To be shocked this isn't getting more coverage?

[Sugarcoldturkey]

Women in Afghanistan are now forbidden from speaking when not inside their homes. A simple "hello" to someone in a shop is now against the law. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/aug/26/taliban-bar-on-afghan-women-speaking-in-public-un-afghanistan

AIBU to think this is some of the most horrific news I've heard in months? I can't wrap my head around it and I can't help thinking - activists/newspapers/politicians are loud when campaigning about the gender pay gap or the state of child care or a woman's rights to her own body but somehow on this topic no one wants to criticise too often or too loudly.

Is it because religion is mixed in? Or guilt over the war? Or do politicians in particular only care about women's rights when it's a vote-winner in their constituency? Or is it just that it's so terrible and we all feel so powerless to prevent it that we just prefer to ignore the situation?

I'm feeling v v shaken.

@Octavia64 I fundamentally disagree with this. If the taliban want food and money then they can meet western demands for women’s rights. Sacrificing women for the ‘greater good’ is not okay.

Yes, that's my first reaction as well. Helping the Taliban feed their people with no concessions by them is just propping up their government, surely? Leading to longer term suffering.

In the 80s South Africa weren't allowed to play international sport but Afghanistan sent teams to the Olympics, play in cricket World cups etc

It's terrifying and sickening. I'm not following any news by choice so didn't know.

As an aside, how will their children be socialised? Imagine all the things you kill off when you can't talk to anyone? The gp, the teachers,,your mum? I can't see these men stepping in to talk for their families.

If everyone is dumbed down its easier to peddle bullshit like in medieval days when the earth was flat

I don't think Afghan women can go to male doctors and women aren't being allowed education

I think it’s really important to say that this isn’t a traditional, medieval way of life that the west has tried valiantly to save Afghanistan from.

In the 70s women in Afghanistan had better equality than women in the U.K.. 15% of their legislative body was women (the figure in the U.K. did not get above 10% until 1997). 40% of doctors were women back in the 70s.

The Taliban emerged from the mujahideen which was backed by the US and U.K. during the Soviet Afghan War. They didn’t come to power in Afghanistan until the 90s. This isn’t some traditional way of life that the west has tried to save Afghanistan from. It’s an historical aberration forced onto Afghan women by militia groups that were armed and funded by western powers to undermine the Soviets.

The taliban don't want food and money.

They don't care whether their population starves or not.

The UN are trying to keep these people fed because they do care if people starve to death.

excuse me, Soviet Union?? Do you know anything about it to mention it in the same sentence as Taliban??
Women had equal rights with men much earlier than in the UK and there were a lot of women in STEM professions compared to the UK. There were no SAHMs.

But what do you really think that will achieve? Holding government to account and condemning the Taliban isn't going to help those women?
To make a difference it will mean going to war but I'm not sure that is going to happen and will mean so many innocent people dying.

Until 1972, women in this region dressed exactly like we do today. Can you imagine the horror, of being there at the time that these new laws came in?

It is predicted, that the UK could be majority Muslim, by 2050.

Let that sink in.

The PP described the Soviet Union as a more extreme form of government, which it was, surely? She didn't claim the Soviet Union oppressed women like the Taliban do. My reading of the PP's comment was that she was describing her childhood opinions, at a time when the Soviet Union was a big topic in Western news.

The US care about their position in the world and their relationship with other countries. The US voters were also the ones that forced state governments from towing back on rights. The Taliban don't care about any of those things. The West has tried interfering in the Middle East. It's a shit show partly as a result. Same with Syria.

If we can all be up in arms over the Palestine genocide then we can all care about the vile and terrifying treatment of women in Afganistan.

But oh wait, it's not a popular or trendy topic to virtue signal with... so crickets.

If we turn a blind eye to this it will keep on creeping through other places and we will be in a very scary place soon.

The rights of women are being eroded across the Western world.
Violence against women is at crisis levels.

This is a warning for all of us and I think we will deeply regret ignoring this problem and pretending it doesn't exist.

Re Afghanistan, unfortunately there is nothing to be done there at the moment.

And by the way Taliban was originally sponsored by the USA to counter Soviet Union influence, so it is there thanks to the Western meddling to begin with. Google Operation Cyclone. They were called “insurgency” then. If the Western governments minded their own business, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Libya wouldn’t have been in such a terrible state now. Syria too.

My father in law was a Russian Bulgarian student (Sanskrit linguist) who travelled from London to Kabul in a VW Kombi. He and his Cambridge buddies took this massive road trip in 1961. I’ve attached what was written about their observations of women/girls in Kabul at the time: Snapshots of time-worn female oppression and the resistance to it those women maintained, against the odds.

Afghan and Iranian women are my heroes because so many of them will, with everything they’ve got, and while facing insurmountable risks, carve their rights in their own blood if necessary. They will die on that noble hill. And for those who go about their daily lives dutifully, they do so to survive. Their silent resistance lives within them and it must be what gives them the courage to survive under such fearsome brutal regimes. Those women show the world that you can hold courage and fear in one hand. They must live a life of knowing when to rise and when to fall back; this constant dance with duality that is, to most of us, an inconceivable existence.

I remember the Soviet-Afghan war raging on in the background of my American childhood. When my son was born, just after 9/11, I remember thinking ‘and so it continues in his childhood’. His father did 2 tours in Afghanistan (British military). My first husband sat, in wartime, with the ghosts of Kabul his father knew in the flesh 40+ years before, when the geopolitical rumblings were gathering strength.

But it might at least help other women. It might stop other countries (including our own) from backsliding on women's rights.

My friend taught girls in Afghanistan about 15 years ago and spoke about how eager they were to learn, how brilliant some of them were, how eager they were to be taught and improve their English. It's a tragedy of wasted human potential as well as everything else, to think of them being silenced by stone age savages in this way. I do think there is an element of fear & cowardice in the way it is being reported, we mustn't appear Islamophobic, even when it's the most deranged and brutal variant of Islam. Look at Angela Rayner ingratiating herself with that large group of Muslim men weeks before the election, for instance.

In Australia they have already removed women's rights to single sex anything so this WILL be coming - make no bones about it.

Zarah Sultana just this week was saying how much she loves it when men tell women what to wear. Yes, she is an MP in Coventry.

Just look at what happened in Iran. The moment the Left were no longer useful they were all slaughtered. They are fucking idiots if they cannot see what is coming but it is now illegal in the UK to critisise Islam.

This is what the Left want.

Who has predicted that?

If the UK government were in partnership with the Taliban providing with arms, you'd have a point. But they're not.

The very sad fact is we have no leverage. There is nothing the UK can do to help Afgan women.

I didn’t realise this. Thank you.

Anything to do with women never gets much press. If you notice outrage over race and religion trumps women every time.

The world is missing out on the great impact, the great minds, the great importance of these women … a mighty contribution to humanity is utterly lost inside oppressive medieval, misogynistic, violent, totalitarian regimes. The loss of these women’s voices and their incredible influence is our collective loss.

I agree.