The new law, banning women from raising their voice in public, is the latest crushing women's rights.

The daily English lessons that Shabana attends are the highlight of her day. Taking the bus in Kabul to the private course with her friends, chatting and laughing with them, learning something new for one hour each day - it’s a brief respite from the emptiness that has engulfed her life since the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

In another country, Shabana* would have been graduating from high school next year, pursuing her dream to get a business degree. In Afghanistan, she and all teenage girls have been barred from formal education for three years.

Now even the small joys that were making life bearable are fraught with fear after a new law was announced saying if a woman is outside her home, even her voice must not be heard.

  • @UnderpantsWeevilEnglish
    29•3 months ago

    Meanwhile… Facing Economic Collapse, Afghanistan Is Gripped by Starvation

    Nearly four months since the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan is on the brink of a mass starvation that aid groups say threatens to kill a million children this winter — a toll that would dwarf the total number of Afghan civilians estimated to have been killed as a direct result of the war over the past 20 years.

    While Afghanistan has suffered from malnutrition for decades, the country’s hunger crisis has drastically worsened in recent months. This winter, an estimated 22.8 million people — more than half the population — are expected to face potentially life-threatening levels of food insecurity, according to an analysis by the United Nations World Food Program and Food and Agriculture Organization. Of those, 8.7 million people are nearing famine — the worst stage of a food crisis.

    …

    “We need to separate the politics from the humanitarian imperative,” said Mary-Ellen McGroarty, the World Food Program’s country director for Afghanistan. “The millions of women, of children, of men in the current crisis in Afghanistan are innocent people who are being condemned to a winter of absolute desperation and potentially death.”

    …

    Since the Taliban seized power, the United States and other Western donors have grappled with delicate questions over how to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan without granting the new regime legitimacy by removing sanctions or putting money directly into the Taliban’s hands.

    “We believe that it’s essential that we maintain our sanctions against the Taliban but at the same time find ways for legitimate humanitarian assistance to get to the Afghan people. That’s exactly what we’re doing,” the deputy U.S. Treasury secretary, Wally Adeyemo, told the Senate Banking Committee in October.

    But as the humanitarian situation has worsened, aid organizations have called on the United States to move more quickly.

    American officials showed some flexibility around loosening the economic chokehold on Afghanistan last week, when the World Bank’s board — which includes the United States — moved to free up $280 million in frozen donor funding for the World Food Program and UNICEF. Still, the sum is just a portion of the $1.5 billion frozen by the World Bank amid pressure from the United States Treasury after the Taliban took control.

    • andrew_bidlawEnglish
      -6•3 months ago

      The way the US moved to leave was a disaster, now punished with these bloodsuckers demanding help for problems they themselves create.

      • @[email protected]English
        17•3 months ago

        I mean what else could the US have done? The entire afghan military and government folded within days. They’ve got to help themselves at some point.

        • RedSeriesEnglish
          11•3 months ago

          Not pressuring the Afghani government into releasing ~5,000 Taliban fighters as part of the pullout would have been a good start if I’m being honest. Donald “Art of the Deal” Trump himself basically sentenced that country to die when he agreed to those terms.

          I agree that it’s a sad state of affairs that the military and government caved so quickly. 20 years of help and they couldn’t manage to stand up on their own, all things said and done. Not calling you wrong, but the way we left was a disaster, and honestly we should have reneged on the deal once Biden took office and found a better way to transition out of the country.

          • @[email protected]English
            9•3 months ago

            Us being there was pretty much an unmitigated disaster from start to finish for sure, up to and including how we left.

            But at the same time, holy shit, a country and its people have to advocate for themselves at some point

            • RedSeriesEnglish
              4•3 months ago

              Agreed, it’s mind-boggling that they couldn’t manage after such a long time.

          • @sazeyEnglish
            4•3 months ago

            USA could have been in Afghanistan for 200 years and they still wouldn’t be able to put together more than a humpty dumpty army. The problem isn’t even Afghan ineptitude as such, the problem is that US policymakers start and stay completely ignorant to local cultures and customs wherever they decide to stick their dick.

