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THE BELOW (updated 12 MAR 2022)
When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi
figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da
qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so
called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali
Al Jazeera
26 Mar
<<Afghan girls stage protest, demand Taliban reopen schools
More than two dozen girls and women stage protests in front of the
Ministry of Education against the Taliban’s decision to shut schools.
More than two dozen girls and women have staged protests in front of the
Ministry of Education in the capital, Kabul, days after the Taliban
administration shut secondary schools for girls until further notice,
following which the Afghan group has been accused of reneging on its
promise on higher education for girls. Thousands of jubilant girls
across Afghanistan had flocked to learning institutions on Wednesday –
the date the education ministry had set for classes to resume for girls
of all ages. But just hours into the first day, the ministry announced a
shock policy reversal that left youngsters saying they felt betrayed and
foreign governments expressing outrage. On Friday, the United States
cancelled planned talks with the Taliban in Qatar that were set to
address key economic issues after the group’s decision to close schools.
The decision, which the Taliban has yet to explain, means girls above
the sixth grade will not be able to attend school. <Open the schools!
Justice, justice!> chanted protesters on Saturday, some carrying school
books as they gathered at a city square in Kabul. They held banners that
said <Education is our fundamental right, not a political plan>, as they
marched for a short distance and later dispersed as Taliban fighters
arrived at the scene.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/26/afghan-girls-protest-demanding-taliban-to-reopen-schools
Opinion by Gino d'Artali: no weaponry of watever kind will break the
power of the Afghanistan's girls and women's will and demand to be
educated the way they want and what they want to learn!
Al Jazeera
26 Mar 2022
<<Afghanistan: Taliban girls’ education ban won’t last, says Malala
The armed group ruling Afghanistan closed girls’ secondary schools just
hours after reopening them this week.
The Taliban’s ban on girls’ education will not last forever, Nobel
laureate Malala Yousafzai has said, emphasising that Afghan women now
know what it is to be <empowered>. The armed group, now ruling
Afghanistan, closed girls’ secondary schools just hours after reopening
them this week, prompting a small protest by women and girls in the
capital Kabul. <I think it was much easier for the Taliban [to enforce]
a ban on girls’ education back in 1996,> Yousafzai, who won the 2014
Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for all children’s right to education,
told the Doha Forum in Qatar on Saturday. <It is much harder this time –
that is because women have seen what it means to be educated, what it
means to be empowered. This time is going to be much harder for the
Taliban to maintain the ban on girls’ education. This ban will not last
forever.> The Taliban stopped girls from attending school during its
rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when it was removed by the US-led
invasion.
....
<On Tuesday, we joined millions of Afghan families in expressing our
deep disappointment with the Taliban’s decision to not allow women and
girls to return to secondary school,> a State Department spokesperson
said on Friday. <We have cancelled some of our engagements, including
planned meetings in Doha [Qatar’s capital] around the Doha Forum, and
made clear that we see this decision as a potential turning point in our
engagement.> On Saturday, US special envoy Thomas West said he expects
the Taliban to reverse its decision <in coming days>. Yousafzai, who
survived a Pakistani Taliban assassination attempt when she was 15, said
girls’ schooling should be a condition of diplomatic recognition for the
Taliban.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/26/girls-education-ban-wont-last-nobel-laureate-malala
Malala Yousafzai:
<Malala Says Taliban 'running Out Of Excuses' For Preventing Girls From
Receiving Education.>
Her opinion as published by Republicworld.com:
3 Feb 2022
<<Pakistani activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai
recently said that the Taliban is running out of excuses as they can no
longer use religion as an excuse for preventing Afghan girls from
receiving education. Ever since the Taliban seized power over the
war-torn nation on August 15 last year, a series of discriminatory rules
have been enacted by the Islamist group across Afghanistan. Such
instructions suggest a return to the strict ruling of the group’s past
tenure in power, despite promises of a milder form of government.
Speaking to BBC, Malala, who was shot by the Pakistani Taliban for
campaigning for girls’ education, noted that ever since the militant
group took over Kabul in mid-August, the lives of women in Afghanistan
changed completely. But while hailing the women protesters in the
war-torn nation, she said that there has been pressure on the Taliban to
listen to the voices of Afghan women in the Gulf and ensure that their
rights are protected. Afghan women protest against Taliban’s policies
According to BBC, students have returned to some public universities in
Afghanistan for the first time since the Taliban seized power in August.
