#taliban and afghanistan

[charlesoberonn]

Donald Trump is responsible for the spike in international conflict in recent years.

His 2020 "peace" deal with the Taliban which completely sidestepped the Afghan government and gave the Taliban everything they wanted directly led to the botched withdrawal of US troops in 2021 and the subsequent Taliban reconquest of the country.

This was a reversal of US geopolitical efforts and a successful war of conquest by an enemy of the US. While the whole world watched. It empowered autocrats and enemies of the US and its allies worldwide to attempt to do the same. Most notably with Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

So next time you hear Trump boasting that there were no wars during his term, remember that it was his incompetence that led to the current state of affair.

[curtwilde]

Taliban has announced that women in Afghanistan will be stoned to death in public for adultery.

The Afghan Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, has issued a disturbing proclamation, vowing to implement brutal punishments against women in public. In a chilling voice message broadcasted on state television, Akhundzada directly addressed Western officials, dismissing concerns about violating women’s rights by stoning them to death.

"You say it’s a violation of women’s rights when we stone them to death," Akhundzada stated. "But we will soon implement the punishment for adultery. We will flog women in public. We will stone them to death in public," he declared, marking his most severe rhetoric since the Taliban seized control of Kabul in August 2021.

These grim statements, purportedly from Akhundzada, who has seldom been seen in public except for a few outdated portraits, emanate from Afghanistan’s state TV, now under Taliban control. Akhundzada is believed to be located in southern Kandahar, the Taliban's stronghold. Despite early assurances of a more moderate regime, the Taliban swiftly reverted to harsh public penalties reminiscent of their previous rule in the late 1990s, including public executions and floggings. The United Nations has vehemently criticised these actions, urging the Taliban to cease such practices.

In his message, Akhundzada asserted that the women's rights advocated by the international community contradicted the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Akhundzada emphasised resilience among Taliban fighters, urging them to oppose women's rights persistently. "I told the Mujahedin that we tell the Westerners that we fought against you for 20 years and we will fight 20 and even more years against you," he stated.

His remarks have sparked outrage among Afghans, with many calling for increased international pressure on the Taliban.

"The money that they receive from the international community as humanitarian aid is just feeding them against women," lamented Tala, a former civil servant from Kabul.

"As a woman, I don’t feel safe and secure in Afghanistan. Each morning starts with a barrage of notices and orders imposing restrictions and stringent rules on women, stripping away even the smallest joys and extinguishing hope for a brighter future," she added.

"We, the women, are living in prison," Tala emphasised, "And the Taliban are making it smaller for us every passing day."

Taliban authorities have also barred 330,000 girls from returning to secondary school for the third consecutive year. University doors were closed to women in December 2022 and participation in the workforce is heavily restricted.

[djuvlipen]

[warningsine]

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have issued a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public under new laws approved by the supreme leader in efforts to combat vice and promote virtue.

The laws were issued Wednesday after they were approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, a government spokesman said. The Taliban had set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” after seizing power in 2021.

The ministry published its vice and virtue laws on Wednesday that cover aspects of everyday life like public transportation, music, shaving and celebrations.

They are set out in a 114-page, 35-article document seen by The Associated Press and are the first formal declaration of vice and virtue laws in Afghanistan since the takeover.

“Inshallah we assure you that this Islamic law will be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice,” said ministry spokesman Maulvi Abdul Ghafar Farooq on Thursday.

The laws empower the ministry to be at the frontline of regulating personal conduct, administering punishments like warnings or arrest if enforcers allege that Afghans have broken the laws.

Article 13 relates to women. It says it is mandatory for a woman to veil her body at all times in public and that a face covering is essential to avoid temptation and tempting others. Clothing should not be thin, tight or short.

Women should veil themselves in front of all male strangers, including Muslims, and in front of all non-Muslims to avoid being corrupted. A woman’s voice is deemed intimate and so should not be heard singing, reciting, or reading aloud in public. It is forbidden for women to look at men they are not related to by blood or marriage and vice versa.

Article 17 bans the publication of images of living beings, threatening an already fragile Afghan media landscape.

Article 19 bans the playing of music, the transportation of solo female travelers, and the mixing of men and women who are not related to each other. The law also obliges passengers and drivers to perform prayers at designated times.

According to the ministry website, the promotion of virtue includes prayer, aligning the character and behavior of Muslims with Islamic law, encouraging women to wear hijab, and inviting people to comply with the five pillars of Islam. It also says the elimination of vice involves prohibiting people from doing things forbidden by Islamic law.

