#taliban-afghanistan news

[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

[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.

Continue Reading

[i-merani]

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

[queerism1969]

Women in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan are facing significant challenges in their fight for survival and equality, yet some self-identified feminists, known as TERFs, do not acknowledge or support their struggle and revolution.

[weemietime]

Absolutely wrenching.

This is a real ongoing gender apartheid

It is slowly beginning to rise to the first few stages of genocide in my opinion. I'm deeply afraid it will become normalized for the Taliban to kill off groups of women who "resist" or dissent.

The degree of oppression they face is positively extraordinary and an atrocity in every sense of the term. This is a crime against humanity happening right under our eyes and no one on the left is talking about it to a sustainable degree because Israel isn't involved.

I say, not in my name. I will not allow antisemitism and bigotry to silence these women's voices. They deserve to speak loud and proud. Fuck the Taliban. Fuck the IRGC. WOMEN LIFE FREEDOM.

Organizations to donate to help Afghan women.

[theupfish]

"As it stands, Sweden, Finland and Denmark already grant refugee status to all Afghan women seeking asylum, recognizing the severity of the persecution of women in Afghanistan - because of their gender."

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Qasim Rashid at Let's Address This:

In Afghanistan, the Taliban's Minister of Education has announced that girls' schools are likely to remain closed permanently, affirming what was allegedly a temporary decision in 2022. Additionally, the Taliban has now banned women from so much as speaking in public. As a Muslim let me be explicitly clear. This is apartheid, vile, and inexcusable. It is completely contrary to the Islamic tenets of seeking education. Adding to the injustices Afghan women face are the now centuries of imperialism and western interventionism. A return to justice is key to protect Afghan women now, and in the future. Let’s Address This.

Islam’s founder Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) declared, "It is incumbent upon every Muslim male and every Muslim female to attain education." In his Farewell Address, the last public address he delivered before he passed away, he declared, "Do treat women well, and be kind to them, for they are your partners." In doing so he emphatically crushed the patriarchal claim that women are somehow subservient to men, but instead established that women and men are equal partners. More than words, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) ‪exemplified these teachings with his actions. His first wife was a wealthy CEO named Khadija—and she was also his employer. While the Taliban has forbidden women from attaining education or playing any public role in society, Khadija was a well-known and well-regarded entrepreneur who ran a thriving trading business. Far from condemning such behavior, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) praised his wife Khadija as the example for women to follow—proud, confident, educated, wealthy, innovative, compassionate, all while also choosing to be a wife and mother.

[...] And adding to this oppression of Afghan women is the immeasurably harmful impact of imperialism and western interventionism. Much has been written by the devastating role Russia played in attempting to invade Afghanistan, and the response from the United States in arming the Mujahideen. Washington Post managing Editor Steve Coll details this extensively in his book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Indeed, less than a decade before the horrific events of 9/11, who can forget when western media praised Bin Laden as an “Anti-Soviet warrior on the road to peace?”

[...] The roughly 43 million people, and 22 million women and girls in Afghanistan are living under gender apartheid. The past attests to examples when Afghan leaders have afforded basic rights to women in Afghanistan. For example, in 1957, four years after becoming Prime Minister, the pro-Soviet Gen. Mohammed Daoud Khan allowed women to attend university and enter the work force. In 1975, Khan proposed a new Afghan constitution that granted women additional basic rights. A volatile series of military coups, followed by the U.S. Government arming the Mujahideen in the 1980s to combat Soviet communism ultimately ensured those rights would never come to fruition. And thus the cycle today is not new, but a repetition of the atrocities imposed upon Afghanistan, and Afghan women in particular, for centuries.

Afghanistan institutes further repression of women by barring them from speaking in public.

[the-eyespy]

🇦🇫🇵🇸 Taliban member from Afghanistan calls for sending troops to Palestine, stating: "We are 700k strong in Afghanistan. Send 400k to Palestine so we can destroy Israel."

[head-post]

Afghans flee Pakistan en masse: “We’d live here our whole life if they didn’t send us back”

Pakistan is set to begin forcibly removing 1.7 million migrants, many of them Afghans who fled the Taliban, Sky News reports.

Thousands of Afghans are fleeing Pakistan ahead of the government’s Wednesday deadline for undocumented or unregistered foreign nationals to leave the country.

