Susan Walsh/AP Photo
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) speaks at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the condition of women in Afghanistan, April 27, 2021.
When Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, the senior senator from New Hampshire, addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during an April 27 hearing on the Biden administration’s plan to withdraw from Afghanistan, she talked about a photograph of seven Afghan women, positioned right behind her. “When you say the level of violence is too high, I want to put a face on it,” said Shaheen, who then provided a detailed account of how the Taliban brutally murdered these seven young women.
“We have worked for two decades alongside our allies to advance the rights of not just women and girls but other ethnic minorities in Afghanistan,” she said. “We owe it to women and girls to ensure that their hard-fought rights are preserved. Sadly, I believe an arbitrary deadline for our withdrawal of our forces risks those efforts,” she concluded, questioning the logic of the Biden administration’s planned withdrawal.
The “conditions-based withdrawal” that Sen. Shaheen favors usually translates into an extension of the Afghanistan War, however, because the conditions never get better. A number of New Hampshire–based organizations have come to question the senator’s rationale of defending women’s rights. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaeda, they argue, not to defend women’s rights there. They further note that some Afghan women leaders have demanded we leave, and that some of our allies have atrocious women’s rights records.
The “conditions-based withdrawal” that Sen. Shaheen favors usually translates into an extension of the war.
In fact, they point out, Shaheen has a conflict of interest: She receives significant campaign contributions from major defense contractors, some of which are major employers of New Hampshire residents.
“Our presence there has no effect on women’s rights,” said Will Hopkins, a veteran of the Iraq War and now executive director of New Hampshire Peace Action, an organization that raises awareness of the impacts of U.S. militarism. “That’s not what the U.S. military does. We’re not there to protect women’s rights, we’re there to ensure the government we want is in power and the factions we don’t want in power aren’t in power.”
“Women’s rights are a problem in Afghanistan,” Hopkins added. “But American military presence isn’t something that addresses that or even seeks to address that. It is an argument that is put up as a distraction.”
For years, Malalai Joya, a leading Afghan women’s rights advocate and former member of Afghan Parliament, has criticized the U.S. occupation and its rationale for being there. “The catastrophic situation of women was a very good excuse for the US and NATO to justify their criminal war in Afghanistan. They misuse the miseries of Afghan women for their propaganda machine,” she said in an interview with The Nation.
The conflict in Afghanistan has been devastating for women and girls. Over 10,000 women and girls were killed or injured between 2009 and 2020, according to a 2021 U.N. report. “The years-long conflict in Afghanistan ‘continues to wreak a shocking and detrimental toll’ on women and children, who accounted for 43 per cent of all civilian casualties—30 per cent children and 13 per cent women,” the report reads. The Intercept has reported that the CIA has also been training death squads, some of which kill children.
“Sadly, it is unsurprising that Sen. Shaheen, one of the Senate’s top recipients of defense dollars in campaign contributions, has spoken out against this withdrawal, as the war has made vast sums of money for contractors who fund her re-election campaigns,” Hopkins said.
Between 2015 and 2020, Shaheen received nearly half a million dollars in contributions from people or organizations classified as “miscellaneous defense,” “defense electronics,” “defense aerospace,” and “foreign and defense policy,” according to the Center for Responsive Politics. This includes donations directly to her campaign committee, as well as to the Shaheen leadership PAC.
Defense contractors love to give to senators on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees; Shaheen serves on both. On the Armed Services Committee, she is the sixth-highest recipient of all 26 senators. On Appropriations, she’s fifth-highest of 30. On Foreign Relations, another crucial committee where she serves, she is third of 24. Her high ranking is all the more notable considering that New Hampshire is one of the smallest states, where the cost of running a statewide campaign is considerably lower than it is in most other states.
Five defense contractors are in her top 20 donors: BAE Systems, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Nevada, and Honeywell. General Atomics, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin also made her top 100.
During the 2018–2020 cycle, Shaheen was particularly favored by some defense contractors. She was the number one senator to receive BAE Systems’ donations, and the number two senator for Sierra Nevada Corp. She ranked ninth for General Atomics, and 11th for Raytheon.
Defense contractors love to give to senators on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees; Shaheen serves on both.