Last month, a U.N. report said the ministry was contributing to a climate of fear and intimidation among Afghans through edicts and the methods used to enforce them.

It said the ministry’s role was expanding into other areas of public life, including media monitoring and eradicating drug addiction.

“Given the multiple issues outlined in the report, the position expressed by the de facto authorities that this oversight will be increasing and expanding gives cause for significant concern for all Afghans, especially women and girls,” said Fiona Frazer, the head of the human rights service at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

The Taliban rejected the U.N. report.

[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

[eretzyisrael]

[folklorespring]

Pure evil

[afghanbarbie]

The sex-based apartheid against women in Afghanistan cannot be reduced to, "Afghan men saw Afghan women enjoying freedom and got mad, so they established extremist religious governments to stop it." I am really tired of seeing this misconception and oversimplification spread around by leftists, liberals and feminists – it's racist, and simply not fucking true.

The majority of Afghans want a secular government and for the oppression of women to end. The Taliban represent a minority of Afghanistan's people. The deterioration of Afghan society – in particular, women's rights and freedoms – directly results from decades of foreign intervention, imperialism and occupation. Afghans did not destroy Afghanistan, the United States did, and the USSR paved the way for them to do so.

Had Afghanistan never been treated like a pawn in the games played by imperialistic powers, had we not been reduced to resources, strategic importance and a tool for weakening the enemy, extremism would have never come to power.

An overview of Afghanistan's recent history:

The USSR wanted to incorporate Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia and did so by sabotaging indigenous Afghan communist movements and replacing our leaders with those loyal to the USSR. The United States began funding and training Islamic extremists – the Mujahideen – to fight against the Soviet influence and subsequent invasion, and to help the CIA suppress any indigenous Afghan leftist movements. Those Mujahideen won the war, and then spent the next decade fighting for absolute control over Afghanistan.

During that time period, known as the Afghan Civil War, the Mujahideen became warlords, each enforcing their own laws on the regions they controlled. Kabul was nearly destroyed, and the chaos, destruction and death was largely ignored by the United States despite being the ones who caused and empowered it. This civil war era created the perfect, unstable environment needed to give a fringe but strong group like the Taliban a chance to rise to power. And after two decades of war, a singular entity taking control and bringing 'peace' was enticing to all Afghans, even if their views were objectively more extreme than what we had been enduring up to that point.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they allied with the same warlords that had been destroying our country the decade prior and whom they had rallied against the Soviets – these are the people that made up the Northern Alliance. The 'good guys' that America gave us were rapists, pillagers, and violent extremists, no better than the Taliban. And that's not even mentioning the horrible atrocities and war crimes committed by American forces themselves.

So, no, Afghan men did not collectively wake up one day and decide that women had too much freedom and rush to establish an extremist government overnight. No, this is not to excuse the misogyny of men in our society – the extremists had to already exist for Americans to fund and arm them against the Soviets – but rather to redirect the bulk of this racist blame to the actual culprits. The religious extremism and sex-based apartheid would not be oppressing and murdering us today if they hadn't been funded and supported by the United States of America thirty years ago. And despite all the abuses and restrictions, many Afghan women prefer the Taliban's current government to another American occupation. I felt safer walking in Taliban-controlled Kabul than I did being 'randomly searched' (sexually assaulted) by American military police in my village as a child.

Imperialism is inextricably linked with patriarchal violence and women's oppression. You cannot talk about the deterioration of Afghanistan without talking about the true cause of said decline: The United States of America. Americans of all political views, including leftists and feminists, are guilty of reducing or outright ignoring Western responsibility for female oppression in the Global South, finding it much easier to place all blame on the foreign brown man or our supposedly backwards, savage cultures, when the most responsibility belongs with Western governments and their meddling games that forced the most violent misogynists among us into power.

(Most of this information comes from my own experience living as an Afghan Hazara woman in Afghanistan, but Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence covers this in much more detail. If you want more on the Soviet-Afghan war and Afghanistan's socialist history, Revolutionary Afghanistan is an English-language source from a more leftist perspective)

[secular-jew]

Buddha statue meticulously carved into the stone 1500 years ago, Bamyan Valley (Afghanistan), destroyed by the Islamic State.

This is Islam.

