WOMEN TUNNELING OUT of Afghanistan to escape the Taliban hasn’t happened yet, but Afghan women’s plight was predicted by the Washington Post‘s Dana Priest back in 2009.
“… (Dana Priest) is increasingly of the view that we’re going to probably have to come to terms with the Taliban and just find a way to tunnel out women, because it will be an awful reality for them, otherwise this will be a never ending war …” – Steve Clemons (2009)
Steve Clemons, talking with Rachel Maddow on the subject back in 2009, quoted Priest, which caught my eye. The predictions of Priest, as well as Clemons, are coming to pass.
From the UK Guardian over the Memorial Day weekend:
A brain drain of bright young women is already taking place in Afghanistan before the 2014 handover that many fear will mean a reversal of advances in women’s rights.
The lack of commitment by the Afghan government to equality and to tackling the high rates of ill-treatment of women in the home and in the workplace is raising real fears they will be at the bottom of the political agenda in the push for power after Nato forces leave the country.
Worsening security for civilians – casualties among ordinary Afghans have risen year on year for the last five years with 3,021 killed in 2011, and women are thought to be suffering disproportionately – has led to rising numbers of women and girls leaving education and the workforce and staying indoors, according to Guhramaana Kakar, a gender adviser to President Hamid Karzai.
What have we gained as a country if we’ve given blood and treasure to a country whose women have to find shelter underground?
It makes no sense to give funds through 2024 if women are fleeing Afghanistan life.
Beginning with Bush, who allowed Afghanistan to go by the wayside because of the Iraq war, then through the reinvigorated efforts by Pres. Obama, this latest negative news regarding women means nothing was been gained that can be sustained, because a country without a place for its women will always be unstable.
Afghanistan will be a living hell for all it’s people. It will collapse just as South Vietnam collapsed; another American military success story.
Make up your mind Taylor. You complain that President Obama isn’t withdrawing the NATO forces fast enough, now you complain that if we draw precicipitously Afghani women are at risk of Taliban tyranny even worse than the Karzai regime. Can’t have it both ways. Your story is made of of quotes by Washington Post bloggers and professional anti-war activists like Rachel Maddow and writers for the Guardian in London who also have demanded immediate withdrawel of all NATO forces and now complain that a precipitous withdrawal is even worse for Afghani women.
RAJensen, It’s an oops-aw-shucks moment. It also the horns of a dilemma. We can’t stay because Afghanistan is loosing proposition. We can’t leave because the end game is going to be a horror show- especially for the Afghan women.
You have to have a heart of stone wrapped in razor wire not to feel for the women who will have to live in the misogynist hell that will be Afghanistan.
It is even harder when you realize it was our piss poor choice of leadership that got the women of Afghanistan in this place. It was the gross incompetence of George W. Bush and his chasing the Will O’ The Wisp of Iraq that allowed the Taliban to come back from the dead.
It was also a deeply misguided US foreign policy that used the uncertain tools of Pakistan and OBL to fight a shadow war with the Soviet Union in a place of no great concern to US national interest. Once the Soviet Union shuffled off its mortal coil, the US abandoned the Sideshow and left Afghanistan to its own devices. It was only when OBL and his unhappy campers showed up in Kabul that the US started to care about Afghanistan again. OBL launched his little exploit, and Afghanistan paid the price for OBL’s obsessions.
Deep inside, thoughtful people know the long, dark Salafi night that Afghan women are about to endure is a product made in the USA; and they weep.
Very well said,
!
Are we reading the same thing? Or, are your Obama Love-potion glasses once again getting in your way?
Taylor never said what you said she did, that is “…….., now you complain that if we draw precicipitously Afghani women are at risk of Taliban tyranny even worse than the Karzai regime. Can’t have it both ways. ”
She isn’t having it both ways. She never said we shouldn’t withdraw whether abruptly or not. What I read and what she wrote was that we made a mess of it and in the end didn’t protect the women and girls from the onslaught of the brutal woman-hating Taliban. And that we have gained nothing particularly in the way we promised to protest Afghan women by the way we conducted that war starting with Bush who abandoned Afghanistan for Iraq and by the time Obama’s turn came, it was almost impossible to turn things around and in Taylor’s own words “a country without a place for it’s women will always be unstable” Not one word or words about not withdrawing whether abruptly or not.
Will you ever lose your love-potion glasses? Sheesh.
No, not all. While a majority will indeed suffer, I’m not reading that any of the men have to leave public life for fear of having acid thrown in their faces or the places where they go to school or work burned to the ground. There is not an equivalency here. Never was one. That generalization does harm to all Afghan women as all Afghan women are potential targets and directly to those Afghan women and girls who have been violently abused (to say the least) just for being a human female and doing what most human beings do: going to school or work.
