‘Gender apartheid’ takes hold in Afghanistan 3 years after US withdrawal

August 29, 2024 Current News Articles

The Hill

08/28/24

A new Taliban edict banning women in Afghanistan from baring their faces and speaking in public places is spotlighting the betrayal felt by Afghan women and their allies three years after America’s withdrawal from the country.

After seeing major progress in women’s rights during the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Afghan women now face restrictions on their movements without a male relative, and women have to cover their bodies and faces with a thick, heavy cloth while in public. Secondary school for girls is nonexistent, and more and more of their freedoms have eroded.

Parasto Hakim, who runs underground schools for girls, called what’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan “gender apartheid.” Women on the ground say the latest ban is rolling out unevenly, depending on the Taliban fighter or official they encounter.

But in the days since the new edict came into effect, billboards and banners have been going up throughout the South Asian country dictating how women should dress.

In posts on the social platform X, Hakim said the restrictions will likely expand, possibly even to primary schools. “Afghan women will once again face the worst gender apartheid under Taliban rule, as they did after 1996,” she added.

In the 1,095 days since the U.S. withdrew and the Taliban rapidly took power, Heather Barr, interim co-director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, said women, girls and their families in Afghanistan are slowly giving up hope on the situation changing.

“[Over] time, they give up and they start thinking about who you should marry, and the support you have to try and study at home drifts away in terms of people supplying you with books, people supplying you with computers, internet, and stuff like that.”

Living in that environment, and the impact on their mental health, is the toughest toll Afghan women and girls face, according to Barr.

“You’re stressed and angry at first, but over time, you kind of subside into depression and hopelessness, which I think is what a lot of the women and girls that we talk to are now feeling,” Barr said.

It’s also getting harder for women under the Taliban regime to see any light at the end of the tunnel, she added.

“To sustain this belief that you’re going to win in the end. How can you? It’s very hard to kind of stay in that mindset when three years have passed.”

But women in the country are also mounting their own, quiet resistance to the new Taliban edicts — at times risking their safety to express their dissent.

Women are posting and sharing videos of themselves singing, despite the Taliban’s laws forcing them to stay silent in public.

“Afghan women are defying the Taliban’s ban on women speaking in public by singing out loud. Let’s stand with them and support their powerful voices,” Habib Khan, founder of Afghan Peace Watch, wrote on X.

In a statement to The Hill, Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women, girls, and human rights, said that the Taliban’s relentless, discriminatory edicts are unparalleled.

“Their institutionalized efforts targeting the women and girls of Afghanistan constitute gender persecution. These extreme policies are self-defeating and reinforce views that the Taliban are pursuing the same approach that made them a pariah in the 1990s,” Amiri said.

The special envoy added the U.S. will use “every tool at our disposal to support Afghan women and girls, including working with and mobilizing the international community to ensure we collectively make clear to the Taliban any progress in normalized relations will be contingent on ending these extreme policies and making significant improvements in the human rights situation in Afghanistan.”

In an interview with LBC, Hakim asked: “isn’t it time to ask the world leaders who handed Afghanistan over to the Taliban — what were you thinking?”

This sentiment is echoed by Women for Women International’s country director for Afghanistan, Payvand Seyedali, who told The Hill that “America, Canada, and the UK seem to have washed their hands — on the ground, we see very little impact from their engagement today.”

“What we saw on American TV during the evacuation was exactly how it felt on the ground — a mad, shocking, nonsensical withdrawal,” Seyedal said. “That chaos still has reverberations we feel today.”

She is also critical of United Nations Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo, who recently highlighted Afghan women’s concerns at the Doha III meeting in June this year but had Afghan women excluded from those talks with the Taliban.

According to Seyedali, protests from women’s rights groups led to a hurriedly planned two-hour event the day following Doha III, where select Afghan women were invited with little notice, and no time to consult with wider groups of women. Many did not attend, expressing feelings on media of being a tokenized afterthought.

Seyedali, who is based in Kabul, said the U.N. really “struggles to walk the walk.”

“They seem to be at a loss politically, and disconnected beyond humanitarian engagement. This stalemate comes at an incredibly high cost, draining donor investment with questionable return on investment — especially for women,” she added.

The Hill has reached out to the U.N. about the criticisms.

Roza Otunbayeva, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, said in a statement the new laws “extends the already intolerable restrictions on the rights of Afghan women and girls, with even the sound of a female voice outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.”

The statement added that, “The international community has been seeking, in good faith, to constructively engage with the de facto authorities.”

Rights groups after the May meeting in Doha strongly criticized the controversial U.N. move to exclude the groups, including women’s rights activists, from the two-day meeting on Afghanistan as the toll for the Taliban government’s participation.

A statement issued by a group of U.S. policy advocates for Afghan women and girls said that despite these egregious violations of women’s rights, there has not been a coherent, coordinated and rights-based response to this crisis from the international community.

“The response has been piecemeal. It has lacked a commitment to upholding human rights and international law through concrete steps such as measures to hold the Taliban accountable for their abuses. Instead, the international community has engaged in a pattern of gradually accepting the Taliban’s violations of the rights of women and girls. This poses a dangerous trend toward the normalization of such abuses,” the statement added.

According to Lina Tori Jan, a policy officer at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, the U.S. can help fund women-led organizations both inside and outside the country to effectively engage with women in Afghanistan.

