As soon as it came to power, the Taliban assured the world that it had mellowed considerably since it last ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. Now, we were assured, the Taliban would uphold the rights of women. Girls would be allowed to go to school, even to university; women would be allowed to work outside the house. But that is not how things are turning out.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, Taliban leaders have contradicted those public promises on rights by ordering women to stay at home. No more working outside the house, as was promised only a few weeks ago. Some brave women have held rallies in Kabul to protest this state of affairs – to no avail. The Taliban also promised it would allow girls to attend school up to, and including, university. But all over the country the Taliban has been preventing girls over 12 from going to school; apparently the group has decided that, after all, education for girls should not go beyond elementary school. That will make these girls fit for little else than motherhood and housework, which is just what the Taliban wants. The girls and women of Afghanistan have tasted twenty exhilarating years of semi-freedom. Now the doors to the dungeon have been closed again with a vindictive thud.
“In contradiction to assurances that the Taliban would uphold women’s rights, over the past three weeks, women have instead been progressively excluded from the public sphere,” she told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The Taliban had repeatedly said that today’s Taliban is very different from the one that existed in 2001, before the Americans arrived. Women, they claimed, will be treated better than they were before. They would, the group promised, be allowed to go to school, even to university. But so far all the signs indicate – see Michelle Bachelet’s report just above — that the group doesn’t mean it, and never did.
Why should the donors who have just pledged more than $1 billion to Afghanistan condition that aid on the Taliban keeping its original promise to allow girls to continue attending school, just as they have done for the past twenty years, up to, and including, university? No appeals to the rights of women will have any effect; money, and its withholding, is the only way to make the Taliban keep its promises. And in the same vein, why not link donors’ aid to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to the rights of Afghan women to work outside the house?
#4. The Taliban’s Promise Not To Seek Revenge On Its Opponents
Bachelet has pointed to other broken pledges by the Taliban on granting amnesty to former civil servants and security officers linked to the previous government, and prohibiting house-to-house searches.
The UN has received multiple allegations of searches for those who worked with US companies and security forces while some UN staff have reported increasing attacks and threats, she added.
Credible allegations of reprisal killings of some former Afghan military members have also been received, she said.
And one can see, on-line, videos of Afghan soldiers being decapitated by Taliban troops, who then proceed to ghoulishly parade around holding aloft the severed heads of those they promised the world, just a few weeks ago, would not be harmed.
Bachelet called for a mechanism to monitor rights in Afghanistan. “ I reiterate my appeal to this Council to take bold and vigorous action, commensurate with the gravity of this crisis,” she said.
It’s only been two weeks (I am writing this on Sept. 14) since the final withdrawal of American soldiers from Afghanistan, and a few weeks since the Taliban made its pledges about not preventing girls from studying, or women from working, and solemnly insisting that it would not harm civil servants and soldiers of the previous government. And already all of these pledges have been repeatedly broken. It’s time for the aid donors to withhold their aid to Afghanistan until the Taliban begin to keep those promises, to stop their house-to-house searches for “enemies” to execute, to allow girls to go to school and women to go to work. Appeals to decency won’t work. The threat to withhold aid money, on the other hand, about which the Taliban care very deeply, will concentrate their minds wonderfully. Let’s give it a try, and see what happens.
mortimer says
The Taliban considers that promises made to dirty KUFAAR are invalid and needn’t be honored. They consider collaborators with the kufaar to also be kufaar, so they may be executed.
Revenge murder is NORMATIVE Islam rather than an aberration.
-K.11.173 “Believers, retaliation is decreed for you in bloodshed.”
-K.2.178 “O you who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you in the matter of the slain.”
-K.5:33 “The reprisal against those who wage war on Allah and His Messenger, and go about the earth corrupting it, is that they should be killed or crucified, or have their alternate hands and feet cut off, or be banished from the land.” Waging war against Allah is rejecting Him.”–Tafsir of Imam al-Bukhari
-Imam AbdulLatif ibn AbdurRahman rahimullah said, “It is not possible for someone to realize Tawheed and act upon it, and yet not be hostile against the mushrikeen. So anyone who isn’t hostile against the mushrikeen, then it can’t be said that he acts upon Tawheed, nor that he realizes it.” [ad-Durar as-Saniyyah 8/167]
-(The recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified or their hands and their feet be cut off on the opposite sides, or be exiled from the land.) `Wage war’ mentioned here means: oppose and contradict, and it includes (opposing) disbelief.”–Tafsir Ibn Kathir “Surat al-Ma’idah [Q 5]”
gravenimage says
All grimly true, Mortimer.
Grace says
Why would anyone believe them. Their Book is their way of life, Nothing is going to change their dedication to it.
Diane Harvey says
“In contradiction to assurances that the Taliban would uphold women’s rights, over the past three weeks, women have instead been progressively excluded from the public sphere,” Bachelet said.
In her fevered brain Bachelet actually thought she and her ilk could overturn the Qur’an and 1400 years?
PRCS says
Maybe?
Probably?
No doubt!
gravenimage says
Michelle Bachelet has railed against civilized nations to daring to deport Jihadists. She is a naive fool at best.
mortimer says
This crisis was made inevitable by the uninformed fools making decisions behind the doddering, senile puppet president.
