Afghanistan: let's arm the women!

[Leafyhouse]

Surely this is the only long term solution? We've spent 20 years educating a generation of women. They're now of fighting age. Modern warfare these days isn't about knife fights, it's about using a laptop to call in a drone strike. And the women of Afghanistan will fight like cornered rats against the Taliban, because they have NOTHING to lose.

Give them state of the art weapons, training and logistical support and let them tear into the Taliban. The men have failed - they threw down their weapons at the first opportunity because of tribal rather than national allegiances, and widespread corruption in the Afghan government.

The Taliban have exploited this well. But the one enemy the Taliban would never know how to fight are powerful women. It's an interesting concept - anyone got Malala's Twitter account?

It would be impossible. The women are mostly dependent upon the men for food and shelter. They have children to look after. Women are physically weaker than men. How would they learn to operate the tech? It takes years of army training to do that. The men would simply get together and over power the women.

Where are the women going to live? Where will they get food from? How do they prevent their families from tracking them down and killing them? I would imagine most of them will be brainwashed into believing their lives are just about kitchen and pregnancy, how do you help them change to another mindset? What about their religious beliefs? They're not going to want to start killing the men around them, their relatives, neighbours, members of their religion and community.

It's a nice idea, but it's not Hollywood.

Daisy there are women fighters though? One female general..

Op I agree, it's probably the stragety the Americans should have used over these 20 years and helped to modernise the country.
Empower the women.

Also in the documentary, is this what winning looks like ( u tube) which shows the the challenges the Army faced.. Many men they tried tk train were just not interested eg they were being attacked (weakly) in a watch tower and the Marines were saying " you can't just shoot, you need to make sure your aiming at the people's shooting at you because you may kill civilians and you will also waste amo by shooting at nothing." in response the guy grabbed the gun ran outside the safety of the watch tower and just shot anywhere

Others were too out of it stoned and on herion to do anything.. The marines were saying stuff like" even if you take prisoners you must give them water " or... Cover up the bodies of the dead even if they are your enemy..

They couldn't even fill sandbags..

I'm sure the women folk would have been far more responsive and better teachers.

Setting up an underground railroad to get women and girls out of the country would incur far fewer casualties.

Women are outnumbered, they have never had the same access to education and healthcare that men have traditionally had.

They would need armaments, weapons training and regular supplies - who would do that and where could they train without attracting attention.

It's too late.

America and the allies should offer to evacuate any women (and their children) who want to leave, but it would be too big an operation and many women would be hidden inside, unable to escape.

www.npr.org/2021/02/16/968424630/women-take-the-lead-in-fighting-isis-in-daughters-of-kobani?t=1628968564406

There are some amazing women who have fought in Syria.

It's just hideous.
Many women have fought and would fight, many wouldn't but they havant been asked.

Don't forget many women in Afghanistan actually support the Taliban and it's objectives.

You really have no idea. Try visiting Afghanistan and seeing the medieval living conditions first.

There's a fuckload of house to house urban fighting going on,

You can't take cities just by drones - you need boots on the ground

How are you going to train civilian women to do that role, and do it well enough to win?

And who is going to do their logistics?

I've just seen someone interview a poor woman, she said they are there just outside kabul and she said I don't care if they kill me this is my country I'm not going backward.

Mpsw it's too late now but I reckon the US should have helped women before, and in many many more ways.

How are you going to get to these women in Taliban controlled areas (meaning the women aren’t allowed to be seen in public) in order to train and arm them?

What do you think they should have done?

The US spent $88b on the Afghan army and police. Which projects should have been de-prioritised to create a women's militia?

I learned today that widespread sexual abuse of boys by US allied local elites helped the Taliban recruit supporters, who wanted it stopped. America sheltered the abusers, gave them additional arms and power in local areas, and quashed any attempts to investigate and punish. In fact, these elites were allowed to forcibly abduct victims to American military bases to abuse the boys on base, in hearing of Amercian soldiers, who were traumatised and complained but were ordered to do nothing to stop it or intervene at all. One was stripped of his command and sent home for attempting to stop the vilest abuse of one boy.

So that's why and how we lost Afghanstan for the women. That's how we failed them. Because we failed the children, and therefore we lost the support of the local population. We collaborated in the widespread abuse of their children.

www.hrw.org/news/2019/11/27/afghan-activists-exposing-child-abuse-detained

www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/nov/13/afghanistan-paedophile-ring-that-abused-over-500-boys

To deal with the Taliban, we would have to deal with paedophile elites, and the West is a bit shit at dealing with paedophile elites. We'd quite literally rather cut and run to leave women, children and innocent men to be raped and/or slaughtered than deal with it. Fucking madness. What is WRONG with our leaders?

