Working for women in Afghanistan.

IT'S DAY SIX OF A SIX-DAY LOCK DOWN, with all U. N. staff restricted to essential movement, and then only in scarce armored cars. If you follow the security advisories on a map of Afghanistan, you quickly discover the insurgency is not only closer, but has virtually surrounded the capital. Barely a week after the assassinations of four international aid workers with the International Red Cross, "specific and credible" intelligence has been intercepted that the U. N. may well be the next target.

Here at the guest house where I am staying (living with four other women and two men, all U.N. workers from various agencies) we debate whether the Taliban is stronger or more aggressive. Of course, it could be both. It's hard to know within the confines of this house, even if we are situated in the heart of Kabul.

English-language newscasts with local reporting don't exist, and neither does daily newspaper delivery. All we have to work with are cryptic text messages from our respective directors forwarded from U. N. security. Reconnaissance helicopters fly overhead every few hours--we all look up, and some of us wave--but otherwise, it's another painfully quiet summer day in our overgrown backyard, morning glories climbing up the mud wall, around the U. N. -mandated, double row of barbed wire.

The seven of us are here to do development work, and that means we are considered "non-essential staff." If an evacuation is called, we're among the first on the plane. For some of us, that's a relief. For others, like me, who work on advancing women's human rights within the framework of U. N. SCR 1325, it's a nightmare.

A month ago, my director asked that I design a new unit around women's participation in governance, peace, and security. I've completed the work plan, neatly compartmentalized and diagramed around the "3 Ps"--Prevention, Protection, Participation--and organized through capacity building and technical support. My outputs, targets, and outcomes are impeccably aligned in three distinct columns. The concept note outlines the EVAW law the women Ministers of Parliament will pass, the CEDAW report the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will submit, and the election campaigns grassroots women will organize. I imagine how crisp, sensible, logical, and inevitable this proposal will appear when printed on clean white pages.

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IT TOOK ONLY THREE DAYS for the house to get edgy in its listlessness. We've caught up on our emails, we've Skyped our friends and family for hours, we've each checked and re-checked and checked again our 15-kilo evacuation packs. We sleep late into the morning and take long afternoon naps

IT'S ON DAY THREE that I erase, entirely and irrevocably, the neat and tidy unit I have designed. I do this with a single key stroke.

I begin again, this time tacking a photo above my desk of two burqa-clad women beheaded by the Taliban a few weeks back. They were accused of being "prostitutes," which in Afghanistan can mean just about anything: a woman who works for government or an NGO or the U. N.; a woman who has attempted to escape a forced marriage; a women caught talking to a man that is not her near relative. Or just a woman in Afghanistan. Last week, this photo was my point of reference while contributing to a case study of the limits of 1325 on-the-ground in Afghanistan: "To ask if women are at the peace table" one sentence reads, "seems obscene when their presence in the public market alone puts them at risk of summary execution by the Taliban."

BY DAY FOUR, MY WORK PLAN HAS TRANSFORMED itself into a movement-building machine. It's filled with the voices of the women who have inspired me for the last six months, and the ghosts of the two headless Afghan women pinned above my desk. The unit is designed with multiple and easy entry and exit ramps--escape routes really--to allow for a matrix of connections in Afghanistan and around the world. I realize it will be messy: capacity will be built along the way, but right now we will work with what we have. I take an inventory of what's in the "have" column: incredible, passionate Afghan women, here and in the Diaspora, committed to not turning back, to not seeing the country dissolve into war again. We also have global network of women and men committed to women's peace-building. We have daily high-level meetings with (all-male) power brokers on the fate of Afghanistan--is this war won, almost won, almost lost, entirely lost? In this parched land, we will need to do some bridge building.

We also have the Taliban, and the warlords (too many of whom, despite committing gross human rights abuses during the civil war, now serve in parliament or on the cabinet). We have "night letters" in the south warning of the fatal consequences for using cell phones after dark; we have gang rapes in the north by commanders more powerful than the U. S.-backed president; we have girls in the west who burn themselves alive out of a hopelessness made more acute after learning about this illusory idea of "universal human rights."

We will need to tread lightly, even while leaving a heavy footprint for peace. We will need witnesses at our back--is the world of women peace builders ready and willing? We will need to have courage, wherever we are.

BY THE NIGHT OF DAY FIVE, I've completed the unit. It takes up barely any room on an external hard drive, or in my 15-kilo evacuation pack. I've called it "Women in Peace and Governance." I spend day six distancing myself, ready to tear the whole thing apart if needed after having shared it with the Afghan women for whom it is intended. What do I know? I am only a visitor here, locked behind barbed wire, with armed guards stationed at my guest house door. All I know is the fire in my belly that says even if the evacuation is called, I will not abandon this work.

It's late in the night when the last text message arrives. "Situation normal. Restrictions lifted. Report to work as usual." And, as quietly as it began, so it ends. For some of us, understandably, it's a nightmare, invited back into an unprotected world with fear as ubiquitous as the dust in the dry air. For me, it's an awakening into a new kind of day, with a new kind of clarity about the beautiful bravery of women's peace building in Afghanistan.

Theresa de Langis, Ph.D., works as the Senior Gender & Politics Specialist for UNIFEM Afghanistan. She can be reached at [e-mail].