Last month, Pakistan’s interim government threatened to round up, detain and deport those who do not leave the country voluntarily. Islamabad blames Afghan migrants for a surge in armed attacks, mainly in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southwestern province of Balochistan on the border with Afghanistan.

Learn more HERE

[bopinion]

2024 / 41

Aperçu of the week

“The first casualty, when war comes, is truth”

(Hiram Johnson, progressive US politician, who was Governor of and Senator for California, among other things, on World War 1)

Bad News of the Week

Bavaria is Germany's largest federal state. It is larger than Ireland, for example. Or Denmark. Or Belgium or the Netherlands or Croatia or Switzerland. So it's pretty big by European standards. So if an area is three times the size of Bavaria, that's a lot. And the area of forest that has already been burned in Brazil this year is just as large.

A total of 22.38 million hectares caught fire between January and September, according to a report by the MapBiomas initiative. This corresponds to an increase of 150 percent compared to the same period in 2023. The MapBiomas network consists of universities, non-governmental organizations and technology companies and examines satellite images, among other things, to keep track of environmental developments.

According to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), the main reason for the fires is deliberate arson. To create grazing land for cattle and arable land for soybean cultivation. Brazil's President Lula da Silva is committed to better protecting the forests and has already achieved success through stricter legislation and prosecution, as well as defining new protected areas.

So why are the figures still soaring? Researchers attribute this to the ongoing drought stress in the Amazon and its neighboring regions, which simply makes it easier to burn and causes it to spread more quickly. At the same time, the second largest tributary of the Amazon, the Rio Negro, is currently drying up, with the water level at its lowest since records began - in 1902!

The first researchers already fear that the first tipping points have also been passed in Brazil. This would be a catastrophe for the planet's largest C02 reservoir, oxygen producer and biodiversity guarantor. And therefore for humanity. It shocks me that there is still political support for fossil fuels. For example, in the current US presidential election campaign, where even Kamala Harris has backed away from her opposition to fracking because it could cost her the swing state of Pennsylvania. Or in Germany, the automobile country, there is talk of “technological openness”. Or Hungary would prefer to buy Russian gas again. Or...

Good News of the Week

The first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel. A sad day. Because it brought immeasurable suffering. First for the Israeli victims of the Hamas act of terrorism. And then on practically the entire Palestinian people. Both triggered by the extremism of individual so-called leaders who accept any victim for their ideologically blinded egoism - except themselves. The fact that there are now (one year after the attack!) still Israeli hostages with unclear whereabouts or conditions and at the same time the number of civilian victims of this war - because it is nothing else - is increasing daily is unbearable.

What I find good in this context is the differentiated view among the population here. In Munich, there have already been demonstrations with different points of view, which have certainly sharpened their own different points of view: “365 days - Munich against anti-Semitism” and “Palestine speaks Munich - 365 days of genocide”. The events took place on the same street. And remained peaceful and no clashes were reported. Even if both are too short-sighted, because not every Jew is a Zionist and not every Palestinian is a terrorist. On the contrary: a demonstrator holds up a sign that reads “Palestinians against Jew-hatred”.

Recently, an acquaintance told me about a video conference that a conversation partner from the USA suddenly left. He later apologized: he had been in his home office, his partner and he were of opposing political opinions and there would have been a huge row at home if he had found out what his international colleagues thought of Donald Trump. Namely nothing.

Such fundamental differences, which run like a deep rift even within families, were previously only known to me in the context of corona, when it seemed that vaccination supporters and opponents could no longer build any kind of bridge to each other. In the current political debate, there seem to me to be very few uncompromising hardliners. On both sides. Because there is consensus on one thing: the suffering must come to an end. That of the Palestinian civilian population and that of the Israeli hostages and their families. As long as we can agree on that, there will still be a basic understanding. For the good.

Personal happy moment of the week

We have been struggling with coronavirus and other colds for some time now and are still not really fit. As a result, real life is only taking place on the back burner: work gets done and we don't have the energy for the rest. Work-life balance looks different. But now we've finally been “outside” again. For brunch with friends. And we'll be doing it again a week later. It's nice to meet other people again without it being a meeting.

I couldn't care less...

...that the European Union can and probably will now impose punitive tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. The official reason is that Beijing is promoting car production with so many subsidies that competition is being distorted. In reality, however, the European automotive industry has simply been asleep. And what's more, the subsidy was invented in the European single market, so to speak.

It's fine with me...

