Feeling devastated after seeing this news about Afghanistan

[LovingLilacDuck]

I stumbled across this on BBC — https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q25dwj807o

I can’t stop crying. I feel so incredibly devastated that we live in such an unequal world. I cannot believe in 2026 people have to starve and children die — and girls be sold??? because of hunger. Goodness sake. That’s not right, it’s so inhumane. Seeing the tears on those tiny girls’ eyes and how fearful they are just breaks my heart so much, oh Gosh.

I just really feel sorry for these people who have to live under Taliban and suffer immensely. It’s so heartbreaking. And I know these people are not the only ones unfortunately…I just feel like we all have so much, more than we all need to and I wish we could just help the poor more as a whole world. But that doesn’t bring any profits does it???!

I wish I could do something to help, whatever that may be. Does anyone have a clue about what to do? I’d appreciate any insight. Thank you.

Mountains.

same reason Switzerland hasn’t been conquered in a long time.

it’s an incredibly mountainous region where the local population can simply melt away into the mountains and take pot shots at any passing armies.

there’s no infrastructure worth speaking of (with the exception of a few cities) so even if you have air supremacy you’re just bombing a few tents and the mountains are sufficiently high and difficult that getting planes into the region is tricky - you are operating at the limits of their height. Plus very few landing places if you are actually going to operate the planes from bases in the country. Hence helicopters.

but it’s relatively easy to shoot down helicopters (see Vietnam) and the local population is very heavily armed from all sorts of sources (the Pakistani border is pretty porous and the Iranian border also tricky)

moving troops around is a nightmare - no roads to speak of, planes don’t have landing places and helicopters are vulnerable to RPGs plus in many cases because of the mountains the tribes can attack from above the helicopter.

Poor women, girls and young boys. All are victims. (I have to keep telling himself there are good men out there.)

None have formally recognised the Taliban as a government actually. Could they do more, yes absolutely. But do you have an understanding of what led to this mess?

There would be no impact on marching for Afghanistan in Britain. The country doesn’t recognise the government, and has no diplomatic relations with it. There are already sanctions and travel bans on them. It’s not comparable to Palestinian protests, where Israel is an ally of Britain and, in theory, has the diplomatic relationship in place to put pressure on them.

Accurately put, TonTonMacoute

Yes we can weep and rend out hair over the horror of it all, but the horror - at least for the women and children - is what too many of their men want, and western concern isn't going to change that

Edited to add that, before training quite so many Afghans as special forces, it might have been worth pausing to consider where their loyalties really lay. Doubtless they enjoyed the opportunity of learning to fight more effectively, but for those with Taliban sympathies that was hardly helpful

A reminder that little girls are also being sold into sexual slavery in Palestine.

Also a reminder that little girls are being sold into sex slavery in the UK. I think influencing the British Gov to stop it here is far easier than getting it stopped in Afghanistan. Though I feel that virtue signalling and sending a tenner to a charity in Afghanistan is easier than risking being called a bigot for standing up for raped girls in the U.K.

Here are transcripts of the torture and rape of British girls during my lifetime -

The rape gang inquiry (privately crowd funded) suggests it is still happening today. I believe you can still donate money to help British girls get justice.

transcripts.openjusticeuk.org/

www.stopgroominggangs.com/Home/Transcripts

www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/what-we-do/crime-threats/modern-slavery-and-human-trafficking

Extract - Children are found working in all of these situations, as well as in sexual slavery.
Many victims have been trafficked from overseas – frequently from eastern Europe, south east Asia, and Africa – and their exploitation often begins en route. British victims tend to have fallen on difficult times, making them vulnerable to the lure of well-paid work complete with decent accommodation, which proves a cruel lie.

What would happen if this journalist handed out money? Everyone would turn up making sadfaces about how they have no choice but to enable child rape, and the only thing stopping it is if someone journo gives them money.

Our aid budget was important too, and we keep cutting it. We were one of the few countries that met the 0.7% target and that was something to be proud of. Now nowhere near that. It's planned to reduce still further. I have seen several people applauding this on mumsnet. It's gross.

As for the people saying "I would starve to death with my child before I did this" - would you watch your other children starve to death? I'm not saying it's a good action, but maybe stop flexing about what you'd do in a situation you are blessedly unlikely to ever have to face.

@RingoJuice that's a simplification, not every society in the history of the world has repressed women in the way you describe. It may be inevitable post-agriculture and post-industrialisation but I would be wary of implying it is "natural" in the way you are.

@ThePieceHall so that helps one person, what about all the others? Yet you, sitting at home, are more "moral" than the journalist who is at least trying to tell the world the story.

It’s often easier to virtue signal about foreign issues than identify and resolve the issues at home because it causes a very uncomfortable conversation around how we’ve been governed or people’s ideological beliefs being stretched.

Far easier to stick a towel around your face and yell anti Semitic chants on a jolly in London. Screw the working class white girls who are still being targeted and abused because it’s an uncomfortable conversation around per capita rates of offence (per capita is always ignored) of the demographic doing the crime.

When people stop the apologia for men selling their daughters into sexual slavery, then I'll stop saying that in that situation, I'd rather my entire family died - preferably while trying to escape.

