AIBU to ask how to help women and girls in Afghanistan

[Aplone]

... Following the takeover of the Taliban? Are there any practical steps which we in the UK can take to help women and girls who will now undoubtedly lose rights and freedoms under this new regime. I feel so helpless watching these events unfolding, and really want to be able to do something. Are there any reputable organisations* to donate to? Any other actions we can take (petitions etc. although please no links as they are not allowed!!)? Thank you very much.

*not Oxfam! After the way they behaved in Haiti I don't trust them one iota!

(Inb4 - "what about the menz?" I want to help women and girls and "what about our homeless veterans?" I want to help our homeless veterans too, infact it is an issue very close to my heart but I have some idea of what charities etc. offer support and you can support more than one cause!)

Send Stonewall in to teach them how to identify out of their oppression. I have heard it's easy to do ...

I am sick and heartsore at the plight those poor women and girls are facing and it makes me so fucking angry the way they were completely abandoned to savages.

I don't think the western countries really understand tribal societies, nor that there is an ability to develop strategies that actually work in dealing with them.

I'm feeling immensely sad for all the young girls and women who will be enslaved and raped in the coming days, months and years. I don't full understand why the US and UK left when they must have known this would happen, I can't understand why the Afghan army didn't fight. And I'm horrified to see all those men at the airport for flights; why aren't they stuffing planes with women and children instead? Their own families have let them down, and the West has let them down. If US, UK and EU won't act then I hope Russia will step in; then it's only freedom of speech that will be limited, not the utter brutality of the Taliban.

@Panickingpavlova

And a job that allowed many side line benefits in corruption for extremely dirt poor people

Bluntness many good documentaries circling, the one is very good this is what wining looks like on u tube.

At one point an old man begs local villagers to take up arms and help, he said if you don't want to join the army fine just learn how to defend yourselves... And he said... The emotion, cost, in put it takes to raise a child to be lost due to one bullet.. Defend yourselves.

They were not interested, stoned... Other basic stuff to do..

Then it was always pointless. An exercise in futility. If the military was simoly there as they got paid and could never be relied on to actually fight the Taliban then we have wasted two decades and a trillion bucks.

However I suspect that was known. That all they were doing was using western tax payers money to keep people gainfully employed in Afghan.

To paraphrase Iowan Ron McMullen's recent piece,

Afghanistan could very easily fall into a multi-sided tribal civil war with warlords and drug lords battling each other and the Taliban (the same Taliban who kill girls for going to school) as any semblance of central administration crumbles. The countryside could blossom again with pink and white poppies — spelling death and misery in Afghanistan and abroad.

This twitter thread has some suggestions for donations, but mostly focused on refugees twitter.com/KateOfHysteria/status/1427141576980115456

@LemonRoses

Existing camps are unfortunately already no go areas for aid agencies and are under Taliban control

I think we were at cross purposes - I was referring to the 2.4million people in the existing camps in Pakistan and Iran, not internally displaced people, who I agree are beyond practical help at present

And I include 'free passage' as something that simply cannot be achieved at present as well.

Those in the existing camps in neighbouring countries are still refugees, still in need of assistance

The West should have gone in and got every last woman and child out and left the men to it. They can tear each other to pieces.

meditrina They are, but I think the plight of people in Afghanistan is probably more pressing, and they should have priority just now. Perhaps coupled with significant aid to the established camps - as opposed to cuts to foreign aid budgets.

The largely wasted track and trace budget would have gone a very long way to helping improve conditions for refugees,

There is no way at present to provide assistance in country, and the situation is too new and potentially volatile to make the attempt.

People will be making their way over land borders, and when those people arrive in Pakistan or Iran, they still need help.

Just as these displaced a while ago but remaining in camps still need help. If either/both Pakistan or Iran decide they will take in no more because they can no longer cope with the numbers, then yet more people will be trapped. We can ease pressure on those numbers by resettling from camps

This petition might be of interest to you all

chng.it/QJKwYVhxHY

‘That all they were doing was using western tax payers money to keep people gainfully employed in Afghan.’

A trillion dollars spent ‘training and arming’ the Afghan army.

This is an incredibly self serving view of US/western interference in Afghanistan.

How much of that trillion dollars went to US arms manufacturers? A hugely influential, economically domineering sector in the US.

How much of that trillion dollars went to US contractors running operations and command programmes in Afghanistan? Keeping economically beneficial expertise in US organisations.

It may well have been a futile 20 year exercise in imposing western values that was never going to work, but don’t make out there was no ulterior motive and it was a charitable effort.

@daisycottage

The West should have gone in and got every last woman and child out and left the men to it. They can tear each other to pieces.

Cmon now, that would have been war between the west and afghan,you can’t rip families apart, they would never have permitted taking their wives and kids away,

you can’t rip families apart

Why not ? It used to be SOP for the British Empire as it partitioned all sorts of countries in it's own interests.

Fucking angry aggressive violent hectoring entitled fucking men. I am so fucking sick of the sight of angry shouting men, convinced they are right and determined to enforce that world view on others.