However, the Islamist authorities have also said that male and female
students should be segregated on the curriculum based on religious
principles. Moreover, the Taliban back in September also issued a fresh
set of education laws, which greatly highlighted gender bias. It is to
mention that girls are still not allowed to attend secondary schools.>>
Read more here:
https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/rest-of-the-world-news/malala-says-taliban-running-out-of-excuses-for-preventing-girls-from-receiving-education-articleshow.html
and the and must read embedded article:
<<'Catastrophe unfolding' | EU Parliament Hosts 'Afghan Women Days' To
Highlight Crisis Under Taliban Rule
The EU Parliament is hosting <Afghan Women Days> on February 1 and
February 2 to address and shed light on the dire situation of women in
Afghanistan.>>
Read more here:
https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/rest-of-the-world-news/eu-parliament-hosts-afghan-women-days-to-highlight-crisis-under-taliban-rule-articleshow.html
Read also two articles I wrote about Malala Yousafzai here:
www.cryfreedom.net/malala.htm
and
www.cryfreedom.net/malala2.htm
The Guardian
Supported by The Guardian.org
Mar 25 2022
By Stefanie Glinski and Ruchi Kumar
<<Taliban U-turn over Afghan girls’ education reveals deep leadership
divisions. Earlier this week, girls across Afghanistan arrived for
lessons on the day secondary schools were due to open for them for the
first time since the Taliban seized power. They were told to go home,
and informed schools would remain shut indefinitely. As international
outrage grew at the U-turn, the official Taliban response was confused
and contradictory. The group blamed a lack of teachers on the closures
and said they first needed to create an appropriate environment for
girls to study, and decide on appropriate uniforms. A statement issued
by the Taliban’s education ministry then said school openings would be
postponed <until further notice when a comprehensive plan, in accordance
with Sharia and Afghan culture, is developed>.
Experts say that the decision to close education to girls over 11 is
nothing to do with uniforms. Instead, it is a sign of deep divisions
within the group about the future direction of rule in Afghanistan.
Heather Barr, associate director of the women’s rights division at Human
Rights Watch, said: <The uniforms are already very conservative and the
schools are already segregated by gender. They had seven months to
decide what type of scarves girls should wear on their heads and even
those seven months weren’t enough. This isn’t a credible excuse.> <They
don’t want to actually come out and admit they don’t want girls to go to
school,> she said, adding that the Taliban made similar prohibitions on
education and work during their rule in the 1990s. The decision to keep
schools closed was announced by Umar Jalal, a director at Afghanistan’s
Academy of Sciences, instead of the Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah
Mujahid. It is believed to have been made during a three-day cabinet
meeting held in the southern Kandahar province and has caused uproar and
surprise even in Taliban circles. Harun Najafizada, director at
Afghanistan International Television, said: <The Taliban’s older
generation – represented by the group’s religious leader Hibatullah
Akhundzada and acting prime minister Hasan Akhund – is ideologically
opposed to sending girls to school. They can’t take it: they see it as
immoral and not in line with local culture.> He added that a source
close to the group’s leadership had allegedly heard Akhund saying he did
not want to see girls attending school in his native Kandahar province
for as long as he was alive – but seemed to not have extended that
statement to other provinces such as Kabul, Bamyan or Herat.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/mar/25/taliban-u-turn-over-afghan-girls-education-reveals-deep-leadership-divisions-afghanistan
Al Jazeera
23 Mar 2022
By Ruchi Kumar
<<Danish Siddiqui: Family of slain journalist takes Taliban to ICC
Lawyer for Danish Siddiqui’s family says there is sufficient evidence
the Indian journalist was tortured and murdered in Taliban attack.
The family of Danish Siddiqui, a Reuters photojournalist who was killed
in Afghanistan last year, has filed a complaint with the International
Criminal Court (ICC) against the Taliban, lawyer Avi Singh, representing
Siddiqui’s family, said <.… We have just filed before the International
Criminal Court a communication addressing the war crimes and crimes
against humanity in context to what happened to Danish Siddiqui,> Singh
said, adding that <there is sufficient independent evidence that he was
tortured, murdered and his body was mutilated>. Siddiqui, who won 2018
the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Rohingya refugee crisis, was
killed last July while reporting in Spin Boldak district of Kandahar
province in southern Afghanistan. Several reports and investigations,
including by this reporter, have corroborated disturbing details of the
illegal detention, torture and murder of Siddiqui and the mutilation of
his body. An Afghan commando, Sediq Karzai, was also killed alongside
the journalist. <The Taliban had refused to return his body to the
authorities. We had to make several appeals to their leaders, and
reasoned that he was Muslim and deserved a respectable burial,> Jan
Mohammad, a local civil activist involved with the investigations last
year, told Al Jazeera. Mohammad’s name has been changed to protect his
identity.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/23/family-of-slain-journalist-file-icc-complaint-against-taliban
23 Mar 2022
By Weronika Strzyżyńska and Akhtar Mohammad Makoii
<<‘Is it a crime to study?’: outcry as Taliban bar girls from secondary
schools.
The Taliban are facing international condemnation after they announced
on Wednesday that girls would not be allowed to attend secondary school,
despite their previous assurances.