        • @mlgEnglish
          2•3 months ago

          Next time don’t support the losing opposition of shitty warlords that made the Taliban look better in comparison lol.

          I seriously don’t get why they decided to make them the government of Afghanistan if they were going to invade anyway and could have set up a real government with a proper election.

          Almost like they wanted some former criminals who would follow every order given to them in exchange for becoming the head of the country.

      • @UnderpantsWeevilEnglish
        -8•3 months ago

        bloodsuckers demanding help for problems

        The Taliban isn’t the organization demanding help. They seem relatively content to squat on the administrative offices in the central urban areas, simply to keep American military out.

        The US economic sanctions are hitting all the folks on the periphery. The liberal institutions that used to live under the American military shadow are the ones we’ve effectively pincered between our punitive fiscal rules and the Taliban’s own ultra-orthodox conservative social policy.

        This is exactly what happened to Iran in the early 80s. A revolution powered by a combination of progressive anti-monarchists and revanchist religious leaders emerged victorious, only for the progressives to get knee-capped by a Reagan government that claimed to be targeting the religious leadership. The only way to make this analogy more perfect would be for the US to start funneling chemical weapons into Turkmenistan so they can start chipping away at the Afghan western border, like they did with Saddam’s Iraq back in the early 80s.

        • andrew_bidlawEnglish
          9•3 months ago

          Taliban squats on suffering of afghani people and slices it’s workforce in half just because. They know the donations would come. They don’t need to do anything for the west to feel pity of this country for the years of occupation - and while Talibs don’t have anything to do with it afghani nation would be carefully supported whatever bullshit they do.

          Talibs took over Afghanistan in mere days because the existing government (whatever platform they even had) was too codependent on american presence. Corrupt and weak, without any political or military might, it predictably flopped. That’s what 20 years of this ‘buildimg’ effort went up to become. There were no plan to leave, especially that fast, and as long as it existed the way it did, no one bothered to nurture afghani own political ground. And when they left, it crumbled.

          • @UnderpantsWeevilEnglish
            -5•3 months ago

            Taliban squats on suffering of afghani people and slices it’s workforce in half just because.

            20 years in the wilderness fighting a guerrilla campaign against a hostile invading army does little to cultivate a base of moderate bureaucrats.

            They know the donations would come.

            The donations can’t come so long as they remain head of the national government. The US sanctions regime forbids it.

            Talibs took over Afghanistan in mere days because the existing government (whatever platform they even had) was too codependent on american presence. Corrupt and weak, without any political or military might, it predictably flopped.

            The prior government was made dependent on US presence as a control on their domestic authority. This was a feature, not a bug. Americans gave the Iraqi government too much slack, and they immediately started forming diplomatic relationships with their Iranian neighbors. So we ran Afghanistan differently, hobbling the Kabul government such that they couldn’t do anything without US consent.

            Then we left, and the administration collapsed like a house of cards, because that’s all it really was. Just the window-dressing of a liberal democracy over a foreign military dictatorship.

            But when we left, we also ripped out the base of the Afghan economy. We looted the national treasury. We shut down all the interstate electronic infrastructure. We froze access to foreign markets. And we threatened any business that hoped to do trade into Afghanistan with the same kind of penalties. Consequently, we crashed the Afghan economy and effectively blockaded it from access to fertilizers, medicines, and food imports that the state was relying on up to this point.

            That is ultimately what’s driving the current famine. Afghan is effectively under siege by threat of the US federal government.

        • @PugJesusEnglish
          7•3 months ago

          A revolution powered by a combination of progressive anti-monarchists and revanchist religious leaders emerged victorious, only for the progressives to get knee-capped by a Reagan government that claimed to be targeting the religious leadership.

          Jesus fucking Christ. Tell me you know nothing about the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution without telling me you know nothing about the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution.