Trump’s Peace With the Taliban – What About the Women?
Afghan women are watching with trepidation as the US draws closer to a deal with the Taliban, distressed at the thought of losing any of the hard-earned progress they have made in the deeply patriarchal country since the Taliban was toppled in 2001.
During State of the Union Address, President Trump stated negotiations for peace with the Taliban were underway to facilitate a pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It is something he said he would never do a year ago.
Phyllis Chesler, author of American Bride in Kabul, recently said: “I do fear for the Afghan people — particularly women and young girls — if and when America leaves, especially those who have shown so much courage in standing up for themselves against incredible odds.”
From the 1920s when Queen Soraya (wife of King Amanullah) pushed for changes to improve women’s lives and their position in the family, to the early 1970s, Afghan women were able to exercise some rights. As the wife of the king, Soraya fought to prohibit the wearing of the veil and the observance of polygamy. Women and girls were encouraged to get an education, and not just those in the capital city of Kabul, but also in the countryside.
Notwithstanding the violent protests by the country’s religious sects which forced the king to abdicate the throne in 1929 and go into exile, women maintained a certain amount of freedom, at least some by Western standards. Yet even as late as the 1960s in many secluded areas of Afghanistan, polygamy, child marriage and honor killing were practiced, and women were forced to wear the burqa.
When the Soviet Union invaded the country in 1979 in response to U.S. covert operations in the region [which had been well in place for six months to overthrow the Communist People’s Republic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)], women still enjoyed certain rights. Coed education was introduced in elementary schools by the PDPA and women were able to teach.
This began to change when the U.S. government backed the drug-trafficking Mujahideen—the forerunners of the Taliban—to oust the PDPA. (There is actual video footage showing then-U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski directly inciting the Mujahadeen rebels in Pakistan.)
As U.S. drug adviser to President Carter, David Musto, said, because “we [went] into Afghanistan to support the opium growers,” moderate Sufi leaders in the countryside were replaced by radical ones. This was due to massive financial support from agents of the Pakistani Inter-Services, funds that came from both the United States and Saudi Arabia, which were allocated toward jihadist ends.
According to Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway of The Washington Post, “The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation. The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.”
Nevertheless, because of the Afghan Women’s Council, Afghan women were able to maintain some rights, which were altogether eradicated once the Taliban took over the reins of government in 1996. Women seeking an education were forced to attend underground schools, where they and their teachers risked execution if caught.
Women were denied medical treatment for illnesses if a male chaperone did not accompany them. They were also publicly beaten if their burqas slipped or if an ankle or a strand of hair showed. They were stoned to death for “adultery” when raped. Women were even forbidden to laugh loudly as it was considered improper for a stranger to hear a woman’s voice.
Trump’s reasons for wanting the U.S. to leave Afghanistan are understandable. Over 2,400 American soldiers have been killed and approximately 20,320 wounded, not to mention the trillions of dollars spent in an 18-year campaign with no end in sight. Yet, while America did not initiate this socio-political chaos, it provoked it in its support of radical Islamists.
When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, as Chesler points out, it was not to defend the helpless women but to kill Osama bin Laden. In fact, America remained silent when Afghan President Hamad Karzai, in an effort to appease the Shi’ite minority, approved Article 132 of the Civil Code, which specified that a woman is legally required to yield to her husband’s sexual requests.
Afghanistan today remains divided, corrupt, volatile and a haven for terrorists. Yet, forging a peace treaty with the Taliban is just as bad as brokering one with ISIS or Boko Haram. If the U.S. does, in fact, reach an agreement with the Taliban and pull out of the country, what assurances will be made for the rights of the women and girls?
N.B. Originally published by the Clarion Project on February 25, 2019.
Mario Alexis Portella is author of Islam: Religion of Peace? – The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up
Book is available on Amazon:
Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/islam-mario-alexis-portella/1129630361?ean=9781973635550
WestBow Press:
https://www.westbowpress.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001168034
The above facts are known to all the political decision makers of the world. But i find it strange that none has got the courage to tell a spade a spade and raise voice for either banning and confiscating such a book containing such contents or expunging objectionable parts and confiscating any copy containing the same.
It further amuses me that all reiterate that terror has no religion. But the perpetrators of terror openly claim to have committed their acts in accordance with the guidance of their religion. Then why the world should not believe them?