<The denial of education violates the human rights of women and girls,>
said Michelle Bachelet, the UN human rights high commissioner. <Beyond
their equal right to education, it leaves them more exposed to violence,
poverty and exploitation.>
Samira Hamidi, an Amnesty International campaigner in Afghanistan, said:
<This is a worst nightmare come true for the women and girls of
Afghanistan, who have had their future and all they had hoped and worked
for ripped away from them over the last year.> Hamidi said the Taliban
had <betrayed> the country by <depriving a generation of women and girls
of their right to education>. Bachelet said the decision was <of grave
concern at a time when the country desperately needs to overcome
multiple intersecting crises. Disempowering half of Afghanistan’s
population is counterproductive and unjust>. The surprise announcement
came late on Tuesday night. Many teachers and pupils found out only on
Wednesday morning, the first day of the school year in Afghanistan, as
girls prepared to return to class after a six-month break caused by the
turmoil in the country. <Lots of excited girls were already waiting
outside the school. They were here hours before their classes started.
They were very happy and excited. Then we told them about the new
order,> a schoolteacher in Kabul said. <Many of them started arguing. I
had nothing to tell them. I left an hour ago. I cried.> By the end of
the school day, the teacher said, some of the girls were still standing
outside the building, unable to <to move their legs to go back home>.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/23/girls-in-afghanistan-school-taliban
Al Jazeera
23 Mar 2022
<<The Taliban closes Afghan girls’ schools hours after reopening
Backtracking by the Taliban means female students above the sixth grade
will not be able to attend school.
The Taliban administration in Afghanistan has announced that girls’ high
schools will be closed, hours after they reopened for the first time in
nearly seven months. The backtracking by the Taliban means female
students above the sixth grade will not be able to attend school. A
Ministry of Education notice said on Wednesday that schools for girls
would be closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law
and Afghan culture, according to Bakhtar News Agency, a government news
agency. <We inform all girls high schools and those schools that are
having female students above class six that they are off until the next
order,> said the notice.
<Yes, it’s true,> Taliban spokesman Inamullah Samangani told AFP when
asked to confirm reports that girls had been ordered home.
He would not immediately explain the reasoning, while education ministry
spokesman Aziz Ahmad Rayan said: <We are not allowed to comment on
this.> <It’s very disappointing that girls, who were waiting for this
day, made to return from school. It shows that Taliban are not reliable
and cannot fulfill their promises,> Shukria Barakzai, an Afghan
politician and journalist based in London, said.
<It means that secondary and high schools are banned for girls.
matterEven primary schools are not open across the country. Most of the
provinces do not have girls’ primary schools,> Barakzai told Al Jazeera
from London. <It shows that the Taliban is exactly the same as before –
they are against girls’ education.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/23/taliban-orders-girls-schools-shut-hours-after-reopening
And also the embedded articles (links to) on the matter:
-At Oslo talks, West presses Taliban on rights, girls education
-In Afghanistan, Taliban diktat sparks debate about women’s attire
Al Jazeera
22 Mar 2022
<<From: The Stream
How is life for Afghan women under Taliban rule?
Women’s rights have eroded in Afghanistan in the seven months since the
Taliban took power, despite promises by the leadership to uphold them.
The group has banned Afghan women from most paid employment, hindered
women’s free movement, shut down and abolished the Ministry of Women’s
Affairs, and silenced female journalists. Access to education has been
especially hampered, leaving millions of girls and women with few
opportunities to achieve their dreams and boost household incomes. Less
than one-third of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces have allowed girls’ schools
to reopen, and secondary classes, due to start this week, face strict
conditions. Taliban officials say new women students will not be allowed
out of the country without a male chaperone. Women are fighting back.
Since last August, a growing network of women have organised protests
demanding the right to work and go to school. In Herat province, a
speech by a young student demanding her education went viral, while
teacher unions pledged mass public protests outside government offices
if girls were barred. Officials relented and schools reopened, but girls
were not allowed to take their end-of-year exams.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2022/3/22/what-is-life-like-for-afghan-women-under-taliban-rule
NPR
21 Mar 2022
By Simran Sethi
<<Nowruz is banned in Afghanistan, but families continue to celebrate.
The Taliban may have banned the Nowruz holiday, but it cannot erase the
Persian new year from people's minds. <When I think of Nowruz, I can
only think of the food,> Shararah (a pseudonym to protect her identity)
says with a broad smile. The 23-year-old teacher is Zooming in from a
modest apartment in Kabul, Afghanistan, reflecting on the holiday that
marks the start of spring. Despite the late hour, Shararah is animated,
her face growing increasingly brighter as she describes the
once-bustling streets of Mandawi market in Kabul's old district,
colorful stalls that she and her sister would navigate one by one. A
place, she says, where <you could find everything from a needle to a
cow.> But in early March, the Taliban's Ministry of Vice and Virtue
confirmed that there will be no official Nowruz celebration this year.
