Sellers at the Kandahar women's market in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Photo: ANSA/File photo.
By Edu Montesanti – Mar 14, 2024
Much likely, the bitterest date lived by Afghan women in history. A fact considered by most of them across the Central-Asian country, invaded by the US in 2001: a 20-year occupation that promised to “liberate” the women. Last March 8, there was nothing to celebrate in Afghanistan.
The Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 as the US and NATO withdrew from the country, an occupation concluded on August 30 of that year. Since then, the armed group has banned women from taking part in public life with heavy repression, even preventing women’s and girls’ access to education as part of harsh measures imposed despite initial promises of a moderate government. The Taliban is violently barring girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade.
Adding to a terror scenario for Afghan women, misery drives the country into a too-serious humanitarian crisis, comparable to Yemen’s catastrophe right now. Ranking at the bottom among 137 countries in the global happiness index, Afghanistan faces the challenge of low life expectancy, various persistent issues that predate the pandemic of coronavirus, and over 54% of the population living below the poverty line.
In October 2001, the Bush administration with over 40 countries decided to invade the Central Asian country in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, promising to liberate the Afghan women precisely from the ruthless rule of the Taliban, which had been in power since 1996. Now, the Taliban is reintroducing an autocratic Islamic Emirate similar to the system of governance that defined their first spell in power, from 1996 to 2001. During the US-led occupation, the Taliban used to attack, too, throughout Afghanistan – including women and girls with extreme violence.
Neither ‘Jus ad Bellum’ nor ‘Jus in Bello’
Afghan voices, since the very first days of the US invasion, started accusing the occupation as a way of defending US political and economic interests in the region, not the safety of the Afghan people nor the world’s safety.
The Afghan State had never attacked the US, so the invasion of Afghanistan was a war of aggression, a so-called “preemptive war” that violated international law and the US Constitution itself.
Moreover, Taliban leaders then offered to help find Osama bin Laden, hidden in the mountains of Afghanistan after being accused by the US of being responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and deliver him to be judged in a court. So, justifying the US occupation of Afghanistan was legally unjustifiable.
Actually, the US “War on Terror” did not fight terror as it did restrict civil liberties in the US, and broke international relations for nearly 400 years, when it comes to power balance and multilateral relations.
US “preemptive war” that killed many more innocents than 9/11, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, meant a grotesque setback to international relations which will take a long time to be fixed (if everything goes well from now among great powers starting by the US itself, which is far from being a reality).
Not only the US right to engage in the war (jus ad bellum) but also its conduct in it (jus in bello), was seriously denounced by most of the Afghans from the start to the end of ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ (2001–14), and ‘Operation Freedom’s Sentinel’ (2015 -2021) in which 100,000 civilians and over 60,000 security forces have been killed. All that was never questioned by the world mainstream media, as US war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan just got worse, year by year in Afghanistan at the time.
Afghanistan Redux: Malala Yousafzai, White Feminism and Saving Afghan Women
The “liberated women” of Afghanistan
On June 15, 2004, then-president George W. Bush declared that the women of Afghanistan were finally liberated, thanks to the US intervention. Something strongly rejected internally. Today, the bitter truth is that Afghan women live under a terror scenario, even worse compared to the years of the US invasion.
Finish Professor of International Relations Timo Kivimäki, Director of Research at the University of Bath (UK), told this report that the Taliban, as a whole, wishes moderation in power today. Quoting sources inside the Taliban, he said that internal, strong rejection to the US after 20 years of occupation, is the obstacle to achieving that.
“My sources in the Taliban administration tell me that the majority of the Taliban, and especially some of those Taliban persons that the US sees as most repulsive, such as Mr. Sirajuddin Haqqani, Afghanistan’s interior minister, favor allowing women and girls to educate themselves the same way as boys and men,” said the specialist, a Ph.d. in International Relations.
“The US long occupation and especially the freezing of Afghan state’s foreign reserves in US banks have made it very difficult for anyone in the new Afghan Taliban government to suggest or support anything that the US wishes,” Kivimäki added.
Speaking exclusively to this report, concluded the worldwide renowned analyst who has been a consultant to the Finnish, Danish, Dutch, Russian, Malaysian, Indonesian, and Swedish governments, as well as to several UN and EU organizations on conflict and terrorism:
Due to the hard feelings towards the West, especially the US, it is difficult for these modern Taliban to get their voice heard. It is difficult to support something that the thief of 9 billion dollars of Afghan people’s funds wants the Taliban to do.
Who Remembers?
Today, the least serious consideration opposing the US “humanitarian warmongering” in Afghanistan is that it was tragically unsuccessful in “fighting terror.” Neither Afghanistan nor the world has become safer after the US occupation, on the contrary -, and the Taliban is back, free to act.
As predicted, Afghanistan and particularly the Afghan women who allegedly motivated the US-led coalition to the invasion of the Central-Asian country, are now totally forgotten by the world media, and great powers after the US withdrawal. As much as the US crimes have been forgotten – both facts, expected by some of us since the very first days of US “Just War” in Afghanistan. Who remembers…?
EM/OT
Edu Montesanti
Edu Montesanti is a Brazilian-Italian journalist, writer, teacher, and translator. Edu is the author of Lies and Crimes of the "War on Terror" (Brazil, 2012; Mentiras e Crimes da "Guerra ao Terror," original title in Portuguese), highlighted in the 2012 Sao Paulo International Book Fair. He writes for Brazil's Instituto Humanitas Unisinos, Pravda (Portuguese), and Orinoco Tribune. Used to write for Pravda Report (English), the Brazilian magazine Caros Amigos (both printed issues and the website), Brazil TV's website Observatorio da Imprensa, Spain's Diario Liberdade, the Canadian website Global Research (English, Portuguese, and Spanish), Bangladesh's The Weekly Blitz, London's Atlas Institute for International Affairs, for Telesur English, and US's Truth Out and Pressenza. He used to translate for Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo's website (Argentina), the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan's website, and Malalaï Joya's website (Afghanistan). Edu Montesanti has been teaching at Brazilian public schools. You can follow his work at edumontesanti.wordpress.com.
