[ad_1]
As the world witnesses the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan, and the United States finally decides to withdraw its soldiers from the country, the main concern for the West seems to be what will happen to Afghan women now.
“The return of the Taliban is terrible for women,” Atlantic said. “Afghan women are afraid to return to the repressive past under the Taliban,” the New York Times reported. “Afghanistan: Why are there serious fears about women” is the headline of Sky News.
These news reports are not only intended to create the assumption that the West really cares about women’s rights in Afghanistan, but also imply that women’s rights were actually protected during the US occupation of Afghanistan.
Although the plight of Afghan women is used to whitewash the American invasion of Afghanistan, the mainstream conversation about the “victims” of the war almost completely ignores men and boys. Instead, they consciously erased their humanity.
Maya Mikdashi – In her article, can Palestinian men be victims? – Researched the gender division of Israel in the Gaza War in 2014 and the importance it placed on women and children in conversations about the victims of that attack. She explained how this approach has achieved many discourse feats, two of which are the most prominent: “The popularization of women and children into an indistinguishable group, by the’identity’ of gender and gender, and the reproduction (and more generally) of the Palestinian male body The Arab male body) is as dangerous as ever.” She pointed out that the status of Palestinian men as victims has always been cautious.
Similarly, Afghan men are almost never classified as war victims. At least in the West, whether they can be deprived, whether they can worry about their civil and human rights being violated, or whether they can be regarded as sympathetic refugees, is always open to question. Their experience is often speculated and almost never reported. A simple Google search of “Afghan men” clearly shows that they are only potential perpetrators of misogynistic violence in Western research papers, news reports, and social media posts.
However, to truly understand why Afghan men are demonized, we must look at why the United States and the West are so interested in “saving” Afghan women.
Soon after George W. Bush announced his so-called “war on terrorism,” the plight of Afghan women under Taliban rule became a prominent topic in the United States. The then first lady Laura Bush condemned the “serious suppression of women in Afghanistan” in a radio speech to the whole country and claimed that “the fight against terrorism is also a fight for women’s rights and dignity.” “Time” magazine even published a report on the oppression of Afghan women entitled “Unveiled”. At the United Nations’ International Women’s Day celebrations on March 8, 2002, Laura Bush delivered another well-known speech in which she argued that the war in Afghanistan “is helping Afghan women to restore the life they once knew.”
The US government uses feminist language when talking about Afghanistan, not because it really cares about Afghan women, but because it believes that this approach can help its invasion gain widespread support.
The media played an important role in the gendering of the American war in Afghanistan. Shortly after 9/11 and the start of the “War on Terrorism”, in addition to numerous reports about the abuse and discrimination faced by Afghan women, media organizations began to disseminate photos of Afghan women wearing burqa under Taliban rule, and combine these photos with photos The juxtaposition started earlier, and their clothes were not supervised by men. As Afghan women were identified as oppressed and in need of liberation, gender was brought to the forefront of global politics, and all Muslim men were identified as oppressors of women and enemies of Western civilization. Suddenly, the American war in Afghanistan was legitimized as a feminist effort in the eyes of the American people and the wider international community.
There has been little change in the past 20 years.
Now, pictures of Afghan women taken in the past 20 years are circulated on social media and published by news organizations to emphasize how “free and safe” they are under American occupation and what they will lose under the rule of the Taliban.
Of course, Afghan women were not “saved” by the occupying forces. The United States and its NATO allies did not protect Afghan women from oppression and violence, they just created a different reality of violence for them. The economic and political instability caused by the invasion, combined with routine nighttime attacks, drone strikes, and active fighting in Taliban strongholds, exacerbated the obstacles faced by Afghan women during the occupation.
The United States and its allies have undoubtedly provided some Afghan women with new opportunities and much-needed assistance during their stay in Afghanistan. However, their efforts have mainly focused on a specific subset of Afghan women whose suffering fits perfectly with their account of the inherent violence and misogyny of Afghan men.
