonial lens to
examine the work of journalists, independent documentary filmmakers, and activists. It
pays particular attention to the varied ways in which the concept of feminism is deployed
to advocate for or against ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan. This project asks:
what is the relationship between feminism, Afghan women, and the War on Terror? It
examines articles, broadcasts, images, films and websites, produced about Afghan
women alongside interviews, memoirs, and other materials these traveling women make
about their own experiences of being “liberated” women working within the danger of
the war zone and the “traditional” culture of Afghanistan. It examines intersections of
race, ethnicity, citizenship, and class with gender through an analysis of the term
traveling women use to describe their experience of being foreign and female in
Afghanistan – the ‘third sex.’ This work traces how the ‘third sex’ come to be in
ii
Afghanistan after 911, and how they access Afghan women. This makes visible the
networks of media, military, and non-governmental agencies they rely on there and how
these relationships shape news output in the war zone. I then parse out the conflicting
perspectives of liberal feminists and radical feminists as they emerge online in the
discourse on militarism and Afghan women’s liberation, making visible the relationships
amongst Afghan and non-Afghan feminist organizations and media outlets. The conflicts
that emerge amongst liberal and radical feminists are indicative of the challenges that
arise when feminists attempt to articulate cross-cultural, global, concepts of gender
equality and liberation. These challenges are compounded by the context of the War on
Terror, and the use of humanitarian logics to rationalize military endeavors.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance, dedication, and
encouragement of Dr. Deepa Kumar. I would also like to thank Dr. Ethel Brooks for her
valuable contributions to this project. Their mentorship and support has contributed
immeasurably to my development as a scholar, and to the character and scope of this
work. Thank you also to Dr. Jack Bratich and Dr. Regina Marchi for the time and energy
they have given to the project as evidenced in their thorough readings and insightful
comments. I would also like to acknowledge the Department of Journalism and Media
Studies and the School of Communication and Information, as well as the Department of
Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Center for Race and Ethnicity, for all of their
support throughout my time at Rutgers.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………. ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………. iv
LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………… vi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS……………………………………………………... vii
I. INTRODUCTION: Gendered Discourses in the War on 1
Terror
Women Reporting on Afghanistan
Visibility and Credibility
Traveling Women, Gendering Orientalism and the ‘Third
Sex’
II. CHAPTER 1: Print Journalism and the ‘Third Sex’: 19
Women Traveling to Afghanistan to Report on Afghan
Women for The New York Times and Time Magazine
2001-2005
Editors and Letters to the Editor
The Reporting
Translating Journalism to Expertise
III. CHAPTER 2: Making the images of Afghan women: 67
Television Correspondents and Freelance Photojournalists
in Afghanistan
The Story of Bibi Aisha
Producing Images of Subordination and Suffering from the
Perspective of the Third Sex
Mobility on the Ground, and the Infrastructure of the War
on Terror
Heroism, Humanism and Television Correspondents
IV. CHAPTER 3: Documentary Film and the ‘Third Sex’ 125
Feminism, documentary, and visibility
Coming to Afghanistan
Networks
The Third Sex, Afghan Women, the Logic of Humanitarian
Warfare
V. CHAPTER 4: Online Interactions and Feminist Discourse 171
in the War on Terror
The War on Terror, and Online Exchange
Personal Narratives
The Exchange
VI. CONCLUSION 225
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………… 236

v
LIST OF TABLES

Table Page
1 News Coverage Before and After 911…………………………….. 41

vi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Illustrations Page
1. Dr. Marzia Mohammadi by Kate Brooks………………………. 89
2. Stillborn birth, Badakshan Provincial Hospital by Paula 95
Bronstein…………………………………………………………
3. Live birth at Badakshan Provincial Hospital by Lynsey Addario.. 96
4. The Candidate by Stephanie St. Clair…………………………… 97
5. Victim and Police Officer by Veronique de Viguerie…………… 98
6. Burqa Clad Women by Stephanie Sinclair………………………. 100
7. Feminist in Chief, Cover of Ms. Magazine January 2009………. 187

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1
I. INTRODUCTION: Gendered Discourses in the War on Terror
The goal of this project is to develop a clearer understanding of how the concepts of
feminism, gender equality, and liberation, have been rather seamlessly co-opted into the
rationale for war and ongoing occupation in Afghanistan in the public discourse. In order
to better understand this phenomenon, I look at the work of a select group of women who
travel to Afghanistan from North America to Western Europe to write about, make
images of, and film documentaries about Afghan women. I examine how these women
come to produce this work on Afghanistan in this moment in history, and how the
dissemination through different media platforms and venues (print, photography,
television, film and digital media) impacts how it travels and circulates through the
discourse on War on Terror militarism from 2001 on. The work of these women tells us a
great deal about the roles women play in the maintenance and proliferation of the War on
Terror over the course of a decade through their participation in the production of
knowledge about gender, sexuality, and Afghan culture. A close analysis of the media
produced by these women also reveals the relationships between the production of
knowledge about Afghan women in news media, and the discourse produced by feminists
that advocates for or against militarism in Afghanistan. The latter part of this work
examines how liberal and anti-war feminists use digital media to engage one another in a
public debate on troop surges, troop withdrawals and the end of the war in Afghanistan
after the election of Barack Obama in 2008. This debate makes visible the interrelated
nature of reporting on Afghan women and advocating for Afghan women, and the impact
of the state’s implementation of Orientalist logics to make the case for war on both of
these actions.
2
In the realm of public discourse, the relationship between terrorism, the War on
Terror, and gender equality in Afghanistan was established quickly, in the short period
between the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 and the declaration of war (dubbed
Operation Enduring Freedom) in Afghanistan on October 7th 2001. It is during this period
that spokespersons for the United States government explicitly make the case that war in
Afghanistan will democratize Afghanistan and liberate Afghan women. In the first
chapter, I look at the editorials and letters to the editor authored by women that appear in
internationally circulating and venerated mainstream news media outlets (The New York
Times and Time Magazine) during this period. These editorials establish the explicit
ways in which the administration of George W. Bush sets about overtly framing the War
in Afghanistan as a mission in service of democracy and human rights, through the
argument that this war will engender equal rights for Afghan women. This section shows
how the administration frames this as a particularly gendered issue by deploying female
statesmen to talk about Afghan women and their oppression by the governing party of
Afghanistan, the Taliban.
This blatant propagandizing by the state was met with a number of critiques from
scholars of empire, Orientalism, and Islamaphobia, who saw in this narrative a
contemporary re-configuration of long-standing Orientalist notions about gender and
sexuality in Muslim societies1. In the realm of mainstream public discourse however, the

1 At the outset of the War on Terror this critique is seen in in Lila Abu-Lughod’s 2002
article “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” Charles Hirschkind & Saba
Mahmood’s 2002 peice “Feminism, the Taliban and Politics of Counter-Insurgency” in
Anthropological Quarterly. This critique has been reiterated more recently in Kristan
Hunt and Kim Rygiel’s volume (En) Gendering the War on Terror, Deepa Kumar’s
Islamaphobia and the Politics of Empire (2012) and Saadia Toor’s piece, “Imperialist