The curse of two X chromosomes in Afghanistan

Some of the most admirable people I’ve known in a long and hopefully productive life happen to be women. Like every other human being, I started life in a female’s womb. I’m grateful to a caring woman for that ride and the nurturing that followed. Part of that nurturing involved solid men who taught me to respect, promote, and protect the females in my family which carried over into similar behavior toward all women, relatives or not. And that’s why the latest news out of Afghanistan has me so lividly pissed off.

More about that coming up but for those who get all butthurt over perceived versus actual prejudice, let me preface here by saying I am fairly tolerant of all religions and their attendant practices. Believers want to handle rattlesnakes, speak in tongues, or eschew modern technology, that’s fine by me. When it wanders over into inhumane or destructive behavior in the name of religion, it’s time for brutal honesty based on the basic concept of what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s my position. Here’s my opinion on the latest outrage against females in Afghanistan.

It’s a commonly accepted fact these days that our abrupt and ill-conceived total military departure from Afghanistan left the ultra-orthodox Taliban fanatics as the sole arbiters of societal norms in that country. Beats me why anyone would expect things to be different when we split following two decades of brutal combat and more than 2,000 Americans KIA. It’s not like we missed the obvious previews when Taliban extremists carried out arbitrary arrests, stoning, amputations, and other inhuman punishments based on their interpretation of Sharia law. We knew from first-hand experience these guys were fanatical cretins. But the White House called it quits, we saluted and folded like a cheap suit leaving no one behind to keep the Taliban goons at bay.

Enter the Taliban version of the vice squad and suddenly we flashback to Orwell’s 1984 with Big Brother and the Thought Police intimidating life in every city and mud-hut village. Enforcers carry the absolute authority of the country’s “Ministry for Virtue and Prevention of Vice” and they glower from every street corner or cart-path in Afghanistan wrapped in white robes. White robes? Virtue signaling Afghan style? Well, it’s easier to hide a whip or club, I guess, but where do they pin the badge?

There’s an updated set of arcane laws now on the Taliban books that covers—mostly precludes—everything from public transportation, music, shaving, and celebrations. The new naughty list is long, detailed, and hangs like a sword of Damocles over every citizen, but the heaviest burden falls on women and girls. Under previous interpretation and enforcement of Sharia law, most females suffered under restrictions on education and employment. Wearing the hijab or burqa was expected but not totally policed. There was some wiggle room provided you avoided the vice cops. Now it’s burqa or get busted.

Article 13 of the new laws recently announced says that face covering is required for women “to avoid temptation and tempting others.” And it specifies that any other clothing worn by women should not be thin, tight, or short. Seems an unnecessary provision unless some designer comes up with a thin, tight, or short burqa. No mention of self-control by men here, so I suppose the Taliban believes the mere sight of a woman’s face automatically turns Afghan males into rabid sexual predators. These new morality laws go further than demanding that Afghan females only appear in public looking like a sack of wrinkled laundry.

Other recently imposed burdens include a restriction on women speaking, singing, or reading aloud in public. According to the clerics who apparently have nothing more productive to do than dream up this crap, a woman’s voice is “intimate,” so hearing a female singing a little ditty while she shops or gassing on a street corner with friends is a mortal sin. You know, it might just stimulate some eavesdropping guy to attack with voice-activated evil intent. Makes me wonder what happens when an Afghan male uses an app featuring Siri or one of her computer-generated female clones.

Reading about all this in various sources indicates that Afghan women are particularly put upon by female members of the Taliban vice squads. An anonymous woman in Kabul is quoted in a story about the new laws saying the female morality patrols are particularly feared. “They behave even more aggressively than the male officers do,” she said. And I believe it. These kinds of arcane measures can’t stand without a certain amount of female buy-in to the program.

A good number of Quranic scholars say that their holy book does not ban women from getting an education and imposes far fewer rules about female dress and behavior than the Taliban’s interpretation. I’m prone to believe that too. It moves my opinion of the Taliban from religious fanatics to genuine evil people exercising malice aforethought against half of their coreligionists. Cut it anyway you like, but that’s just wrong. It’s an evil perpetrated by a gang of misogynist neanderthals. The same kind of wild-eyed goons who ordered all taxis in their country to be painted a pretty turquoise color believing that it would somehow reduce crime.

In some measure I suppose it makes our ultimate failure to implement any sort of positive, long-range changes in Afghanistan just a bit easier to understand. You can tell fanatics, but you can’t tell them much. It’s a sad state of affairs for the human race and the kind of thing that prompts an angry screed like this one based on sheer frustration. I remain hopeful for bigger and better things for females in general, but it’s hard for me to see a solution for women in Afghanistan failing an armed rebellion against their Taliban oppressors. Here’s a final depressing thought. On the US military KIA list from our two-decade quixotic misadventure in Afghanistan are the names of 166 American women. They did their duty with conviction and compassion common to females of our species. Sadly, they died leaving a particularly bitter legacy in a nation that continues down a very dark path.

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