She added that there are a few steps that can be taken including delivering on the commitments made to the Afghan allies and well as including Afghan women in all policy dialogues in relation to the country.

In a statement to The Hill, a British embassy spokesperson said the U.K. continues to provide humanitarian support to the most vulnerable and press the Taliban on human rights.

“As part of UK diplomatic engagement, we regularly meet a range of Afghan women to ensure our policy and programming reflect their views. Afghan women must have a say in their country’s future governance,” the statement added.

However, Seyedali said that while they see those who visit from these governments try to speak up and push, “we see a common refrain of chargé d’affaires on the ground advising headquarters — but unable to move the needle.”

According to Barr, there is a kind of “deep rage” at the international community, particularly Western countries like the U.S. and U.K., that were involved in military operations from 2001 on.

“They feel like you created this situation,” Barr said of the sentiment of Afghan women toward Western governments. “You made the deal with the Taliban in Doha, which we were shut out of. You handed the country over to the Taliban. And now we’re the ones who have to live with it. And you don’t seem very interested in hearing about it anymore.”

The Taliban publish vice laws that ban women’s voices and bare faces in public

August 29, 2024 Current News Articles, Primary documents

Associated Press

August 23, 2024

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have issued a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public under new laws approved by the supreme leader in efforts to combat vice and promote virtue.

The laws were issued Wednesday after they were approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, a government spokesman said. The Taliban had set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” after seizing power in 2021.

The ministry published its vice and virtue laws on Wednesday that cover aspects of everyday life like public transportation, music, shaving and celebrations.

They are set out in a 114-page, 35-article document seen by The Associated Press and are the first formal declaration of vice and virtue laws in Afghanistan since the takeover.

“Inshallah we assure you that this Islamic law will be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice,” said ministry spokesman Maulvi Abdul Ghafar Farooq on Thursday.

The laws empower the ministry to be at the frontline of regulating personal conduct, administering punishments like warnings or arrest if enforcers allege that Afghans have broken the laws.

Article 13 relates to women. It says it is mandatory for a woman to veil her body at all times in public and that a face covering is essential to avoid temptation and tempting others. Clothing should not be thin, tight or short.

Women should veil themselves in front of all male strangers, including Muslims, and in front of all non-Muslims to avoid being corrupted. A woman’s voice is deemed intimate and so should not be heard singing, reciting, or reading aloud in public. It is forbidden for women to look at men they are not related to by blood or marriage and vice versa.

Article 17 bans the publication of images of living beings, threatening an already fragile Afghan media landscape.

Article 19 bans the playing of music, the transportation of solo female travelers, and the mixing of men and women who are not related to each other. The law also obliges passengers and drivers to perform prayers at designated times.

According to the ministry website, the promotion of virtue includes prayer, aligning the character and behavior of Muslims with Islamic law, encouraging women to wear hijab, and inviting people to comply with the five pillars of Islam. It also says the elimination of vice involves prohibiting people from doing things forbidden by Islamic law.

Last month, a U.N. report said the ministry was contributing to a climate of fear and intimidation among Afghans through edicts and the methods used to enforce them.

It said the ministry’s role was expanding into other areas of public life, including media monitoring and eradicating drug addiction.

“Given the multiple issues outlined in the report, the position expressed by the de facto authorities that this oversight will be increasing and expanding gives cause for significant concern for all Afghans, especially women and girls,” said Fiona Frazer, the head of the human rights service at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

The Taliban rejected the U.N. report.

This story was first published on Aug. 22, 2024. It was updated on Aug. 23, 2024 to make clear that the Taliban vice and virtue laws say that women should veil themselves in front of all male strangers, including Muslims, and in front of all non-Muslims.

Why Afghans are being slowly poisoned by their evening meal

August 28, 2024 Current News Articles

Arthur Scott-Geddes DEPUTY EDITOR OF GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY and Akhtar Makoii

The Telegraph (UK)

24 August 2024

Afghanistan has one of the world’s highest rates of lead exposure and a mounting body of evidence suggests cookware could be to blame

The process starts with lumps of scrap metal – mostly car parts like gearbox casings, radiators, wheels and body panels – stacked high in the yard outside the workshop.

Piece by piece they are melted down into ingots in a ramshackle furnace that spews thick, black smoke into the air over the factory in the province of Ghor in central Afghanistan.

The workers here have little more than scarves to protect themselves against the pollutants – many do not even have gloves to wear as they carry crucibles of molten metal across the to the waiting moulds.

Firooz Ahmad has worked at the factory for eight years and spends 10 hours a day at his workstation turning the cast aluminium hulls into the pressure cookers that almost every Afghan family uses to prepare their daily meals.

The 39-year-old has no idea that he is being slowly poisoned by the metal cooking pots, called kazans, that he makes every day.

“Is it dangerous?” he says when asked if he is worried about lead poisoning.

“I have headaches and persistent pains in my joints and sometimes it’s difficult to breathe – maybe I am poisoned!” he says, laughing.

He is not alone. Afghanistan has one of the world’s highest rates of lead exposure, with an average blood lead level nearly three times that of nearby India and almost five times that of China, according to the best available data.

