Afghan Women Fear the Worst (again)

[MsAmerica]

With New Taliban Manifesto, Afghan Women Fear the Worst
NYT
By Christina Goldbaum and Najim Rahim

Three years into its rule, the movement has codified its harsh Islamic decrees into law that now includes a ban on women’s voices in public.

No education beyond the sixth grade. No employment in most workplaces and no access to public spaces like parks, gyms and salons. No long-distance travel if unaccompanied by a male relative. No leaving home if not covered from head to toe.

And now, the sound of a woman’s voice outside the home has been outlawed in Afghanistan, according to a 114-page manifesto released late last month that codifies all of the Taliban government’s decrees restricting women’s rights.

https://afghanistanpeacecampaign.org/2024/09/04/with-new-taliban-manifesto-afghan-women-fear-the-worst/

How and why did these men come to despise women to this horrific extent?

This degree of misogyny feels unfathomable and completely divorced from an understanding how it is to live in the world.

I wish these women could leave.

I come regularly come across Afghan refugees in my daily life. The vast majority are young men. It breaks my heart that their mothers, sisters, wives are stuck behind.

ffs!

Horrendous & so devastating to feel so completely powerless to do anything to help them.

This thread is also of interest www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5150205-afghan-womens-voices

Maybe we should swap the men for the women. Men are not the ones losing everything under the disgusting Taliban.

One of the big reasons for this is that there is significant poverty in Afghanistan, families are starving to death and having to sell their daughters. If you have the ability to scrape together the resource to send 1 family member out of the country to find somewhere where they may be able to work and earn money which they can send home, who do you send?

You can't send the daughter, she's not allowed to travel without a male relative and even with one getting out of the country is made more difficult for females. She would also be significantly less safe in a refugee camp or travelling alone.

You can't send the father, he's the only one in the family allowed to work and is needed at home to keep them eating and living in some kind of shelter.

So the only option is the young male relative, who MAY be able to get out of the country and MAY survive the journey and MAY make it to a country where he's allowed to work and earn money to send home. Of course the flip side of that, is he may not survive it, or by the time he does he may not have anyone left at home to send money to.

This is an interview with Taliban spokesperson and BBC from yesterday. It's interesting that he thinks the world has an obligation to provide aid but the Taliban has no obligation to abide by its agreements. It is signed up to CEDAW. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) It's considered to be the most important human rights treaty for women.

The world must stand firm against these atrocities and not back down. Notice he refuses to appear on camera with a woman or sit opposite her.

They don't despise women, they fear and hate them.

It's so horrific

I worked at Corams Fields a few years ago and we saw a lot of women and children Afghan refugees. They stayed in the hotels near by and would use the park during the day time as they weren’t enrolled in schools yet. Didn’t see many men.

I would like to know what the war was about and why the US and UK left. What was the point of it all? They say up to 1 million people were killed what for if nothing changed for the better?

Define the difference between "despise" and "hate."

If you despise something you think it both worthless and useless, beneath your notice. None of these feelings need be included in 'hate', (though they could be) which suggests a deep animosity to a thing or person who you may consider can damage you or harm you or who simply disagrees with you.
Hate = strong dislike or hostility.
Despise = to have contempt or scorn/loathe because you think that person has no value, or is bad.
You can both despise someone and hate them. English has almost no true synonyms. Nuance in choice of words gives different meanings.

Well, this is extreme, but let's not pretend that this is so unusual - men clearly regard women as "less" in much of the world.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to answer this well, but, from the American standpoint, I think they did indeed imagine things would change for the better. I think Americans have this funny idea that when they arrive, often knowing nothing of the culture, the "natives" will instantly appreciate Americans and embrace their ideas.

What the war was "about" was, theoretically, rooting out extremism. But, again, they didn't go at it very well, and ultimately nothing changed, except that a lot of women had a brief experience of a better life.

It is not just Americans, I would argue, but rather a westernized, liberal viewpoint. The presumption is effectively that the westernized, liberal mindset is a natural and inherent mindset for all human beings; that everyone has a belief in the equality of all human beings, a desire for democracy and freedom of speech, and it is only oppression that prevents this from manifesting everywhere. Thus, the westernized, liberal mindset leads to the belief that if you just remove a dictator here and there, everywhere will end up like Western Europe. Sadly this is not the case, and many oppressive regimes are held in place by the fact that they have the implicit support of the populations they supposedly oppress.

Joe biden’s reported view at around the time of the withdrawal was that the US couldn’t continue to occupy Afghanistan ‘for a bunch of women’. Yet another example of how he was the opposite of a feminist.

Regardless of the horror of this situation, I wonder how the men in charge think it is sustainable. If girls can’t be educated beyond (age?) then, eventually there will be no female teachers who can teach at that grade. If girls can’t train as nurses and doctors, how can women receive medical care?

Even in a society which doesn’t value women at all, they are actually necessary within society. This is not a position which makes any logical sense

“Crossing continents” on BBC R4 had avery moving item this week from an Afghan woman talking about her day to day life. She said that now, men are taking on the rules of the Taliban and joining in with the daily repressions. She also said that the only role for women now is the give birth or be a midwife. I wonder if any aid organisations are able to get contraceptives into the country as children are being born with no future.

Not sure. I think in the end, men do it to impress other men. It's men they fear. So controlling women and children are an way for them to feel more powerful. That's how low they go.

I suspect these policies will lead to there being fewer older women, and these men will see that as a bonus. The suffering of the women and girls doesn't matter to them because they don't see them as human.

Well said!

Well, @hholiday, to stick up for Biden, I'll say two things.
1.I'm skeptical that he said what your quote claims. You included no link, I can't find it with a search, and I rather doubt that's true.
2.On the other hand, that's essentially correct, and has nothing to do with whether or not he's a feminist - although surely he's more of a feminist than Trump or the Taliban. He was correct that if the U.S. presence hasn't managed to do more than help a few women in the main cities, while the majority of the country has not managed to get on track, there was no realistic reason for a continued U.S. presence.