Thanks for the charity links.

I've just read an article that says MSF and ICRC, and some organisations under auspices of OCHA have not left.

How long they can stay is a moot point, and it's not clear whether they are able to operate in any way normally, but they're there for now

Having posted earlier that I didn’t believe charities would be allowed to operate, I was delighted to see a report today that the Taliban leaders have already been in discussion with UNICEF and asked them to remain. The UNICEF operations manager based in Afghanistan said they completely understand that the organisation is non-political and an essential lifeline. She added that the leadership has asked them to suspend their activities for two days whilst they get the message out to the people on the ground.

This is the bit that still causes me great concern. Even if the leadership is genuine in allowing UNICEF to operate safely and unimpeded, I am deeply sceptical that they are in full control of their troops.

Rip families apart? By the sounds of it the men can't wait until they can start tormenting their women again. They're absolutely disgusting and vile. Leave them to it.

@meditrina

It might be worth pausing and letting the situation on the ground setttle.

They will still need money in a few months time (arguably greater need then as it drops out of thee headlines)

And there will be a better idea of who is doing what.

In the short term, would you be interested in supporting the. Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan or Iran, who between them are hosting 2.4million of the estimated 2.6million worldwide (UNHCR estimates from earlier this year)

Thankyou for this and yes I would

Sorry for the late reply I am reading through the responses. But no, I have zero respect for Amnesty they are an absolute joke. On their Twitter feed they do mention Afghanistan but don't mention Afghan women and girls as a discrete group - it says "Thousands of Afghans at serious risk of Taliban reprisals - from academics and journalists to civil society activists and women human rights defenders - are in danger of being abandoned to a deeply uncertain future."

I guess the women and girls who aren't "women human rights defenders" (what a weird way of wording it???) aren't worthy of a mention. Cretins!

@Aplone - them NOT mentioning women and girls is very weird surely??

Malala Yousafzai is on Newsnight now.

[quote blinkinblimey]@Aplone - them NOT mentioning women and girls is very weird surely??[/quote]
Yes exactly. No mention of girls and then only "women human rights defenders" for the adult females. I guess that it might be a typo and they meant "women's human rights defenders" but a mention for the women and girls set to lose their rights would have been nice too, in that case

I really wish to god there was something I could do. But any Guardian appeal or Amnesty campaign can go fuck themselves, given the misogyny and the the damage to female human rights they've actively promoted in so many of their articles and activities of late. I'm done with the hypocrisy now well said.

@onlychildhamster

This is a list of what happened to Afghan leaders in the past century:

• King Habibullah (1901 to 1919) (assassinated)
• King Amanullah (1919 to 1929) deposed (exiled)
• Habibullah Kalakani (1929) deposed (killed)
• King Nader(1929 to 1933) assassinated
• King Zahir (1933 to 1973) deposed (exiled)
• Mohammad Dauod Khan (1973 to 1978) (killed)
• Taraki (1978 to 1979) (killed)
• Amin (1979) (killed)
• Karmal (1979 to 1986) (deposed)
• Najibullah Admedzai (1986 to 1992) (deposed) (hanged by the Taliban)
• Rabbani (1992 to 2001) (killed by the Taliban)
• Karzai (2001 to 2014) (brother & father killed)
• Ghani (2014 to 2021) (deposed)

What the West did not understand about Afghanistan was that the traditional western divide of authoritanism Vs democracy do not transpose well in every country. Afghan politics is based on tribal loyalties i.e. if the Taliban orchestrate a deal with your warlord who shares the same tribe as you, you don't fight against the Taliban. This is exacerbated by the fact the army never got paid their salaries due to corruption. Ultimately though, there are 14 different ethnicities in Afghanistan and it is this way due to the British empire drawing up boundaries so that Afghanistan could be a buffer state to protect India.

It is very sad but I don't see an end to the suffering in Afghanistan. We should have handled it better 20 years ago.

Thank you for this information it is very terrible but interesting and useful to know

Have finished reading the thread now and have collated the charities and ideas suggested. Thank you all xx

charities
Turquoise Mountain
Women for Afghan Women
CARE
Rukhshana Media
womenforwomen.org.uk
www.street-child.co.uk/afghanistan
Linda Norgrove foundation
ICRC (Red Cross)

UNICEF and OCHA though these are related to the UN, which has a horrible track record with its "peacekeepers"

Also -
support for refugees in camps in Pakistan / Iran

twitter thread with suggestions on how to support mobile.twitter.com/KateOfHysteria/status/1427141576980115456

write to MPs re support for free passage for refugees and sign the petition www.change.org/p/priti-patel-call-on-the-uk-government-to-resettle-20-000-afghan-refugees

Thanks for all the comments saying how all charities "on the ground" are having to work with / via the Taliban. Just horrible.

I read an article earlier which mentioned a family unable to afford a taxi to Kabul, so they sold their dead son's widow to pay for the fare! And this was in order to escape the Taliban. I can't even.