A mounting body of evidence suggests that kazans and other cooking pots made of low-quality recycled aluminium could be to blame. The ubiquitous pots are often given as wedding gifts and can be found in every corner of the country.

In recent years, researchers have been trying to find out why they were seeing dramatically elevated blood lead levels among Afghan refugee children who had arrived in the United States.

In 2022, researchers in Washington state screened dozens of imported aluminium and stainless steel cooking pots and “simulated [the] cooking and storage” of food.

They found that every single piece of aluminium cookware donated by Afghan refugee families exceeded the US Food and Drug Administration’s limit for the maximum lead intake from food.

The worst offenders were the kazans – one of which “leached sufficient lead to exceed the childhood limit by 650-fold”.

By contrast, none of the pressure cookers made from stainless steel were found to exceed the safety levels.

Soon after the report was published, several US states put out health advisories warning of the dangers of the Afghan pressure cookers. And earlier this year Washington became the first US state to ban the manufacturing, sale or distribution of cooking pots contaminated with lead.

But news of the danger posed by the kazans does not appear to have reached Afghanistan.

The Telegraph understands that there was a furtive attempt to focus on cooking equipment contaminated with lead under the US-backed government of Hamid Karzai, but it petered out when he lost power in 2014.

Ten years on, none of the Taliban health ministry officials The Telegraph spoke to were familiar with the problem or of any plans to deal with it.

If it is not dealt with, however, the consequences for Afghanistan could be severe and long-lasting.

Lead poisoning contributes to some five-and-a-half million premature deaths around the world every year and accounts for a significant global disease burden due to the long-term damage it causes, including an increased risk of high blood pressure and kidney damage later in life.

There is no safe level of exposure, according to the World Health Organisation, and some 800 million children are believed to be affected globally, including almost every child in Afghanistan.

The pernicious effects the heavy metal can have on health are particularly acute for young children and mothers.

Lead builds up in the body over time and is stored in the teeth and in the bones.

High levels of exposure can severely damage the brain and central nervous system, causing convulsions, comas, and even death.

Even in smaller doses, lead can cause severe learning disabilities. It has also been linked to a greater incidence of violence and criminality in adulthood.

“The evidence is that lead poisoning just hurts kids’ cognitive development,” said Dr Alice Evans, a Senior Lecturer in the Social Science of Development at King’s College London.

“It’s not like you’ll have a sick day, so to speak, but rather it affects how the brain is developing, and the way that economists have been able to show this is that kids who are affected have worse progression in school,” she told The Telegraph. “They’re more likely to be suspended, and it seems they’re more likely to be associated with violent crime.”

The sudden decline of crime rates across the industrialised world, but particularly in America in the 1990s, has been attributed to the removal of lead from paint and petrol.

While some scientists are still sceptical of a causal link between lead and crime rates – the lead-crime hypothesis – the correlation between falling levels of lead in the blood of young children and violent crime is startling, as this graph shows:

There have been several other apparent success stories.

Most recently, researchers in Bangladesh managed to identify turmeric enhanced with vibrant yellow lead chromate as a major cause of the sky-high blood lead levels they were seeing.

The discovery prompted the country’s Food Safety Authority to start a highly successful two-pronged campaign, warning the public of the dangers of contaminated spices and patrolling the markets with X-ray fluorescence analysers to detect lead.

It may be harder to pin Afghanistan’s problem on a single culprit like the kazans, said Rachel Bonnifield, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Global Development.

Countries that have suffered decades of conflict like Afghanistan also tend to have much higher levels of lead in the environment, she said, adding that Kohl, or surma – the traditional eyeliner worn by many Afghans from extremely young ages – has also been identified as a potential source.

The antimony it is usually made from is often mistaken for, and found alongside, galena, or lead sulfide.

More broadly, understanding the true extent of Afghanistan’s lead poisoning problem is complicated by the lack of data, she said. But what is clear is the severity of the impact it can have.

“The consequences of lead poisoning for global health, for children’s education and for overall development and economic growth are, frankly, staggering,” she told a recent conference.

The Telegraph confronted the owner of a kazan factory about the potential danger of his products.

Enayat, who owns a factory producing cooking pots in the western province of Herat, said he had heard of “rumours” about lead poisoning.

“These are just rumours,” he told The Telegraph. “We now have European customers, and our competitors are spreading these false rumours about poisoning.”

“I’ve been in this business for 20 years and have never encountered a case,” he said, adding that in his factory they only use “pure aluminium” to make their pots.

Convincing Afghans of the dangers of lead poisoning may too be an uphill battle.

Mr Ahmad, the craftsman from Ghor who gets paid about £4 a day, said he and his co-workers had only one priority.

“We only care about bread and how to fill our stomachs here, that’s the challenge and nothing else,” he said.

Taliban vice and virtue laws provide ‘distressing vision’ for Afghanistan, UN envoy warns

August 28, 2024 Current News Articles

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

ISLAMABAD — The Taliban’s new vice and virtue laws that include a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public provide a “distressing vision” for Afghanistan’s future, a top U.N. official warned Sunday.

Roza Otunbayeva, who heads the U.N. mission in the country, said the laws extend the “ already intolerable restrictions ” on the rights of women and girls, with “even the sound of a female voice” outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers last Wednesday issued the country’s first set of laws to prevent vice and promote virtue. They include a requirement for a woman to conceal her face, body and voice outside the home.

