Why does the UN and other organisations not do anything about women in Afghanistan?

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i just don’t understand, how can it be okay to stop someone from having an education, from speaking, from going out . Why is nobody doing anything, is it because it’s in the name of religion?

I’m not sure what pp are after either. If the west go in they are seen as the worst. And the US doesn’t really want to send their young anymore anyway.

So if it’s not actually going in and regime change what do people advocate?

The notion of progress is a western Christian principle. We can't stop being western Christian, and Afghans can't stop being non western Christians.

I have no idea whatsoever about the nature of progress - if it exists - in eastern Islam I'd like to learn. I try. But there is no escaping the fact that at some point they will conflict.

You also need to factor in the fact there there is an inherent contradiction in the developed western Christian progress of anti colonial thinking. So even if we accept the Afghanis are somehow morally wrong, it's not for us to interfere.

All in all a complex brew.

What do people want "the West" to do? Declare war on Afghanistan? Then the same people will be saying how terrible it is that innocent children are being killed, just like in Palestine.

But in my lifetime, things haven't always been as they are today, so it's important to not go down "it's their culture" route. There are women alive now, who remember their mother wearing mini skirts and who themselves, are educated. Life is very different for their daughters. It's also important to point out that women's culture etc doesn't always align with what the men in power want to call cultural/religious. Their human rights are being abused, which should give them refugee status, but doesn't always do so. There's a lot to unpick, granted, but it's a forced way of life. It hasn't culturally developed out of want.

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This is so sad. KJK has collected messages from oppressed women in several countries.

How come some Islamic countries like Turkey and Morocco are more progressive than the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan? That is a genuine question btw because I don't know.

Well Al-Andalus was a beacon of Muslim, Christian and Jewish tolerance for 700 years and that was back in the 1400s.

It's where I read about the concept of people of the book. Pesky history again.

If anyone's interested there's a good article below about the lessening of progress in islamic nations - it's quite a long read but very worthwhile

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science

Kemal Attaturk did a lot for Turkey, I believe he turned Turkey secular and gave women rights that other women in Muslim countries don’t have.
In the south east though it’s a different kettle of fish.

Bollocks. It’s men being abuse to women and girls. It’s nothing more complex than that. If that’s their culture then it’s wrong. The UK and the US chose to abandon the women and girls of Afghanistan and it’s reprehensible.

👏 👏

What would you have had the UK and US do? Stay in Afghanistan indefinitely? Bomb the Taliban out of existence?

Stop interfering in politics in the ME, it's had severe consequences.

Isn't that what we are doing?

The US has sent billions in bombs to Israel and has been bombing Syria and Yemen. The UK has also been involved in the Gaza/Israel conflict.

There are around 40k US members of the armed forces currently in the ME. The US has at least 19 sites with military facilities, 8 of which are permanent in countries such as Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

The UK but predominantly the US, has been meddling in the ME since the 50s. Political Islam was funded by Saudi Arabia and the US.

So once we pulled out of Afghanistan, the Taliban took over. And once we pull out of the middle-east entirely, what will happen then?

What about all their lovely oil and all the weapons we sell them?

That's not what happened.

Trump negotiated with the Taliban.

Yes that's right, in his first term he negotiated with a terrorist organisation, a negotiation that gave them the power to take over. Once the US was going home there wasn't much else the other powers could do.

He also released 5,000 Taliban extremists from prison.

There are multiple problems to the rest of the world 'sorting out' Afghanistan.

Thr Taliban is a cult. They didn't reason themselves into their views, so can't be reasoned out of them.

Their astounding brutality means the chances of internal.rebel-group suppprt for external intervention are small.

They aren't susceptible to international political pressure, because they simply don't care what we think of them (see 'cult' above).

Economic and cultural sanctions are ineffective against a country with little international trade to damage. By contrast, South Africa had a lot of goods to sell, and a rich, internationalist political class who wanted to buy foreign goods and consume wider culture. They cared that they couldn't sell their fruit or have global pop stars tour. The Taliban don't want any part of the decadent west, and have little to sell but opium (whch they disapprove of, so it's not exactly a government-level trade). But we should still have refused to play their cricket team. Just because the effect is minimal doesn't mean we shouldn't bother.

Which leaves military intervention. And that's never worked against Afghanistan. Not now, not in the 19th century (if you're not familiar with the First and Second Anglo-Afghan wars, have a read). A modern military force does not do well against dedicated and well-armed guerrillas, with no military legal code, operating in inaccessible terrain (see also Vietnam). And if we do manage to invade, we're back to the problem that got us here in the first place - if the West holds Afghanistan, Russia undermines us; if Russia holds it, we undermine them. Whoever has it is not only fighting the Afghans (see, again, right back to the First Anglo-Afghan war). And these days Pakistan, India and China would probably also get involved.

That doesn't leave a lot of options.

One thing we could do is a simple, automatic asylum process for any woman who gets out. And ensure they get further than Pakistan. I'm not sure how much can be done to assist them to the border, but the second they set foot across they should be protected. We can lobby our government, and they can lobby the governments of the surrounding countries, for that.

Biden was in power next though, couldn’t he address the issue?

You rather prove a point. If you insist on viewing other cultures through your prism, then you really are going to end up in an eternal conflict.

The Taliban as I can understand aren't cracking down on female emancipation for the lolz and to get the best value out of their TateBros subscription.

They are doing it because the world they see is very different to the world you see.

We used to burn witches. And yes, you can fixate on the fact that almost all were women in a rather Spare Rib editorial. However communities back then did what they did in a world view that had eternal damnation and souls to be saved.

This entire thread is asking "Why doesn't someone do something". And the fact that over 170 posts in and there is no hint knowing who the "someone" is, let alone the "something" is it's own answer.

As I noted to sniggers upthread, that is a very Western Christian question. The need to civilise savages.

Funny in any other context, it would be borderline racist.

500 years ago, very few (if any) of the people enjoined in this debate would have thought the way the Taliban treats women was in the slightest bit contentious. And even now in 2025 England that number isn't the zero it should be.

I think the Taliban now is the issue rather than what people may have thought, or a minority who agree now.

I don’t think there has been a solution offered on this thread. But there is a tendency to swing this back to the west. It’s not something I want or condone, the people responsible for the behaviours are actually doing it.