Manufacturing consent
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
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She had never met her husband before their arranged wedding in the summer of 2024. Each time her family asked to see him, they were told he was shy. It was only on the wedding day, relatives say, that Fatima understood what had been hidden from her: her husband had severe intellectual and physical disabilities and could not eat, wash or dress himself without help.
[…]
The decree also legalises child marriage. It allows male relatives to marry off children and says that once those children reach puberty, they may ask a court to nullify the marriage in limited circumstances.
Fucking nightmare.
That's hardlg the worst of it, further on in the article it gets far more depressing
It is just sickeningly cruel
It would have been smart for NATO to recruit females to fight but it's too late now.
https://www.wral.com/archive/17902880/
They did do that to some successes like the (very small) Female Tactical Platoon but it was very hard to meet the targets when it’s going directly against the grain of the traditional culture so they had to keep revising them down. In joining they would suffer consistent sexual harassment (which they had no means to report and wasn’t investigated even in a case with video proof released to the public) and be looked down on by the community, they would often be set to make tea and clean whatever their job actually was, no clear paths of advancement and little to no mentors who had paved the way before them, and they were on the Taliban’s kill on sight list. So you had to be in a pretty desperate situation to consider it.
The women soldiers would have been put in all female units commanded by NATO officers.
I don’t know if there were enough officers who knew Pashto in the coalition (it wasn’t NATO only) well enough to do that. They handled speaking Pashto via native translators generally. Most of whom were men because women were not educated so the overwhelming majority (~80%) were illiterate. It would be hard to be an effective officer to people who don’t understand you.
I think that would have been quite politically difficult also. The idea was to promote a local administration with its own army and offload responsibilities to them while providing assistance as needed as they developed their capabilities. Obviously that did not work out at all as planned and ultimately failed miserably. But, nevertheless, that’s how it was sold to the public and internationally. Taking charge of Afghan people with our forces directly is going in the opposite direction by making us more involved, and would be seen as damaging the credibility of the government when we’re disregarding them to enact measures that the public of Afghanistan see as contrary to their culture. I think to viably do something like this there would have to be significant changes to the entire approach to the war at the earliest stages to not get trapped in that box, which is also the point where there is the least translation capability unfortunately.
The officers don't have to speak Pashto, just have a translator. Those who see women fighters as being against their culture are probably sympathetic to the Taliban. Afghans knew what the Taliban view of women were. Consequently, they would have known these women were fighting for their and their daughters' rights. It's not necessary to be literate to operate small arms. The women would have fought alongside special forces teams. In a firefight, air support and reinforcements could be called.
NATO is responsible for this mess, indiscriminate bombing, propping unpopular and corrupt leadership, injustices. Why would any afgan let alone women fight for them? To be abandoned by them once Taliban are back?
Interesting how you attribute no agency to the locals in “once the Taliban are back”. Implying it’s all NATO’s fault and somehow assigning no blame to the locals who just allowed it all to come back with no resistance.
The locals were stuck between a corrupt government supported by an occupying power and the Taliban. Elections were stolen, violence endemic, and poverty widespread. And now, EU is willing to work with the Taliban as it does with countless authoritarian regimes to prevent illegal immigration. They want to empower the captors and legitimize a new dictatorship.
NATO should have told women the consequences to them of the Taliban taking over.
my goodness father there is so much empty land in these areas, man the fuck up