Three years ago, on August 21, 2021, the Western adventure in Afghanistan ended. Nothing remains of twenty years of our presence. Like the website of the University of Kabul, where we offered Afghans courses in “Gender and Woman Studies” since 2015.
It has aged badly, like the CNN article that announced it. Like UNICEF, which said it was “fairly optimistic” that the Taliban would respect women’s right to education while they took back power; like Twitter (as it was called before Elon Musk bought it) which declared that the Taliban could continue to use the social network “as long as they respect the rules”; like a Canadian minister (female) who called the Taliban “our brothers” and the famous French association Osez le féminisme! which expressed “sisterhood with Afghan women in the face of misogyny”.
Ah, misogyny…
The Taliban last week banned women from even “looking at men” and speaking out loud not only in public, but also “inside their homes.” In a 114-page document seen by the Telegraph, the regime announced new measures regulating daily life. “Adult women are forbidden to look at unknown men.” Women are ordered not to speak out loud inside their homes “to prevent their voices from being heard outside.”
Reading is forbidden.
Also forbidden is “making friends with a non-Muslim.” In this case, there will be very few temptations, given that Afghanistan is the worst country in the world to be a Christian and in Kabul there was only one official Catholic church, right inside the Italian embassy, but it too is now closed, as is the “Gender Studies Course.”
Afghanistan has gone from being the famous tomb of empires to the tomb of Western illusions.
We know how it ended. But let’s see how it began.
Note: This is not satire.
Thirty seconds on the BBC. A British NGO correspondent in Afghanistan presents Duchamp’s L’Urinoir to a group of Afghan women. The embarrassment is palpable as they tell them about “conceptual art”.
And so it began. Meanwhile…
The Spectator reported that “787 million dollars have been spent on ‘gender programmes’ in Afghanistan”.
Bahar Jalali, founder of the “first gender studies program in Afghanistan,” noted that after years of teaching at the American University in Afghanistan and founding the first “gender studies program,” everything was “taken away for nothing.” Now there is not even an American University in Kabul anymore.
But Jalali is interested in "Palestine". There is also a lot to do for gender equality there…
The website of the Swedish “National Alliance for Masculinity in Afghanistan” reminds us of how it started. The Swedes thought they would fight the Taliban by publishing research on “the contribution of Afghan men to gender inequality”.
“Stop complaining. Be strong. Be responsible. Be a man. Boys are just boys…”. A monument to Western naivety: “There are many MeToos in Afghanistan! It's time to be responsible."
Have we learned anything?
Europe financed a desalination plant in Gaza with 10 million euros. A meritorious work. Too bad Hamas has converted the plant into a missile launch pad.
The UN has just set up an exhibition in New York on the victims of terrorism… without once mentioning the Israeli victims of October 7.
Westerners truly live in a wonderful world.