Your harrowing report on the worsening oppression of women in Afghanistan reminds us that our business in that country, despite the withdrawal of troops in 2021, is not done (‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public, 26 August). Controversial though aspects of the Afghan campaign were, one undisputed success was the positive movement towards achieving the development goal of improving women’s education and rights. All that has been lost under the Taliban, and it would appear that they now wish to restrict women’s rights still further.
Short of another intervention, what can we do? For a start, we should open up the Afghan civil resettlement scheme still further: all those women thrown out of university by the Taliban should be offered visas and a chance to finish their studies in the UK. It will not be easy for them to get out, but it is not impossible.
Further, using the resources of the BBC World Service, we should offer a comprehensive distance-learning package to all women in Afghanistan.
The last element is to extract the costs of these measures from our bloated aid budget to Pakistan, which remains one of the major recipients of overseas development aid. While there is much need in Pakistan, it also manages to keep nearly 1 million (mostly) men under arms and has an active nuclear weapons programme. If it can afford those, it does not need our aid. Since the Pakistani spy agency, the ISI, has historically supported the Taliban, the country’s responsibility for the plight of Afghanistan’s women is manifest.
In effect, by providing Pakistan with aid, we are subsidising both its militarism and the oppression of Afghan women – this must stop.
Simon Diggins
Defence attache, Kabul 2008-10
• The situation for all Afghan women and girls is indeed dire, as spelled out in your editorial (20 August). Just when 11- and 12-year-old girls in Britain are about to start at their secondary schools, their contemporaries in Afghanistan are denied any education, and only a small minority are able to access teaching online. Many young girls are being forced into child marriages, especially if their mothers are impoverished widows, and prohibited from working outside the home. Their futures tragically damaged, their hopes crushed. What can be done for them?
Recently, I was able to put one such girl in Kabul, who had managed to learn English online, in touch with an 11-year-old schoolgirl here, and they are now joyfully corresponding – opening their hearts and minds to each other, each one learning about another sort of life.
Is this not an arrangement that we can spread across the country? Fostering such relationships between young girls from different cultures could be a source of hope for future peace.
Margaret Owen
London
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