About 700,000 Afghans Have Lost Their Jobs Since Taliban Takeover, Says UN Report March 1 , 2023
Introduction:
(Eurasia review) An estimated 700,000 people have lost their jobs in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, “with the agriculture, civil service, and construction sectors the most severely affected,” according to the latest report by the UN special rapporteur to Afghanistan.
The report, which covers developments in the country between July and December 2022, stated that around two-thirds of households in Afghanistan have acknowledged “difficulties in meeting basic food and non-food needs.”
“[M]assive job losses, business closures, and the reluctance of foreign investors to engage in the [country’s] economy” have had catastrophic impacts on the lives of millions of Afghans, the report said.
Afghanistan’s worsening economic decline—which stood at around 30 to 35 percent in 2021-2022—has further worsened the humanitarian crisis. “This crisis has been exacerbated by the unintended consequences of political cautiousness and overcompliance with [U.S.-imposed] sanctions, despite the humanitarian exemptions afforded by the Security Council,” the 19-page report that was submitted to the UN said.
The report further stated that an “estimated 18.9 million people are experiencing acute food insecurity, a number which is expected to rise to 20 million, and over 90 percent of Afghans are suffering from some form of food insecurity, with single-parent female-headed households and children being disproportionately affected.”
Currently, the shops in the markets of these three districts have been closed, and in some parts of Darayem district, people have taken up arms against the Taliban.
Appalling. They clearly want to live in the Stone Age.
Taliban are extreme even by fundamentalist standards.
Regarding women's rights:
Here is an interesting excerpt from Robert Kaplan's book Soldiers of God. This book is a travelogue depicting his time as a foreign correspondent imbedded with various Pathan/Pashto militant groups during the Aghan - Soviet war. He describes their view on women in Chapter 2 - A World of Men:
Women are oppressed in all muslem societies. But among the rural Pathan, women simply don't exist...Here are three Pathan proverbs:
Women have no noses. They will eat shit
One's own mother and sister are disgusting.
Women belong in the house or in the grave
You rarely see women on the Northwest Frontier or in Afghanistan; you see moving tents with narrow holes for eyes. Photographers who walked through minefields and sneaked into Soviet bases were afraid to take close ups of Pathan women unless they were at least a hundred yards away and had a lens the size of a mortar - and provided not a single mujahid was looking. A close up of a Pathan woman was more prized and difficult to get than a photograph of the undercarriage of an MI-24 helicopter gunship
...
A Pathan won't even tell you the names of his wife and mother. To ask him is an insult. It would be like asking him to undress in front of a crowd.
....
It goes on and on like this. One thing to note. The end of the book describes the ascent of the Taliban, who came from the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan that were being 'educated' by extreme wahabi preachers. These exiles made their way back into Afghanistan and became the Taliban. Point is, the men who he is describing in the earlier passages were considered progressive with respect to the Taliban. So read that passage again, and figure the Taliban are even worse.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
