Evacuation form Afghanistan- women?

[Aprilinspringtimeshower]

So saw this article and the accompanying photo www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/17/afghanistan-striking-image-appears-to-show-640-people-fleeing-kabul-in-packed-us-military-plane?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

This is what concerns me- where are the women? The overwhelming majority of people on that plane are men, adult males. There are a few women and some children.
Yet it is the women who are in greatest danger. Young girls, older women. Single women who won’t be able to support themselves once stopped from going outside unaccompanied, professional women who will be banned from working .

Everyone said that the war was about women’s right and way of life. And that what is happening now is a danger to the rights and well-being of women.

Surely it is women who are the ones that need to get out of the country safely and be offered asylum- so where are they? Why wasn’t that plane full of mostly women or even equal amounts of women and the men that accompany them.

I don’t hear the government saying anything to target protection and refuge for women specifically. And to young girls and women who are in real danger

AIBU that it is always the men that get the preference, and that really no one cares enough to actually provide proper protection to the women and girls ..it’s just all sound bites and noble words

Filling seats with women and children would be a death sentence for the men

Let your women and children die vs die yourselves. Decent men would choose the latter

You’re still not getting it. The women and children aren’t under a sentence of certain death. The men fleeing are because they supported and assisted the troops. It’s not that hard to understand, surely?

@MotionActivatedDog

And do people think the men we import here will suddenly adopt Western values of equality and tolerance? Most likely they’re going to treat us like that on our own streets.

Sorry?

Given that they've been working with the US administration, they're not likely to be diehards for the culture they're fleeing. Refugees do need education - language - and help with integration, wherever they end up. If the UK was fighting for women's rights in Afghanistan it can carry on the good work here, if necessary.

Absolutist positions on how people from a particular place "are" and "will" behave are an excuse to look away from the suffering the UK has helped to create.

The new scheme they are working on is for women and girls at risk
So all 19 million of them then. There’s not a woman or girl in the country that isn’t at risk. The news says the Taliban are going door to door raping and abducting them.

@Paulinna

The new scheme they are working on is for women and girls at risk So all 19 million of them then. There’s not a woman or girl in the country that isn’t at risk. The news says the Taliban are going door to door raping and abducting them.

So what do you want, then? Airlift 19 million people? And then do what with them? And take them where?

The fact is, every single man who gets out is taking the place of a woman or child who won’t. Maximise the number of women and children by taking zero men, it’s that simple.

@Paulinna

The new scheme they are working on is for women and girls at risk So all 19 million of them then. There’s not a woman or girl in the country that isn’t at risk. The news says the Taliban are going door to door raping and abducting them.

Yes, and if Syria is anything to go by, the UK will agree to take in about 3000 of them, after they've reached a place of relative safety. In many cases, they'll do that with men fron extended families who I suppose we'll leave behind in border camps.

Should we blame their husbands and sons for that, or might there be a broader responsibility on people who aren't currently fleeing execution to do better by refugees?

There's a debt owed by this country and many others to locals who worked with our forces for years. Interpreters, drivers, and a ton of other workers who enabled our servicemen to do their jobs. Those people (men, in the main) are at significant, immediate risk of death. This is not to say that women and children shouldn't be as high priority - they should be - but I don't find it as hard to explain why we're seeing pictures that are disproportionately male at the moment

@Paulinna

The fact is, every single man who gets out is taking the place of a woman or child who won’t. Maximise the number of women and children by taking zero men, it’s that simple.

So condemn all the men who supported the troops to certain death. Why, just why?

@Paulinna

The fact is, every single man who gets out is taking the place of a woman or child who won’t. Maximise the number of women and children by taking zero men, it’s that simple.

But is there a reason you can give that all women's lives should be prioritised over all men's?

@Paulinna

The fact is, every single man who gets out is taking the place of a woman or child who won’t. Maximise the number of women and children by taking zero men, it’s that simple.

The fact is, they are not. The US and UK are turning applicants for visas away. Most men who have worked for them and qualify to get out because they face death otherwise are ... men. Who have been promised this protection.

Do you think US and British soldiers, diplomats and staff should also be left behind to create space for Afghan women and children?

@Paulinna

The new scheme they are working on is for women and girls at risk So all 19 million of them then. There’s not a woman or girl in the country that isn’t at risk. The news says the Taliban are going door to door raping and abducting them.

Exactly. All the emotional language and rhetoric here doesn’t change the fact that the majority of women and children in Afghanistan are doomed. A small number (who are lucky) will escape. Men, women, whomever.

I wonder is it much more dangerous for a woman to do the crossing especially in a group of men, is it decision based on the DH making it getting a job, refugee status first.
2/3 of the children from Calais were suspected to be men lying on their age.

But is there a reason you can give that all women's lives should be prioritised over all men's?
Because there are worse fates than death. Men will be killed immediately - women will be kept alive to suffer. Also many women have children who definitely should be prioritised.

Because there are worse fates than death

Indeed. Like being tortured for collaborating with the enemy. Which is what would happen to those men.

The way of life in these countries is that men are put first, women are second class citizens. The fact is that the majority who would have helped the US/UK would be men, that said I think they should be helped out.