The laws empower the Vice and Virtue Ministry to be at the front line of regulating personal conduct and administering punishments like warnings or arrest if its enforcers allege that Afghans have broken the laws.

“After decades of war and in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis, the Afghan people deserve much better than being threatened or jailed if they happen to be late for prayers, glance at a member of the opposite sex who is not a family member, or possess a photo of a loved one,” Otunbayeva said.

The mission said it was studying the newly ratified law and its implications for Afghans, as well as its potential impact on the U.N. and other humanitarian assistance.

Taliban officials were not immediately available for comment.

In remarks broadcast Sunday by state-controlled broadcaster RTA, Vice and Virtue Minister Mohammad Khaled Hanafi said nobody had the right to violate women’s rights based on inappropriate customs.

“We are committed to assure all rights of women based on Islamic law and anyone who has a complaint in this regard will be heard and resolved,” he added.

Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said last year that Afghan women are provided with a “comfortable and prosperous” life, in spite of decrees barring them from many public spaces, education and most jobs.

The U.N. has previously said that official recognition of the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan is nearly impossible while restrictions on women and girls remain.

Although no country recognises the Taliban, many in the region have ties with them.

Last Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates accepted the credentials of the Taliban’s ambassador to the oil-rich Gulf Arab state.

A UAE official said the decision reaffirmed the government’s determination to contribute to building bridges to help Afghans. “This includes the provision of humanitarian assistance through development and reconstruction projects, and supporting efforts that work towards regional de-escalation and stability.”

Otunbayeva is scheduled to report to the U.N. Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan on Sept. 18, three years after the Taliban stopped girls’ education beyond sixth grade.

Nadim: Conditions for Reopening Schools for Girls ‘Not Yet Met’

August 28, 2024 Current News Articles

TOLOnews

TV Network

25 AUGUST 2024

Ziaullah Hashimi also mentioned the recruitment of eleven foreign instructors for the Afghanistan International Islamic University.

Neda Mohammad Nadim, the acting Minister of Higher Education, said that the conditions for reopening schools and universities for girls in the country have not yet been met.

During a program outlining the one-year achievements of this ministry, Nadim added that some individuals make unjustified remarks regarding girls’ education and emphasized that the demands of the people cannot be met by violating Islamic law.

The acting Minister of Higher Education said: “The research by scholars is ongoing. If scholars conclude in their research that educating females in this manner is permissible, it is believed that permission will then be granted.”

Neda Mohammad Nadim also mentioned that the ministry’s staff has increased by five thousand compared to the past, and he emphasized that no one will be allowed to obtain fraudulent educational documents.

Regarding this, Nadim said: “From now on, we will not allow anyone in Afghanistan to present us with imaginary students in society and to unjustly grant diplomas.”

Other officials from this ministry also mentioned that over one hundred and thirty curricula have been finalized by them and sent to the leader of the Islamic Emirate for approval.

The Directorate of Publications and Public Communications of the Ministry of Higher Education said that in the past year, in addition to various educational sectors, they have also engaged in healthcare service delivery activities.

Sardar Wali Salehi, the Director of Scientific Program Development of the Ministry of Higher Education, said: “In total, 131 curricula have been finalized based on religious, national, and international standards and have been sent to the Islamic Emirate’s higher authorities for approval.”

Meanwhile, Ziaullah Hashimi, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Higher Education, said that eleven doctoral programs, twenty-six master’s programs, thirteen new faculties at the bachelor’s level, and eighty-six new departments have been established in various educational institutions.

Ziaullah Hashimi also mentioned the recruitment of eleven foreign instructors for the Afghanistan International Islamic University.

Regarding this, Hashimi said: “With the aim of providing specialized and professional training to the country’s young generation, eleven professors from Egypt, Turkey, Iran, and other Islamic countries have been recruited to the Afghanistan International Islamic University.”

The Ministry of Higher Education reported that over 557 million afghani have been collected as revenue from the distribution of diplomas and transcripts, and currently, around one hundred and ninety thousand students are studying in the Emirate’s educational institutions.

Taliban reject UN concerns over laws banning women’s voices and bare faces in public

August 28, 2024 Current News Articles

By Associated Press

August 26, 2024

The Taliban is rejecting concerns and criticism raised by the United Nations over new vice and virtue laws that include a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public.

ISLAMABAD — The Taliban on Monday rejected concerns and criticism raised by the United Nations over new vice and virtue laws that ban women in Afghanistan from baring their faces and speaking in public places.

Roza Otunbayeva , who heads the U.N. mission in the country, UNAMA, said Sunday that the laws provided a “distressing vision” for Afghanistan’s future. She said the laws extend the “ already intolerable restrictions ” on the rights of women and girls, with “even the sound of a female voice” outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the main spokesman for the Taliban’s government, issued a statement warning against “arrogance” from those who he said may not be familiar with Islamic law, particularly non-Muslims who might express reservations or objections.

“We urge a thorough understanding of these laws and a respectful acknowledgment of Islamic values. To reject these laws without such understanding is, in our view, an expression of arrogance,” he said.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Wednesday issued the country’s first set of laws to discourage vice and promote virtue. They include a requirement for a woman to conceal her face, body and voice outside the home. They also ban images of living beings, such as photographs.

