#afghanistan (country)

[ymustutortureme]

I genuinely feel like this isn't said enough. So I'm gonna say it.

To everyone Zionist out there, every pro-genocide, pro-israel bigot, from the bottom of my heart, from the depths of my soul:

Fuck you.

[son-of-avraham]

I remember seeing some people talk about what were the last two afghan jews back when there were still two in the country and how almost... silly and comical it was that they still couldn't get along with each other but like... Imagine being the only two people of a minority group in your entire country because everyone else ran away, were intimidated into fleeing, or were killed. Maybe I'm a killjoy, but I really never found it funny to think of them having petty disputes because, like, obviously people in high-stress situations are going to be more prone to argument and disliking each other. Obviously when your sacred texts are stolen, when your community is snatched away, when you aren't sure if you'll be taken prisoner for the last time and never return... Obviously you're not going to be primed to interact with others pleasantly.

When you look up afghan jews, you'll find this.

[toebeans-mcgee]

Please, don’t forget about the women in Afghanistan.

This image is not at all a commentary on Islam and/or of the different head-coverings that a woman may choose to wear while respecting her faith. Wearing a burqa/burka does not equate to an inherent lack of rights/freedom. This is also not a criticism of the Barbie movie. This is a statement about the brutal treatment of the women and girls in Afghanistan (as well as in Iran). 

I loved the Barbie movie and think it’s a very important and empowering film. However, it is a bit jarring when I’m scrolling through my phone, listening to the Barbie soundtrack, and I come across an article detailing the mounting horrors these women face in these countries. There is so much happening in the world, and it all needs news time, but the virtual media silence on this topic is frightening.

Even though my country isn’t perfect (especially so after June of last year), it’s easy to lose perspective on how privileged I am. 

The many different flavors of western feminism aren’t for everyone and every culture; to think so would be privileged and tone deaf. There is no "one-size-fits-all" kind of empowerment. But, objectively, what is happening to women and girls in Afghanistan and Iran is abhorrent and cannot be forgotten. 

If Barbie can be anything, then Barbie can be an advocate and an activist. Do what you can, Barbies.

“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” ― Audre Lorde

[acediscowlng]

okay i do understand that a large part of this is just being how the timeline plays out, i get that, i really do, but sometimes i do think about john winchester being a soldier and training his sons to be soldiers but also john was specifically a soldier in vietnam and whooo boy that man sure did fall into the monster vs human mindset real fast and i think about how military men in the show are repeatedly shown to be uniquely suited to hunting and who did they hunt again? why are they so good at hunting? who did they have experience hunting while they were in the military?

and the show never even comes close to unpacking this and you know what i get that i really do because i do not want to unpack it either but here we fucking are, aren't we?

[loumandforyou]

When my grandpa was around 14 years old, he joined the Greek resistance against the German and Italian occupation (smuggling food, helping Jewish people hide). One of my mom's stronger first memories is going to a protest for the war in Vietnam. One of my own, is standing in a protest against the war in Afghanistan, with people screaming "φονιάδες των λαών, αμερικανοι!" ("Murderers of people/nations, [are the] Americans"). Now I go to protests about Azerbaijan with an Armenian friend.

People have always stood against wars, against the deaths of innocent people.

Why now, protesting against the war in Palestine, is wrong?

[countriesgame]

Please reblog for a bigger sample size!

If you have any fun fact about Afghanistan, please tell us and I'll reblog it!

Be respectful in your comments. You can criticize a government without offending its people.

[curtwilde]

My heart hurts to say this about Bangladesh because I still think of ya'll as my country and my people, but you have really lost the plot.

When will this subcontinent be free of religious dogmatism and religious nationalism?

[coochiequeens]

Happy National Princess Week!

1 Amanullah wasn’t actually king until 1926 – he was Amir before then. For simplicity’s sake, referring to him as king.

2 For an idea of how Syria was doing at the time, read the entry on Naziq al-Abid (although please excuse the hideous and outdated art). It is entirely possible from the timeframe that she and Soraya knew each other, although I have no evidence of it.

3 Soraya’s father was Mahmud Tarzi, the father of Afghan journalism and a pretty swell guy.

4The “wandering marketplaces” bit is a rumor, but illustrative that he was a man of the people and really fairly popular.

5 This was the Third Anglo-Afghan War, which happened right around the formation of the League of Nations. For years prior, Afghanistan has been treated like a pawn in a larger game of chess between Russia and Britain (usually referred to as the “Great Game”). The Afghans fought for self-determination, and although it was an overall military victory for Britain, Afghanistan came out of it independent. Several books I read pointed to the League of Nations being a central cause of this, as it was pushing for an end to colonialism and promoting self-governance.

6 This was all laid out in Amanullah’s “Book of Order,” the Nizamnama, introduced in 1923. It was a hugely controversial document for the more religious members of Afghan society, as to their eyes it placed secular laws above god’s law. He argued all of the points on religious grounds. Polygamy, for example, was an only acceptable if you treat all your wives equally – which was a feat only possible if you were the Prophet. Amanullah was pretty strictly monogamous – unheard of for kings – and very faithful to Soraya.