One thing is for sure, that is even when attempting to engage on “peace talks” with Taliban it would be best not to be naive about them and take at face value anything that they might say or promise. To just “give trust away” to those Islamic characters who compose the Taliban would be foolishness and folly. For when trying to have genuine negotiations with the them ,it need to be kept in mind that there is an Islamic doctrine called TAQIYYA This is the Muslim dogma the lying and deception are good things to do, if and as long as the lies and deceit are done for the advancement of Islam.
For the deceptive and disingenuous Taliban have proven many times over, by their own actions, that they are a ruthless, brutal vicious gang of thugs with no honor. So in any kind of “dialogue” the Taliban will most likely speak the truth only when it happened to suite them. The rest of the time they will be speaking half-truths and also be outright lying. Likewise, the Taliban will keep their word in anything that they may happen to promise only and long as in fits into their agenda and no longer. So before engaging of the foolishness of attempting to have genuine “talks for a peace alliance” with Taliban, the officials of the current government would do well to heed the wisdom of Sun Tzu found in THE ART OF WAR. For it instructs “We cannot enter into an alliance neighboring’s princes, until we are acquainted with their designs.” To put this in a more updated and current way, it may be said that “We cannot enter into a peace alliance with the Taliban until we know the actual intentions and real schemes.”
When engaging in “peace talks” with Taliban it would be very naive to take at face value anything that the Taliban might promise. For example, the Taliban might say that they will respect the rights of women and girls, for they ,many times, employ the Islamic doctrine of Taqiyya In those so called “negotiations” with officials of the West .Taaqyia ids the Islamic teaching that lying and deceit
So it may be nothing but foolishness and folly to even try to have worthwhile constructive peace discussions with lying brutal cruel men who make up the Taliban . For having a genuine practical peace compromise with Taliban might be impossible
Aa the former US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had well-spoken when he said “There has never been – there never can be – successful compromise between good and evil.”.
Not to get to much off the main subject of this article , about “peace talks” withe Taliban and that the Taliban are full of misogyny ,,its still,nevertheless very important to report with this ten minutes of the keyboarding of this essay on Facebook I posted a picture of a first responder medic concerning the Manchester Bombing in England with appropriate essay attached to it .
Facebook then immediately rejected and refused to post my message because Facebook claims that my essay is a Is a “Violation of the Community Standards ”
This following essay is the posting the Facebook found a “violation of Community Standards.”
Here is what FACEBOOK found so “terrible” I FAEC must not like the truth
“That jihad homicide/homicide attacks, in Manchester England, does lead to the subject that there are Muslim mind control places where Muslim males are thoroughly indoctrinated into the strong but blind and unquestioning faith in Koran with all non-watered down; hard core Islam with its militant jihad. Those places, “schools,” are called madrasas. In those Islamic mind programming centers young Muslim male are ingrain in the mindset Koranic dogma of the use of violence and killing for the advancement of Islam. As the Koran instructs. As in, for example, in 2:191. 9:5, 123. 47:4. Many of those who of such center are so much damaged that they are literally dangerous to self and others. As seen many times in jihad suicide, homicide bombing/attacks. For the Koran instructs in 9:111. “The believers fight in Allah’s Cause, they slay and are slain, they kill and are killed.” Furthermore, those mind programming places also ingrain the outlandish absurd Koranic doctrine of a sex-filled paradise with many virgins, houris, in it for the Muslim male who dies fighting for the cause of Islam in the jihad. Such a strange doctrine of a houris filled- place in found in the Koran in 44:54. 55:56. 78:31. Moreover, such Islamic mind programming centers are further explained about by the scholar Don Richardson in his book SECRETS OF THE KORAN which on pages 69,70. Informs the reader that ‘the world needs to be warned. At least forty million Muslim youth in the Muslim worlds’ religious schools, called madrasa, are avidly memorizing the entire Koran … These schools become breeding grounds for potential terrorists. When male students, isolated from family and friends in madrasa, reach puberty and their hormones are active, there are no girls to date. Instead, Muslim clerics easily shift to focusing the male student’s attention on Koranic verse that promises sex in heaven with dark-eyed houris. Students can only fantasize about martyrdom followed by the sexual release Muhammad promised. This is an unspeakably cruel brainwashing technique , and the Koran is its perfect guidebook.’ “