For example, in a recent article by Al Jazeera, Sahar Ghumkor and Anila Daulatzai explained how Afghan women quickly realized after the US invasion that if they said their suffering was caused by the Taliban and the Taliban, they would be considered more It is worthy of US aid as long as it is. They even quoted an Afghan woman who said: “We found that if you tell them that the Taliban killed your husband, you will be supported. If we tell them that the Soviets killed our husband, or our husband was killed in 1990 We will be useless if we die in the age. They only care about whether the Taliban makes us widows.”
In fact, the United States does not care about the complexity and different realities faced by Afghan women in the 40-year war. They are only interested in the experiences of Afghan women, which fit their narrative and help justify their “feminist” invasion.
And the Afghans, no matter how much they suffered at the hands of the Taliban, let alone anyone else, the United States completely ignored them. In the eyes of the West, Afghan men have never been victims—they are the perpetrators of 9/11, fighters of Al Qaeda, members of the Taliban, and oppressive figures who can only rule terror in their society.
This belief that every Afghan is a threat has had devastating consequences.
Most American soldiers deployed to Afghanistan, like their political leaders and generals, did not try to distinguish Afghan male civilians from Taliban fighters. As a result, they often aim weapons at the corpses of innocent Muslim men.
Americans often tortured, illegally imprisoned and killed Afghan male civilians. For example, many Afghan men have been imprisoned and tortured in the “black spots” of the Bagram Air Force Base complex in northern Kabul without formal charges.
Habi Bramullah and taxi driver Thilawa are just two of the blameless victims of the U.S. war on terrorism in Afghanistan.
Habibullah died of a pulmonary embolism from a blunt leg injury in Bagram on December 4, 2002-he was locked to the ceiling and repeatedly beaten. The soldiers responsible for his death tried to justify their actions, calling him “disobedience”.
Dilawa, 22, died in Bagram on December 10, 2002. He weighed only 55 kilograms when he died. Although he was not charged with any crime, he was still locked on the ceiling of the cell and suspended by his wrist for four days. During his brief detention, his legs were also exhausted. He survived only five days in captivity.
Since 2001, thousands of innocent Afghans like Dilawal and Habibullah have been killed—some by the United States and some by the Taliban. However, these people are neither regarded as victims of the American invasion, nor as people worthy of the sympathy of the West-in the eyes of many Western observers, they are just potential security threats that have been taken for granted.
According to data from the Bureau of Investigation and Information, between January 2004 and February 2020, the United States carried out at least 13,072 drone strikes in Afghanistan, causing 4126 to 10,076 deaths. It is believed that between 300 and 909 of the victims were civilians.
It is impossible to know the true number of innocent Afghans killed in the U.S. drone war against Afghanistan, especially Afghans, because successive U.S. administrations have tried their best to conceal this number.
As the New York Times explain For example, in 2012, the Obama administration calculated that “all military-age men [killed] As combatants in the strike zone…unless there is clear intelligence to prove that they are innocent. “
“Counter-terrorism officials,” the Times article went on to say, “It is a simple logic to insist that this approach is a simple logic: people in areas known to have terrorist activities, or people found with top Al Qaeda agents, are very It may not be done well.”
In other words, unaccused Afghans are often killed by the United States with impunity simply because they happen to be people living in areas that the United States wants to “save and civilize.”
Of course, not all men who died in Afghanistan during the 20 years of the American invasion are treated equally. American soldiers who died in Afghanistan are seen as heroes who sacrificed for the country, for democracy, and for human rights-although it is well known that the army they served has committed serious human rights violations against innocent Afghan civilians.
Now that the United States has withdrawn from Afghanistan, it is time for the international community to change its perception of those affected by this invasion and its serious consequences.
Like Afghan women and children, Afghan men have experienced decades of relentless wars, oppressive regimes and indiscriminate drone attacks. We cannot continue to view them as inherently misogynistic and security threats-they are people who deserve our support and sympathy.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
[ad_2]
Source link