7 Soraya’s entire family was involved in bettering the lot of women: her sisters founded a women’s hospital and an organization to help women.

8 Amanullah was a very learned guy – he personally taught adult education classes.

9 The bride price wasn’t abolished technically – it was just capped at 29 rupees, instead of the tens of thousands that that one saw beforehand.

10 The magazine in question was Ershad-I-Niswan, “Guidance for Women.” The speech at the bottom is one she gave in 1926 at the seventh anniversary of Afghan independence.

11 This was formed in 1927. Many men took grave offense at random women (who were mostly older types) entering their houses unbidden. They would basically make house calls to check in on women.

12 This was the Khost Rebellion, which basically halted the entire country from about 1924 to 1926. Amanullah won it mostly through bringing in British and Russian help and bribing various tribes to fight for him. The Brits and Russians were still trying to figure out how to exercise influence, although the Brits were fairly stuck-up about it (and seemingly sore that they’d ceded Afghanistan in the first place).

13 Remarkably, Soraya joined him in visiting Khost afterward, although the locals HATED her.

14 The Minaret still exists as a tourist destination, to my knowledge.

15 Much of this, as you’ll see, was getting ahead of himself. He would spend a lot of money bringing in specialists from Europe to make roads or telegraphs, but not have anywhere to run them, necessarily. A lot of people spent time sitting around. It was fairly wasteful.

16 They also did a ton of other stuff: instituted a solar calendar, promoted archaeology, and guaranteed rights to women and minorities: “The Prophet said all people are equal, men and women. Take his words to heart.”

17 The politics of this trip are interesting. Britain and Russia were both vying to have Afghan under their umbrella, but without appearing too desperate. Amanullah and Soraya were playing them – and the rest of Europe – against each other. They were given lavish greetings almost everywhere they went.

18 The first illustration is that of their visit to an arms factory in Sheffield, where Soraya impressed with her shooting accuracy. She’d also wowed the Brits in 1927, at a clay pigeon shooting competition between the Afghans and British diplomats.

19 The second illustration is that of a time where Soraya, seemingly aware that their servant could understand the Farsi that she was speaking in private, mentioned in Farsi that the boiling-hot tea was awfully cold. The servant, shocked at her comment, was about to comment, when he realized he was not supposed to be able to understand them, and that both Amanullah and Soraya were looking him directly in the eye.

20 Among the gifts they got while abroad: furniture, tanks, cars, planes, a rifle (for Soraya), and two fluffy white kittens (from Turkey). Amanullah idolized Turkey, which had recently achieved many of his stated goals, under its new leader Mustafa Ataturk.

21 Russia was convinced Afghanistan had signed some sort of treaty with Britain, and drove themselves nuts trying to find it in their belongings. Near the end of their stay, they became convinced it was in the one piece of luggage they hadn’t checked – when, at length, they managed to separate Soraya from the bag, it turned out to be just a suitcase full of her lingerie.

22 Okay. So this is one of those things that gets overstated and accepted as fact – and it sounds plausible. After all, Britain interfered with god knows how many countries – just 25 years later, they’d overthrow the democratic leader of Iran in a secret operation. But they stridently deny involvement here, and the declassified cables between their envoys bears that out. More on this later.

23 Some reports of “naked photos” of Soraya indicate a doctored photo of Soraya’s head on a dancer’s body, citing it as evidence of British involvement. Others assume that, to rural Afghans, merely showing bare shoulders would be considered a form of nudity. I could not find consensus on what photographs exactly were the ones to rile up the Afghans so.

24 The rumors of secret Christianity (“They met with the pope!”), a secret crematorium for old people, and a macabre soap factory are ones that apparently still sometimes pop up as rumors in present-day Afghanistan.

25 I’m glossing over it here, but after his visit to Europe, Amanullah got pretty iron-fisted in his approach. He’d pushed for western-style clothing for government employees already, feeling that traditional clothing was not taken seriously on the international stage. But here he started mandating clothing, and forcing people to cut their beards – and fining them if they didn’t. He made some parks burqa-free zones, and on one occasion purportedly ripped off a burqa from a woman in such a zone, leaving her to walk home, utterly humiliated.

26 Additionally, his civil service requirement, and that of coed education, directly robbed local tribes of power, by extracting their young for what many considered indoctrination.

27 many other women whipped off their veils at this event, after the queen – although not all. It was an optional thing, and should not be viewed as a tool of oppression. Many women kept it on willingly and happily (ref. the woman on screen right).

28 Amanullah was not great at budgeting, and his taxes grew onerous in short order. His heart was in the right place, but he was pushing way too fast.

29 the bandit here was named Habibullah Kalakani (well, just Habibullah, “Kalakani” denoted where he was from), but he was known better as Bacha-i-Saqao, or “the water carrier”: a title indicating his low status. He was illiterate, brutish, and not well loved.

