Taliban: NGOs employing women will be banned & building should not have windows that women can be seen

I honestly don't think the plight of women is anywhere near the top of any government's agenda. There won't be anything like the support there was for boycotts of SA imports. I am old enough to remember the massive coverage of apartheid and how exercised politicians were and how we all got involved.
As pp have said, what can we boycott other than cricket? There isn't much else.

I've put out a request to the RAWA and WRN Afghanistan on twitter as to what they would like us to do, how we can support them. Last time i asked was a few months ago and the answer was boycott as much as poss and pressure our own governments and organisations (like the ICC) into making public statements about how this is apartheid and how it should not be tolerated. and for sports organisations to boycott.

The Taliban, btw, have also introduced severe punishments to any men who facilitate access to smart phones and the like for women, so there is very little help expected there.

I think at this point organisations like RAWA and WRNA are very well aware of the harms that will happen to women whatever we in the west do. The difference is that they would like us to be their voices. I think that is the VERY least our governments can do. Especially governments who participated in military actions over there and then left without a backward glance (to be fair: hard to see what else they could do)

And much as it pains me - i want to see our countries sending men back to Afghanistan and refusing asylum or support. If we don't have Afghan women getting out of there, then we don't accept the men. Controversial view i know, and it makes me uncomfortable to actually articulate that. But it has been at the back of my mind for a while now. (in my home town a pub building that has been empty and falling derelict for about 20 years is to be turned into a meeting-place/cultural centre for Afghans living there. I really really want the council to ensure that Afghan women have equal access to it, and women's areas where they can receive support they may need.)

ETA to add: agree wholeheartedly with @MrsTerryPratchett that different groups want different things. And that is fine because a multi-pronged approach is going to be a) more effective and b) attract more support. People who don't feel they can stand with women on this, may feel more able to stand with cricket teams on this issue etc etc.

The Women's Rights Network who are raising awareness and spreading the word about what is happening to Afghan women want us to boycott.

Then we boycott.

It's worth saying that in SA when all the various boycotts were happening, different sectors cared about different things. The British descent SA and the Boer descent SA people were focused on money and political power respectively. Very broadly (and poorly remembered). So boycotting wine/fruit and sport/free Nelson Mandela targeted different sectors of society.

Cricket may work on certain people. But heroin, I don't know. I believe in wholesale legalisation and I suppose that would mean proper supply chains. Less cash for the Taliban. Get it from Northern Thailand, rather than Myanmar or Afghanistan.

I think it was more likely that they were messaging each other through windows.

This latest edict stinks of panic - when you see this level of control on an already repressed population, it means something is going very wrong elsewhere.

At a guess, economics. Yes, we can't influence the Taliban but they have no major trade inflows and most aid has stopped. On top of that, there is a border skirmish with Pakistan, a resurgence of ISIS and problems in a lot of tribal areas where farmers are reverting to opium production.

I wonder if many women & girls were self-harming/commiting suicide and that is behind the restrictions becoming tighter and tighter. In a few decades there won't be many women who haven't experienced slavery their entire lives.
There's no way they could help themselves without any understanding that life could or should be so different.
It makes my blood run cold the abuse that must happen behind closed doors.

It's free rein. Doesn't refer to monarchs but to letting a horse have its head. Sorry, I see this misspelling so often.

The total control when mixed with an utterly misogynistic ideology is deadly to women. At the moment Islam is the outstanding example.

i don't care if it makes them sad.

I don't think the Taliban approve of cricket anyway, which is why the team live in either Dubai or India (it's not clear to me)

But authorities elsewhere need to send a message to us, the other women in the world, that they are listening. That they actually do care about women.

The Women's Rights Network who are raising awareness and spreading the word about what is happening to Afghan women want us to boycott. I think we should do that. What those women are existing (it is hardly living) through is barbaric. In that position? I would rather starve to death than carry on. A boycott doesn't help them, but it sends a message to all women. But of course: nobody cares about us anyway, to a great extent.

meanwhile an English man coaches their cricket team and they will play in the ICC competition in Edgebaston despite Afghanistan cricket not fulfilling any of the criteria to be a member of the ICC.

We can't help the women of Afghanistan. But we can send a message by talking loudly about things like this as much as we can. As often as we can. And maybe picketing.

We can contact, write to, shout at and picket organisations like the UN who don't give a flying fuck about women's rights anywhere, least of all Afghan women.

Pour encourager les autres, and all that.

Thank you for the link @Ereshkigalangcleg

Maybe it is. Very sobering.

I agree @ThePoshUns - there are some women's organisations, like the long-established RAWA, and others https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RevolutionaryAssociationnoftheeWomenoff_Afghanistan

Most of them are now based outside Afghanistan for obvious reasons.

I feel so desperately sad for these women but not sure what the west can do. We tried invading but look what has happened after we left. The only people that can 'help' are the husbands, brothers and fathers of the women there. I'd happily donate to a charity or organisation that could help.

But they have in the past

It is not just Iran, though, is it.......it is Saudi too. Just because a few upper class women have been allowed to drive cars in recent years I'm not sure how much else has changed for women and their legal status in that country.

With the lack of maternal care for pregnant mothers and lack of medical care for infants, I think many women more will die in childbirth and fewer babies will survive.

Not really. The opposite in fact. The less rights women have the more children they have. As they are never allowed to meet, they will have no idea how to avoid pregnancy or possibly even how they are getting pregnant.
If each woman manages 2 or 3 children that's just about enough. But most will have many more as they will likely be pregnant from about 14 until they die. If they die in childbirth, their husband will just get a new one.
I can't see this ending while Iran exists.

Islamists’ Fear of Females - The Roots of Gynophobic Misogyny among the Taliban and Islamic State

https://media.defense.gov/2022/Jan/06/2002918533/-1/-1/1/JIPA%20-%20ALVI%20-%2022.PDF

They must at some level realise that they need women to produce more taliban members, do they intend to steal them from other countries when they destroy all of their own women?

Again, men have more power in other countries but they dont have absolute power.

Taliban won’t care and banning the Afghan team for the next ten years because they think they are right and they won’t change their mind. (They also think cricket and anything that takes a person’s mind from worshiping Allah is wrong)
they are dong everything they did last time but slightly harsher because women from different houses can’t meet up that is so girl schools can’t be run

Do you think having the upper hand is the same as having free reign?

It’s not just Afghanistan, though. Bungalow in my road, in my ‘naice’ leafy university city outskirts, bought two years ago. It has a high hedge. The first thing the new owners did was install window boards on all the front and side windows, completely opaque, held in place by bars. We know there are women in there, because the neighbour heard them in the back garden after dark. They are NEVER seen, although they are occasionally visited by another two women in full niqab.

it is not a pot house, the roof is normal for heat, and the men come and go ‘normally’ in their Mercedes and BMW which are parked in the drive.

but no one can say anything, because it’s ‘not our business’ ( and anyway we’d probably be arrested for racism or something). I worry about it, though

Fundamentalist, tribalistic Islam.

What concerns me is how quickly many in the West relativise women's rights when it comes down to it.

The UN was prepared to meet the Taliban and honour their request that no women should take part in the discussions. Already the new leader of Syria has heavily suggested that women will not be permitted to be judges because they are "not biologically and psychologically suited" to such roles. It is only a matter of time before sharia law is fully re-introduced - and many in the West will say it is a price worth paying to be free of Assad.

For some women's rights are a price to pay, or an isue to overlook, when it comes down to the preservation of the campaign of hatred against Israel. Look at the way that the rape of Israeli women was denied and played down. People are perfectly willing to overlook the problematical side of Islamism and fundamentalism in order to preserve their political priorities.