Taliban are putting DV survivors in womens prisons

[AdamRyan]

"For their own protection" apparently.
There are no shelters in Afghanistan as its a "western concept" and women must live with their husbands or male family members.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67724424

I think this is one of the more upsetting things I've read today. Women being treated like criminals because their husbands abuse them.

It shows how little the world thinks of women that many governments now recognise the taliban and will work with them.

E.g. Tobias Ellwood https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/13/tobias-ellwood-quits-as-chair-of-defence-select-committee-over-taliban-remarks

Joe Biden
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.voanews.com/amp/biden-s-comments-on-taliban-s-role-to-defeat-al-qaida-reignite-controversy-on-peace-deal-/7165083.html

It's a nightmare world.

Follows directly from the extremely patriarchal reading of Islam the Taliban uses (borrowed from Salafism in Saudi Arabia initially). Every single thing that can be interpreted negatively for women is so interpreted, with no understanding of the change in eras and meanings.

For instance, in Afghanistan women's shoes are not allowed to make a noise. This is because during the era of the prophet prostitutes wore bells around their ankles.

The ban on women traveling alone beyond a certain distance is also related to that earlier time which was extremely warlike and where traveling alone for a woman would have been suicidally dangerous.

The assumption that nothing about women should be seen but their eyes, however, is more dependent on later interpretations which seemed to argued that it's impossible to know what the hadiths about female modesty actually mean so better be safe than sorry and so cover the women completely (because it was no inconvenience for the men and all the religious interpreting was done by them). Indeed, the Quran says that both sexes should dress modestly and not much more than that.

All this is Taliban: The Sequel, for the 1990s version of the same. And it's not a film, but a demonstration of how poorly women can be treated in this world.

This is as well, I’m not one for emotive language but this made me feel sick with fear for the many women this has affected.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/04/afghanistan-taliban-women-marriage-divorce/

They may as well just criminalise being a woman fullstop, they are nearly there. They truly are disgusting.

I read this earlier. What the fuck is wrong with these men? Just when you think it can't get any worse for women in Afghanistan, it does.

And the Taliban closed the women's shelters because they weren't needed? Really? Presumably because the men there are such angels.

It’s just an implacable tightening of womens world, it’s so incredibly sad and awful.

Pakistan are pushing Afghans back into Afghanistan too, I saw a news segment interviewing a young woman who had been born in Pakistan who has gone into hiding to avoid deportation to Afghanistan because her womens rights activism would mean she would probably get an extremely hostile reception.

For instance, in Afghanistan women's shoes are not allowed to make a noise. This is because during the era of the prophet prostitutes wore bells around their ankles.

Wtaf. That's awful.

The assumption that nothing about women should be seen but their eyes, however, is more dependent on later interpretations
I always tell my children this is the logical conclusion of "modesty". Particularly my sons when they start going on about girls cleavage.

I'm so sad the women of Afghanistan were deemed "collateral damage" to the west pulling out.

And yes, it does show how precarious women's rights are

Still have rage over the sheet numbers of Afghan men who made it to the US planes to save themselves, leaving behind untold numbers of women and children.

Terrifying. What a monstrous regime. I understand that women in Afghanistan aren’t “allowed” to make any noise when giving birth, and children’s birth certificates don’t include the mother’s name - just the father’s. What a place to be born female.

Correct me if I'm wrong. But I'm pretty sure I was reading articles about imprisoned Afghan DV survivors under the previous democratic government as well. Which would make it worse as it points to deep-seated structural issues behind it.

Women being treated like criminals because their husbands abuse them.

It's a callback to the times (not that distant) when male relatives could have female relatives sectioned or placed in asylums/homes to

• appropriate their money and property
• conceal their abuse of them.

It wasn't unknown for 'homes for wayward girls' to be used as a 'safe place' to remove girls from sexual abuse. Not the abuser, he stayed in the home. The girl would be moved and it would be her reputation that was harmed and set her up for a life of restricted opportunities (and continued imprisonment).

A friend from that part of the world told me that she thinks it's difficult for anyone reared in the west to understand this. It's a bit like someone from this century trying to understand medieval life.

Women aren't regarded as people like men - in fact they're closer to livestock owned by the head male. I believe it wasn't so long ago that some tribes branded the women like cattle.

In a very real legal sense and certainly at a practical level women are slaves with no rights that are enforceable ( at a practical even if not legal level) against men. They have no rights in respect of their own bodies, children, subject to enforced sex and with no right to work or payment for their labour. Sounds like slavery to me.

It saddens me that there is no worldwide movement akin to the anti apartheid one to combat this, but then this affects only women not men as well. And of course it's more difficult for there to ever be a female type Nelson Mandela figure to lead resistance from within. The women would be tortured and killed, not 'just' imprisoned and women often have their children to worry about which keeps them in line.

A quote from "A Carpet Ride to Khiva", in a section on Kandahar:

"You have to stop thinking of men and women as the same species,’ I was told. ‘Women are like sheep and men are like wolves. Everyone knows that it is in the nature of sheep to be led astray and that sheep make a tasty meal. You never trust sheep – what a notion! – nor do you leave your sheep unguarded, because men are like wolves and the nature of a wolf, given the chance, is to prey upon unguarded sheep. If sheep and wolves freely mingled together, it would lead only to bloodshed.’"

(Shoot the wolves then, I thought...)