Good on him. Fantastic.
Maybe he can donate some to Afganistan women who are doing it tough since he surrendered to the Taliban for an undisclosed sum and benefits?
From 2002 to 2021, however, during the U.S.-led NATO mission to stabilize Afghanistan, Afghan women served as cabinet ministers, ambassadors, parliamentarians, diplomats, and journalists, reflecting historic levels of involvement in society. It is fair to say that empowering women represents the best work the United States did in Afghanistan and its most positive legacy. In early 2021, months before the U.S. military withdrawal and the Taliban’s takeover, 2.5 million Afghan girls were attending primary school, and 27 percent of the seats in the Afghan parliament were held by women.When the Taliban returned to power after the August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, their leaders made pledges that they would govern the country differently from the way they did previously by allowing women to work and study. They closed Afghanistan’s schools to girls immediately after they took power but promised to reopen them. A Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, told reporters that women would be permitted to participate in society “within the bounds of Islamic law,” adding that “when it comes to experience, maturity, and vision, there is a huge difference” between today’s Taliban leaders compared “to 20 years ago.”
In reality, there is no difference when it comes to the treatment of women. Over the past two and a half years, the Taliban have gradually stripped women and girls of their rights, tightened control over their lives, and even sanctioned violence against them. The Taliban started their campaign against women in September 2021 by disbanding the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and replacing it with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, whose mandate is to ensure that Afghans follow the new regime’s strict interpretation of Islam. Shortly after that, the Taliban issued orders requiring all professional women to quit their jobs, and in December 2021, they forbade women to travel abroad without a male relative. When Afghan schools were reopened to girls in March 2022, only those 12 years old and younger were allowed to return. Later that year, the Taliban further revealed their true intentions toward women when they announced that women would no longer be permitted to attend university or to work for international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
The Taliban are also increasingly encouraging violence against women, both in word and in deed. Official public floggings of women as well as men have become commonplace for what the Taliban deem “moral crimes,” such as adultery, theft, or running away from home. In May 2023, the head of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Kandahar, Mawlawi Abdulhai Omar, instructed his province’s leaders to ban women from going to cemeteries and health centers on the pretext that women visitors and patients were inappropriately wearing makeup or pretending to be ill.
Omar told the provincial leaders to arrest and punish fathers and brothers for not “correcting” these transgressions in their daughters and sisters. In a culture that already faces the scourge of honor killings, such decrees seem likely to increase the prevalence of domestic violence. In cities and rural areas today in Afghanistan, women cannot walk freely on the streets. Millions of girls cannot receive an education, and hundreds of thousands of women cannot earn an income to help support their families. An increasing number of girls are being forced into marriage, often with much older men, and suicide rates among female Afghans are on the rise as they lose hope for their future.
