The drought and the conflict have caused another 550,000 new internally displaced people, adding to the 4 million already homeless in previous years. Borders are closed, banks are at a standstill and no money is circulating. Prices for basic goods have doubled
«Please help me, you know what’s happening in Afghanistan, it’s over for us. We no longer exist. Help me because I am in danger, because I no longer have a future ». Words like boulders those of a young Afghan journalist. The same ones that are pronounced by women and girls who in the last 20 years have studied, have found a job, have laboriously emancipated themselves to become judges, policewomen, entrepreneurs, politicians, to become part of a system that, despite the war, it manifested itself and imposed itself. Over 25% of women were in Parliament, there were hundreds of female journalists, activists, thinkers, artists. And even the male world, always remaining very conservative and traditionalist, had been torn apart. Until August 15, 2021.
The Afghan Republic was certainly not a perfect country with its endemic corruption, constant attacks, widespread poverty, drug production records, yet a sort of perception had crept among Afghans that change was underway, at least for young men and women who studied and for those who lived in big cities. A country that saw two thirds of its economic budget financed by donor countries, starting with the United States, a country that alone could never have done it. Then in February 2020 the Americans and the Taliban signed a peace agreement in Doha in Qatar, negotiations where the Afghan government is not involved although it has always been supported by the Americans and its allies. After 20 years of war, the United States to get out of an endless conflict cost blood, destruction and an outlay that has exceeded the three trillion dollars, announce the withdrawal.
When a negotiation between conflicting parties does not involve one of the protagonists, as happened with the Afghan government, it marks his death sentence. As the Americans forced President Ghani to open prisons and release all Taliban leaders who had been jailed in the past two decades, they allowed the old leadership to reform and take power. Everyone in Afghanistan knew what would happen, many hoped that the Taliban would agree to enter the political system and, instead, the Afghans’ worst nightmare turned out: the Taliban have taken everything, the country has emptied itself of all leaders at any level, also because they risked being killed, as well as a large part of civil society that, aided by the international community, left the country in a mass evacuation unprecedented in history: 150,000 people evacuated in two weeks. Those who left were saved, those who remained now live hidden and at the mercy of Islamic extremists. Afghans felt betrayed and abandoned by Westerners. The Taliban immediately launched two narratives, a moderate one with the West from which he wants to be recognized and from which he wants the money (donor countries have frozen 9 billion dollars needed to run a state without money) and another, the most sincere with the population: no more school for women over 12 years old. The female gender has been canceled, be it the world of work or the advertising posters on the street where women’s eyes have been obliterated. Music was banned as was women’s sport. The girls locked themselves at home with their cell phones, begging the rest of the world to help them.
To all this is added the worst economic and humanitarian crisis in the world, with 97% of the population that in 2022 will be below the poverty line. The drought and the conflict have caused another 550,000 new internally displaced people, adding to the 4 million already homeless in previous years. Borders are closed, banks are at a standstill and no money is circulating. Prices for basic goods have doubled. For Unicef, this winter, one million children under 5 are at risk of dying of hunger, with temperatures reaching -20, unmanageable for those living in tents. Medicines are running out and Covid is reigning. For some at least now there is no more fighting, but Shukria Barokzai, a former presidential candidate whom the Taliban tried to kill twice, replies: “Peace is not the absence of war, peace without rights is just another prison”. –
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