A year has passed since the reinstalment of the fanatic Taliban back to power. It was easily predictable that women and girls would be the prime victims of this barbaric rule and are facing devastating and inhumane suppression in all areas of life. However, the women of our country proved that no force could impose their reactionary ideologies or hold them captive inside their homes. Afghan women made history by raising the flag of struggle against the Taliban and for freedom and justice. Since the first days of Taliban’s takeover, these women protested on the streets without any fear of guns or whiplashes; they were suppressed, threatened, and humiliated, but bravely continued their fight.
The inquisition-based government of these fascist and misogynist fundamentalists is so reactionary, abhorred, and brutal that no country has officially recognized it, not even their supporters and patrons who pull the strings for their recognition, due to its disreputability. This is while the Taliban have tried hard to act restrained by masquerading and deceiving and have declared many times that they have not implemented the Sharia law yet.
US imperialism apparently claims that they were surprised by the fall of Kabul and the escape of Ashraf Ghani, but the fact is that the plan was to hand over power to the Taliban; releasing Taliban leaders from Guantanamo and Bagram prisons, removal of terrorists and war criminals from the United Nations blacklist, establishment of an office in Doha, launching negotiations under the supervision of a traitor like Zalmay Khalilzad, signing a disgraceful treaty with them, releasing of 5000 Taliban prisoners and finally deserting over 85 billion dollars’ worth of US-made power and military equipment are all proofs that everything went according to their plans. During the 20 years of US occupation, US/NATO kept the Taliban as an alternate force and secretly strengthened it by playing a catch and chase game the entire time. During these years, the Taliban committed many crimes, suicide attacks and bomb explosions against the innocent civilians and rarely targeted the US/NATO bases.
The blood-stained hands of the US imperialism and its allies in creating and supporting Taliban, ISIL, Al-Qaeda, Jehadis, etc. is an open secret now. The US is not anti-terrorism if it is only eliminating one or two of its ‘burned-out’ or ‘disobedient’ pawns. Killing of al-Zawahiri in Kabul is more of a propaganda campaign for the US presidential elections rather than uprooting of these murderous and terrorist gangs. The CIA, MI6, Mossad, and other allies of these intelligence agencies are completely aware and directly involved in the training, financing, equipping and propaganda of these regional mercenaries. In addition, the governments of Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia have supported and collaborated in metastasizing this cancer for more than 40 years. Keeping the criminal Jehadi traitors under their wing and running 30,000 religious’ schools in Pakistan for decades is a clear example of ISI's pro-terrorism policies that are funded by the US and its allies.
The US is not giving up on Afghanistan to protect its interests and compete with China and Russia. Misleadingly, they have imposed sanctions and not recognized the Taliban regime, but they continue to pump Dollars through different channels and ways, thereby preventing its collapse. Their imperialist masters are deceiving the world about establishing an ‘inclusive’ government but are in fact only trying to position some of their more experienced agents in the Taliban government. Furthermore, the US is actively strengthening ISIL in the region, according to the media ISIL recruitment has almost tripled in the past year. Transferring the ISIL terrorists from Syria to Waziristan and then to eastern Afghanistan shows that ISIL is the next choice for creating chaos and unrest in the region to pressurize China and Russia.
On their first days of seizing power, the Taliban deprived women of the right to education, work and freedom; banned them from various government and private offices, schools and media, restricted their movement without a male chaperon and declared hijab mandatory. They plummeted the country into poverty, unemployment, and economic collapse; despite the false declarations of amnesty for all former military and civil personnel, hundreds of them are decapitated every day; they forbade every kind of personal freedom, music, science, and art; and intensified the oppression against the religious and ethnic minorities. Contrary to their claims, the security situation has only deteriorated and dozens of our compatriots are killed every day in explosions and suicide attacks in crowded public places. After their ominous takeover, many talented young people fled the country in unprecedented numbers.
Despite enduring all these tragedies, our people have not yet lost hope in the future and predict the inevitable downfall of these medieval-minded mercenaries, and state that:
The clashes between the emirate-seeking and caliphate-seeking factions are intensifying day by day, even though the Taliban are two sides of the same coin when compared with Wahhabis, Salafis, and ISIL, there are still cutthroat disputes amongst them. Their failure and passivity to provide basic work opportunities or security is becoming unbearable. Today the entire world including Afghanistan is moving forward but this reactionary regime is outrageously plunging the nation into Middle Ages. Corruption has infiltrated the Taliban leadership and many of them are taking heavy bribes and accumulating wealth. Pakistan, as one of the patrons of the Taliban, is sinking in its own economic and political catastrophe; and the theocratic Iranian regime, which controls a faction, is facing widespread public unrest and protests and this disgraceful autocracy may end soon. The US, the sworn guardian of the Taliban is now deeply involved in supporting the Nazis of Ukraine and provoking Taiwan against China and this turmoil is shifting this unipolar world to a multipolar one. Apart from these, in the 21st century a Stone Age regime can never stop the people from progression, civilization and science and knowledge by forcefully pulling them back into Dark Ages.
Female and male Jehadi scavengers and the treacherous technocrats and intellectuals who were hyped and nurtured by the CIA, ISI of Pakistan and VEVAK of Iran and enjoyed the almighty dollars and luxuries, are now shamelessly lurking to reclaim their lost paradise. ‘Resistances’ and ‘Fronts’ were ridiculous parades led by Ahmed Masoud, Amrullah Saleh, Atta Muhammad Nur, Rashid Dostum, Mir Rahman Rahmani, Rahmatullah Nabil, Muhammad Mohaqiq, Sami Sadat, Zia Massoud, Yunus Qanuni, etc. were simply contests for power and trying to restitute their image as the corrupt fugitives. Our people never want the return of the mafias and looters of the previous ridiculous “republic” who laid the ground for the growth and spread of the Taliban virus. In the same way, the mission of countless separatist and nationalist agents is to slice up Afghanistan into smaller pieces so it can be easily gobbled down by their foreign masters.
The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) has always asserted that “women’s rights” and “freedom” have always been bogus claims by the US invaders and we as a nation have no other choice but to unite and struggle independently against every kind of fundamentalism and its foreign masters by vastly mobilizing the masses mainly women and banishing traitorous, spineless, and submissive elements from our ranks. The progressive forces, without any expectations, should spare no efforts to fight and rise in solidarity for freedom, democracy based on secularism, and social justice.
We have full faith in this great struggle and the extraordinary potential hidden in our Afghan women, and we warmly shake the hands of every justice-seeking force and individual in this crucial battle for Afghanistan and its people and to continue hoisting the banner of struggle against Taliban and Jehadi fundamentalism.
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
August 15, 2022