Afghan women return to live in the same conditions as 20 years ago. The archaic macho traditions have been imposed again and the international community looks without reaction at some women whose fundamental rights are being taken away
Although on more than one occasion there are those who twist the gesture when it is affirmed that women have been the great heroines of history, the great sufferers, it must be recognized that it is true. And it continues to be ratified at every moment.
There is no evidence that matriarchal societies have been formed. Throughout history, social and political structures have prevailed in which men ruled, acted and exercised their will while disregarding their daughters, mothers and wives (and it still happens, unfortunately).
Despite everything, there have been women who have known how to succeed paddling against the tide in a sea of male mediocrities. And that enormous and meritorious effort has led them, by fits and starts, to the recognition of equality.
However, that circle has not yet been closed everywhere. Women still suffer discrimination as if their only role were to be the guardian of the home and resignedly accept entrenched and archaic macho traditions that prevent them from being, acting and deciding for themselves, growing as a person, showing their own will.
an agonizing life
The most intransigent model in recent decades has been that of Afghanistan. The Taliban have put women back in the same place they were more than 20 years ago by re-imposing them to wear the burqa and cover their faces in public and in private.
In 1996, after a harrowing civil war, the Taliban, a group of fanatics formed in the madrasas of Pakistan, managed to conquer Kabul and impose their fundamentalism.
Afghan women were subjected to their reactionary yoke. From that moment on they were required to go completely hidden behind the burqa, never go out alone and suffer all sorts of injustices and discrimination that made thousands of them, war widows and without a male figure to protect them, endure the slowest and terrible of agonies: social misery.
The international denunciations of the NGOs were of little use. Until 9/11 came and changed everything: the US singled out Mullah Omar’s Afghanistan as an enemy for protecting Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, the cause of the terrible attack on the twin towers.
Washington demanded his surrender and, given the refusal, proceeded to destroy the Taliban regime from the air, with the help of the Northern Alliance rebels and special forces. The operation was a success, and the Taliban returned to the caves from which they had emerged. Although Bin Laden, a refugee in the neighboring country, was slow to be found and executed, he was already designing a different destiny for a complex country, backward, multi-ethnic and so affected by violence.
Protest in solidarity with the Afghan victims of the Taliban regime held in London in 2021 /
the turn back
From that moment, there was intense involvement on the part of the UN. International forces were deployed to pacify the rugged territory and establish a liberal regime. Thanks to the substantial aid provided, they managed to rebuild part of the destroyed schools and hospitals and launch important vaccination campaigns, in addition to raising the population’s standard of living a few points. And, finally, they managed to recover a substantial part of the rights, of Afghans in general and of women in particular.
Nearly twenty years later, in August 2021, the US decided to withdraw. He did not think that the political benefit was profitable. The Taliban had been regaining control of large areas and the authorities in Kabul, consumed by ineffectiveness and corruption, were unable to prevent their progression.
The biggest and only fear was that the country would once again become a platform for international jihadism, this time at the hands of the Islamic State (IS). Fortunately, the Taliban and ISIS are antagonists, and the Taliban had no problem committing to fight their rival.
However, the staggered and agreed withdrawal was an absolute failure. It turned into a headlong flight and the complete and utter bankruptcy of what had been achieved to date.
They cover their faces again
The Taliban advanced without resistance, with hardly any opposition. It was an unmitigated success for them. The Taliban regime presented a more friendly face to the media. He promised to integrate women into his new emirate.
But the reality has been quite different. Over the months we have seen girls’ schools open only to close a few hours later. And, as a coup de grace, the Taliban leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, decreed on May 7 that all women must go with their faces covered in public. Even in private, if they meet men who are not family members. Only girls and the elderly are exempt.
Whoever fails to comply with this measure may be imprisoned or their closest male relatives, if they are officials, may be fired. A draconian measure that, in plain view, far exceeds the alleged crime.
Likewise, they are advised that the best thing they can do is to stay at home. An invitation that is accompanied by other restrictions such as traveling or sharing the same space as men in parks. They are even forced to go to work accompanied by a male tutor.
To put pressure on the Afghan government to rectify its positions, countries and international organizations have long imposed economic restrictions on the emirate and frozen its funds abroad. But, although this has further weakened its economy, the one who suffers, paradoxically, is the civilian population itself, whose standard of living has hit rock bottom again.
There is no easy solution. The international failure to turn Afghanistan into a state with certain guarantees has been absolute. Perhaps time will allow the causes to be deciphered, but what is clear is that reality once again exceeds fiction.
What once caused us so much aberration and rejection, this cruel discrimination and mistreatment of women, has returned with the same force to the starting point.
This article has been published in ‘The Conversation‘.
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