"As long as I am alive, girls will not find their way to the door of the center of corruption, which is school". These are the words of Taliban Premier— Hasan Akhund who thus, clarified once and for all, his government's position on education for girls and young women who have not been in school for more than four hundred days now, and whose living space is shrinking every day.
Assuming the schools would reopen, in fact, there would be many who will not be able to attend them as women and girls have been ordered for months now, not to go out of the house for more than a certain number of meters without a male chaperon.
As a result, those who do not have fathers, brothers, husbands or uncles available to accompany them to school or elsewhere, are effectively confined inside the house.
Taliban’s Anti-Women Directive
On the other hand, they would not know where to go. A few days ago, in fact, women and girls were also banned from public parks and amusement parks in the capital. According to the Taliban, apparently, it was not enough as was ordered a few months ago to institute women-only during days inside gardens and amusement parks: women must stay at home for good.
They are free at best, as is increasingly the case, to sit for hours in front of small stores selling bread hoping someone will pay for a couple of naans to feed their children.
If you are widowed and alone, in fact, you cannot work or even feed your children. If you protest, you end up in jail or worse. You end up married by necessity to any Taliban member because women—as per the god of Afghanistan's rulers' orders, must have a man to 'protect' them: beating them black and blue and raping them if necessary.
In the past two weeks, four female journalists and six female activists have been arrested and remain unaccounted for. And the situation is bound to get worse. In fact, it is not just women and girls but an entire population which is hostage to the group of criminals in power.
Sharia Law’s Hardline Policies
The supreme leader of the terrorist group that rules Kabul—the invisible Haibatullah Akhundzada has, in fact, ordered Afghan judges to implement Sharia in all its splendor and in full. That means: severed hands for thieves, flogging or stoning for adulteresses, and other such niceties.
The law is, in fact, inspired by the very civilised and very modern principle of an eye for an eye. It won't be long (it is already happening in rural areas) before we see again women being stoned to death and homosexuals crushed by trucks in Kabul stadium.
After all, the Taliban have never made any secret of their intentions. What is stunning is not the foretold catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan but the hypocrisy and bad faith of the West.
Not long ago, at a high-level conference, a very high-profile NATO member claimed that: "We have taken away those who were working with us and we are doing a good job in forcing the Taliban to keep the agreements made." What agreements?
The slaughter of the population? The erasure of any semblance of human and civil rights? The franchising of terrorist training camps given to Pakistani jihadi groups? The high public offices given to members of Al-Qaeda?
A blanket of guilty silence has descended on Kabul, broken only by the call to reopen schools. But this is not just about women and girls, but an entire country at the mercy of terrorists upon whom hangs a bounty from many countries and the UN itself.
Threatened Human Rights, Corruption Plague Kabul
And while we are talking about schools and girls, under the above blanket, quietly, the Americans are facilitating the transaction between the Afghan Central Bank and a Polish and a French company to print and deliver new bank notes to the Taliban government.
Not only that. Three and a half million dollars, part of the funds frozen to the terrorist government in Kabul, were transferred to Switzerland into a fund of which Shah Mehrabi— a member of the board of directors of the Afghan central bank, is a part who swears and perjures that the new bills will not be used to finance illicit activities or to fund the government, but will only replace the old ones.
And the Taliban, we al know, "are honorable men”. The Americans do not comment, NATO pretends to believe that everything is going well and that the only problem is lack of access to education for girls.
This is until the next terrorist attack, planned in Pakistan, blessed by China and executed in Afghanistan. History, we know, has an annoying tendency to repeat itself and does not have the short memory of Western governments. We have seen this movie before, and the end is known.
(Francesca Marino is a journalist and a South Asia expert who has written ‘Apocalypse Pakistan’ with B Natale. Her latest book is ‘Balochistan — Bruised, Battered and Bloodied’. She tweets @francescam63. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for his reported views.)
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