US President Joe Biden’s shameful and shambolic pullout from Afghanistan opened the floodgates for a wider tragedy in this long-suffering South Asian state and moreover whetted the political appetite for authoritarian regimes worldwide to probe new aggressions. While Afghan civilians are enduring a brutal winter and suffering from an acute economic crisis, the radical Islamic Taliban regime has largely restricted international aid agencies from operating in Afghanistan as those agencies employ women. It may be mentioned here that, currently over 25 million Afghans depend on foreign humanitarian assistance.
Recently Islamist Taliban regime ordered that women would be barred from working in foreign aid agencies and threatened to stop foreign aid.
Into the fray came the UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed and her delegation for a four-day fact-finding mission to try to talk sense and try to find some common ground with the “de facto authorities” aka the Taliban, so that fewer Afghans will be at the mercy of medievalist mullahs.
The visiting UN team stated, “the delegation directly conveyed the alarm over the recent decree banning women from working for national and international non-governmental organizations, a move that undermines the work of numerous organizations helping millions of vulnerable Afghans”.
Prior to arriving in Kabul, the UN delegation visited Muslim countries in the Middle East as well as Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey to assess attitudes towards the extremist Taliban measures. Amina Mohammed cultivated ties with moderate Muslim states as a way to indirectly pressure the Taliban in her words to “travel from the 13th century to the 21st”.
The UN team added that this latest “clampdown on working women followed edicts from the fundamentalist Taliban to close universities to female students, until further notice, and prevent girls from attending secondary school”. Equally, women and girls have been ordered to stop using parks, gyms, and banned from most areas of the workforce. The Taliban regime has once again enforced its medieval rule on women thus treating them as mere slaves of the whims of the men.
Most unfortunate fact is, for ages Afghan men have been continuing a notorious culture of treating women as sub-humans while forcing them to remain behind closed doors under thick Islamic veils and dedicate their lives in taking care of the house, children and their husband. While Afghan males mostly indulge into drugs, women and perverted sexual acts, using young boys, they do not give values to the rights of women or at least treat them with respect. Majority of them maintain multiple wives and uncounted number of concubines. Members of the Islamist the Taliban regime are no exception.
Commenting on restrictions on Afghan women gross violations of their rights UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed, a Nigerian Muslim said: “These restrictions present Afghan women and girls with a future that confines them in their own homes, violating their rights and depriving the communities of their services. Afghanistan is isolating itself. We can’t abandon the women of Afghanistan”.
Taliban have suspended access to universities for women and girls,” and barred girls from schools beyond the sixth grade. While Islamist Taliban regime in Afghanistan has not been recognized by any member of the international community, Amina Mohammed said, the Taliban authorities in Kabul view diplomatic recognition as a prize.
UN Women’s chief executive Sima Bahous warned, “What is happening in Afghanistan is a grave women’s rights crisis and a wakeup call for the international community. It shows how quickly decades of progress on women’s rights can be reversed in a matter of days”.
While Amina Mohammed told reporters, “We want to look for light in this darkness”, Islamist Taliban are confronted by the determined resilience of Afghan women both inside the country and abroad. There is a tough and educated population, admittedly a vocal minority who knows that this regime of darkness and dystopia is a passing plague upon the country. But how long must they wait for the dawn? Unfortunately, hope is in short supply.
Afghans – particularly girls and women shall continue to endure unimaginable sufferings and ordeals whereas one man should be held responsible for his daydreaming of retaining his presidency in 2024 at the cost of Afghans as well as Americans. In my opinion, Joe Biden is a monster who is pushing many countries in the world towards destruction under the guise of “establishing democracy”, although he has denied democratic rights to his own people – the Americans.