[allthegeopolitics]

Afghan women and supporters around the globe are standing up — or, in this case, singing — in solidarity after the Taliban introduced new rules that prohibit women's voices from being heard in public. Video captured an Afghan woman, Taiba Sulaimani, who lives in Toronto, singing an Afghan song about breaking free from oppression, Storyful reported. The Taliban last week issued the country's first set of laws said to prevent vice and promote virtue. They include a requirement for a woman to conceal her face, body and voice outside the home.

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[i-merani]

Can someone blow up taliban like we can all chip in pleaseeee can someone save the women there

[molkolsdal]

“I hate being a woman. Before Eid, I cut my hair short. If God didn’t like girls, why did he create us?” Fatima (21), an aspiring artist, painted murals before the Taliban came into power. All of the mural projects she was involved with have been painted over and replaced by Islamic Emirates propaganda. “The day the Taliban shut the schools, it felt like I fell from a roof. I hit the ground, I felt crushed and I died… from inside.”

Kiana Hayeri

[she-is-ovarit]

Afghan women and girls are being sent to "prison" for "their safety" by the Taliban, who are making Afghan men essentially pinky-swear in front of other Afghan men that they won't hurt women and girls. This comes after girls are forbidden from receiving an education higher than the 6th grade, are barred from entering public spaces, required to abide by a dress code and have a male chaperone at all times.

[warningsine]

I keep seeing such comments on my notes which makes me wonder: what did I miss?

"The Handmaid's Tale" draws on global histories.

Atwood was inspired by what happened:

during the Iranian Revolution (1978-1979),

in Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos,

in Germany (The Lebensborn project),

in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu,

in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge,

in Stalinist Russia.

She was also inspired by what happened to Argentinean women during Jorge Rafael Videla's military dictatorship which was backed by the US.

But killing the pregnant women was a crime that even Argentina’s military men – who referred to themselves in self-aggrandising speeches as defenders of “western and Christian civilisation” – couldn’t bring themselves to commit. Instead, they kept pregnant activists alive until they gave birth, murdering them afterwards and handing their babies to childless military couples to raise as their own. It was, in a macabre sense, the military’s ultimate victory against a despised enemy they had decided to annihilate completely. It is estimated some 500 children were born under these circumstances.

(x)

And what happened to Spanish women under Franco.

Known as the lost children of the Franco-era, as many as 300,000 babies are estimated to have been abducted from their mothers under General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939-75, and in the decades after.

The theft of newborns began in the 1930’s after the Spanish Civil War as an ideological practice, stripping left-wing parents or Franco-opponents of their children as a way of ridding Marxist influence from society. But in the 1950’s, the practice expanded to poor or illegitimate families who were seen as economically or morally deficient, Agence France-Presse reports.

New mothers were often told their babies had died and the hospital had taken care of the burials. These babies were allegedly sold for adoption and involved a wide network of doctors, nurses, nuns and priests, according to AFP. The system carried on after Franco’s death in 1975 until 1987, when a new law was implemented regulating adoption.

(x)

"When I wrote 'The Handmaid's Tale', nothing went into it that had not happened in real life somewhere at some time," she said.

[bellamonde]

As most of you have read by now, Taliban has banned women from university education. These brave Afghan women took the streets protesting the closure. It will start with university and eventually trickle down. Taliban is fearful of educated women.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said late Tuesday that no other country in the world bars women and girls from receiving an education."The Taliban cannot expect to be a legitimate member of the international community until they respect the rights of all in Afghanistan," he warned. "This decision will come with consequences for the Taliban." 

Frankly, US can go f*** itself. They allowed this to happen. Biden allowed this to happen. What the hell did they think was going to happen once Taliban came back to power? Did they think that Taliban was going to allow women to be educated, to be free? Of course they didn’t; of course the US knew this was the end result. They didn’t care because Afghan women are nonhumans in their eyes. So, Blinken can say whatever he wants. His words are empty and the US is partly responsible for what is happening to Afghan women and to Afghanistan. The audacity of US administrations knows no limits. 

It’s up to us to help. To put pressure on western governments to do something, such as, fair refugee laws that would help these women and girls to come to the west and live normal lives. And also, pronouncing Taliban as an illegitimate government. 

Stand with the women of Afghanistan. Be their voice. Show that the world we care.

I will try to put together a link for petitions and letter writing campaigns to help Afghan women. And if you know of any, please message me. 

Source: @shabnamnasimi