A sad end game in Afghanistan is starting to take shape

A poor woman begging for food at a bakery in Kabul in 2019

Some comments from American officials suggest that the Taliban will not be able to return to power and America will continue to support the existing government with humanitarian and diplomatic support. The Afghan government is saying the same thing.

Such words of reassurance aren't remotely close to credible.

The New York Times writes:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Farzana Ahmadi watched as a neighbor in her village in northern Afghanistan was flogged by Taliban fighters last month. The crime: Her face was uncovered.

“Every woman should cover their eyes,” Ms. Ahmadi recalled one Taliban member saying. People silently watched as the beating dragged on.

Fear — even more potent than in years past — is gripping Afghans now that U.S. and NATO forces will depart the country in the coming months. They will leave behind a publicly triumphant Taliban, who many expect will seize more territory and reinstitute many of the same oppressive rules they enforced under their regime in the 1990s.

The New York Times spoke to many Afghan women — members of civil society, politicians, journalists and others — about what comes next in their country, and they all said the same thing: Whatever happens will not bode well for them.

Whether the Taliban take back power by force or through a political agreement with the Afghan government, their influence will almost inevitably grow. In a country in which an end to nearly 40 years of conflict is nowhere in sight, many Afghans talk of an approaching civil war.

“All the time, women are the victims of men’s wars,” said Raihana Azad, a member of Afghanistan’s Parliament. “But they will be the victims of their peace, too.”

Over two decades, the United States spent more than $780 million to promote women’s rights in Afghanistan. The result is a generation who came of age in a period of hope for women’s equality.

Though progress has been uneven, girls and women now make up about 40 percent of students.

“I remember when Americans came and they said that they will not leave us alone, and that Afghanistan will be free of oppression, and will be free of war and women’s rights will be protected,” said Shahida Husain, an activist in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar Province, where the Taliban first rose and now control large stretches of territory. “Now it looks like it was just slogans.”  

In Taliban-controlled areas, women’s education is extremely restricted, if not nonexistent. In some areas in the country’s east and west, the Taliban have opened schools to girls who can attend until they reach puberty, and in the north, tribal elders have negotiated to reopen some schools for girls, though subjects like social science are replaced with Islamic studies. Education centers are routinely the targets of attacks, and more than 1,000 schools have closed in recent years.

“It was my dream to work in a government office,” said Ms. Ahmadi, 27, who graduated from Kunduz University two years ago before moving to a Taliban-controlled village with her husband. “But I will take my dream to the grave.”  

Still, the Taliban’s harshly restrictive religious governing structure virtually ensures that the oppression of women is baked into whatever iteration of governance they bring.

The NYT points out that while the US was there, education, culture shifts, employment and health care accessibility have benefited some but not others. Especially in rural areas, where some of the war was the most brutal with civilians dead and livelihoods devastated. Rural women’s opinions are unclear but that is where about three-quarters of Afghanistan’s 34 million people live. Those people are generally unreachable because of geographical, technological and cultural constraints.

There could be an Afghan rural-urban divide that makes the toxic American variant look mild and benign. After 20 years, we still don't know what we need to know.

Questions: Was America's attempt to free Afghanistan of oppression and protect women's rights a mistake.? Will it lead to more harm than good once we are gone because the false hopes of girls and women will be crushed by Taliban force? What, if anything, can America do to at least partly atone for what we have wrought? Or, is there nothing for America to atone for, e.g., because our intentions were good but misguided or failed? 

What have we done? Why do our political leaders keep lying to us?

A police lieutenant saying farewell to her mother in 2019

For her Godless insolence, she will be a target in 2021, if she isn't already