In response to the UNAMA statement, Mujahid added, “We must stress that the concerns raised by various parties will not sway the Islamic Emirate from its commitment to upholding and enforcing Islamic law.”

In rare public criticism of Afghanistan’s rulers, the Japanese Embassy in Kabul expressed its deep concern about the continuing restrictions on women and girls as announced in the laws.

The embassy said Monday on the social platform X that it would keep urging authorities to “listen to the voice of Afghan women and girls for education, employment, and freedom of movement” for the future of the country.

‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public

August 28, 2024 Current News Articles

Annie Kelly and Zahra Joya for Rukhshana Media

New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.

The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

Women’s voices are also deemed to be potential instruments of vice and so will not be allowed to be heard in public under the new restrictions. Women must also not be heard singing or reading aloud, even from inside their houses.

“Whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face, and body,” the new laws state.

Men will also be required to cover their bodies from their navels to their knees when they are outside their homes.

From now on, Afghan women are also not allowed to look directly at men they are not related to by blood or marriage, and taxi drivers will be punished if they agree to drive a woman who is without a suitable male escort.

Women or girls who fail to comply can be detained and punished in a manner deemed appropriate by Taliban officials charged with upholding the new laws.

The restrictions have been condemned by Roza Otunbayeva, the special UN’s representative for Afghanistan, who has said they extend the “intolerable restrictions” on the rights of women and girls already imposed by the Taliban since they took power in August 2021.

Speaking to Rukhshana Media, Mir Abdul Wahid Sadat, the president of the Afghan Lawyers Association, said that the new laws contradicted Afghanistan’s domestic and international legal obligations.

“From a legal standpoint this document faces serious issues,” he said. “It contradicts the fundamental principles of Islam [where] the promotion of virtue has never been defined through force, coercion, or tyranny.

“This document not only violates Afghanistan’s domestic laws but also broadly contravenes all 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

“The Taliban government does not have any sort of legitimacy and these new edicts designed to further erase and suppress woman are an indication of their hatred towards women,” says Fawzia Koofi, an Afghan human rights activist who was the first woman vice-president of the Afghan parliament.

“When they say women cannot speak in public as they regard women’s voices as a form of intimacy it is incredibly frightening yet the whole world acts like this is normal. There have been very few reactions of comments to what is happening and the Taliban are emboldened by this indifference. It is not only women but all human beings they are targeting. They must be held accountable.”

Shukria Barakzai, a former Afghan parliamentarian who was Afghanistan’s ambassador to Norway, agreed the international community’s silence on the Taliban’s oppression of Afghanistan’s 14 million women and girls had played its part in the criminalisation of women’s bodies and voices.

“It is concerning that international organisations, particularly the United Nations and the European Union, instead of standing against these inhumane practices, are trying to normalise relations with the Taliban,” she said. “They are, in a way, whitewashing this group, disregarding the fact that the Taliban are committing widespread human rights violations.”

In the three years since seizing power from the US-backed government, the Taliban have imposed what human rights groups are calling a “gender apartheid”, excluding women and girls from almost every aspect of public life and denying them access to the justice system.

Prior to the new “vice and virtue” laws, women and girls were already blocked from attending secondary school; banned from almost every form of paid employment; prevented from walking in public parks, attending gyms or beauty salons; and told to comply with a strict dress code.

Earlier this year, the Taliban also announced the reintroduction of the public flogging and stoning of women for adultery.

The Taliban have been approached for comment.

As Trump attacks, Harris says Biden was right to withdraw from Afghanistan

August 28, 2024 Current News Articles

Francesca Chambers
USA TODAY

August 26, 2024

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris said that she stands behind President Joe Biden’s decision to leave Afghanistan, as the Democratic nominee came under attack from Donald Trump on the third anniversary of the botched U.S. withdrawal.

In a statement on Monday, Harris referred to “our Administration” and emphasized her support, despite the chaotic pullout, which included the deaths of 13 American service members in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport on Aug. 26, 2021.

“As I have said, President Biden made the courageous and right decision to end America’s longest war,” Harris said. “Over the past three years, our Administration has demonstrated we can still eliminate terrorists, including the leaders of al-Qaeda and ISIS, without troops deployed into combat zones. I will never hesitate to take whatever action necessary to counter terrorist threats and protect the American people and the homeland.”

Trump has hit Harris repeatedly over Afghanistan since she became her party’s nominee.

“Three years ago, Kamala’s and Biden’s incompetence left 13 dead warriors, hundreds of civilians killed and grievously wounded, and $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment on the planet abandoned to the Taliban,” Trump said Monday on Truth Social. (The Taliban took possession of an estimated $7 billion in military hardware provided to the Afghan National Army.)

Harris has described herself as being the last person in the room when Biden decided to move forward with plans that began under Trump to leave Afghanistan. A photo of Biden holding a secure video call on the withdrawal at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, during the debacle showed Harris as a participant.

When the president delivered an address on the withdrawal, Harris was one of four senior U.S. officials who stood behind him on camera.

Trump and his campaign in a flurry of statements on Monday across multiple platforms said it “ranks among the worst foreign policy debacles in American history,” and argued that there had been no accountability for it − or the swift Taliban takeover that followed.

