The debate on the funds frozen to the Taliban government focuses the attention of the Security Council, one year later
A year ago the world was horrified at the fate of Afghan women who had been left in the hands of a new Taliban government after the US stampede. Today it is they who are horrified at the world’s indifference.
There is a new war in the world. Ukraine, which has commanded the attention of the UN General Assembly, could also fade next year if another, newer conflict emerges to capture the attention of world public opinion. Meanwhile, the image campaign of the Taliban 2.0 has given way, as was feared, to “gender apartheid” in Afghanistan, where women’s rights are “systematically” destroyed, denounced yesterday the former parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi, who currently chairs the Afghanistan Women, Civil Society and Human Rights Commission.
Before speaking to the UN Security Council, at the meeting evaluating the first anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power, he consulted “many women” in his country about what they wanted him to say. “They asked me to tell you that they are disappointed, horrified and furious to see the world not speaking out on the suffering of 14 million people at the hands of a government that doesn’t even have international legitimacy,” she broadcast. No representative of the Taliban government could answer him, because their ambassador is not recognized in the UN or in any country in the world, although 34 governments have some kind of relationship.
Since coming to power, the Taliban have banned women’s access to secondary education, issued 31 decrees relegating them to obscurantism, opened women’s prisons, closed 300 media outlets and left 17 provinces without a single female journalist. (only 600 of the 2,576 remain in all of Afghanistan). Since August last year, 2.3 million Afghans have fled the country and millions more are still desperately searching for a passport to leave. “There is no place for women or for the future of Afghanistan,” she lamented.
Koofi, 47, is well aware of the obscurantism to which women in her country are returning. The day she was born, into a polygamous family in which there were seven wives, she was left in the sun to die, because her mother wanted a boy to keep her husband’s affection. Her life and her work to defend the rights of Afghan women is in itself a challenge to the aspirations of the Taliban, with whom she negotiated in the Doha talks as one of the five women of the intra-Afghan delegation, and for which she has suffered two assassination attempts.
This Tuesday Koofi was in favor of limiting aid to the new government to ensure that it reaches the population and not those who claim to hold power “given by God”, while countries like Russia, China, Mexico and even Norway ask that the funds from the Afghan Central Bank to deal with the humanitarian crisis and prevent the collapse of the country.
international security
But it is not the situation of Afghan women that stops the US from doing so, but the Taliban government’s proven collaboration with the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, as revealed by the murder of Ayman al-Zawahiri on the balcony of a wealthy neighborhood from Kabul. The world does not believe that the Taliban are willing to treat women with dignity, but even less that they are going to collaborate with international security by persecuting terrorists.
The argument that justified the invasion of the country more than two decades ago leaves its population in the abyss of hunger and misery, beyond the “humiliation” suffered by women who were promised the dream of Western equality. “Can you imagine that to leave this room you would need a woman’s permission?” Koofi asked. “No, I suppose it will be difficult for them to imagine it. We have to admit that we have all failed Afghan women.”
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