30 This was sort of a perfect storm of events: Amanullah was distracted by a rebellion in the Khyber pass, and by all accounts, Saqao was not really on his radar. The army was off quashing that rebellion, leaving it wide open to Saqao. Additionally, Amanullah’s backups had either been alienated by his behavior, or outright stymied from joining him. A number of nearby tribes were stopped at the Afghan border – whose exact location had been a point of contention – by British troops and not allowed to pass.

31 There was a humiliating period I am glossing over here where Amanullah tried acquiescing to Saqao’s demands, which included rolling back all his reforms and divorcing Soraya. It was not enough, and he was ousted anyways.

32 A  number of writeups made a point of talking about how he fled in his import car that he’d gotten in Europe. Amanullah’s taste for luxury was not one of his more widely-lauded traits.

33 Here we get more points that some writeups point to as evidence of British interference. Adding to the peculiar exception for the British (which is explained by the fact that the British had been better to the rural tribes than, say, the Germans, whose drinking offended the religious minority) are some other oddities: TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) was in the area at the time for reason that have never been adequately explained; eyewitness accounts describe English rations being passed around by Saqao’s men; there are even reports of Saqao meeting with British envoys (which are not borne out in any cables).

34 The majority of modern academic thought seems to affirm that Britain wasn’t directly responsible, although they certainly didn’t help with the political atmosphere at the time. Bottom-line, it was not in Britain’s interests to have a destabilized Afghanistan at the time. Nevertheless, contemporary Western newspapers from France, Italy, Russia, and even England all assumed England had masterminded it, and that Saqao was Britain’s puppet.

35 Saqao was profoundly ill-suited to his new role in leadership. He did not understand how banks or taxes worked, and preferred to just threaten merchants to give him money. Likely apocryphal tales describe his men marveling over windows, which they’d never seen before. He staffed his entire government with various poorly-educated cronies and personal friends. Few of them could read, least of all Saqao.

36 The guy to overthrow Saqao was Nadir Khan (unrelated), who’d been Amanullah’s military commander in the Anglo-Afghan war, but had left to Paris during the Khost rebellion. He came back and overthrew Saqao, executing him. Some attempts were made by foreign powers, especially Italy, to reinstate Amanullah, but the local support wasn’t there.

37 The US’s involvement in the 70s and 80s is probably well-known to most of you, but here’s a Wikipedia article covering it. The short version, which is somewhat disputed, is that the US armed the rural religious population to overthrow the progressive government. This mass destabilization of the country led to the rise of the Taliban.

38 Kabul in the 60s was actually a hub of fashion! Crazy, right?39 These women were wearing chaderi, which I believe is basically synonymous with burqa – I could be wrong on that.

[storm-of-feathers]

There aren't only three genocides happening. By the way. There's been at least ten ongoing. None of you cared about them until you could hate jews about it, though.

[soviet-siscon]

this is out of left field but am I going to get cancelled for saying that people are fucking idiots when it comes to understanding the soviet-afghan war and they literally refuse to learn anything about the Saur revolution and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan?

[andgat]

❤️❤️❤️

[nerianasims]

I'm always relieved when I see a Ukrainian I know post something after Russia has murdered yet more of them.

I am not relieved that my government is disallowing them from striking military targets in Russia. I don't know wtf is going on there. We can't know everything, or even much, about international politics at this scale, but in this case I can't even imagine what the hell the logic is. Except. One thing.

In a history class on WWII, I read many well-researched papers that argued that Neville Chamberlain's whole appeasement, "peace in our time" thing was a ruse. Britain's army and its allies (especially the United States) were not prepared for another world war yet, in material terms. It was a stalling tactic to build up their militaries. They didn't think Hitler would stop; they were not so stupid. But they figured Hitler (and Stalin, who remember was on Hitler's side at this point) would believe that the Allied powers were weak, and therefore not themselves prepare for a huge Allied war machine.

Things didn't end up going along with the Allies' timeline because war is never predictable. So there was a hell of a lot of scrambling. But while morale and political will are incredibly important to war, so is the simple reality of having the equipment and soldiers to deal with it. And while we could probably crush Russia's military relatively easily right now (so long as we didn't try a land invasion), they are allied with China.

[xtruss]

According to the data compiled by Islamic Relief, this year’s Ramadan will be the toughest ever as more than 600 Million People in Muslim-Majority Countries will mark the Holy Month of Ramadan without enough food. A third of those people are already facing severe Hunger and Malnutrition due to a Fatal Combination of Conflict, Climate Change and Inequality.

[redvelvetwishtree]

There are people on Instagram's book reading community demanding creators don't show books by Russian authors and telling everyone to throw such books away ... ...like ??? How do their brains work? Why are western people sooo sure of their political correctness and shove it down aggressively down others' throats? Everyone can decide on their own what they want to do or not. It is always the western people policing and bullying everyone.

Also, ma'am, when are you throwing away all your American and British literature? Lemme know when please.

[selamat-linting]

skipping wwe ppv's set in the us, france, and australia because of their human rights abuses and ongoing support on neo-colonialism all over the world