Trump participated in a wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday as Biden vacationed in Delaware and Harris met with her advisers.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, hosted a press call on Monday alongside family members of the soldiers who died in the bombing in which he criticized the Biden-Harris administration for not holding officials accountable.

“Nobody expects perfection from our government, but we do expect accountability,” Vance said. “The fact that Kamala Harris can’t even bring herself today to offer any real answer for what happened or for what she’s going to do over the next six months to get to the bottom of what happened is, I think, insulting to the families who gave their loved ones in service of this country.”

The administration admitted last April that it should have evacuated troops faster, once the withdrawal had begun, and that an intelligence assessment of the situation was wrong. But it blamed Trump’s administration, too, saying it negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban without consulting U.S. allies or the Afghan government.

“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the document says.

In a statement on Monday, Biden remembered the thirteen Americans who perished and underscored his position that the U.S. can successfully fight terrorism from afar − without explicitly revisiting the events that preceded their deaths.

“They embodied the very best of who we are as a nation: brave, committed, selfless. And we owe them and their families a sacred debt we will never be able to fully repay, but will never cease working to fulfill,” Biden said.

The vice president’s office declined to comment on Trump’s attacks and referred an inquiry to her campaign.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said “there are many ways” for leaders to observe the third anniversary, Trump’s wreath-laying among them.

“Another way is to continue to work, maybe not with a lot of fanfare, maybe not with a lot of public attention, maybe not with TV cameras, but to work with might and main every single day to make sure that the families of those, of the fallen and of those who were injured and wounded — not just at Abbey Gate, but over the course of the 20 some odd years that we were in Afghanistan — have the support that they need,” he said, referring to the scene of the airport bombing.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan led to a marked drop in support for Biden nationally. His favorability rating never bounced back, and Trump made a point of raising the issue in his opening statement at their June debate.

Harris and Trump are scheduled to debate on Sept. 10, and Trump is sure to bring it up, said Thomas Alan Schwartz, a professor of history at Vanderbilt College.

“She’s taking a risk,” Schwartz said of Harris’ identifying herself with the issue. “It is not something that most Americans feel good about.”

Harris has been under pressure to share a detailed policy agenda and identify areas in which she differs with Biden. While she mentioned Israel’s war in Gaza during her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention last week, Harris hasn’t delivered a foreign policy speech since taking over the ticket.

While her advisers have said Harris doesn’t feel hemmed in to sharing Biden’s positions on every issue, Peter Feaver, who served under multiple presidents on the National Security Council, said it’s “probably politically safer for her to stick with the administration on this one, given that it would otherwise create quite a significant breach of daylight between her and President Biden.”

“She wouldn’t gain anything politically from it, and instead, she’d be inviting a maelstrom of media attention,” he said.

‘Afghanistan will cease to exist if nothing changes’: Mahbouba Seraj shares plight of women under Taliban

August 28, 2024 Current News Articles

Bhagyasree Sengupta

Firstpost

August 27, 2024

In an exclusive conversation with Firstpost, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Afghan women’s right activist Mahbouba Seraj paints a grim image of Afghanistan under Taliban. While sharing the plight of women in the country, Seraj echoed the need to ‘sit-down’ and hold talks with the draconian regime

In an insightful conversation with Firstpost, Afghan women’s rights activist Mahbouba Seraj shares the plight of women under the Taliban along with the need to hold talks over the matter

It has been three years since the Taliban took over Kabul and returned to power in Afghanistan changing the lives of countless Afghan women who called the country their home. On 15 August 2021, when India, South Korea and several other nations were celebrating Independence Day, the world saw a country collapse in the hands of a radical group which was notorious for causing disruption in the past.

While Afghanistan continues to face economic hardship despite the vague promises the new regime came with, it was the Afghan women who paid the biggest price when the Taliban came to power. Right from the very beginning, the Taliban imposed a plethora of restrictions on women. From stringent dress codes to no access to education, women in Afghanistan lost their voice in a matter of months.

In an exclusive conversation with Firstpost, Afghan women’s rights activist Mahbouba Seraj, recalled the fear people had when the Taliban came back to power and shared the plight of women in Afghanistan. While she urged the international community to sit and talk with the Taliban, she emphasised that nothing has changed in the country in the last three years and the situation of women in Afghanistan remains deplorable. Last year, Seraj was nominated for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Kabul.

‘I was not going to get forced to leave my country’: Seraj

When the world witnessed Kabul fall into the hands of the Taliban, Seraj was one of the first voices it heard when it came to narrating the plight of women in Afghanistan.

“My first thought was fear, a lot of fear because Afghanistan had a history with the first-time of Taliban, which was absolutely horrifying. But the second time I should say that their presence in Afghanistan did not turn out the way the world thought it was going to be, which the rivers of blood were going to be running all over the city of Kabul and other provinces. It was not that,” Seraj told Firstpost.

“I knew what the situation was going to be with women. But I was still hopeful, somewhere deep down I was hoping that maybe this time it would be a bit different. But then unfortunately it wasn’t,” she recalled.

Seraj had to live in exile when the Soviet Union was in power in Afghanistan in the 1970s. She lived in the United States for over two decades and had the country’s citizenship. However, she was determined to stay in Afghanistan this time. She insisted that by staying in Kabul she is doing her “part by just being here”.

