twenty years armed presence United States of America and its allies Afghanistan At least apparently they didn’t change anything. Washington expelled the Taliban in 2001, creating a false image of freedom, until a reinforced and equally sectarian Taliban expelled Westerners and a puppet government in August 2021. Ashraf Ghani.
Desperation and chaos airport Kabul, The desire of tens of thousands of Afghans to escape was the image of a predictable disaster: we cannot change the lives of people trapped in despotic regimes. You lack patience and wisdom. We have a lot of interests and propaganda.
Gone are those who believed in the story that we would bring them democracy and progress. millions left behind invisible Afghan women to have a face other than the burka, again without the right to work, school and university.
If the West had listened to Malalai Joya in her three-minute speech at Loya Jorja (Ayan, the Great Assembly of all people) in December 2003, we would have saved ourselves a lot of pain. Joya denounced that the Northern Alliance consists of: murderers and drug dealers. They were our allies against the Taliban
20 years of occupation
It is too early to know what the long-term effects of 20 years of occupation will be, what the consequences will be of planting the seed of a certain freedom, which does more harm than good. What will be the reaction of empowered women and their daughters who must now stay in power? silence?
Umbrella Hassani He is a famous Afghan artist born in Tehran, his family’s exile city in 1988. Graffiti condemns the plight of women oppressed by machismo. He returned to Kabul in 2001, but had to flee in 2021. Negina Azimi is not the only artist to fill the walls with images of struggle. The works of both were destroyed by the Taliban.
Salma al-Shebab is a Saudi woman studying at the University of Leeds in England. She has returned to her country for vacation, she. He was arrested for retweeting Saudi activists, imprisoned and sentenced to 34 years by a special terrorism court.
The sentence came this week, after the US president’s visit to Riyadh, Joe Biden, who sheathed the prince’s criticism Mohammed bin SalmanCIA thinks mastermind behind dissident killing and dismemberment Jamal Khashoggi. Oil was more important than human rights, as was the case with Emmanuel Macron, who greeted the prince with honor and forgetfulness at the Elysée, or with the President of Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, The one who made peace with Riyadh despite Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Afghanistan, as far as is known, does not have oil, gas and does not picture anything in the international arena. An excellent example of demonstrating determination in the defense of human rights.
women without veils
While there are no comparable circumstances, the American woman has just faced a legal blow that made her job easier. abortion ban. It is the first of several rights at risk. In the US, an extremist Christian climate is growing, with a mountaintop Republican Party that some are comparing the FBI to the Gestapo.
I met her in Kabul in 2009. Ramadan Bashasdost, independent presidential candidate. Despite being from the Hazara minority, he finished third. I shared that I was surprised that so many children living in poverty wanted to become doctors. He explained to me that it is a sequel to an Indian series that was very popular in those days. “You sent us abundance, guns, bombs and soldiers. If they had sent us a drama, it would have been different.”
Scandalized by Afghanistan, faceless women roam our cities shrouded in veils, the wives of millionaires from the Persian Gulf. And we allow hijab girls to go to school to learn the opposite of what is taught at home. Education equip them with tools to decide how they dress when they come of age. Few will be freed from the yoke of family and tradition.
Schools should be places of secular education without headscarves, crosses or other religious symbols. Reason and science should be above all fanaticism. The laws of the state govern fanatical disobedience. Why doesn’t this argument work for Catholic denominations, anti-vaccine and climate change deniers? The answer is simple and racist.