Frank Anderson says
Sincerely respected H.F., If you have not read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, or it has been a long time, please consider my humble suggestion to read it. Either we are watching open treason and collaboration or total “delusion of reprieve.” Islam cannot reform or change. Pretending that it can simply confuses the ignorant and trains them to keep quiet until it is their turn to board the train cars for the death camps.
Depending on who is estimating and the areas they consider, islam has murdered between 250 and 1000 million human beings and enslaved billions/milliard more in 1400 years. They don’t care “one tinker’s damn” what non-believers wish or believe. They want to conquer and enslave the entire world, while killing all who dare to resist.
gravenimage says
Very minor point, Frank–it is “tinker’s dam”–a fragile and very temporary safeguard (it refers to old time tinkers using a small smear of mud to prevent solder from spilling onto other parts of the vessel, and then is washed away, usually with the swipe of a finger)
–pedantic gravenimage
Wellington says
You are never pedantic, gravenimage.
Frank Anderson says
GI, ALWAYS appreciated.
gravenimage says
Thank you, Frank and Wellington. A minor point, as I note.
BTeboe says
They didn’t break any promises, because under Islam lying to infidels is required. Unless someone can figure out a way to delete the brainwashing Islamists get from the day they’re born until the day they die and denigrate Muhammed, women will always be second class citizens. You cannot drag 7th Cen barbarians into the 21st. The best solution in my opinion, is to keep them isolated in their own areas, because the goal of Islam is to spread Islam. Stop doing business with them, stop pretending you are going to change them, stop allowing them as refugees, cut them off financially from the rest of the world. The Taliban are begging for money now so they can feed people. Don’t give it to them. They wanted to control the govt, well let them have control.
Richard Watson says
The Americans certainly should not have been there for 20 years. But since they were they should have completely wiped out all the Taliban and their followers. They should have leaned very heavily on the Pakistanis and destroyed their nuclear abilities. Finally they should have built a very large military base in northern India. Any breath of Taliban movement should have resulted in carpet bombing of the area for many days.
Cruel? Yes. Expensive? Very. But it is the only way we will stop this insane idealogy. No American government would ever do it. So the march of Islamic fundementalism will continue and our societies will gradually become more Islamic in small ways: our education, our comedy, our clothing and our very speech.
BTW it will be interesting to see how the Chinese deal with the Taliban.
PRCS says
Don’t know how they will deal with them–yet–but they’ll view them as they do the Uighurs.
gravenimage says
Richard, many seem to have the idea that the Taliban and those like them are just a handful of “extemeists”. But the fact is that 99% of Afghans want to live under Shari’ah law.
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
The Taliban are all about spreading their sausage fest ideology.
Anna Yelena says
These filthy degenerates are following what men have written back 1,400 years ago and selling those words to the illiterates as being from the All Mighty. They’re dictators who have written, added whatever they want to satisfy their filthy selves. They use women and little girls as sex slaves, they’re perverted to the core. And look who they’ve followed for 1,400 years. A thief, killer, liar and pedophile. These people are the scourge of the Earth and Satan is rejoicing. The world should stay away from them and definitely no money going to them as the money will never be used for the people. In God we Trust.
Walter Sieruk says
By their Islamic nature the Taliban with their empty of worthless promises of no value , at all , will blatantly lying Taliban will only keep their disingenuous word regarding the basic human rights of girls and women only a long as it suites them until they obtain complete and total power in Afghanistan.
This also applies to other lying “promises” the make or vow. This deception scheme is part of the Islamic way of Taqiyya ,which permits dishonest words of lies and deceit for the advancement of Islam.
Joe Biden is either an actual fool and brainless idiot to feel the he can trust the Taliban or he’s just a wicked and destructive and they are so he goes along with them.
In either cause Joe Biden is a very dangerous man and a disaster for the people of Afghanistan and furthermore he will ,and already has, terribly harmed America and will continue to do so.
tim gallagher says
Yes, as if the knuckle dragging members of the Taliban were ever going to deviate from the totally misogynistic and primitive Islamic attitude towards women and girls. Unfortunately, it is never going to happen with any of these brain dead, hardline Muslim scum. Some people, such as the people who did somehow believe that the primitive vermin from the Taliban were going to change their policies, are unbelievably gullible. So it’s back to the 7th century for everybody in Afghanistan when it comes to attitudes towards women and attitudes towards almost every other human interaction..
Walter Sieruk says
The Taliban range from insidiously disingenuous to blatantly lying, only a very naive person or total fool would trust them.
Frank Anderson says
W.S., I have a real, sincere problem believing any promise made to a non-believer. 1400 years of teaching the practice of lying whenever advantage can be obtained is general with all standard islam. The tahhh leeee bahhhhnnn do not nave a corner on that market. (sarc intended).
gravenimage says
+1
somehistory says
Reading this makes me think of the story of the “pale green pants, ” in “What Was I Scared of?”
At one point, the little “dog-like creature” says, “I said and said and said those words; I said them, but I lied them.”
If…and I don’t recall reading that they actually said girls could go to school and women work…they said those things, they “lied them.” They indicated that everything they were going to do would be according to what they were taught as devout mozlums.
And, no one should have believed that they would allow anything not written in the book of evil filth by which they live and force on everyone over whom they have any power.
gravenimage says
The Taliban’s Broken Promises On the Treatment of Women
…………..
Anyone who believed in “Taliban 2.0” was sadly an utter fool.
Spiro says
Ah the U N nothing more than a debating
Society of willfully ignorant fools