“Good Women Have No Need for This Law”: The Battles over the Law on Elimination of Violence against Women

The chapter focuses on the law that would take center stage in gender politics in contemporary Afghanistan: the Elimination of Violence against Women law (EVAW law), decreed in the summer of 2009. The chapter explores the origins of the law, the tactics used to promote it, and the opposition it encountered in Parliament. It shows how the EVAW law was promoted through a transnational coalition in which global gender expertise and institutions intersected with personalized and patrimonial local politics. The chapter argues that the partial status the law achieved—signed as presidential decree but never approved in Parliament—reflected the constant tension between three key aspects of the post-2001 order: foreign military operations, the rehabilitation of the mujahedin, and external attempts to promote Afghan women’s rights.