Is It A Holocaust Against Women & Girls What the Taliban Has Done and Is Doing?

[David Zephyr]

I say it is.

I've studied this issue a lot in the last four years. It's what makes the War in Afghanistan now more complex than Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq. Obama didn't start the war or put our troops into Afghanistan in the first place. But my question isn't about the merits of the U.S. presence there.

My question is whether you think that the plight of little girls and women in Afghanistan is a holocaust or not. I think it is.

[aquart]

1. No. They just won't kill that many.

Why? I'm sure you can think of the reason. Oh wait. I'd better tell you. They won't kill all of them because they need wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers.

The Germans wanted a pure society free of the taint of Jews, Catholics, Communists, and homosexuals. The Taliban are NOT trying to go gay.

And stop using extreme terms so loosely.

[JI7]

2. i don't think it would be described as a holocaust as they aren't trying to wipe

out women .

but what is happening and has happened throughout history to women. and continues to in places other than Afghanistan also is something horrible.

[Behind the Aegis]

3. Apartheid would be more apt.

[David Zephyr]

9. That's why I ask the question. What word applies to what is going on there?

It is not merely oppressing women. There is systematic brutalizing of women and the accepted and sanctioned indiscriminate murder of women and girls.

It's not "oppression". I think it is far worse than "apartheid". And yet, I ask the question because I think it comes closer to holocaust, but perhaps there's a better word.

Sometimes the lack of framing an issue can contribute to its neglect.

There's been a real absence of discussion here of the horror that is going on against girls and women every single day there.

[Kitty Herder]

14. Perhaps none of the old words fit?

And I agree that there is a depressing lack of discussion about the horrors perpetrated against women and girls there.

[Liquorice]

16. You're right. There is no word that quite fits what is going on over there. It's

like the world doesn't care enough to name it.

[David Zephyr]

20. Thank you, Liquorice.

I think what I'm getting at is that if you can't frame it or name it, then it seems to fall off the radar and we forget them and their plight. It's just terrible.

[csziggy]

17. Enslavement is what I call it. Women are locked up, their activities and choices restricted

With no free will, forced into marriage and unwanted sexual partners, beaten and abused if they break the rules, murdered if they transgress too far.

Sounds like slavery to me.

[Flaneur]

4. No.

They suffer from an oppressive social system of which the Taliban is only one manifestation.

But if by Holocaust you mean genocidal mass murder, then the answer is clearly no.

[David Zephyr]

12. It is not genocidal mass murder. In this you are correct.

But it's more than oppression. What word would you use? That's the point of the thread.

[htuttle]

5. It's more like institutionalized slavery than a holocaust

And there are obviously degrees of the same thing nearly everywhere in the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5lMxWWK218

[Ohio Joe]

10. Agreed

That was my thought as well.

[Habibi]

25. Yes. Slavery is the word.

[sarge43]

6. Terrorism with a goal of total subjugation

They're not trying to destroy all women. They're benighten, but they're not that stupid.

[Truth Talks]

7. Taliban vs Team USA

If you were an Afahan woman, would you rather deal with the Taliban or get bombed by the U.S.?

The Taliban sound like a pretty disgusting bunch of people to me. However, I have to remind myself that most of what I hear about them is channeled through the corporate media. So I have to ask if the Taliban are really bad as we hear. If they are, then the best way to help, in the long run, is to get out of Afghanistan. The longer we remain there, the longer that country will be fucked up.

[David Zephyr]

11. The Taliban's treachery against girls and women is not a right-wing myth.

Was Bill Clinton wrong to use our troops to prevent genocide in the 1990's in the Balkans?

Was Bill Clinton wrong not to use our troops to prevent genocide in Rwanda in the 1990's?

The genocide in the Balkans was not a right-wing myth.
The genocide in Rwanda was not a right-wing myth.

What is happening to women and girls is not a right-wing myth.

[cali]

22. well,educate yourself. Really, it's not that hard.

and by the way, if we get out of the country, something I'm for, the Taliban will take over again, and life for women will revert to what it was in the nineties. A good book to read is Ahmad Rashid's The Taliban. It was written in 2000.

[David Zephyr]

23. "The Taliban" by Ahmad Rashid.

Thanks, cali. "Educate yourself". That's at the heart here. Awareness. And thanks for mentioning Rashid's book.