“This country of mine has gone to hell and back, at that time, it was the Russians (then part of the Soviet Union) that took over in 1978. And I had to leave the country with my family. I was not in Afghanistan the first time the Taliban were here. I lived in the US for 26 years before coming back to Afghanistan in 2003,” she recalled.

When asked why she didn’t leave the country and sought refuge somewhere else when the Taliban came back, Seraj expressed her will to stay in Afghanistan and continue with her work. “I was not going to do that. Once I was forced to leave my country, and that was the time when the Russians were here. And this time to tell you the honest truth, I was not going to get forced to leave my country,” Seraj emphasised. “So I stayed and I’m still here. And I want to stay here because, you know, there are some women in this country that they might need my presence,” she added.

Women ‘betrayed’ by the world found refuge among themselves

The 76-year-old human rights activist recalled how the Afghan people felt betrayed when they witnessed the United States and delegations from other countries leaving Kabul while it was struggling. “The Afghan people were so betrayed, it’s not even funny, to be honest. And I really do wonder how come the world does not realise what they did to us. But maybe some of them are realising that we were betrayed big time,” Seraj told Firstpost.

Those who didn’t have the means to leave Afghanistan sought refuge in safe houses that propped up across the country. Even Seraj opened her doors to men and women who were struggling at that time. “Safe houses existed in Afghanistan before the Taliban came. It was something that was needed because of the social changes in Afghanistan and the fact that women were always under pressure,” she explained.

“When the Taliban took over, temporary safe houses were created that were mainly for women and their husbands and their children. And it went on for a short period. And we started that also. We gave safe refuge because of the way the Taliban moved this time. They started through the provinces of Afghanistan and finally, they came to Kabul. So Kabul was the last refuge. But we don’t have those anymore. My safe house is still there,” she added.

‘Nothing has changed in three years’

When asked if anything has changed in three years since the Taliban took over, Seraj said that women in Afghanistan still face a “horrendous situation”. “Well, women are facing the most horrendous situation in Afghanistan right now because there is no education for them and they cannot work. They cannot get out of their houses without a man. They cannot travel. They cannot go anywhere. There is no money. There are no jobs,” said the women’s rights activist.

“A country cannot run that way. We are really in a very bad place.”

“Nothing has changed. The public floggings are still going on. I heard just a few days ago some were happening in Kabul also. We were hoping and thinking that the Taliban might go easier on the women of Afghanistan and let the schools do what they are supposed to do, which is to educate the women and the girls. But that did not happen, unfortunately,” she added.

Any room for negotiations with the Taliban?

In the past, Seraj has held talks with the Taliban regime spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid, constantly urging the regime to allow women to receive education in the country. She also requested the international community to hold dialogues with the Taliban and raise concerns about the persecution of women in Afghanistan. However, the needle hasn’t moved much. “We are still looking for and trying to find a way to communicate with the Taliban, to see if they could sit down and talk to the women of Afghanistan and tell them about what is going on and maybe we suggest a few things and give them some ideas,” she said.

“And Afghanistan is a beautiful artwork of all different ethnicities and traditions. All men and women are equal in the eyes of God and Islam. So I don’t know what kind of an interpretation it is that we are not. So I hope things change for women, but so far nothing has changed,” she added.

**Afghan women’s rights activist Mahbouba Seraj speaks to Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid. Source: Facebook: Mahbouba Seraj**

Seraj expressed frustration over how no women from Afghanistan were able to attend the third UN-held talks on Afghanistan which took place in Doha in July this year. The Doha talks were the first time the Taliban took part in the meeting. In the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Taliban also did not recognise the female Afghan athletes.

“That’s so unfortunate because, you know, 20 million people cannot be disregarded as nothing, whether that’s in the sphere of education or in being an athlete or doing some competition with the world and whatever,” Seraj told Firstpost. “If the Taliban, maybe they think that they can stop the women of Afghanistan from breathing the air, you know, I don’t think that will happen. As far as Doha talks are concerned, hopefully, we will find a way of actually sitting down with them and having a talk because otherwise, we don’t have any other choice. I mean, what is the next choice?” Seraj asked.

“The next choice is for all of us to kill each other, that’s the one other choice that we have. Apart from that, we have to really sit down and talk and discuss what’s going on. That’s the only way,” she added.

The Nobel Peace Prize-nominated activist insisted that Afghanistan will “cease to exist” if things go on the same way. “Afghanistan will cease to exist if this thing goes on the same way. We cannot afford that. We have to change the way we are doing the whole discussion and the whole communication and the world has to help us,” she furthered.

The Nobel debacle

In January this year, while receiving Finland’s International Gender Equality Prize, Seraj recalled how she missed out on winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023. “This will make Afghan women so happy,” she initially said in her speech. “I promised myself I wouldn’t mention the Nobel Peace Prize after that it’s my own people that hurt me the most,” she added. When asked why she said that Seraj reiterated the sentiments and said there’s more to the story.

“They held me responsible for something that happened in the history of this country with certain people, especially our Hazara community. And that was not in my hand,” Seraj come from a royal lineage, she belonged to the family of Abdur Rahman Khan, who was the Amir of Afghanistan from 1880 to his death in 1901. While Khan is known for building to state of Afghanistan by uniting the country after years of internal fighting, he is also known for perpetrating the Hazara Genocide.

