What can we do?? Horrified by what is happening to women in Afghanistan and want to do something

[worried3456]

Can't believe how bad it's got and how little the world seems to care.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/aug/26/taliban-bar-on-afghan-women-speaking-in-public-un-afghanistan

Women are now banned from speaking in public as well as doing anything else you could imagine that makes up a life - such as going outside or having a job or getting an education. Suicides are skyrocketing of course. How can we tolerate this? We don't have have a route for women from Afghanistan to apply for asylum here.

Does anyone have any tips of what we can do as ordinary people in the UK? which orgs are best to donate to?

Unfortunately there is pretty much nothing that can be done. Short of all out invasion but the Americans tried that and gave up after 20 years. The russians also tried and failed in 1979.
Making it easier for afghans to claim asylum? You really think the fathers/husbands will let their wives /daughters leave the country they do not even let them out unescorted. If you made it easier for afghans to claim asylum you would get almost exclusively the men with this toxic mindset moving to your country. The Germans tried this in 2016 and quickly realised it was a terrible idea.

Why don't we save ourselves the bother and cost and be alot more picky about who we allow to live here and put womens and children's rights of those already living here first. Not holding my breath with Labour though.

Nomorewindchimes mentioned it above, but The Linda Norgrove Foundation just brought 19 woman medical students to study in Scotland. They arrived last week. The Foundation had previously been sponsoring 100 med students in Afghanistan, not specifically women. When the Taliban kicked the women out of school they started trying to get the women students in that group into the UK. They couldn't do it through the UK asylum system* so the Scottish Government/Parliament tweaked a few pieces of devolved legislation and found a way to admit them as “home students” on student visas, which meant they also qualified for bursaries for tuition and living expenses. This process took over two years.

They’re understandably not giving details on how the women were escorted out of Afghanistan, except that it was via Pakistan (and it sounds like it was only physically possible to go from certain areas of Afghanistan) and the student visas were issued there before they flew to Edinburgh.

*The UK does have Afghan Relocations and Assistant Policy (ARAP), which resettles and helps individuals who worked for the UK government in Afghanistan and their families and doesn't offer asylum but a temporary protected status and fast track to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain, and the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), which apart from people already granted status before the pull-out only currently applies to people already living outside of Afghanistan. It does prioritise women and various other categories of "vulnerable" people.

Hardly surprising though. Why would Afghan men rise up against this? What's in it for them? They've got the women exactly where they want them.

Bomb the Taliban!

Oh, hang on, I think we tried that once before.

Poor, poor Afghan females. It is just Abhorrent. This is on my mind most days.

What infuriates me is when a man is being persecuted it's called racism but when a woman is its called culture.

I never thought we should have accepted Afghan men asylum seekers, they should be deported, unless they worked for the UK and can prove it. But apparently they can’t be deported so they know they are ok to come here. They can cross the border and go to Pakistan anyway, they have no business coming to Europe or UK. If we think their country is like we were in medieval times ( it is not quite the same but) then let time sort it out, don’t import the problem here fgs.

Both Biden and Starmer are weak. Ironically the main Western figure with the guts and "act now, think later" kind of mindset to try bring change is Trump.

The man who just wants people to 'stop fighting' and started the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.

The withdrawal seemed so rushed and chaotic, which means that people died unnecessarily and others were trapped and are living in fear. Why was it suddenly crucial to withdraw the troops by the 20th anniversary of the occupation?

It was costing a fortune and there was no end in sight.

They should have helped all their Afghan workers to leave first. As well as the exploited women and children.

It's horrific what's happening. Glad the media is starting to report on this. When it happened last week I couldn't find it in the UK media anywhere.

They should divert any financial aid that goes to the government and send directly to the charities helping women and children to get out. If all the money that goes to the government gets taken away until they revise their stance, then they shouldn't get any aid. Financial aid should only be reinstated if all the male policy makers / men in powder are replaced by women. Haha!

There are some brave Afghan women on X singing and revealing their faces. We can watch and share those images? If you take a look on there I think it looks authentic. Keep talking about this everyone

Yes this would be perfect. If they think so low of women and hate women so much, why don't they let them all go.

You know why.

Yes unfortunately I do 😞

I don't wish to wade in on the Palestinian/ Israel argument, especially on a thread about Afghan women BUT want to point out that it is indeed entirely possible to have a genocide on an exponentially growing population.

There is no fixed number which defines a genocide and even if there was, mathematically speaking, it could still be possible for a population to grow exponentially whilst suffering from genocide.

@LifeofBrienne makes a good point about sport. WTF are we playing cricket against them, and why were they allowed at the Olympics?

the Taliban might or might not care about international sport, but simply mentioning their absence and the reason for it at all events would be better than this resigned acceptance.

They need to be ostracised in the same way South Africa were during Apartheid.

Was there an Afghan team at the Olympics ?
As Russia was banned, they should be as well.

It’s rarely mentioned, but back in the 70s/80s, didn’t the UK supply the Taliban with weapons to use against the Soviet Union? So round and round we go.