I don't know how much you know about the US's involvement in Afghanistan. Less than an hour ago I would have told you I had no knowledge of it whatsoever or interest in hearing about it. Like many other teenagers the current conflict began while I was too young to really care or read the news.
I had to do my reading for Media Studies course. I opened up the first article and it blew me away. I can't help but write about it because I feel like this should be known by the public, or at least the younger generations like me who were previously unaware of the situation. The article is called Unveiling imperialism: media, gender, and the war on Afghanistan. by Carol Stabile of the University of Wisconsin and Deepa Kumar of Rutgers U.
Our involvement in Afghanistan started long before September 11, 2001. During the cold war, a pro-soviet party came to power there, and to prevent the Soviets from gaining control of the country the US began funding a conservative resistance group of Islamic Fundamentalists called mujahideen. We trained and armed the resistance sending them plastic explosives, sniper rifles, anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, and other weaponry. We hailed them as "freedom fighters" against the communist threat and poured money into the region to aid them in their quest to overthrow the current power.
But this group, the mujahideen "first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil". Osama bin Laden was a part of this group and there he made made vital contacts. The US trained him. Their leader was seen as "definite dictator material."
And though President Carter and the CIA made it seem as if the US began funding the group after Soviet invasion that wasn't true. US got there first to draw the Soviets into Afghanistan and into a war. We, knowing all of the harsh practices of the mujahideen continued to support them for our own benefit, neglecting moral and civil rights. especially those of women. Before conflict began women had similar rights to those in the US, they went to school, had jobs, had rights. After the group took power women were declared to always wear veils, they were forbidden from going to school and having jobs.
After the Soviet Union was defeated the US didn't follow through, they withdrew abandoning the wreckage of the war that they started. When the Taliban came into power womens' situations only worsened. they couldn't even leave home without male relatives. But the US supported the Taliban so they could secure a contract for an oil pipeline. The US stayed silent while women were assaulted, just as they had in Saudi Arabia as not to endanger their oil holdings in the region.
And now we use womens' rights as justification for the invasion of Afghanistan, when it was we who virtually let them get this way. Meena, founder of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan was assassinated in 1987 by US backed insurgent Gulbuddin Hakmatyar.
Yet we still claim that we forged a war there for women's rights when clearly the rights of women were never even a concern. The government commonly uses women's rights as a shield to mask ulterior motives and gain public support. But when it comes to a point when they no longer have interest in the area for economic or political reasons the plight of women is disregarded, played off by the media as if we have made a substantial difference, when really they only focus on specific success and empowerment stories while core problems still exist.
Perhaps this article was not written in the most unbiased way, but the facts are facts.
Maybe my shock in learning this means that I'm just young and naive.
Maybe I'm just young and naive in thinking that things shouldn't be like this and the government shouldn't work this way. But how can we stop it?