Afghan journalist and women's right activist Mahbouba Seraj collected the award on behalf of AWSDC. X — **Afghan journalist and women’s rights activist Mahbouba Seraj collected the award on behalf of AWSDC. X**

“I was not the doer of it. It was 130 years ago by a man who happened to be my great-grandfather. And he made Afghanistan a state. When he arrived in Afghanistan, there were a lot of wars and a lot of problems going on with the different tribes that they were running in Afghanistan. And the Hazaras happened to be one of them. So there were killings, there’s no doubt. And it was horrible also,” she said.

“So they held me responsible for that. And they started, you know, this huge campaign against me,” she added. Seraj maintained that she was not the only one who lost the Nobel. The women of Afghanistan lost the prestigious prize as well. “Finally, at the end of the day, I did not win the Nobel Peace Prize. But it’s not me that did not win. It was the women of Afghanistan that did not win,” she emphasised.

When asked what she thinks about some of the people calling her “Taliban lobbyist”, Seraj reiterated calls for holding dialogue to bring change. “If you don’t want to talk to the people that you’re having problems with, what is the next way to make them (Taliban) understand what they are doing is not right? If we fight instead, we are going to die for no reason. How can we just kill each other, but not talk to each other? I don’t, I don’t believe in that,” she said.

“We should become intelligent. We are going to fight for our existence. If we don’t do that, we are doomed. And that’s something I don’t want,” she added.

Clutching on to hopes of winning the battle she has been fighting for decades

Seraj, who is in her 70s has been fighting for the rights of women in Afghanistan for decades. When asked if the current situation makes her frustrated, Seraj insisted that she would fight for Afghan women till the very end. “It makes me extremely frustrated. Especially now that after three years, I really don’t have a single thing in my hand that I can say to my sisters. But at the same time, I cannot give up because as long as there is life, there is hope and there is God. I do believe in my Allah and I know he will look after us and I know he will give us an answer, that will happen. Maybe it will not happen while I’m alive. I might not see it, but it will happen. So that’s why I keep on doing it until the last breath in my body,” she furthered.

When asked what the international community could do to help the women in Afghanistan, Seraj lamented that the world could have done a lot. Well, the international community could have done a hell of a lot more in the beginning and the international community can still do a hell of a lot now, too. But it all depends on the international community,” she remarked.

“We do need the support of every single woman in the world from everywhere, not only for Afghanistan, but all of us women for each other, because if we don’t look after each other, nobody else will.”

“The way the world is, it’s not going to last only with Afghanistan’s problem or the problem. Well, right now there is war in Gaza, so you can imagine what will be happening afterwards. We can all get together and maybe we can help each other in a necessary way. We can we can alleviate the hurt and the pain that we have,” she insisted.

When asked if she would encourage women to stay in Afghanistan, Seraj told Firstpost that she could not do something like this, given the current circumstances. “I cannot say that to them, honestly, I cannot ask that anymore, although in the beginning there were so many cases that the women were leaving the country. It’s entirely up to them, whatever they decide to do. But to the women and the world, what I’m trying to say is that, please, let’s stop. Let’s stop being so oblivious to everybody else’s needs and respect each other’s existence in the world,” the Afghan women’s rights activist asserted.

Activist Mahbouba Seraj sharing the plight of women in Afghanistan at the United Nations. Source: UN Photos — **Activist Mahbouba Seraj shares the plight of women in Afghanistan at the United Nations. Source: UN Photos**

The West should not think that the East shouldn’t exist the same way, and vice versa. There can’t be one religion in the whole world. We all have our religions and we should be free to practise,” she added. Seraj also took time to point out how refugees and immigrants are actually giving new life and “new blood” to Europe. “We all are going to be this mix of colours, mix of cultures. What is this fear that the world has from each other, that the East is going to eat the West or Muslims are going to eat everybody else? No. Everybody needs a life,” she explained.

“More than 40,000 people are dead in Gaza. This is not acceptable. So many people are away from Afghanistan, they should have been in my country, doing the work for our country,” she added.

Hope for future

Seraj is the executive director of the Afghan Women’s Skill Development Centre, during the conversation with Firstpost, she explained what the organisation does. “Well, the organisation is doing anything pertaining to women and bringing the women to a place where they could have a better life,” she averred.

“If it’s for educating them on agriculture, whether it’s about talking to the different provinces and people in the different villages to let their children go to school or to have a better life or to do some handicraft like arts that they have in the area or learn something that will be useful for them. We are doing that,” she added.

Finally, Seraj has one message to the women who are fighting for their rights in Afghanistan. “I’m telling the Afghan women, hang in there, sweethearts. Nothing lasts forever. This shall change, too,” she concluded.

How handmade rugs are providing a future for Afghans

August 28, 2024 Current News Articles

CBS News

AUG 25, 2024

After the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, education for girls and boys has been a rare commodity in a country where families must make devastating choices in order to guarantee their survival. Correspondent Tracy Smith talks with Nargis Habib, a California entrepreneur who pays artisans in Afghanistan to produce beautiful woven rugs for a price that helps support families’ financial freedom.

WATCH: How handmade rugs are providing a future for …
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/how-handmade-rugs-are-providing-a-future-for-afghans/

Annie Kelly and Zahra Joya for Rukhshana Media

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