So imagine then that one day, a bunch of armed thugs told you that you are no longer allowed to read, attend school, get a job, watch your favourite Asian drama… That from now on you are nothing more than an animal of burden, the property of another. This, my dear friends, is the predicament that the girls and women of Afghanistan currently face. Can you imagine the shock? The fear? My heart breaks thinking about it.
And just because the Western world has failed miserably, it still does not change the fact that women make up half of the world’s population. They must all be protected and given rights not as women, but as human beings.
There were too many things done wrong, it is a man- or men-made tragedy, if you like to name it that way. I can’t even talk about this matter at the moment. This is something that is hard to cope with, but unfortunately it was predictable.
I can tell your heart breaks, every word rings true, and through to me, I believe, also to whoever reads them, I pray to God this will be upended in Jesus Name! Jesus! I actually met a self identified African at work, just this past week! Who said to me, men are first! Women should be home cleaning the home. Considering all the celebrated contributions women have made in the world, including the home, and every area of life!! His declaration should have him sentenced to the life he claims for women, and hopefully produce in him a change of heart.
It is great that you linked both topics, in whatever ways we can, may these women be free!!
This country is and has been always complicated, due to many groups, languages and their own ideals. Many rules now sharia likely are men’s rules… it is to us Westerners not comprehensible how this type of culture are still oppressing women of equality, women are servants.
If they haven’t reached any better living conditions “by now”, how will they now… I read the book The Breadwinner… when my kids had this as an assignment in perhaps 5th grade… and I watched Kite Runner… I believe this can and does happen…
I really don’t know what and how can be helped these poor women and children, to the West stop providing weapons. Do not support their ideals if they don’t want a better living quality for all. And take only women and children as refugees… they are the least protected.
Thank you for your kind words and prayers. I really appreciate it.
Umm… I’m not even sure what that person was talking about. He certainly had a mother, maybe a sister too, and surely he would wish more for them.
It is just when the US troops went to Afghanistan about 20 years ago, I was 30. I was watching the news since then, and it is just so sad. I think one of our old chancellors Helmut Schmidt once said that even in old history, Alexander the Great has only passed by Afghanistan to continue his campaign of conquest, because he knew that there were, and today it is the same problem there are too many ethnic groups. This state was instable and now is even more. The problem with the ethnic groups doesn’t end at the border, my next fear is Pakistan and if you might remember they do have nuclear weapons. That’s why I want to stop my train of thought here …
Another thing is that I know of a German-Afghan project that might never come true now. Roger Willemsen was an author/journalist from Germany, he did once an interview with someone from the Taliban and was many times in Afghanistan because he was known that he loves education and therefor they started a project for schools for girls only and for girls and boys with poor financial background. He started a project in Kabul in a poor quarter they were building a school for boys and girls. It was finally built in summer 2020, we all know that because of Corona - there was no school they have registered around 650 kids now, but they were never able to teach them in that building. To think that now it might never happen at all, is just so …
That is why this topic is disheartening and hard to talk about.
Unfortunatly, or maybe now luckily Roger Willemsen doesn’t get to see what is happening now, he died of cancer a few years ago.
Now the project was taken over by many of his friends and popular and well know German singer Herbert Grönemeyer uses his name now to keep this project alive, but will it happen, will it still be possible?
Roger Willemsen once said:
The kids talk about alphabetization, as if it was a career. Their hunger for knowledge is burning. The concept of their lives is full of responsibility for the development of Afghanistan.
Und wieder läuft so viel schief
Und ist so schrecklich und grausam, das Worte so überflüssig zu sein scheinen…
Da sehe ich diese Bilder, wo Menschen sich aus lauter Verzweiflung ans Flugzeug hängen und sie später zu Boden stürzen…
Diese Hilflosigkeit
Und ich wünsche euch Kraft euch Helden, mit denen nie einer rechnet, ihr aber immer da seid… So wahnsinnig viel Kraft wünsche ich euch
And so much goes wrong again
And is so terrible and cruel that words seem so superfluous …
There I see these pictures where people hang on the plane out of sheer desperation and later fall to the ground …
This helplessness
And I wish you strength, heroes, with whom no one expects, but you are always there … I wish you so much strength
Biden points to deal negotiated by Trump to explain Afghanistan exit
Amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Biden said Monday that his decision to pull American forces from the country stemmed from a deal that former President Donald Trump’s administration had negotiated with the Taliban.
“When I came into office I inherited a deal that President Trump had negotiated with the Taliban,” Biden said at the White House, adding, “The choice I had to make as your president was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season.
“There was only the cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops into combat in Afghanistan, lurching into the third decade of conflict,” Biden said.
The Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan was signed in Doha, Qatar, by the Taliban and the United States on Feb. 29, 2020. In exchange for a ceasefire with American and allied forces and the severing of ties with terrorist groups, the U.S. pledged to facilitate the release of thousands of Taliban prisoners and withdraw its forces by May 1, 2021. The Afghan government was not involved in the negotiations.
Trump, who campaigned on bringing the war to an end in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, had frequently touted the agreement.
“I’ll say this for the Taliban,” Trump said in March 2020 after the deal was signed. “They’re great fighters. You know that obviously. They’re great fighters. All you have to do is ask the Soviet Union. Are they great fighters? They are great fighters. But they’re tired also. This is 19 years, 19 years.”
Trump also took credit for the war’s end at a rally last month. “I started the process, all the troops are coming home,” he said. “Biden couldn’t stop the process.”
If it helped, but I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t achieve anything, and I would be just another casualty. My country has already sent hundreds of young people to support this senseless war. 29 of them have returned in a casket, never to see their families again. For a small country such as mine, it was a national tragedy. But we all believed that the United States could fix anything. It can’t, of course. Western civilisation, in general, is too complacent, too unwilling to understand that thugs like the Taliban don’t spend their time playing video games and binging Asian dramas. They’re not built like us.
Since 9/11 more service members have died not in combat, but from depression and PTS. Westerners can’t stomach seeing their buddies being gunned down by religious fanatics. The Taliban, however, feed on conflict. It makes them stronger.
No, we need to take a different approach. Violence isn’t it. They’re experts at it.
This war was never about the “human or female rights” of the local population and the country and its people were just tools by different opponents like figures in a chess game.
It was visible for free for me. At first I posted NY Times but that was paid only so I chose USA Today instead. I don’t know why it is not visible for you.
Considering all the celebrated contributions women have made in the world, including the home, and every area of life!! 
that you linked both topics, in whatever ways we can, may these women be free!!