This came about less than seven months after the Taliban reclaimed the
government as the U.S. military withdrew. The holiday — dating back
3,500 years and celebrated by more than 300 million people across the
Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus — has been designated as
<magus,> or pagan, and abolished, exactly as it was in 1996, when the
Taliban last ruled Afghanistan.>>
Read more here:
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/21/1087296594/nowruz-is-banned-in-afghanistan-but-families-continue-to-celebrate?t=1647890142667
And also:
Al Jazeera
21 Mar 2022
By Lynzy Billing
<<‘One day to enjoy’: Economy woes dampen Afghan Nowruz celebration. The
Taliban rule and the flagging economy have seemingly put a dampener on
celebrations this year.
Kabul, Afghanistan – Groups of women bustle through the female entrance
of Sakhi Shah-e Mardan Shrine in Karte Sakhi in western Kabul, where
many Afghans gather every year to celebrate Nowruz, which marks the
arrival of spring. They rush towards the mosque located inside the
shrine premises, posing for selfies and TikTok videos, wearing colourful
dresses donned with sequins. This is the first Nowruz since the Taliban
returned to power 20 years after they were toppled in a United
States-led invasion.
....
The popular festival was banned during the Taliban’s previous rule
between 1996 and 2001. On Sunday, the Taliban administration said there
would be no public holiday for the Persian New Year, though they said
they would not stop people from celebrating the festival if they wanted
to. Most businesses in Kabul have chosen not to open, the owners opting
to stay at home with their families for Nowruz. A few street vendors are
selling food along the roads, but they are outnumbered by the Taliban in
a heavy show of security despite the largely empty streets.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/21/afghanistan-prepares-for-first-nowruz-after-taliban-takeover
Opinion by Gino d'Artali:
'A show of security' or better said an armed and clear taliban sign to
stay off the streets. Little do they know that the tradition says that
who stays indoors people bring disaster upon themselves. Whatever they
do in this situation but the evil knife (read the taliban) cuts both
ways, whether one is inside or outside.
Al Jazeera
20 Mar 2022
<<Afghanistan world’s unhappiest country, even before Taliban
Afghanistan ranked last in the World Happiness Report among 149
countries surveyed, with Lebanon following.
Afghanistan is the unhappiest country in the world – even before the
Taliban swept to power last August. That is according to a so-called
World Happiness Report released before the United Nations-designated
International Day of Happiness on Sunday. The annual report ranked
Afghanistan as last among 149 countries surveyed, with a happiness rate
of just 2.5. Lebanon was the world’s second saddest country, with
Botswana, Rwanda and Zimbabwe rounding out the bottom five.
....
Researchers ranked the countries after analysing data over three years.
They looked at several categories, including gross domestic product
(GDP) per capita, social safety nets, life expectancy, freedom to make
life choices, generosity of the population, and perceptions of internal
and external corruption levels. Afghanistan stacked up poorly in all six
categories, as it did before the Taliban’s return to power. The country
was under the United States occupation for 20 years during which
Washington alone spent $145bn on development, according to reports by
the US special inspector general for Afghanistan.
Still, there were signs of increasing hopelessness.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/20/afghanistan-worlds-unhappiest-country-even-before-taliban
Al Jazeera
18 Mar 2022
<<Taliban release three Afghan journalists after media crackdown
TOLO TV staffers were arrested after the channel broadcast a report on
the Taliban’s ban on foreign drama series.
The Taliban have released three employees of Afghanistan’s largest
television station after detaining them for reporting that the country’s
new rules were cracking down on media freedoms. The report on TOLOnews
said that the Taliban had banned all broadcasts of foreign drama series,
a channel executive said. Three staffers from TOLOnews were taken from
the station in Kabul on Thursday evening and arrested, according to
Khpalwak Sapai, the channel’s head of news, who was one of the arrested.
Sapai later said that he and Nafay Khaleeq, the station’s legal adviser,
were released within hours, later on Thursday. Bahram Aman, a news
anchor, was kept in custody overnight and released on Friday evening,
the station said.
<After almost 24 hours I have been released from prison. I will always
be the voice of the people,> Aman wrote on his Facebook page. <Our job
is to deliver information to the people,> said Sapai in a statement
issued by the network after Aman’s release. <For this reason we always
suggest that any issue related to the media or TOLOnews be shared
through the Ministry of Information and Culture.>
....
“Ever increasing restrictions”
The United Nations and the Committee to Protect Journalists decried the
arrests and demanded the Taliban stop harassing Afghan journalists and
stifling free expression through threats, arrests, and intimidation.
<The Taliban must immediately … stop detaining and intimidating members
of the Afghanistan press corps,> a statement from CPJ said. The UN
mission in Afghanistan expressed <its deep concern about the detentions
of journalists and the ever increasing restrictions being placed on
media in Afghanistan.> The mission, known as UNAMA, said on Twitter:
<Time for the Taliban to stop gagging & banning. Time for a constructive
dialogue with the Afghan media community.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/18/taliban-release-three-afghan-tv-staffers-detained-over-media-ban
medica mundial
11 Mar 2022
<<Afghanistan: New wave of repression against women´s rights activists.
