The Many Dangers of Being an Afghan Woman in Uniform

I have heard it said that overturning the tables of vendors and money changers on the temple mount alone may have been enough to have Jesus Christ condemned to death. It's a shame that many attempted to erase the videos of Mrs. Malikzada's murder from the web.

I personally enjoyed this article and don't understand the many comments on the US' position in the Afghan War. For once can't we read an article and not think about America's position in it and just focus on the women this article is about. They are the one's that matter here. Not the money being spent by the US there (as if we'd have the bipartisanship to use the money for any good here) or why we're still involved in that region (we were dumb enough to get involved the least we can do is try to fix the mess we created). Why are we calling it an archaic state full of vicious tribes and medieval traditions? I think that shows a huge egotism to think that the state of gender equality here is so progressive that we have the right to ridicule any place different than ours. He without sin cast the first stone...

After the Mujahadin, with US support, drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan and murdered Najibullah, the Wall Street Journal sent in a reporter (Barry Newman, I think) to do a story. He interviewed a woman who had been in the government under the Soviet-backed administration. She said that under the Soviets, one of their policies was equality for women, and it worked, at least in the big cities. Many women were teachers, and they taught co-ed classes. Women worked in government, and the professions, such as medicine. They were part of the Afghan Western elite. The Soviets built housing, with electricity, running water and telephones. They developed industry. She said that she was better off under the Soviets. That's an easy comparison, because all they were left with was rubble. So if you want equality for women in the third world, the Soviets knew how to do it. We should have left them alone.

I'm conducting an open access survey in Dari, Pashto and Urdu. https://www.fes-connect.org/trending/bridging-social-capital-a-new-attem... Due to information of our partners in Afghanistan the only job opportunities for alumnis in Kabul (10 000 per semester) is to working for the Afghan government. There you only get a job if you have relatives being employed yet. And 'job' means: you have to join either the army or the police. They must defend an isolated Green-Zone-government that doesn't find support across the 34 provinces. According to German members of parliament the death toll across army and police in 2017 was around 10'000. Add another 20'000 Taliban killed, you may estimate the dimension and the future, because families that lost members by murders will take revenge. 90 per cent of the budget of Afghanistan - which is bankrupt - comes from NATO and UNDP. This money is spent for a useless war without any perspective, because the tribes along the 2400 kilometers long Durand line never respected this colonial border. So the woman defending the Kabul regime and this border may being heroes by serving because of desperation and no job alternatives. But their choice deepens the conflict with the majority of Afghans that do neither accept the NATO invaders nor the government they installed. Afghanistan needs female citizens. not warriors.

As I have been writing in these posts for years, yes years. We have totally lost the Afghanistan War. It was impossible to win for Afghanistan is not a country. It is a collection of barbaric tribes and Taliban. They'll never stop fighting. All American deaths and morbidity was in vain not to mention trillions of dollars. The Public is apathetic. It's not their kids that are dying. Relatively speaking it involves few families and friends out of 330,000,000. And it appears never ending. For the good of our country we should withdraw totally from that region. By the way we also lost Vietnam , Iraq, Libya, Syria and contribute to mass slaughter and starvation in Yemen. We are evil and inept. Our impotence is world renowned.

....it's all irrelevant - just as the million people in sub Sahara Africa that are starving - there are bad things happening to people all over the world.....however, the US can't solve their problems. We need to completely extract ourselves from Afghanistan. No soldiers, no bombs, no support, no funding...nothing. The Country is one of the most corrupt in Asia. We've spent $1 trillion dollars there - I should say wasted $1 trillion dollars - Ms Sophia Jones, who wrote this article has no conception of how much money $1 trillion dollars is. How that money could have helped rebuild US inner cities...how it could have provided education to low income children...how it could have fed over two million children in the US who go to bed hungry every night. The Taliban had record opium revenues last year - controlling northern Afghanistan brings them an estimated $1 billion in narco terrorism funds. The Taliban employ approximately 30,000-40,000 people to further their effort. The government is corrupt and has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars of aid. WE NEED TO LEAVE AFGHANISTAN.