When I wrote in the OP that I've studied the Taliban and their horrors for the last four years, one of the books which opened my eyes a lot was indeed Rashid's "The Taliban". I've seen so very little here at the DU on this subject and I feel that I have contributed to that silence by simple, old-fashioned neglect. So I take blame, too. Meanwhile, girls and women are suffering, really suffering there without any recourse at this very moment.

It's easy to conflate Bush's wars and imperialism with so much that sometimes we overlook the fact that there are still things that we shouldn't turn our backs on.

In another post above, I mentioned Rwanda. That happened on a liberal Democrat's watch. That's a very shameful chapter in the story of Bill Clinton's presidency.

And, I'll take flak for this, but I disagree with those rushing to call Afghanistan "Obama's War". He is no Nixon, no LBJ and he is no Bush. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt for now.

But war or no war, what the Taliban does to women and girls is wrong. And, I think it is wrong for us as a nation to turn our heads away.

[chrisa]

26. That's actually ridiculous.

To even compare the two. Does the US bomb women because they show their ankles, or because they were caught kissing a man in public?

"I have to remind myself that most of what I hear about them is channeled through the corporate media."

That's an extremist point of view. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are quite clearly backwards. The country has always been screwed up, and we haven't changed a thing. The idea that the Afghan people will become less bigotted when we leave is uninformed, to say the least.

[timeforpeace]

8. That image you have there? That's called murder. What they're doing to women and girls is murder.

[Kitty Herder]

15. But it is not just murder. It is systematic. n/t

[David Zephyr]

19. Yes.

Murder is one thing. The wholesale subjugation, slavery, secret and public abuse, brutality and execution is more than just murder.

It's appalling and it needs a hot spotlight on it. As we write here, there are little girls and women being beaten, tortured, having their teeth knocked out of their heads and even executed in front of their children.

There is so much written and documented on this subject along with live videos of the horror there. and there's too much silence here about it. For those who like to read, here's a great book to read is "A Thousand Splendid Suns" about the bravery among the women and girls of Afghanistan.

[SoCalDem]

13. We may think so, but they do not. In their eyes, women are chattel

property, things, incubators, cooks, and little more.

Even though we want it to be different, we cannot make them treat their women as we would like. Until we are willing to go there and kill all their men over age 14, we have little say in how their society treats women & girls. We hate it, but we cannot change it, because they obviously don;t give a crap what we think, and they are more than willing to kill & die over it.. are we?

[David Zephyr]

21. By "they" you mean the men?

I think we can help change it. I think we should try.

[SoCalDem]

24. Yes. taliban men..and fundamentalist men, in general

we do what we can, and hope for the best, but until
they are ready to change, there's not a lot we can do:(

[sallylou666]

18. Violence Against Women--a world-wide issue, including in U.S.

A reminder that we have a problem in the US with violence against women:

* In a 1995-1996 study conducted in the 50 States and the District of Columbia, nearly 25% of women and 7.6% of men were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or dating partner/acquaintance at some time in their lifetime (based on survey of 16,000 participants, equally male and female).

Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 181867, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence, at iii (2000), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/181867.htm

* Approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States.

Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 183781, Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, at iv (2000), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/183781.htm

* Intimate partner violence made up 20% of all nonfatal violent crime experienced by women in 2001.

Callie Marie Rennison, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 197838, Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief: Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, at 1 (2003), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ipv01.pdf

* Intimate partners committed 3% of the nonfatal violence against men.

Callie Marie Rennison, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 197838, Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief: Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, at 1 (2003), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ipv01.pdf

* In 2000, 1,247 women and 440 men were killed by an intimate partner. In recent years, an intimate partner killed approximately 33% of female murder victims and 4% of male murder victims.

Callie Marie Rennison, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 197838, Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief: Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, at 1 (2003), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ipv01.pdf

Battered women are not the only victims of abuse - it is estimated that anywhere between 3.3 million and 10 million children witness domestic violence annually. Research demonstrates that exposure to violence can have serious negative effects on children's development.

Sharmila Lawrence, National Center for Children in Poverty, Domestic Violence and Welfare Policy: Research Findings That Can Inform Policies on Marriage and Child Well-Being 5 (2002).

http://www.abanet.org/domviol/statistics.html