BBC is reporting on women dying in childbirth in Afghanistan

[endofthelinefinally]

I remember saying that this would happen. No training for female doctors and midwives, no antenatal care, no help in childbirth. It is absolutely barbaric.
Last week we were reading about women being left to die in the rubble after the earthquake because the male rescuers wouldn't touch them.
Just horrific.

Yes. I agree with this. The BBC is now run by people who seem to be either gullible and easily manipulated, or they have a political agenda of their own.
I read somewhere - possibly via a link from MN - that the rape and abuse of young boys is rife in Afghanistan. I can't find it now. My internet is down atm, but once it is fixed I will do a bit more searching.

Agreed, but it is common for oppressive regimes to grant access under very tight conditions. The media have to choose between live reporting (and giving a female Afghan reporter some work) or a distant report that can't be verified. Try watching any report from North Korea!

Afghanistan is one of the countries that still maintains the ancient tradition of boy 'sex slaves' (not quite that, but we no longer have terms for it). It often fucks up the boys' lives as adult men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachabazi

Sorry, MN stripped out the link formatting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi

Agreed, but it is common for oppressive regimes to grant access under very tight conditions. The media have to choose between live reporting (and giving a female Afghan reporter some work) or a distant report that can't be verified. Try watching any report from North Korea!

In such circumstances, what the media report is generally regime propaganda. So the choice is broadcasting propaganda or not. The BBC go for the propaganda.

I think The Kite Runner - a novel set in Afghanistan - is about sexual abuse of young boys.

But presumably the rates of death in childbirth are real? And the clinics shutting are real too, and not necessarily the result of USAid cuts? Women in Afghanistan seem to have no access to medical treatment at all.

It isn't possible to run a clinic if the regime will not allow any staff to work there. There is no medical or obstetric care allowed for women. It is convenient for the regime to persuade the BBC to blame Trump. Presumably they think some people will believe that narrative. It is a clever ruse.

Propaganda always includes elements of ‘truth’ to make it more believable. But the rate of deaths in childbirth quoted? Who knows? It could be much higher but if they say too high it might invite too much interest. The clinics will be carefully chosen perhaps to make it look like USAID money had been spent on it rather than syphoned off by the Taliban leaders. Though it would make little difference whether a building is open if women are banned from medical care by the Taliban.

Meanwhile Taliban top brass are getting their daughters top level female doctor intervention, in breach of their own rules

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/01/31/maternity-ward-standoff-taliban-hypocrisy-afghanistan/

"..Restrictive laws imposed by the Taliban last year mean women cannot train to become doctors or midwives in Afghanistan.
But this does not stop members of the strict Islamist group from bringing their pregnant wives to clinics and hospitals and demanding that only female healthcare professionals treat them, workers in the country have told The Telegraph.
Members of the Taliban want to be seen quickly, and tell medics that they expect high standards of care for their spouses.
“Everything is by force here,” said Feroza Tahiri, a midwife working at a public hospital in Nangarhar province. Despite this, “we tell them you’ll be seen like everyone else”, she said......."

I think this niggle about the BBC is just not recognisting what happens in the western media as a whole when reporting from other countries.

Adding in a bit about Trump isn't some sort of censorship but an assumption that the viewers are intelligent enough to work out the cause of the problem, eg the Taliban because that is the start of the story, but in this instance how Trump withdrawing aid means one small source of support for women is no longer going to be there.

Just as in recent stories about FGM in Africa newspapers pointed out about the UK Governments announcement that they will no longer finance groups supporting women who have undergone or are threatened with FGM.

It's not different that the BBC reporting from Israel where the Government runs a very tight control of who can report and from where.

Although the irony in that situation is many Israeli papers have english language versions on line with give a far more acurate report of what it happening, even with political slants eg the difference between the Guardian and the Telegraph covering the story.

But obviously if you are intent on when viewing the news to make it fit what you think, then you will find it.

Or the BBC reporting from Gaza where they filmed a one hour film narrated by the son of a Hamas leader, or the over 200 corrections they have had to make to reports taken at face value from Hamas.

The bit about Trump though - suggesting it was ever a source of support to women under the Taliban is a huge assumption. Another take, not presented, is it was money used by the Taliban in funding their oppression of women and Trump was stopping American money being used to support that regime.

This is what I meant. So though the BBC is wrong to fall in with Taliban rules yet because they have we know the awful truth of no obstetric care for women. Does the Taliban think babies deliver themselves? Probably not, but they don't give a flying fuck because women (and children) don't matter - you can always get a replacement.
One can blame Trump for the loss of aid, but the results are entirely and visibly at the door of the Taliban. I hope they know they are all headed for Hell.
If Mr Trump wants to do good (unlikely, he's the man who thinks the US owns Venezuelan oil) he should airlift every woman and child out of Afghanistan and put armed guards on the borders so no-one can enter or leave. Then let them cook own food etc. They won't last long.

Invade Afghanistan again? Because proxy wars by America (Democrats - President Carter) didn’t lead to the rise of the Taliban in the first place?

You seem to go out of the way not to address the central points and raise inconsistent and not relevant points.

Its just crass to try and make a clever remark such as:

The bit about Trump though - suggesting it was ever a source of support to women under the Taliban is a huge assumption.

When nobody said that.

Surely even if you didn't know you could google or whatever and educate yourself.

Trump didn't cancel overseas aid funds with any specfic target, but just as part of his political stance. And as usual women will suffer the consiquences of this.

Do you actually understand how overseas aid works.

Do you know what the US objectives were pre Trump and post Trump.

No - if you did you would know how absurd a comment like that is.

Aid is never neutral, it is always given with political objectives in mind. In Afghanistan it was Democrat-backed American aid that gave rise to the Taliban - and women suffer the consequence of that.

Actually it was the bind that Pakistan had over American military aid that harboured, funded, nourished and trained the Taliban in exile after 2001 as a pliant government in waiting that saw to that.

The Taliban then turned against their ISI backers and are intermittently sending missiles and suicide bombers their way

https://www.afintl.com/en/202510202330

I was talking about twenty years earlier.

The Reagan adminstration backed the Mujahedeen who then split and a breakaway formed the Taliban after the assassination of Najibullah .

The main idea for this did though come from Carter administration and that rat fucker Zbigniew Brzezinski

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/09/01/how-jimmy-carter-started-americas-afghanistan-folly/