We do this over and over: We interfere in a war where we have no business or interest, in essence take over a country, and try to make it a mini version of a western country. We impose our values on a people saying "Our way is better, it is THE way." We then wonder why we are not successful. Look at the countries where this is happened and how quickly they reverted to their native culture after we left. It happens every time. $Billions wasted, we bring in high tech war gear, and in two years tops, after we leave, it is rusting junk. We cannot solve a region's problems by imposing our culture on them. The native peoples must solve their problems their way. In the case of the Middle East it may mean 1,000 years of war that continues to this day. It will continue until THEY are tired of it. As the last decade has shown, we cannot impose a solution. We need to pull completely out of the Middle East, bring our people, machines, and money home. Cut off aid to all parties, including Israel, and let them solve their own problems, their way. They are the only ones who can.

We cannot change their culture by decree, and putting women in the most traditionally male jobs (combat) is the worst place to start. Instead, start where there would be the least resistance: educate women (in all-female academies) to teach in girls' schools and kindergartens, to nurse and doctor female patients and small children, then office work---all with older women as chaperones. After a class of educated women develops, another generation can expand the occupational boundaries.

If I was a woman in Afghanistan I would join the military. It seems to be the only place women can walk around outside without a burka. The US should keep pushing gender equality everywhere in the world, but they should work with women's groups in country so their initiatives can succeed. Top down has never worked. Cultural change happens in the street and unfortunately in these patriarchal societies (I include the US) we need male buy in because they control everything. One woman at a time, but also one man at a time. Much more work to be done throughout the world. Keep up the #metoo and the #stopkavanaugh movements. Give to NGOs working on women's rights. Vote in November.

This article starts out relating positive change and enthusiasm but it ends it with stereotypical western flights of fancy and tragedy for locals. Exactly the story of the past 17 years. Not a coincidence.

Thank you NYT for this profile in courage. These women show incredible bravery. They are heroes.

Fine. But they will never equal the women Yazidi (non-Muslim) fighters who battled ISIS. Now there are some real women.

A 2011 report found that women in the U.S. military were more likely to be raped by fellow soldiers than they were to be killed in combat. Where is the NYT essay about the rampant sexual assault that occurs against female service members in the U.S. military that gets brushed under the rug because it will disrupt the tireless glamorization of our "heroes"?

This is sickening. What expense won’t be spared to stop our nation from acknowledging the sunk-cost fallacy? Prior to the United Stated invading Afghanistan, the Taliban had actually been in pretty strict opposition to cultivation of the poppy flower. About a year after we decided to occupy the land where empires go to die, the region’s heroin production saw an increase of about 100%. Fast forward sixteen years, and now there are pharmaceuticals designed specifically to overcome constipation in opiate addicts, and addiction itself is being labeled a medical disease. P.S. Methadone exists largely because the Nazis had no stable supply of morphine-derived analgesics.

In the wake of #StopKavanaugh it is difficult to see how the US has the moral standing to tell Afghanistan to do anything at all. Yet, the women there are suffering in silence and shame as the women in America suffer in silence and shame. The difference is the technology with which we burn women at the stake when they speak out. American burnings are high tech in shiny Senate shrines, televised for the nation, resulting in the elevation of their lying perpetrators to the Supreme Court of the US while Senatorial defenders tell them they have nothing to be ashamed of--she deserved it. Afghan burnings are literal and take places before dusty religious shrines, filmed by cell phone cameras, resulting in articles in the NYT while the perpetrators slap each other on the back and tell themselves they have nothing to be ashamed of--she deserved it. It all goes to show, changing culture is hard.

This is an absurd PC effort to push Western values on a country that, for the most part, is barley out medieval mode. These are brave women, but you might just as well push them off a cliff as expect them to survive this experiment.

Afghanistan has a long way to go. Education is key. As long as the masses remain illiterate, they can be easily manipulated by their religious leaders, something that is not just exclusive to Afghanistan.

I salute these incredibly brave women.

Thanks to the NY Times for telling us about people such as Shamila and her comrades. Humanity needs heroes such as these, and they need our support.

Gender equality for women in Afghanistan ? Why don't we try it here at home first? The whole war effort in Afghanistan is a failure: it is being continued to placate the Generals and benefit the arms industry. We should get out of that land; let Taliban and the Afghan government fight it out . So far nearly 4,000 American soldiers have sacrifice their lives; thousands more have been injured and disabled and over a trillion wasted. For what? Gender equality in Afghanistan !