Thank you, newdealdem1.
I’m honored to have intelligent translators around here, because some people just can’t comprehend simple English.
More likely the latter, I’m afraid. A plain english reading of what Taylor wrote makes it clear that she is saying being there is not making enough of a difference to be worth the cost. Argue with that propositiion if you want to, but that’s the proposition before us.
For my part, I agree with her. We don’t have anywhere near the resources there to take over the country and run it, which is the only way that we can ever influence the situation by being there. Slowly destroying a country is no way to win hearts and minds, and that appears to be all we’re really accomplishing at this point.
Exactly correct.
RAJensen is busy digging up the latest polls showing Obama way ahead among women . That will show us….um, something.
Deep inside, thoughtful people know the long, dark Salafi night that Afghan women are about to endure is a product made in the USA; and they weep.
No, it’s a product of the backward ass religion of the Taliban. That’s what it was like befoe the US got there, and that’s what it will return to after we leave. Blame the population of the country, not the US. It’s just a litlle foreshadowing of the toilets that Egyp and Libya will become – can’t blame Bush for those, but I’m sure you’ll try all the while neglecting the fact that it is the citizens of the country that have allowed this to happen.
ALL fundamentalist religions are “backward ass.”
Strongly second this!
Do you forget what happened when Brzezinski was NSA during the Carter Administration http://tinyurl.com/79kpnoa (scroll down the page) and then during the Reagan Administration http://tinyurl.com/33g3vjr and their playing footie tootsie with the Taliban mostly because of their wanting to cripple Russia?
The world looks to the US as a beacon of freedom and enlightenment (shaky nowadays if the American version of the Taliban – many in the GOP – have their backwards way) and we’re supposed to set the example for the world. It’s been over 30 years since we’ve not only encouraged to power the Taliban but armed them as well. We’re partially responsible for their ascendency and so we share some of the moral responsibility for their actions and their criminal treatment of Afghan women.
The reason I supported the war in Afghanistan by Bush and then Obama was not only for what happened on 9/11 but because of the Afghan women’s abuse at the will of the Taliban. And, it bears repeating as Taylor said here “a country without a place for it’s women will always be unstable” and I’d add to that will forever be a failure both politically and economically. Short of air lifting all of the women out of that wretched place, I now don’t see how the American government can help solve this crisis militarily. I don’t even think using our ‘soft power’ will work and even if it did have a chance, it would take a generation or more to help. In the meantime, what happens to all the Afghan women and girls? I have no answers. I only hope someone can find a working solution to this madness.
The Taliban would not have existed but for the long shadow war fought by OBL, the CIA, and the Pakistani ISS against the USSR. We provided the parts, we provided the funding, we provided the tactics, we fed the beast.
The Taliban grew out of the long post-war chaos we created. It’s our monster, created out of our neglect.
I don’t blame Bush for the foul-ups that proceeded his Administration. Carter, Regan and Bush the Elder played their part too. I do blame Bush the Younger for the epic screw up of Tora-Bora and the neglect Afghanistan had to endure for three years and change. I do blame Bush the Younger for screwing the pooch but good. I was of the opinion all the way back in 2008 that W had gotten so badly under the power curve that there was no way Obama would be able to correct the course of the conflict. Sadly, I was correct.
As for Libya and Egypt, they too suffer from the effects of a long and misguided US policy set long before Obama took office. Maybe Egypt recovers, maybe not. If political Islam conquers all, it is because no other system was allowed breathing room in Egypt from Nasser onwards. Liberal reform was allowed to be crushed for the greater good of Cold War strategy.
As we found out in the Philippines and other nations, when you dance with the dictator, you are really not going to like the next partner who replaces him. We danced far too long with Mubarak, therefore we now dance with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Libya is another matter, I’m with Taylor on this one; not the brightest move by BHO. Libya was not a matter of US National Interest, but it is now. How we piece together that puzzle is a mystery. I still don’t get why we were so gung-ho to intervene in Libya but now are so stand-offish in Syria. I guess some humanitarian disasters are more pressing than others; especially when oil is involved.
But back to “The Graveyard Of Empires” Afghanistan is in the dire straights it is now because of US policy. If we did not intervene in the late 1970′s, the present would have been different. If we had not abandoned Afghanistan when the Soviet Union collapsed, the present would have been different. If George W Bush had stayed focused on the mission in Afghanistan, and not gone traipsing off to Iraq for no good reason, the present would be different. And if Obama had the guts to admit that Afghanistan was a lost cause in 2009, the present would be different.
We gave the “backward ass” Islamist fundamentalist wings. We made them the force they are today. They are our Frankenstein monster; our great shame.