However like many posters I don't like the fact that the majority of asylum seekers/migrants are men. I don't think it is good for our country or for their integration for the number of men from these countries to be coming in. There was a couple of callers to LBC this morning, one was a migrant who came over without his wife and son, they are still in Afghanistan. He said that she couldn't come here because her English wasn't good enough. I assume he was afforded an education so could learn English? What sort of man lives here and leaves his wife and son in another country? Another was an Englishman who said it made sense for the men to come because afterall if the women came they would have to look after their children and wouldn't be able to work and contribute, they would just claim benefits. What a ridiculous thing to say, many of the men aren't qualified and in fact will be less stable than the women.

Another reason I am nervous of this is that in these societies they live by the rule of their religion. A woman caller to LBC this morning talking about how pointing out it was an Islamic regime caused problems for her and muslims in this country. Yet she went on to speak about what the Quran says. It just seems to me that for many of these migrants their religion is what they live by, they want to live in a country that gives them refuge and freedoms but their rules will come first, this isn't good for integration.

Copied from a previous related thread.
@shekamboo

I am an afghan.
I would be skeptics of everything that has been posted on social media.
Afghans in the west have a very skewed romanticised view of a lot of things.

Afghanistan do not need any foreign involvement only of which is no strings aid on a humanitarian basis to pay for the damage they have caused for the past 20 years.

Here is a good article I thoroughly recommend everyone to read

www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210727-the-taliban-is-steering-the-graveyard-of-empires-towards-a-new-era/

@ByThePool2021

And do people think the men we import here will suddenly adopt Western values of equality and tolerance? Most likely they’re going to treat us like that on our own streets.

Sorry but WTF?? How disgusting and offensive is that??
I teach a male Afghan refugee and we’ve always said if we could have a class of him we would be the happiest school ever as he is the politest, kindest, most generous and most hardworking child in our school. So yes, I would like to think they would adopt our western values of equality and tolerance which is something I feel you could with adopting as well

Yeah, I'd like to think that too. However:

"I've Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe's Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Boggling. | The National Interest" nationalinterest.org/feature/ive-worked-refugees-decades-europes-afghan-crime-wave-mind-21506?amp

We can’t fix this by taking refugees. We can’t get all the women and children to safety. They are taking those who they have placed at direct risk through employment.
The solution would need to be a massive international push to try to mitigate the worst of the Taliban. We’ve pulled troops out without embedding democratic structures and so it’s all gone wrong.

@Paulinna

But is there a reason you can give that all women's lives should be prioritised over all men's? Because there are worse fates than death. Men will be killed immediately - women will be kept alive to suffer. Also many women have children who definitely should be prioritised.

I don't know that everyone would agree with you that rape is a worse fate than death and I don't feel qualified to speak for women in that position. But I'd suggest that it's not such an established universal truth that you could condemn all those men to death for it.

Killing the menfolk and raping the women is a dreadful "custom" of war throughout the ages, and in attempting to survive / escape / help I don't believe people have adopted the "better killed than raped" metric. So respectfully, because we are talking of such horrific things, I don't think there are good grounds for your argument.

We should obviously be trying to save as many people as we can from either fate.

Most of the men being helped to escape are those who worked with foreign forces.

Either they leave on these flights, and then try to help their families leave (or try to send them money from abroad etc)

Or they get murdered by the Taliban and then can’t help their families at all

The men oppress the women, other men may choose to step in to help other foreign men fight the first group of men for whatever reason (but not to save the women) , either way the women remain oppressed and tortured. Yet the men and their choices are to be rescued first.
Always the women at the bottom of the pile due to actions and choices men make for motives unclear.

There are 38 million people in Afghanistan, adult men probably counting for less than half of that. Why are you concerned about the breakdown of the sexes on one plane load of 600-700 people?

Those people will probably all be known to the US military in some way, they will have worked with or for them, and be considered highly vulnerable. The vast majority of those would have been male, some would have been lucky enough to get their wives and children onto the flight with them. Those men will have been the first to be tortured and executed had they not escaped. There will be probably thousands more waiting.

There aren't enough planes in the world that can get all the women of Afghanistan out in time, but the ones who are lucky enough to be airlifted by US or allied military will probably not be random Afghans off the street, will they? They will be the people who are considered traitors, or the families of traitors by the Taliban.

"The flight had not intended to take such a large load but some panicked Afghans pulled themselves on to the C-17’s half-open ramp, Defense One reported."

Likely the case that those fit and able enough to force themselves on to a plane were young men rather than mothers carrying infants.

Poor people.

Woman will be raped. Men will be shot.

I remember wondering why Sudanese women went out from villages and refugee camps to collect firewood when they ran the risk of being raped by janjaweed militia. Then I read an article with interviews with these women. One of them said, well if the janjaweed find us women, if we're lucky we'll "only" be battered, gang raped (and she was, with an iron bar IIRC) and left in the dust and they won't really bothering checking if we're dead or not. But our men would just be killed outright. So they stay in the camp and we go.

@Paulinna

But is there a reason you can give that all women's lives should be prioritised over all men's? Because there are worse fates than death. Men will be killed immediately - women will be kept alive to suffer. Also many women have children who definitely should be prioritised.

That’s your opinion. It’s not something that is universally agreed. Lots of countries, including the UK, punish murder more severely than rape. That implies that death is considered the worst fate.

I desperately want women and children to be rescued, but right now I think airlifting the people who have an almost 100% chance of getting murdered soon (people who worked with foreign forces) is the best place to start.