This is not the first time of fascism and the stupid beings who buy it, nor of erased women, nor of contempt for poor immigrants, nor of genocides due to race and plunder, nor of corruption in dubious democracies with powers. Lovers, when will the last one be?
Today’s society has become accustomed to being indignant for a moment, almost always by surprise, and forgetting it in a short time. Repeated surprise, millions of people discover the same world every day. Today’s society has become accustomed to real atrocities being committed without any reaction other than instant indignation. Moreover, the first hint of compassion for the victims can turn into rejection and hatred if manipulative hands turn them into ammunition.
Three years ago on this day, the US military and international coalition troops were taking the final steps to leave Afghanistan, after 20 years of occupation, supposedly to help the population. They documented that on the first day under full Taliban control, no one smiled. It was a frightening step backwards for Afghan women. We left them alone, but it was neither the first nor the second time.
It was Trump who signed the withdrawal of troops and the agreement for the return to power of the Islamic fundamentalists. The Doha agreement in Qatar in February 2020 provided for the release of 400 Taliban guilty of blood crimes. Biden, the one who fulfilled what he had signed in a worrying abandonment in which they even left the tanks there because it was cheaper than taking them. Everyone knew what was going to happen; the international community too.
Three years later, the fundamentalist government decreed a ban on women’s voices in public. They cannot speak, sing or recite; all Afghan voices must be male. And this measure had its minutes, if not days, of international scandal. Nothing else. The Taliban’s routines are returning. The same thing happened to them already during the five years of the so-called first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996/2001), during which they were silenced, erased and beaten.
With the West, their situation has improved somewhat, but they have not eradicated the multiple abuses they were victims of. “Two thirds of Afghan girls do not attend school, 80% are illiterate and 75% face forced marriages, often before the age of 16,” explained Olga Rodríguez three years ago. And yet, thanks to great efforts, many Afghan women have managed to participate in society by exercising various professions.
Nor did the security of citizens improve much. Numerous attacks on civilians were documented, including by Washington’s troops and their allies. In short, Afghanistan remained in economic crisis and women were not saved. It was time to leave. There was nothing left to get out of there. Not even tanks, as they say. Then the situation worsened because international aid was drastically reduced. After a year of Taliban rule, Afghans were spending 90% of their income on food and only one in ten was eating enough.
Afghanistan has the misfortune of being a key geostrategic point due to its location, because of the countries that surround it. Especially Iran, Pakistan and China. The world’s leading producer of opium – and therefore heroin – and with untapped reserves of natural gas, the pipeline transporting oil from the Persian Gulf crosses Afghanistan. Wars of domination extend throughout history, from Alexander the Great to today. The English, of course, undertook warlike conquests on two occasions. The war waged by the mujahideen insurgents in the 1970s was particularly significant, because it led to the Soviet invasion of the country for another ten years. These warlords received millions from the United States and would become the seed of the Taliban.Hillary Clinton once explained it very easily..
And now it is even worse. Banning women’s voices is another turning point. During this cursed three-year period, we have told you many things that happened in the face of general indifference and passivity. How the Taliban erased faces, bodies, the female presence. They banned secondary education for girls and university education for all women or women working in NGOs. Those who protest – they have continued to do so at risk – have suffered reprisals. They banned the sale of contraceptives and even beauty salons.
And how surprising is it to ban women’s voices, right? No, it is a progression and it will continue and get worse. In the face of the infinite hypocrisy of the international community and the culpable disinterest of society itself.
Three years ago, the Afghans tried to leave, to emigrate, with what they were carrying. With tears on their faces. To put a whole life in a few suitcases. Like so many others, who came from so many other countries. No one leaves their land if they live there properly, no one leaves it to commit a crime. The courage it takes to undertake the epic is far from the moral misery of those who deny and insult them.
Oppression, pain and death are not new to the Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide. Not even Western abandonment expressed at most in rather empty words of condemnation.
And do you remember Aylan? It certainly wasn’t the first time, but that little inert body on the beach was moving something else, for a moment. Then the abandonment increased to the current point, where racists from several countries raise their selfish hatred and divert the danger they represent towards these brave people pushed to leave their land in search of a better life, simply a life in many cases.
The extreme right – the entire right – has placed emigration as the fourth problem of the Spanish. Having the promoters of the campaign under their noses. To the ultra politicians who aspire to govern and make drastic cuts in public health and pensions. To the judiciary, where some elements make abundant use of their open eye to protect impunity if they intervene. To the media, who poison themselves to prolong teamwork.
This is not the first time that fascism and beings without conscience have adhered to it. Neither the contempt for people who are not “white” (the one who changes the most throughout life, as described in the anti-racist poem by Leopold Shengor disseminated by Galeano), nor the genocides due to race and rape, nor the women erased as soon as machismo has the instruments to do so, nor the corruptions that poison public life in countries with dubious democracy and shared powers.
When will we say of all this: this is the last time?