Press Release: Cologne, 06 March 2022. Around the world, women’s rights
activists are being obstructed in their work, threatened and persecuted.
On International Women’s Day, medica mondiale is drawing attention to
the particularly difficult situation of Afghan women’s rights activists.
While the focus of the international community is on Ukraine, medica
mondiale is observing a new wave of repression from the Taliban against
activists and former local employees of international organisations.
<The Taliban are exploiting the current media situation in order to step
up their efforts against people who had been working towards a free
society and human rights in the past. Houses are being searched. People
are being threatened and imprisoned. Violence is being used to force
families of activists to disclose information on the current location of
their relatives,> says Monika Hauser, board member at medica mondiale.
She insists: <Afghanistan needs to remain a priority for German foreign
policy. The German government has to live up to its responsibility and
work at all levels to ensure protection for women's rights activists and
other vulnerable people in Afghanistan.> Commitment to women's rights in
Afghanistan can be life-threatening
Since the change of regime in August 2021, women have been disappearing
from public life. Political participation and access to education is
being refused to them. <Activists who stand up against repression and
fight for self-determination of women and girls are receiving threats to
their lives,> says Soraya Sobhrang, Director of the Afghan partner
organisation of medica mondiale. <Women who protest and exercise
resistance are in mortal danger. They are being threatened, persecuted
and imprisoned. At present there is no safe possibility for women to
publicly assert their rights. Women's rights activists in the last 20
years have courageously and tenaciously established support structures
for women affected by violence. Now there are no longer any points of
contact for these women to turn to. Even self-organised groups for
people affected by violence cannot meet any more without fear of
persecution,> says Sobhrang, whose organisation had previously operated
this type of counselling point for women in Afghanistan.>>
Read more here:
https://www.medicamondiale.org/en/nc/latest/afghanistan-new-wave-of-repression-against-women-s-rights-activists.html
Note by Gino d'Artali: Still, many Afghanistan's women keep fighting
against the taliban.
Read more here:
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220209-my-heart-and-body-shake-afghan-women-defy-taliban
medico mundial
<<
....
3 facts on women’s rights in Afghanistan:
3. Rape seen as adultery
Sexualised violence is frequently treated the same as consensual
adultery, which is illegal under Afghan law. This leads to women being
judged and sentenced as perpetrators (of adultery) when they were raped.
Activists in the larger cities have succeeded in reducing this legal
scandal significantly. However, there is still risk of intra-family
violence and even of so-called ‘honour killings’ in the wake of a rape
or (suspicions of) an adulterous relationship. In general, violence
committed against women within forced or child marriages is not being
recorded sufficiently.
4. Safe houses very rare
Currently there are only 27 women’s safe houses operating in the whole
of the country, and these are not secured for the future. Demand from
women and girls for this type of protection far exceeds their capacity.
The Council of Europe calls for one place in a safe house per 7500
residents. This would equate to 5120 places in Afghanistan. As a
comparison: Germany also does not fulfil the CoE demands, but at least
it does have 350 safe houses.
5. Increasing political participation by women
The participation of women in politics and the government and judiciary
has increased significantly since 2001. Quotas ensure representation in
the national and district parliaments, where the proportions of female
delegates are now 25 and 27 per cent respectively. According to figures
from the State Prosecutor, the proportion of women employed in the
judiciary system has increased from 3 to 20 per cent. Across the
country, 21 per cent of all defence counsel are women, and 265 judges
are female, out of a total of 1951. However, during the peace
negotiations with the Taliban, female participation was significantly
less: very few women took part in the talks, a fact which attracted
protest from women’s groups.>>
Read all here:
https://www.medicamondiale.org/en/where-we-work/afghanistan.html
The Guardian
8 Mar 2022
by Lorenzo Tondo
Rights and freedom is supported by
Humanity United
<<Rights and freedom
Ukraine
From Taliban bullets to Russian bombs: war chases Afghan refugee across
Europe. Masouma Tajik thought she had found safety and a new life – but
six months later Putin’s invasion has forced her to flee again. week
ago, Masouma Tajik found herself running for her life for the second
time in six months. Evacuated from Kabul after the Taliban takeover of
Afghanistan, she was now fleeing another country in another continent,
this time to escape Russian bombs and bullets. A software engineer and
data analyst, 23-year-old Tajik says the shock and trauma of finding
herself in another war zone has shaken her sense of reality. <Sometimes,
when I close my eyes, everything seems surreal,> she says, from the
Polish capital Warsaw where she has finally found a place of relative
safety. <When I was on my way to the Polish border from Lviv, I saw
scenes which took me back to my evacuation in Kabul. Every time I saw
these scenes, I felt deja vu. I had the feeling I had lived through this
before. I couldn’t believe that. I left my family and friends in
Afghanistan a few months before, and I was now leaving my friends in
Ukraine.>
War and conflict have followed her since birth. She was born a refugee
in Tehran, after her family, who are Hazara, an ethnic minority
persecuted in Afghanistan, were forced to leave their home. After the
family returned, and despite all the obstacles stacked against her
because of her gender and ethnicity, she managed to win a scholarship to
the American University of Afghanistan and became one of the top
students in her class. Last August, Tajik was studying and living in
Kabul when the Taliban arrived at the gates of the city on 14 August.