Pics in red, watch the documentary "this is what wining looks like"
Because this very subject is tackled extensively in it.
An American major explains the problems with the elders and police chiefs allowing this practise.
He said how hard it was to have to liase with people who held such views and at one point three young boys are killed trying to escape.
The marine explains over two hours with a police chief how this practise of stealing boys damages the community attitude to the police and how he must help it stop and show the community its wrong. The afghani police chief argues "" the boys love it and who else are the men gonna fuck? Their grannies pussies? "

The marine argues and begs this man to take action and he agrees

The next day he cancels it and nothing is done.
The local police are feared generally and arrest at will and the families come and pay ransoms.
Everything is corrupt, and herion is absolutely rife

Unfortunately, the tea boys are a deeply ingrained part of their culture, just like arranged marriages of 12 year old girls subjugation of women, rape and brutally treating women, no rights for women in law etc..

Unfortunately it seems it was another massive cultural divide that the Americans tried to over come in some areas, ignored in others but I don't think thus is where we lost them.
The police lost them and the ingrained culture of stealing and raping boys.

The dancing boy culture used to be rife across the middle east and asia. Islam managed to kill it everywhere except Afghanistan by criminlising homosexuality - that should tell you how ingrained that practice is over there. They would rather die than stop fucking and raping boys.

I learned today that widespread sexual abuse of boys by US allied local elites helped the Taliban recruit supporters

Bacha bazi is something that has been around for centuries and any US angle is recent and pretty tangential to the scale of this homegrown problem.

And yes, the Taliban banned it, and that was a popular move.

There are numerous accounts, including investigations by RAWA, about continuing abuse (often perpetrated by Afghani officials and police). Occupying forces only intervened if they believed the abuse crossed the threshold of rape as an instrument of war (ie rarely)

But aside from the Dynacorp allegations, I don't think there was foreign involvement.

It was essentially an Afghan police and judicial matter, not something for international forces (of any nationality, in any area)

I'm not saying the Americans initiated it, I'm saying they stood by and both allied with and enriched the power and wealth of the perpetrators.

I don't think it's fair to claim "culture" when clearly banning it is a popular move, the practice is clearly a local source of trauma and rage for victims and their families, and it is very clearly unwanted by the populace.

It is as "cultural" as our own elite rapists are - i.e. not "cultural", but a subset of entitled monsters doing what they please to those less wealthy and less powerful.

We let them. The Taliban didn't. So the locals chose Taliban.

I think your time lines are confused

The Taliban has been around since the mid 1990s

The US did not invade Afghanistan (this time round) until 2001

It wasn't a case of US failure so talibs stepped in. It was an issue totally separate from US actions. And like all other sexual assaults and rapes (and indeed other crimes) it was a matter for the national police and judicial authorities

Occupying forces (whether US or other coalition) weren't part of either the tackling, or the failure to tackle, crime, other than those which constituted an act of war.

I think it's all in the SOFA (2014??)

The issue is, though, that if the US turned a blind eye to such an extent that they facilitated it, vs the Taliban banning it outright, who will mums and dads choose?

Hearts and minds, right? We said that.
Hearts and minds.

@PicsInRed

I'm not saying the Americans initiated it, I'm saying they stood by and both allied with and enriched the power and wealth of the perpetrators.

I don't think it's fair to claim "culture" when clearly banning it is a popular move, the practice is clearly a local source of trauma and rage for victims and their families, and it is very clearly unwanted by the populace.

It is as "cultural" as our own elite rapists are - i.e. not "cultural", but a subset of entitled monsters doing what they please to those less wealthy and less powerful.

We let them. The Taliban didn't. So the locals chose Taliban.

@PicsInRed I don’t see how that can be true. During taliban rule in the 1990s girls and women were prohibited education or any professional lives whatsoever.

While the US and allies were there they spent £100bn per year on reconstruction efforts. And

-girls made up 50% of primary school enrolments, 20% secondary
-women were 25% of the afghan parliament
-women had professional lives and right to education
-didn’t have to wear burka or have male escort them everywhere.

To say the US “turned a blind eye” is false. It is clear that they are resurging because the US and allies have withdrawn from Afghanistan and they are filling the power vacuum.

YeS but the people like the police chiefs it is cultural just like its cultural to marry young girls off and still deny them any role in society it was only kabul and cities where women had more rights.

There was only so far the US soldiers could go.
I agree its appalling I think a whole different tack was needed altogether but I don't think it's fair to blame the US soldiers when they had to step back on so so so many issues.

At one point this poor us solider said, there over there are two groups of types of police, one is modern, on the ball they want to do good.. But the others are corrupt peapdhiles, I only the ones I prefer today work with, but unfortunately it's the corrupt police who need us.

• on another occasion there is were four prisoners taken and shoved in an airless tiny room the Americans wanted to five them water and see them, they tried to encourage the police to give water and they were absolutely told no

They had no jurisdiction.

YeS but the people like the police chiefs it is cultural just like its cultural to marry young girls off and still deny them any role in society it was only kabul and cities where women had more rights.

We have gangs of online and irl paedophiles, we have men who strangle and smother women for fun. These things are too common, and not punished sternly enough, most of our society condemns it, some approve of it and take part.

None of us are presently in the streets protesting it and demanding change.

Yet we don't consider this "cultural" of the west. Perhaps we should? How we do see it however is "entitled fucks use any power and/or wealth they have to abuse women and childen".

That's also how the Afghan situation should be viewed.