People aren't 'flexing' (what a weird fucking thing to say) - they're expressing their feelings on an unbelievably abhorrent situation.

As for the people saying "I would starve to death with my child before I did this" - would you watch your other children starve to death?

or you could kill one of your children and eat them? A lot less suffering involved that way…

Aid is a good idea in theory. How that aid is spent once it reaches a country where the government denies aid to women specifically on the basis of their sex is another.

This is a good introduction to the subject

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Places-Between-Rory-Stewart-ebook/dp/B003GGSSX6/ref=sr_1_6?crid=2KKTHOMDCP0Y2&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.WO2UduVrS1jT0e4xGbcSzzFx-KK_TYH5X_rOGHVVtssqee1nwY6QieHdHpN37mnRtS11QEu_170vq26W0DxlwMgZoWDSYK9zrEStr85T_iS1qh4nHWZo5VA_EhSISv8ZWcUamUXctVvw34ECek7pwKSXK2v2cbBZ9emucwKtfCZgfeHuQ5DxoaAcEpUva_I0v9wtSs_eYlSP8JgbnK4CSLKpe-GzGBBvc5GLMdJbbAQ.mxDzJSjh8Ah8MMAzwPKGz4tZnOVPKE1yPiggluZF7Gs&dib_tag=se&keywords=Rory+Stewart&qid=1779275563&s=books&sprefix=rory+stewart+%2Cstripbooks%2C333&sr=1-6

@Radarqueen honestly most hunter-gatherer societies are absolutely awful to women. It’s a human norm. Only largely industrialized societies have escaped this. The type of things that go on in tribal societies would make you want to throw up, and I’m not just talking about Pakistan.

We can rise above human nature … but it’s a rare and special thing and must be protected where it exists.

I have to say, I missed the stories on Ethiopian families selling their daughters into sex slavery during that famine years ago. Takes a special sort of depravity to do this tbh

To be fair, I just looked it up, and in 2005 at least, apparently child trafficking (for work or sex slavery) was an issue in Ethiopia, both orphans and those with parents. It seems as though many of the parents were lied to and told their children would be domestic workers and given an education, so a little different to knowingly marrying them off, but you have to wonder if they didn't suspect...

But then Ethiopia is a country that also struggles with high levels of sex inequality and misogyny, ranking 125 out of 162 on the Gender Inequality Index.

Nowhere have I said I was more moral.

Ignoring the fact you are railing against a point I never made in the first place, the ridiculousness of your post lies in the fact that no, the Taliban in it's current form simply would not exist without the massive financial, military, logistical, and intelligence support the US lent them in the 70s & 80s.

No, it wouldn't exist in its current form - before then, they had other issues. The country has had a long period of upheavals. The situation isn't quite that simple, too. And frankly, as the Iranian Revolution of the seventies shows, for example, western interference is not needed for a state to inflict repressive misogyny on its people. Ditto with ISIS, who I don't believe have any links to western governments, and are even more barbaric than Afghanistan.

I'm not sure you can blame selling girls into marriage, or sexually abusing prepubescent boys on westerners, either!

A truly harrowing read and I feel absolute horror for the girls of that country. Last night I made a small montly direct debit donation to the Linda Norgrove trust which looks to be doing good work there in memory of their aid worker daughter.

https://lindanorgrovefoundation.org/

The problem is men.

One day I’d love for women to come together across the globe to overthrow men. Imagine a world whereby women were in power. Instead of spending billions on bombs we’d plow that money for good, to eventually empower all women across the world.

My husband is a feminist. Probably didn’t realise until I gave him the label. His dad isn’t but he’d do his fair share of chores around the home. His dad didn’t blink at his wife working or having her own bank account. His dad didn’t realise that sending his daughters off to school was also women’s rights either. How far back in our society would we have to go back to fathers selling their daughters? Hundreds of years. That’s how far back these men are. No amount of aid or classes is going to change that mindset to get them up to speed. Unfortunately that’s why I feel we can’t accept them as refugees. You could give them absolutely everything but overnight they’re not going to see females as equals. Respect them walking down the street in skirts. Want them in positions in power.

They might not sell them off for abuse at the age of six. But they’re not going to do the bedtime routine whilst their wives go to night school are they?

I’m sorry, it’s a dreadful situation but we cannot fix this. We’ve got enough men in this country (of all ethnicities, religions and classes) to get up to speed.

In the Horn of Africa there are loads of reports of girls being sold into marriage. Sometimes the family marry them off just so the girl can be in a household with more food available.

It’s funny that you are using these examples.

The US & the UK helped overthrow an elected prime minister in Iran which long story short, is part of the story of what led to today.

ISIS was born out of the chaos that happened after the invasion of Iraq.

It’s too simple to say “westerners are to blame” for any of these situations. That wouldn’t be the full story. They just weren’t innocent bystanders either. But obviously these groups and governments actions all mattered too.

Soviets probably could have harshly secularized them as they did to other Muslim ‘stans’ so it’s maybe a pity America supported the Taliban. But even if the Taliban had been lined up and shot by the Soviets, they may not have ever abandoned their tribal mentality.