Within 24 hours, thousands of Afghans who once felt protected by the
Afghan National Army and the US military found themselves living under
Taliban law. As a Hazara and a professional woman, Tajik was a target.
<My boss called me to tell me that I had to leave the city and that he
had found a way to get us out,> she says. Along with thousands of other
desperate Afghans she managed to make it to Kabul airport where a
chaotic evacuation effort was under way. <When we entered the airport,
the situation was getting worse. The case was dire, with the Taliban
beating people on the run. I was whipped by a group of Taliban. I was
terrified.>
After days of waiting, on 21 August, Tajik, carrying only a backpack
containing a laptop and Elif Shafak’s book The Forty Rules of Love,
managed to find a seat on a plane bound for Kyiv. Alone in a strange
city with a different language and living as a refugee, she began to try
to rebuild her life. <After a few months, I found myself jobless because
the company I worked for was closing down,> she says. <But I didn’t give
up and got another remote job as a data analyst for a Serbian company.>
Six months later, as Tajik was starting to make friends, her life
imploded without warning, once more. On 24 February, Vladimir Putin
ordered his troops to invade Ukraine and head for Kyiv, which was hit by
the first airstrikes soon after. For Tajik, it was time to escape
again.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/mar/08/from-taliban-bullets-to-russian-bombs-war-chases-afghan-refugee-across-europe
The Guardian
5 Feb 2022
By Selay Gaffar
<<Afghanistan is on the brink of famine. How can Biden just forget about
us? In my home country of Afghanistan, winter is harsh and children are
hungry. Almost every parent faces the torture of not having enough food
to feed their families. Across the country, 5 million children are on
the brink of famine. Many young people are in despair; suicide is on the
rise. The rapid escalation of war in Ukraine is set to make this crisis
even worse. We fear now that soaring prices of wheat – reaching their
highest level since 2008 as a result of the invasion – could multiply
the impact of a famine in Afghanistan. The United Nations has seen the
scale of our misery, launching its largest-ever appeal for funds for a
country: $4.4bn. But rather than heed this appeal, Joe Biden has decided
to claim our money at the moment of our greatest need. Last year I was
forced into exile for my political activism and advocacy of women’s
rights as the Taliban took control of the country. Looking on from afar,
I could not believe how quickly our country faded from the news, how
quickly our suffering ceased to concern even the critics of <endless
war> in Afghanistan. After 20 years of US occupation, my country has
been left in ruins. The US and its allies did nothing to develop
Afghanistan. We were made into a dependency, relying on flows of
humanitarian aid rather than building our own economic capacities. The
evidence? Our current economic collapse and the humanitarian catastrophe
that has followed from it. Biden may have withdrawn the US military, but
he has refused responsibility for America’s intervention in our country.
Instead, he has added great insult to profound injury by stealing our
scarce financial resources. His actions will make the bread queues
longer and the number of children dying of painful hunger greater. This
crime against humanity should never be forgotten.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/05/famine-afghanistan-joe-biden-reparations
The Guardian picture essay 4 Mar 2022
Note by Gino d'Artali: I'll only quote small parts of the article marked
by ...
>>Afghanistan six months on from the Taliban takeover – photo essay
The photojournalist Stefanie Glinski reports on a country traumatised
and tired, with an uncertain future as unemployment and poverty spread
and memories of freedoms fade.
by Stefanie Glinski in Kabul, Afghanistan
Some of those who decided to stay, or who did not have an option to
leave, say they will have to give the Taliban a chance, even though the
group has not been recognised internationally. There isn’t a large
enough opposition anyway, and Taliban fighters have been stationed even
in the most remote valleys of Panjshir, where the last battles of
resistance played out. <We will keep fighting if we have to, we’re not
tired,> said Ziaul Rahman, a 21-year-old Talib stationed in
Afghanistan’s Logar province. Resistance fighters, whether in Panjshir
or in the Uzbek-dominated Jowzjan province, say the same.
...<As we feared, the situation is worsening in most respects – a
reflection of the Taliban’s determination to crush dissent and
criticism,> said Patricia Gossman, an associate Asia director for Human
Rights Watch. <Revenge killings, crushing women’s rights, strangling the
media – the Taliban seem determined to tighten their grip on society,
even as the situation grows increasingly unstable in the coming months.>
...Yet at a closer look the city is emptier, though the number of
beggars has increased significantly. Once buzzing coffee shops are
vacant; several restaurants have permanently closed. Outside the Iranian
embassy, long queues of people wait for visa appointments; they say they
are hopeless. At a Kabul maternity clinic, a newborn boy lies abandoned.
