Heather Barr: For Afghan Women, the Frightening Return of ‘Vice and Virtue’

There is no better symbol for the disappearance of women’s rights in Afghanistan than the end of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the return of the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. When the Taliban on September 7 announced their new interim government, the vice and virtue ministry featured on the list, with a cleric as its newly appointed minister. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs had disappeared, and there were no women in the new cabinet.

The situation has a feeling of impending doom as a largely unchanged Taliban comes into direct conflict with a generation of young women who grew up hearing about the abuses that the Taliban inflicted on their mothers and older sisters and seizing the opportunities those older women were denied. On a chat group of people who have worked many years in Afghanistan, a journalist friend wrote, “Does anyone else fear these protests are going to end in a massacre?” This possibility seems all too real…

https://www.juancole.com/2021/09/afghan-frightening-return.html

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The Bush administration made a catastrophic mistake in Afghanistan in 2001 / Afghanistan: The End of the Occupation

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The last Jews in Afghanistan argued so much the Taliban kicked them out of prison and stole their Torah

Chris Hedges: The Collective Suicide Machine

Book review: AFGHANISTAN: ‘A SHOCKING INDICTMENT’

The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

Vanessa Thorpe: MI 6, the coup in Iran that changed the Middle East, and the cover-up

Victor Jara murder: ex-military officers sentenced in Chile for 1973 death

Andrew Bacevich: High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the Fading American Century

Mohammed Hanif: The rest of the world has had it with US presidents, Trump or otherwise