She was 12 years old and had arrived home with her mother when her father ordered her to wash up – a special man was coming to visit. She didn’t understand exactly why she should shower at that time of day, but she knew it wouldn’t do to question him. She felt alone, and the feeling of terror made her cry.
Less than a year later, he lost his first child. At 14, the second, always after being assaulted and abused by those who took her from home. “Since I can remember as a person until I was 40 years old, I was beaten by men: my uncles, my father, neighbors. All the men in my life beat me just because I was born a woman.”
At 15, she gave birth to a boy, Joseph. Just three years later, the man took the child and threw her out of the house, asking for a divorce, without ever having explained the reason. The 44-year-old writer Mariam Rasouli, born in Herat, western Afghanistan, lives in Trondheim, central Norway, where she also works as a social worker in a shelter project for refugee children separated from their families.
On January 22, a plane from Kabul landed in Oslo. The Taliban regime had been officially invited by the Norwegian government to discuss the country’s humanitarian crisis: The UN warns that by April, 97% of the Afghan population could be below the poverty line. Nine million people, including 1 million children, are at risk of starvation if they do not receive humanitarian aid.
In Oslo, during the three-day visit, the diplomatic delegation made up of 15 men met representatives of human rights organizations and representatives of governments that fought for 20 years, such as those of Germany, France and the United States.
As has never happened before, so-called diplomats, until recently terrorists, religious radicals, assassins capable of setting off car bombs in markets full of civilians, have come under pressure and heard accusations from the Afghan diaspora in Norway, in addition to having witnessed street protests and heard insults from protesters in front of the hotel where the meetings took place.
If women like Mariam could not denounce the abuses committed by the heinous Taliban regime, or if we could only see the jovial posture, calm voice and elaborate narrative of Amir Khan Muttaqi, the group’s chancellor, surely we Brazilians, victims of a leader obscene, we would be in doubt if we are not in a Bolsonarista Brasilistan worse than the emirate created by force by the terrorists.
Afghan women who protested the visit dismiss a commitment to change as being on the faction’s agenda. For them, even recognizing the imminent humanitarian disaster, the Taliban, since retaking control of Afghanistan, have taken the population hostage and use the suffering of their victims as bait for the international community to legitimize their regime, forcing the world to choose between require girls to attend school or prevent them from starving to death.
During 20 years of war, the Taliban have made it clear that they will not follow any demands from the West, and at this dead end, the international community seems to be ignoring the possible damage that the legitimization of the theocratic regime will do to the country’s women.
Yama Wolasmal, a correspondent for Norwegian national TV, an expert on the Middle East and an opponent of the Taliban, says that the group’s view of women is something isolated in Islam and that, without having lost the DNA of violence, the radicals have understood that they will not be able to govern. committing heinous acts, punishing men who shave, women who don’t wear a burqa, cutting off the hands of those who steal or using the Kabul stadium as a stage for stoning, whipping and executing women and opponents.
For Mariam, the claim that the Taliban is isolated in its view of women is not supported by reality. For her, Islam is, in essence, against women’s freedom, and the Taliban, much worse than what Wolasmal described. The limitation of women imposed by Islam in all spheres is a prerequisite for the terrorist group to maintain its political, economic and cultural power.
Without the oppression of women, the terrorist government would disappear. If women were freed, Islamic norms would be dissolved, women would be equated with men, and thus the power of men over women would disappear. It doesn’t matter what the Norwegian government says or how good the intentions are. As the Taliban Chancellor himself said: having gone to Norway is already a victory.
Source: Folha
