Taliban ban women from nursing and midwifery training

[claratheskivvy]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy3l1035nlo.amp

Women have now been banned from attending their nursing and midwifery courses at university.

Female patients are only allowed to be attended to by a female unless accompanied by their male escort. This means that thousands of women will now be giving birth by themselves if they can't find a midwife, which are already in short supply. Afghanistan has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the world.

For the Taliban: Women are only good for one thing.

If that wasn't the case, they'd simply round up all the women and kill them.

Is it the Taliban who are considering lowering the age of consent to 12. There was something I half caught on the news last week

Is that Iran? I can't remember.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/08/16/iraq-parliament-poised-legalize-child-marriage

Looks like it's Iraq.

Apparently even high up Taliban officials are beginning to realise that this is ridiculous and unsustainable.

Link

I thought it was Iraq. And they are debating lowering the age of marriage to 9 years old. 😢

Hopefully,no one!

Of course this thread can't help people, I don't think there's one of us here so arrogant as to think that posting her helps, but it gives us somewhere to talk about it, how bloody awful it is, to post links to sites that might be able to offer something approaching help.

I don't know what goes on in your head, other than playing devil's advocate on something far too morally reprehensible to be playing silly beggars with, but I don't think anyone here gets a moral boost that we don't live in Afghanistan. I know that I don't know more than a qualified midwife when it comes to anything to do with babies, but I think I might know a bit better than a member of the Taliban. Not much better but a bit. I find it offensive that you're assuming all manner of reasons why women are posting here. It's unkind, unfair and like your ridiculous game of devil's advocate completely unnecessary.

The legal age of marriage in Afghanistan is currently "no younger than 15" but I would trust them with nothing.

wrt to Afghanistan having nothing in terms of commodities we want. That is both true but also a bit untrue. They have oil and gas but not a lot. What they have, or are, however, is a land over which a gas pipeline can be built. I'm probably misremembering some of this because it's over 25 years since I was studying around this subject but, here goes ...

The US wanted/want a gasline in the region, the best country for it to go over for some of the way was Iran and that was never going to happen. Next best? You've guessed it, Afghanistan. The US were therefore reasonably happy to accept a less than ideal government structure as long as it wasn't communist. They supported the Mujahideen throughout the Soviet invasion. Post cold war the Mujahideen who were never a coherent group broke up and grew to become what we know today, the Taliban. Things got bad for women. It doesn't do anyone any favours to pretend that the USSR were a great bunch of lads, but while the USSR had some control in Afghanistan women had rights. The US weren't happy with the Taliban, especially now that the USSR was a thing of the past and the fear of communism lessened. But, but, but ... gas pipeline! It would be unfair to say they offered support after all the world condemned the Taliban in the 90s but they were holding power and it would be surprising if the US weren't doing at least some dealing under the table. If they weren't they certainly thought it was best to leave them to it after years of supporting an medieval and misogynist group they stopped. My knowledge post 1998 is slim and no better than anyone who's read the news and gone down very small rabbit holes of extra information. I just know that the west has been support of the unacceptable in Afghanistan when it has suited their economic and political needs.

The pipeline? The US are totally out of it now and have been for decades, I think. Post 9/11 it's been off the table. TAPI (either the Trans Afghanistan pipeline or the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipleine. is still on the table but without the US. Probably. Who knows these days.

In short, the west supports things that they pretend not to support when it suits them. Women's rights mean nothing when billions or trillions of dollars are involved.

That's Islamo-Fascism for you.

Strange how when it's perpetrated by a group like Hamas or Hezbollah, it's supported in the West.

According to a charity that campaigns on this issue. because of legal exceptions there isn’t a minimum marriage age in Afghanistan. https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/learning-resources/child-marriage-atlas/regions-and-countries/afghanistan/
And dowry culture combined with widespread poverty facilitates child sexual abuse and rape, child marriage, sexual abuse and rape of women, domestic violence with no recourse and now unsafe maternity medical care too. So meaning more injury, disability and death for girls, women and babies. And then others being forced into marriage to replace them. It’s absolutely horrific how girls and women have been rendered so officially subhuman.

The thread has inspired me to donate to the charity linked below, so it has helped in a tiny tiny tiny way, which is arguably better than nothing.

For an interesting history of Afghanistan and the West's involvement, I recommend Bitter Lake, a documentary by Adam Curtis.

A lot of the extemist groups of today, including the Taliban, originate from Saudi Arabia's support and export of Wahhabism. The US allowed this to happen/ turned a blind eye in order to buy oil from Saudi Arabia.

The West going into Afghanistan with military hasn't worked in the past.
I think the best way is for somehow help to get to the ordinary people in order for them to rise up and topple the Taliban
No idea how realistic this is though.

It's absolutely barbaric what they are doing to women and girls.

That's facism for you.

I'm a keen, amateur reader of history and beyond the Spartans, and possibly Cathars, I've never heard of a more Death Cult than the Taliban in Afganistan.

They have no intention of being without women. They just don't mind if they lose some.

Well sure they don't want women talking to each other. So having classes together is risky. They could be plotting while giving birth etc

This is so horrific. Imagine trying to bring up teen kids over there, how on earth can you guide them?

Plotting what? What are the men so afraid of?

When people steal control by oppressing others, they get scared of the oppressed people. Who knows when they will fight back?

I really feel for the girls who were raised in education who have now been curtailed and stuffed into marriage. To have been given hope and now right back to the taliban regime. If a mother and child die in childbirth, they just get another wife to add to their existing wives and more kids…...no big deal to them as women are just ‘things’ to give children and sex, nothing else of worth.
Its beyond horrific.

Terrifying place to be female

This is really interesting thank you, I'll have a read around it.

My point was that no nation will go to war solely because of the treatment of women. We're just not important enough to fight for. That runs deep, way beyond the borders of Afghanistan.

I'm in complete agreement with you, @KenAdams .

Many women were subjected to forced FGM by the Taliban - it was one of the first things they did when they took over an area, with even old women being chopped. I assume it's now a requirement for all girls. So they'll not only be giving birth without experienced assistance, they'll be doing it with hastily-butchered and probably scarred genitalia.

I wonder if they'll be punished for making a noise during childbirth? 😨

This is truly awful. It would also account for the high maternal death rate as fgm complicates births and increases birth injuries and infection. It's absolutely evil what the taliban are doing.