Another factor that could be driving Sen. Shaheen’s decision-making process is what Hopkins referred to as “military Keynesianism”—keep wars going to bring jobs home. Defense spending accounted for $3.1 billion in New Hampshire’s economy in 2019, accounting for 3.5 percent of the state’s GDP, ranking it 14th in the nation.
BAE Systems alone brought a billion dollars to New Hampshire in 2018, “measured by aggregate employee salaries, subcontracts, and charitable donations,” according to the company. It employs between 4,000 and 6,000 workers and purchased $135 million in subcontracts and purchase orders from 246 in-state suppliers. BAE is also the largest industrial manufacturing employer in New Hampshire, employing three times as many as the number two.
“It’s multilayered; it’s complicated; on another level, it’s simple,” said Arnie Alpert, the former director of the American Friends Service Committee’s New Hampshire program, who has been working on demilitarization in the state for four decades. “We have an economy in this state and country that’s largely based on production of weapons. And wars lead to more weapons, and one could argue having more weapons leads to more wars. It’s insidious, and it’s very difficult to get elected by saying that those industries and those jobs should not exist.”
Shaheen is also a member of the New Hampshire Aerospace & Defense Export Consortium (NHADEC), a trade group that looks to get New Hampshire defense contractors access to international markets. The senator spoke at a virtual event for NHADEC in July 2020, at which the consortium said she would “give updates from Washington D.C. and key developments in areas relevant to NH’s A&D industry.” NHADEC did not return the Prospect’s calls or e-mails for comment.
“I think we’re really seeing the benefits of investing in ways that help companies get into international markets,” Shaheen told the New Hampshire Business Review following a 2018 NHADEC event. “That’s good for the economy and creates jobs.”
In 2016, Shaheen also spoke at a New Hampshire Aerospace and Defense Conference, at which state and federal officials worked with contractors to boost exports. “You have to gain access to new markets around the world,” she said in a video presentation. “Don’t hesitate to reach out to me.”
Defense contracts permeate the New Hampshire economy, and not only with weapons makers. Information technology firm Red River Technology and technical textile maker Warwick Mills get major defense contracts, and many small and medium-sized businesses get money from the Defense Department as well.
The famously useless F-35 fighter jet is also big business in New Hampshire. According to New Hampshire Business Review, within the state, “the F-35 program supports 55 suppliers—35 of which are small businesses—and over 900 direct jobs, much of them located at BAE Systems in Nashua. The F-35 program generates over $481 million in economic impact in the state.”
“When the only industry is weapons manufacturing,” said Hopkins, “supporting that industry and clamoring to make your home state a key recipient of those jobs becomes a necessity for survival on Capitol Hill, and getting those donations for campaigns is a key factor in determining who can make it to the serious tier of federal electoral politics as well.”
Shaheen’s invocation of women’s rights as a rationale for staying in Afghanistan doesn’t seem to paint the full picture of her motivations.
In December 2019, Congress ordered the creation of the Afghanistan Study Group to make policy recommendations on the Afghanistan War. Their finding, issued in a February 2021 report and corresponding hearing, was grounded in a commitment to a conditions-based withdrawal. However, many in the group have conflicts of interest due to their financial ties to defense contractors—including former New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, one of the group’s co-chairs, who is also on the board of BAE Systems.
Shaheen cites the Study Group’s recommendation as a justification for a conditions-based withdrawal. “I’m not sure we should be bound by a negotiation that the Taliban have not kept up their end of the agreement. And I support the recommendation of the Afghanistan Study Group that any withdrawal should be conditioned based,” she said on April 14.
Leaders within the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies pressured President Biden not to leave before the end of the year. “I would not be surprised if those unnamed ‘leaders within the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies’ have the ears of Shaheen and her staff,” Alpert said.
No one denies that Jeanne Shaheen is a champion of women’s rights. She was the first woman governor and senator from New Hampshire, and Emily’s List has endorsed her. Her invocation of women’s rights as a rationale for staying in Afghanistan, however, doesn’t seem to paint the full picture of her motivations. Unfortunately, the senator did not return our numerous requests for comment.
For many of her constituents, a conditions-based withdrawal is just a prescription for endless war. “It’s been a money pit,” said Hopkins. “It’s a loss of American soldier lives, a loss of Afghan lives; nobody is able to articulate why we’re still there, what we hope to get out of our presence there, or how we eventually get our troops out. It’s way past time. I’m glad that President Biden has decided to set a deadline.”
