Armed Afghan women take to streets in show of defiance against Taliban | Hacker News Reader

Armed Afghan women take to streets in show of defiance against Taliban

theguardian.com

75 pointsDocFeind55 comments

While good for them, basically any other protest march of hundreds of people would just be ignored.

This article seems like propaganda trying to say our twenty years at war weren't a complete waste, as we empowered hundreds of women.

Few protests are ignored when the participants carry antitank missiles and AKs, and presumably a goal of the US occupation was to prevent "civilians" from bearing arms. Maybe a cultural victory...

The US occupation forces never tried to confiscate regular small arms from non-combatant civilians.

> While good for them, basically any other protest march of hundreds of people would just be ignored.

But this is clearly not any other protest march. This is women taking up arms (and braving extreme danger) so that they could step out of their houses, educate their kids etc.

Protesting that you don't feel safe and free in your own community isn't rare, and those protestors often risk retribution for their actions.

Again, these women are absolutely right to protest, I just think this coverage makes it seem far larger than it is.

That was also the propaganda used by Laura Bush back in Nov. 17, 2001 to go to war in Afghanistan:

> Text: Laura Bush on Taliban Oppression of Women - Saturday, Nov. 17, 2001 - Following is the text of Laura Bush – giving the weekly radio address normally delivered by President Bush – speaking out on Taliban oppression of women and children inside Afghanistan.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attack...

Because the US Federal government derives its power from its member states, it directs its power to places it can actually attempt to change instead of anything in its backyard.

The regime supported by the USSR lasted several years after losing all Soviet support and with the Taliban getting full Pakistani and US aid. And this ended in a horrific blood bath (not to claim the Soviet-supported regime by itself was anything to write home about).

So there's some incentive for the urban population, especially women, to resist the rise of the Taliban. It should be noted the US has spent twenty years in the nation aligned with the drug lords of what was once the Northern Alliance, a group that could, among other things, could never develop the country. It's not surprising the US could get nowhere.

It's a history of pain and tragedy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan#Taliban...

Not entirely correct.

The Soviet Union supported government of Afghanistan fell very quickly, and only after, Soviet aid was cut in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately the US left the Taliban a huge cache of weapons and equipment, and this Sky video discusses that no women were seen on the streets during their filming as the fundamentalists rapidly take over the country.

https://youtu.be/f37xrmiqmnU

I wish the Guardian had a more realistic approach in their choices of 'news' stories, they tend to promote tiny events they are interested in as though they are huge, distorting people's understanding of what is actually occurring

Afghanistan will return to the way it has always been for time immemorial.

which 'always'? The rotten kleptocracy it appears to be right now (from my cosy European point of view)? The warring tribal zealot-ridden hellhole it was after the Soviet invasion? Or the (apparently) fast-advancing more-or-less liberal democracy it was before the Soviet invasion?

People and countries can change. And people and countries DO change. I think the lesson I've learned from my safe distance these last 20 years is that it is hard to influence the direction in which this change happens, even with the expenditure of blood and treasure. Oh, you can stir shit up, but there's no knowing how it will settle.

[incidentally, it really isn't clear to me why this sort of thing seems to have worked well for the de-nazification of Germany and pacification of Japan]

You say countries change but the only part of Afghanistan that's changed at all is the cities. Once you get out of the cities you're turning the clock back a thousand years. It was never anything like a "liberal democracy". The fundamental political unit is the tribe and any analysis that does not use the word tribe is misinformed. It's very difficult for someone from the west to understand that a society so different from their own can exist today. It's a pastoral society centuries removed. There is no print media, no radio, no cell phones. Travel is difficult, and only possible some times of year. Most people in Afghanistan have never heard of 9/11 and do not understand the war(s). https://www.pbs.org/video/pbs-newshour-what-does-911-mean-to...

edit: The comparison to Germany and Japan shows just how out of context Afghanistan is to western eyes. In european terms Afghanistan is pre roman europe. No roads, no laws, no central government, no news, no standing army. By contrast germany was a western country and japan was westernizing very quickly post Meiji.

Hey. So at the end of the 19th century both Germany and Japan where backward agrarian societies. I have read (sorry, no reference) that bigoted westerners considered Japanese people to be lazy and feckless. I repeat, things change.

What? This is extremely wrong. The end of the 19th century is ~1900. Germany and japan were absolutely not backwards agrarian societies at the time. This was post industrial revolution.