<His family doesn’t have the money to take care of another child,> said
Latifa Wardak, one of the hospital’s doctors. ...Naila, 10, from Wardak,
has been having nightmares for months, even now that the war has
stopped. The Kabul-based International Psychological Organisation (IPSO)
has said Afghanistan is a <trauma state>, estimating that 70% of Afghans
are in need of psychological support. ...<Everyone in this village has
either lost a family member or has an injury. Everyone is traumatised
and tired. We didn’t want the Russians, nor the Americans, nor the
Taliban. We just want peace. Today I can at least tell my children that
the war is over.> >>
Read the complete article and view the photo essay here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/afghanistan-six-months-on-from-the-taliban-takeover-photo-essay
Al Jazeera
2 Mar 2022
<<LONG READ
Features/Women
The Afghan revolutionary who took on the Soviets and patriarchy
In 1977, Meena began a resistance movement to fight for women’s rights
and defy imperial occupation in Afghanistan
By Alizeh Kohari
Only one clip of Meena speaking — flickering, faded, just a few minutes
long — survives today, and it sounds like a prophecy. It is 1981. She is
24, in a pale blue turtleneck and a dark blue dotted pinafore, her wavy
hair cropped short. Meena had just delivered a speech in Valence, where
she was invited by the new French Socialist government to represent the
Afghan resistance movement at a party congress. Her speech so angered
the Soviet delegation — the USSR had invaded Afghanistan two years
earlier, and she spoke forcefully against the occupation — that they
stalked out, glowering, as she raised a victory sign in the air. In the
clip, a snippet from an interview with a Belgian news channel, she
predicts — calmly, sombrely, pen in hand — the victory of anti-Soviet
forces. But she also warns of its cost: that the anti-democratic,
misogynistic factions of the mujahideen being valorised by the West in
their fight against the Soviets would, in turn, devour Afghanistan.
Amid the clumsy binaries of war, Meena was treading a tricky path.
Fixated on the inferior status of women.
Meena was born in 1956, in the final decades of Mohammed Zahir Shah’s
reign. The modernist king had nudged along a number of firsts for women:
female voices on Afghan radio, voluntary abolition of the chadar, and
ratification of the constitution by a Loya Jirga — a grand legal
assembly — that included women. She attended one of Kabul’s best schools
— the Lycee Malalai, named after a beloved folk heroine who rallied
flailing Afghan forces to victory against the British in 1880 — but in
her middle-class home, she saw her father periodically beat her two
mothers. Uncommonly alert to injustice — her relatives’ casual
mistreatment of Hazara servants, of the educational disparities between
her architect father and her unlettered mother — teenage Meena became
increasingly fixated on the inferior status of women.
How men saw women and how women saw themselves — as individuals with
their own hopes and dreams, rather than in perpetual service to the
family, the tribe, and the nation — would not be transformed by state
mandates alone. These roles would have to be renegotiated, Meena knew,
by Afghan women themselves, from within the most fundamental unit of
society, the family. It is 1976. Three years earlier, the old king had
been overthrown by his cousin, and the 225-year-old monarchy was
replaced with an autocratic one-party state. Kabul University, where
Meena is now studying law, is a microcosm of the forces buffeting
Afghanistan: Marxists and Maoists, monarchists and Islamic revivalists.
Meena, 20, is married to a doctor 11 years older, the only man her
family could find who fit her criteria: no bride price, no second wife,
no objection to school or work. He is the leader of a Maoist group.
Meena also leans left, but she is not interested in being relegated to
the women’s wing of a political outfit. She seeks an organisation that
centres the liberation of Afghan women. There is none, so she starts one
herself. It is called the Revolutionary Association of the Women of
Afghanistan (RAWA).
A fist in the mouth of patriarchy
In the beginning, there were five. A year later, 11. They were not even
all known to each other and rarely met all together. Once, when they did
meet, they sat in a room partitioned by curtains so they could hear the
rest but could not see more than three others. Years before the Taliban
first took over Afghanistan, at a time when women had the right to
education, were such extraordinary measures necessary?
RAWA was not plotting the downfall of the state. At first, it was
organising adult literacy classes, a preliminary step — in Meena’s
vision — towards helping women from strict patriarchal families develop
a sense of self. But in a stubbornly gendered society, where the only
women with any real power tended to be mothers-in-law, the organisers
knew their work would be perceived as a threat: it would, in Dari, be
mushti dar dahan — a fist in the mouth — of patriarchy. In 1978, on the
heels of a violent coup, a new Soviet-backed government began rolling
out reforms across Afghanistan. Land was redistributed, the tricolour
flag turned a solid communist red, bride prices reduced, and marriage
before the age of 18 outlawed. Afghan society bristled at these changes
— particularly, scholars have since noted, the changes concerning women.
