Afghan regime’s return to public stoning and flogging is because there is ‘no one to hold them accountable’ for abuses, say activists
The Taliban’s announcement that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death has been enabled by the international community’s silence, human rights groups have said.
Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Women’s Window of Hope, said the announcement had condemned Afghan women to return to the darkest days of Taliban rule in the 1990s.
“With this announcement by the Taliban leader, a new chapter of private punishments has begun and Afghan women are experiencing the depths of loneliness,” Arefi said.
“Now, no one is standing beside them to save them from Taliban punishments. The international community has chosen to remain silent in the face of these violations of women’s rights.”
The die was cast long before that when the US decided to fund the mujahideen to fight the Soviets. That destroyed the possibility of a secular Afghani state. The US later found that the easiest way to pacify the country was to simply bribe Taliban aligned warlords. Once the money spigot was turned off, a Taliban resurgence was inevitable. Every administration from Reagan to Biden shares some blame in what is happening today.
Don't blame the president: WE decided to go in and kill a ton of Taliban, WE decided to spend actual trillions standing up and equipping an army that did not give enough of a fuck about anything but grifting. The ANA did not even try to slow down the Taliban when the US stopped acting as a backstop. Afghanistan never really thought of itself as a cohesive nation, we were never going to change their psyche.
I'd rather blame Bush and Obama for sinking trillions into helping their friends get rich at the cost of everyone pretending we were building a real country.