The US spent 2.26 trillion on Afghanistan over 20 years, for a country of about 38 million people (it was 20 million in 2000). What an f'ing waste.

Having the Taliban retake the country was inevitable. The US went in there stating flat out that they were not going to stay in the country forever. The Taliban hears this and goes "Oh really? Because we are."

So now all Afghans have to ask themselves. Am I going to back the people who are going to leave in a few years? Even if you hate the Taliban (and a lot of people do), they'll kill you if you oppose them and your allies aren't going to be around to help.

The grand American plan of uniting a bunch of tribes that have been at war with each other of centuries was never going to work either, even if you could find some magical unicorn of a local leader that wasn't hopelessly corrupt.

This is like escape from Saigon without the escape part

How large is this Taliban group? Where do they get the weapons ? Are they recruiting local populous where they take grounds (by force or they get many volunteers?)?

I mean, after decades of screw ups in that country and war and destruction, I can't imagine for the majority to wan't to fight more, especially for a group who want sharia law, but maybe I am totally clouded by my European thinking.

The Taliban is a hybrid tribal confederacy and an offshoot of the Pakistani ISI run by the children of the madrassas funded by the gulf states. It's main purpose is preventing Iranian influence via Afghan Shia's.

Afghanistan is best thought of as a separate planet and you cannot apply a European perspective. For example most in Afghanistan have never heard of 9/11. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904103404576556... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPWjuswmNIE

It is surprising to me that the Taliban, seemingly a fringe and unpopular group even in Afghanistan itself, are so good at clinging to power. But what do I know.

Not entirely surprising. The Taliban is mostly comprised of Afghan refugees who were raised in the madrassas of Pakistan. These were funded by the gulf states and the CIA and controlled by the ISI. With foreign money the Taliban bribes the tribal leaders. The tribe is the fundamental political unit in Afghanistan and always has been. In the early invasion US special forces found every foreign fighter was carrying something like 10k USD.

The 'pitch' is as follows. The Taliban are Afghani's returning home to help their people. They have the legitimacy of islam and bring money to support the locals.

They are neither fringe nor unpopular.

I was going off articles like this one. If people are fleeing in droves, or are kicked out of their towns and ground razed, doesn’t sound like they are the favourites.

Interesting outcome of imperialism…

Can you explain why you'd attribute this to imperialism? Seems to me that women are finally fighting back, after taking shit from the extreme Islamists for too long. Similar scenes were seen when Kurdish women took up arms against ISIS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrxbyrnGo-o

US presence scared off people who stop women from being educated:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna12...

This may have occurred on some timeline of decades to centuries without imperialism (militarily or culturally).

The US backed Islamist rebels against the Soviet Union, thus destabilizing Afghanistan and leading to the ~40 years of war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

The US and USSR didn't start ~40yrs of war in Afghanistan. Afghans have been at war with either invaders or themselves for thousands of years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan

This comment above mine...why is it dead? Is the best comment yet

The one that advocates barring elected representatives from congress based on their religion?

First Vietnam, now Afghanistan. The wealthiest nation with the most powerful military was bested twice by a passionate local force that played the long-game. Iraq is not exactly going well either.

I'm glad that America can return to its isolationist roots and stop policing the world. Export culture, not troops. You simply can't force a country to act the way you want using a military invasion.

If Afghani women want freedoms, I'm glad they are fighting for it themselves. It makes it significantly more authentic (perhaps the only way it can be treated authentically) and will give the Taliban far more pause than the US forcing them to respect women at gunpoint.

This rocks. If the US never invaded, this is the kind of thing we'd hope for. Oppressed people fighting for their own liberation without the intervention of people like Pete Buttigieg hanging a map of Afghanistan's natural resources on his wall.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/07/pete-buttigieg-cia-afghan...

Wow that article has no clue what it's talking about.

It's claiming a lot of extraneous nonsense based on his Annual Performance report (which are mostly nonsense anyway) bereft of any understanding of the units it's talking about.

There's no mention of an Annual Performance report in that article.

Are you referring to something else?

That's what those screenshots with text are of. It's possible that those actually they might be an interim performance report based on the deployment, that isn't a full cycle.

I see, as a non-US resident the article seems pretty benign/inconsequential:

"US politician who worked in the military is part of the establishment and the unit he worked with might have had contacts with the intelligence (not necessarily CIA), DEA and US Treasury, news at 11."

Yes exactly, there's no story there

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