RAWA baulked, too: if the fight for their rights became associated with
imperial power, it was Afghan women who would bear the brunt of the
backlash. And so, it expanded its mandate, becoming, in Meena’s words,
<an organisation of women struggling for the liberation of Afghanistan
and of women>. One could not be achieved without the other. Anti-Soviet
resistance mounted across Afghanistan, first percolating in the
countryside, then spreading to the cities. The crackdown by the
Soviet-backed government also intensified. Political prisoners in Afghan
jails — tribal leaders, clergy, public intellectuals, students — tripled
within six months. Executions were a daily occurrence. Many others
vanished into thin air. Meena began visiting the families of the jailed
and the disappeared, asking after them. This is how many women joined
RAWA. They were struck by the fact that Meena cared. Bereft of male
protection — but also male authority — for the first time, they heeded
her call to channel their rage and despair into a disciplined
resistance.>>
Read more here: (Opinion by Gino d'Artali: It's more than worthwhile
doing so because the Revolutionaly Women active today will find
inspired:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/1/the-afghan-revolutionary-who-took-on-the-soviets-and-patriarchy
FRANCE 24
9 Feb 2022
<<'My heart and body shake': Afghan women defy Taliban.
Kabul (AFP) – One after the other, quickly, carefully, keeping their
heads down, a group of Afghan women step into a small Kabul apartment
block -- risking their lives as a nascent resistance against the
Taliban. They come together to plan their next stand against the
hardline Islamist regime, which took back power in Afghanistan in August
and stripped them of their dreams. At first, there were no more than 15
activists in this group, mostly women in their 20s who already knew each
other. Now there is a network of dozens of women –- once students,
teachers or NGO workers, as well as housewives -— that have worked in
secret to organise protests over the past six months. <I asked myself
why not join them instead of staying at home, depressed, thinking of all
that we lost,> a 20-year-old protester, who asked not to be named, tells
AFP. They know such a challenge to the new authorities may cost them
everything: four of their comrades have already been seized. But those
that remain are determined to battle on. When the Taliban first ruled
Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, they became notorious for human
rights abuses, with women mostly confined to their homes. Now back in
government and despite promising softer rule, they are cracking down on
women's freedoms once again. There is enforced segregation in most
workplaces, leading many employers to fire female staff and women are
barred from key public sector jobs.
Many girls' secondary schools have closed, and university curriculums
are being revised to reflect their hardline interpretation of Islam.
Haunted by memories of the last Taliban regime, some Afghan women are
too frightened to venture out or are pressured by their families to
remain at home.
....
'Fear can’t control me'
AFP journalists attended two of the group's gatherings in January.
Despite the risk of being arrested and taken by the Taliban, or shunned
by their families and society more than 40 women came to one event. At
another meeting, a few women were fervently preparing for their next
protest. One activist designed a banner demanding justice, a cellphone
in one hand and her pen in the other.
<These are our only weapons,? Shala says.
A 24-year-old, who asked not to be named, helped brainstorm ideas for
attracting the world's attention. <It's dangerous but we have no other
way. We have to accept that our path is fraught with challenges,> she
insists. >>
Read more here:
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220209-my-heart-and-body-shake-afghan-women-defy-taliban
medica mundial
3 Feb 2022
Soraya Sobhrang, Afghan women’s rights activist: <A network of women for
women – that is our aim for the future.>
Soraya Sobhrang is an Afghan gynaecologist, a women’s rights activist
and the Director of our partner organisation in Afghanistan. medica
mondiale and Medica Afghanistan have been working together for 20 years,
since the overthrow of the radical fundamentalist Taliban regime in
2001. After the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Soraya
fled with her family. Eventually she was able to reach Germany safely.
Here she tells us about the successes of the Afghan women’s rights
movement, her view on the Taliban, and her hopes and plans for the
future.
....
How did you experience the Taliban taking power in August 2021?
When Herat fell we knew the Taliban would also come to Kabul. The days
before they reached the city were full of fear and chaos. We closed our
office in Kabul and began to undertake the first evacuation measures.
Then, when the Taliban finally entered Kabul, panic and despair took
over. People were running around in the streets with no plan but a lot
of fear. They seemed to be trying to flee without knowing where to go.
As activists it was crucial for us to take care of each other during
this period. We also needed to run from the Taliban, to abandon our
homes and the life we were leading. We hurried from one safe hiding
place to the next. Secure channels of communication were used to
exchange a lot of messages, encourage each other and provide any support
we could. In this difficult time, many international activists were
encouraging and supporting us, including our colleagues at medica
mondiale. Every day I spoke with Monika and Sybille (the Chairs of
medica mondiale, Ed.) and medica mondiale provided support for all staff
members trying to leave the country. This was a great help to us. >>
Read all here:
https://www.medicamondiale.org/en/press/press-releases/details/news/detail/News/soraya-sobhrang-afghan-womens-rights-activist.html
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