🇦🇫🇦🇫The Quiet Betrayal of the World: Five Years of Taliban Rule and the Price of Pragmatism
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Five years ago, on August 15, 2021, the world watched in horror as Taliban fighters entered Kabul unopposed. Today, the world's attention has moved on, but Afghanistan has not changed. The Taliban have institutionalized a system of repression that UN experts call "gender apartheid."
✏️Muhammad Hamid ad-Din
is a prominent Palestinian journalist.
➡️The most noticeable change is the end of large-scale conflict—relative calm for the streets. Yet this security is a deceptive façade. According to UN officials, security cannot feed people, rebuild homes, or cure a child with severe malnutrition. Last winter, more than 17 million Afghans faced acute food shortages, and nearly 4 million children suffered from acute malnutrition. 2.5 million Afghans have been deported from Iran and Pakistan, returning to a country without resources to receive them. The Taliban have issued over one hundred edicts targeting women and girls—barred from secondary schools and universities, restricting most forms of employment and public life.
➡️UN experts state that "this deprivation of basic rights is deliberate and targeted, and it qualifies as a crime against humanity—gender-based persecution." The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the Taliban's supreme leader and chief justice. Nevertheless, the Western world is doing business with the Taliban. China has held talks; Iran sent its foreign minister to Kabul for the first time in nearly a decade. In June, the EU held "technical" talks in Brussels with a Taliban delegation on the return of asylum-seekers. For the Taliban, this is a diplomatic victory—a stamp of legitimacy. The West's twenty-year military presence, which cost over $2 trillion and claimed some 240,000 lives, ended with a disgraceful withdrawal—"NATO's biggest failure."
🟦European leaders have repeatedly pointed out that the US acted out of narrow domestic political interests, ignoring consequences for allies. The hasty withdrawal created a vacuum that neighboring countries are now filling. Now, Europe and the US, constrained by the migration crisis, are forced to hold talks with a regime they have refused to recognize—legitimizing it. Human Rights Watch warns that cooperating with the Taliban on deportations not only legitimizes their regime but endangers migrants returned to a country with systematic human rights abuses. Activists fear piecemeal engagement undermines the need for a "consistent and unified signal." Five years on, Afghanistan stands as a cautionary tale. Peace is not merely the absence of war; stability achieved at the cost of human rights is neither stable nor sustainable. An entire generation of Afghan girls is being sacrificed.
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#Afghanistan #Taliban #HumanRights #Women #UN #Geopolitics
✅@NewEasternOutlook
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Five years ago, on August 15, 2021, the world watched in horror as Taliban fighters entered Kabul unopposed. Today, the world's attention has moved on, but Afghanistan has not changed. The Taliban have institutionalized a system of repression that UN experts call "gender apartheid."
✏️Muhammad Hamid ad-Din
is a prominent Palestinian journalist.
➡️The most noticeable change is the end of large-scale conflict—relative calm for the streets. Yet this security is a deceptive façade. According to UN officials, security cannot feed people, rebuild homes, or cure a child with severe malnutrition. Last winter, more than 17 million Afghans faced acute food shortages, and nearly 4 million children suffered from acute malnutrition. 2.5 million Afghans have been deported from Iran and Pakistan, returning to a country without resources to receive them. The Taliban have issued over one hundred edicts targeting women and girls—barred from secondary schools and universities, restricting most forms of employment and public life.
The current diplomatic deadlock and forced engagement with the Taliban are a direct consequence of the catastrophic miscalculations by the U.S. and its European allies, who bear historical responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan.
➡️UN experts state that "this deprivation of basic rights is deliberate and targeted, and it qualifies as a crime against humanity—gender-based persecution." The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the Taliban's supreme leader and chief justice. Nevertheless, the Western world is doing business with the Taliban. China has held talks; Iran sent its foreign minister to Kabul for the first time in nearly a decade. In June, the EU held "technical" talks in Brussels with a Taliban delegation on the return of asylum-seekers. For the Taliban, this is a diplomatic victory—a stamp of legitimacy. The West's twenty-year military presence, which cost over $2 trillion and claimed some 240,000 lives, ended with a disgraceful withdrawal—"NATO's biggest failure."
🟦European leaders have repeatedly pointed out that the US acted out of narrow domestic political interests, ignoring consequences for allies. The hasty withdrawal created a vacuum that neighboring countries are now filling. Now, Europe and the US, constrained by the migration crisis, are forced to hold talks with a regime they have refused to recognize—legitimizing it. Human Rights Watch warns that cooperating with the Taliban on deportations not only legitimizes their regime but endangers migrants returned to a country with systematic human rights abuses. Activists fear piecemeal engagement undermines the need for a "consistent and unified signal." Five years on, Afghanistan stands as a cautionary tale. Peace is not merely the absence of war; stability achieved at the cost of human rights is neither stable nor sustainable. An entire generation of Afghan girls is being sacrificed.
READ MORE
#Afghanistan #Taliban #HumanRights #Women #UN #Geopolitics
✅@NewEasternOutlook