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.

@NoisyHiker The men though can get completely fucked, especially the ones running here for asylum and abandoning their wives and daughters to the taliban. They let them waltz in and destroy their lives, not even a lick of resistance.

What exactly do you expect Aghan men to do against armed thugs?

And why were women not able to take that same action against the armed thugs?

This!

It's not "cowardice" to pointlessly give up your life when the family you are supposed to be giving it up to protect will still be subject to precisely the same thing anyway.

Common sense to save your own skin in the hope that once a situation arises whereby the Taliban might actually be removed, you might still be alive to participate and assist with that, and hopefully come out the other side.

Its also not remotely the case that all Afghans "blindly follow" the Taliban's ideology, but they are not known for tolerance and letting bygones be bygones, so its hardly any bloody wonder nobody puts their neck on the line by resisting. It would be futile, and just get you, and likely your extended family, killed.

Get some perspective. They are discussing a particularly tragic story that has recently been reported. I really don’t think that issues with the US healthcare system has any relevance whatsoever. Not everything has to come back to how awful the US is.

Pointlessly die, seemingly.

Not sure how this would go down with their wives and daughters mind you.

Here are some of those Afghan men who sought asylum in the UK because they are such victims, raping a British woman in her own home just a couple of weeks back.

https://news.devon-cornwall.police.uk/news-article/926f4799-0343-f111-9d93-6045bdd24049

I do not feel devastated at seeing any Afghan male pulling a sad face while he treats his daughter as a piggy bank.

I do feel sorry for the women if they denounce that culture and do not seek to recreate it elsewhere.

That’s really interesting.

i read, I think it was Mary Beard in sexuality in Roman times and they had a similar vibe - so a man who had sex with lots of people (in the sense of sticking his penis in various orifices) was seen as hyper masculine

however the “receiving” man was considered feminine and it was considered degrading.

i think it was Julius Caesar where his enemies spread rumours he had been a catamite (ie taken part in homosexual sex as a receiver) to damage his political status.

the modern interpretation is that people are either heterosexual or homosexual or bisexual and people are not really categorised in society by whether they are doing the sticking or the receiving. (Obviously various options are available to help with the sticking should one not possess a penis of one’s own)

Death or a life of daily sexual torture followed by death at a very young age from childbirth age 10?

Yeah, but it's more important and pressing to talk about 'them'. About Islam. Never about the shit show that is Evangelicalism.

Because on Mumsnet you only on human rights violations in the East.

Yes, it does. There seems to be a lot of focus threads on the wrongs of Islamic culture and the religion itself. There's no focus on the evils of the west. That's perspective.

Well, it doesn't matter what their wives and daughters think anyway - they're viewed as no more than livestock, and that aside, we can't hear what they'd think of it as they're so thoroughly oppressed they're not even allowed to speak to those outside their family.

Who knows, perhaps many of them would prefer that the husbands they were sold off to, who keep impregnating them via sex I have to believe isn't enthusiastically consented to, would die fighting the dictatorial government that has dehumanised them, rather than maintaining the status quo.

Then again, they're so immersed in the abject misogyny that 92% of the women think men are justified in beating their wives, so god knows. It's Orwellian - many of the women probably don't even have the ability to conceptualise having true autonomy, especially in rural areas.

Please don't think for a minute that the regime change that is pushed by our ruling class has children's, women's or general human rights as its goal. Please.

P.S. I admire our soldiers and have no idea why would anyone want to do what they do - lack of gratitude or even basic respect for them is astounding.

Let's talk about how the west fucked things up for the Afghans, the Iranians, the Palestinian. Let's delve deeper in how western mingling and its self appointed quasi dominion over these regions fucked things up for us all in the west, along with the Petrodollar!

It's called know your history. And fuck around and find out.

I think on mumsnet, especially on the FWRs board, female posters are just as likely to decry the behaviour of those in the west. But let's face it - the common misogyny in the west, while pervasive and unacceptable, is of a much, much, much lesser severity.

Where it is severe, it's generally found in cults or extremist branches of religion that are not normalised within the broader society.

You are absolutely right. Don't want to derail, but he could have easily sold one of his paired organs - the trade in human organs is rampant there and in the neighbouring Pakistan too.

If the west is so evil why are so many people trying to move here….

I mildly wonder if you'you'd feel the same if she was your last living child after all her older siblings had starved to death.

The article makes it clear that many families are losing many children.

I still can't help wondering just how many people saying they'd rather all their children starved to death than got married, even too young, for a change at life, would actually make that decision. Very easy to say when your own child is tucked up sleeping and safe. I wonder how many of the people saying this have ever experienced months' long relentless hunger with no end in sight for themselves, never mind their children.

Gigantic amount of Western privilige going on here.

Selling daughters into “marriage” as settlement for debts is a longstanding practice there. Here’s an article from 2016 about the same problem:
https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/rights-freedom/reality-check-no-justice-for-women-in-ghor-province/
Some of the girls were beaten and murdered by their in laws.
This wasn’t caused by the Americans, and wasn’t even caused by their chaotic departure. It’s Afghan tradition. Let’s be honest about that.

So why were they selling their daughters in 2015 and 2016 when there was plenty of aid? They’re probably only crying now because the price has fallen. Or for the TV.

From the story in the link:

"The neonatal, or newborn, unit is the busiest. Every bed is full, some with two babies in them. Most of them are underweight and a majority are struggling to breathe on their own".

They are still making babies.

Most countries (including many of Muslim majority) cut off ties with Afghanistan after the Taliban took back power and refuse to recognise its legitimacy. There’s only 17 embassies left in Kabul.

Murder-suicides in order to avoid torture and unimaginable deprivations are not unheard of, through history. Some people will kill their children and themselves to prevent them being enslaved, raped, and tortured.

In WW2, a Jewish family:

"It was a miracle that my mother, who carried cyanide pills at all times for a family suicide (and she told my sister and me about it), did not reach the point where she administered the pills to us all." - source

And then on the other side of the war, the mass suicides in Demmin:

"In another case, a grandfather forcibly took away a razor blade from a mother who was about to kill her children and herself after being raped by Soviet soldiers and hearing of the death of her husband. After Soviet soldiers had raped a girl to death and shot her father, an aunt cut her daughter's and son's wrists as well as her own."

Personally, I think I would fall into the camp of preferring death, than to sell my daughter off like an animal to be raped and bred from the age of ten until her eventual (probably early) death.

Probably because they are trying to get away from the places the West causes no end of bother in.