Reality’s « Handmaid’s Tale » is not the United States but Afghanistan
« For each day, Trump’s US feels more like ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ ‘The headline in the British Independent Recently is typical; If you google the president’s and the mentioned television series, you get over four million hits.
But there are places on earth that match much better with the series’ depiction of women’s life as a hell of subordination and oppression.
Before the start of school 2025 have Unicef Estimated that 2.2 million Afghan girls have been deprived of their right to education since the Taliban instituted tough laws against their right to go to school.
In addition to crushing girls’ dreams of a decent life, it is a destruction of competence that almost guarantees that the country will never be able to get out of poverty.
And what remains when the school’s door is closed? Among other things, low -paid work in carpet factories. BBC This week met a group of women weaving rugs in the capital Kabul. Shakila, 22, dreamed of becoming a lawyer, her sister about becoming a journalist, but now they are referred to the factory: « There were no other jobs ».
Since 2021, when the Taliban returned to power, they have introduced over 70 regulations as according to Swedish Afghanistan Committee « Directly limits the lives and rights of women and girls ». Women have been banned from moving in many public spaces, they must not take a university degree, not work for international organizations.
And what remains when the school’s door is closed? Among other things, low -paid work in carpet factories.
In the late summer last year came a bomb mat of new laws that banned them to speak and be seen outside the home – it is now not even allowed to sing or read aloud in their own house, if it is heard on the street. By the New Year they were banned, according to Le Mondeto even be seen through their own windows. They should be invisible, silent.
The outside world is passive. Aid projects to Afghanistan withdrawnUS dismantling of the aid body USAID may receive Fatal consequences in the country.
It is important that the world reacts when the Trump administration restricts women’s freedoms and rights. But the reality’s « Handmaid’s Tale » regimes already exist. The compulsively veiled, hidden, silenced, oppressed women and girls already exist – in the Muslim theocracies, in countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and above all Afghanistan.
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