...that a large majority of the CDU state associations (of the conservative Christian Democratic Union) are open to black-green coalitions. A corresponding blanket rejection, as repeatedly demanded by the Bavarian CSU (the sister party Christian Social Union) and its Minister President Markus Söder, is “absurd”. Exactly. In addition, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg and Schleswig-Holstein are recognized as having good, solid and pragmatic governments. In a coalition of conservatives and the Greens.

As I write this...

...the clean-up work in Florida is progressing after Hurricane Milton plowed through the peninsula like Helene shortly before. The extent of the damage was less severe than feared, even though it could run into the billions and there were also fatalities. What is terrible, however, is how even such disasters are being instrumentalized by the Republicans in the US election campaign to support the dystopian future scenarios that Donald Trump is creating ever more blatantly. Particularly perfidious: the Democrats would take away urgently needed funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to “rescue” Americans in order to buy the votes of illegal migrants. Unbelievable: these guys still manage to leave me at a loss for words...

Post Scriptum

Asylum is a hot topic in Europe right now. The increasing popularity of right-wing parties is mainly due to the fact that (too) many believe the propaganda that the entire continent has a migration problem. As a result, even more moderate centrist parties now also have this issue on their radar and in their election manifestos. The lowest common denominator: less immigration is better than more.

It is therefore surprising that the right of asylum is now being extended. But fortunately, justice is blind. The European Court of Justice has now decisively strengthened the protection of Afghan women. It has stated that the repression of the Taliban regime is now so massive that they are generally considered to be persecuted.

They are therefore entitled to asylum in the European Union. In principle and regardless of individual examination and interpretation. Women are systematically discriminated against by the Taliban - simply because they are women. The fact that this discrimination means, among other things, that no woman is even allowed to leave her home without a male escort makes it unlikely that the theory will be put into practice. But for me, this decision alone is a very strong symbol.

[workersolidarity]

🇦🇫 🚨 💥SUICIDE BOMBER IN AFGHANISTAN STRIKES TALIBAN GOVERNMENT OFFICE IN NIMROZ PROVINCE💥

Afghan media is reporting an explosion resulting from a suicide bomber at a Taliban Governor's office in the Nimroz Province area in the southwest of Afghanistan, wounding three Taliban personnel.

In a statement issued to the Afghan International news agency, Taliban Ministry of Interior spokesperson, Abdul Matin Qane said that an attacker wearing explosives bypassed two security checkpoints as Governor Mohammed Qasim Khalid exited his offices for prayer.

Gul Mohammed Qadrat, a spokesperson for the local Police Command told local media that the suicide bomber detonated his explosives after being identified by the bodyguards of Governor Khalid, who opened fire on the attacker.

Residents in the city of Zaranj reported hearing explosions coming from the direction of the Governor's office on Sunday evening, and witnesses told local media they heard gunfire shortly after the explosion.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[allthegeopolitics]

Life as a woman in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan just got even more restrictive as a government ministry enacts new laws on “vice and virtue” in the country, banning women’s voices and uncovered faces from public life. The laws were issued Wednesday by the ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice,” which was established in 2021 after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan. That was the year the U.S. military and other western powers, including Canada, evacuated the country, leaving behind a power vacuum quickly filled by the militant group. Many Afghans who worked for western powers, including drivers and interpreters, were left behind in the chaotic departure. [...] Women are also forbidden from singing, reciting and reading aloud in public, as a woman’s voice is deemed “intimate” and should not be heard. It’s unclear if speaking is also banned. [...]

Continue Reading.

Note from the poster @el-shab-hussein: Just a heads up before the opportunists try and get ahold of this for islamophobic propaganda, what exactly is Islamic about banning women from reading the Qur'an? Nothing. This has nothing to do with faith and everything to do with control and abuse of power.

[xtruss]

Folks! It’s Fucked-up Afghanistan 🇦🇫 of “Namak Haraams.”

Millions of Afghan Girls are Denied Education as the New School Year Begins, "Marking Another Grim Milestone in the Steady Erosion of Girls' and Women's Rights Nationwide," UNICEF's Chief said. The Taliban has Barred Girls From Going to School After 6th Grade Since Seizing Power in 2021.

[meandmybigmouth]

ISLAM, CHRISTIANITY ONE IN THE SAME IN THE TORTURE, ABUSE AND ENSLAVEMENT OF WOMEN!