In Tried-and-True Humanitarianism: Israel/UAE/Afghanistan Mission

The group of 41 Afghan women, including some members of the country's women's cycling team, and robotics team, and their families, on arrival in the United Arab Emirates Sept. 6, 2021. (Photo: UAE News agency WAM/Amjad Saleh)

"The issue was they had to collect them [Afghan evacuees] from hiding [from Taliban]."

"They [rescuers] had to do rounds around the city in alleys to pick up these people and try not to create any suspicious movement."

"The stressful part really was around the border. There were a lot of Taliban in the area, they were not allowed to leave the shelter and we were very stressed that someone might find them."

Yotam Polizer, chief executive, IsraAid

"Working alongside international partners to ensure that those in need may reach safety, the UAE has welcomed 41 Afghan evacuees, including vulnerable members from the Afghan girls' cycling and robotic teams, as well as at-risk human rights activists and their family members."

Afra al-Hamell, deputy director of strategic communications, UAE

Afghan evacuees arrive in the United Arab Emirates. Photo: Afra Al Hameli / Twitter screenshot

With the collaboration between Israeli aid workers and the United Arab Emirates, scores of Afghans have been given a new lease on life. These are people who are vengeance targets of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the new rulers of the country, the Taliban, whose previous rule was brutal and deadly, inspiring many Afghan civilians to flee their native country in fear of the Islamist terrorist regime, living as refugees in Pakistan (ironically the neighbour whose Interagency Intelligence service is largely responsible for the power now held by the Taliban), finding their way elsewhere around the world in a migration forced by terror.

Now that the Taliban have returned through a brief, violent upheaval that uprooted the democratically elected government of Afghanistan and its military, leaving the terrorists to inherit infrastructure and weaponry left by its fleeing military in the wake of the U.S. desertion of its ally, the hunt is on for former government elite, for civil servants, for those who served in branches of the military and the national police, for women who aspired to excel in music and the arts, sports and medical training, for a new-old world of male domination and female subjugation has found its comfortable niche once again.

The newly-revealed rescue mission launched by the two partners of the Abraham Accords, Israel and the UAE was launched to spirit sportswomen, female rights activists, an entertainer and their families, at high risk of imprisonment or sudden death at the hands of the Taliban avenging the incursion of Western influence in Afghanistan. It succeeded in rescuing a total of 41 people under difficult conditions requiring the utmost secrecy and exceptional skills of evasion.

As the first joint humanitarian project between two Middle Eastern countries this is hugely symbolic of the great opportunities that can be seized to help make the world a better place for those inhabiting countries known for their discriminatory and violent values led by unscrupulous and barbaric leaders. The team that formed the backbone of the evacuation exercised their scheme with cautious optimism that working in tandem with all concerned contributing to the success of the venture, would guide its outcome.

There were 19 cycling team members, three robotics team members, a prominent Afghan singer, a number of human rights activists and their vulnerable family members who constituted the rescued Afghans with reason to fear for their lives. The search missions exercised by the Taliban, going house to house to unearth 'collaborators' of the West, adoptees of Western cultural values, men and women who betrayed the Taliban version of sharia law would eventually reveal the presence of those fearing for their lives. These are 41 fewer souls living in the shadow of death.

The rescuers drove across the country's north after collecting those meant to be rescued, clearing checkpoints to arrive at a temporary destination at the border with Tajikistan, a safe house, for several days' stay while awaiting permission to cross into the country. That permission was eventually secured by the rescue team when the president of Tajikistan gave his permission for the border crossing, enabling the rescuers to ferry their charges to the capital of Dushanbe.

From there they were escorted to a chartered jet, courtesy of Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams, arriving in the UAE in the early hours of September 6. The jet was financed by Montreal-born Adams who himself is a sport enthusiast, a bicyclist who represented Israel, where he moved five years ago, at the Tour de France with his Israel Start-Up Nation cycle team. Mr. Adams was also involved in lobbying the government of Tajikistan to support the rescue mission.

Israeli-Canadian billionaire cyclist and businessman Sylvan Adams rides a bike with members of his team Start-Up Nation at his velodrome in Tel Aviv on June 5, 2020. (Emmanuel DUNAND/AFP)

The Taliban of course would be apoplectic with rage that despised Israelis, Jews, had infiltrated their emirate under their noses, to plot and carry out a rescue of Afghans whose deserved destiny in their view, would be death. To describe the situation as 'politically sensitive' is to understate the reality. The Taliban went out of their way to state unequivocally their preparedness to foster good relations with any nation on earth -- with the exception of Israel.

Women activists had reached out to the Israeli aid group to assist in rescuing people they had selected ti be evacuated to safety. A mission partly financed by an anonymous family foundation. Nine other members of the Afghanistan's robotics team which had been awarded a U.S. robotics recognition in 2017 were evacuated to Doha with assistance from Qatari officials, making this the second such mission.

The future for girls and women in Afghanistan can be seen from the past, when from 1996 to 2001 when the Taliban were last in power, girls were prohibited from attending school and women banned from work and could only emerge from their homes accompanied by male family escorts with the women fully garbed in black head-to-toe burqas. The women’s ministry in Kabul has been converted to house the “Ministries of Prayer and Guidance and the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice,” which had in the ruling Taliban's original iteration operated a feared police force implementing sharia.

 

Yotam Polizer, CEO of IsraAid, right, embraces the Afghan evacuees as they arrive in the United Arab Emirates Credit: IsraAid/IsraAid

The Woke Taliban

"Western cries of 'women's rights' appear a harmless demand. But when coupled with the incompatibility of much of these rights with the Islamic religion, their destructive effects on human society, their historical origins and the dangerous agendas for Muslim societies curtained behind them, a more sinister perspective emerges."

"The feminist ideology has been utilized for decades as a Western justification for the invasion, subjugation and bullying of Muslims."

"Today, the West seeks to ideologically subvert Muslim cultures through ideologies such as feminism."

"Feminism as Colonial Tool" Voice of Jihad editorial

AP Photo

 

Voice of Jihad is a propaganda tool of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, aka the Taliban. Unlike the propaganda infamously projecting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's contempt for the West by graphically displaying barbarity to inspire Islamists to join the Caliphate while ensuring that civilized communities everywhere would recoil in horror and fear, the Taliban are employing the soft power of 'suasion by co-opting Western language in a twist to validate their vision of the rightful place of women in pure Islamic tradition.

 

Women must know their place. And it is not in public. Shamelessly garbed, immodestly flaunting themselves, unlike the piety of Islamist-approved burqas where women can stifle and stumble their way through life, shadowy figures of debased humanity. Figures wholly owned by father, son, uncle, cousin, husband. The very notion that women can aspire to have a career, a profession, employment to enable them to be independent and capable, is counter to all that Islam promises them; male guardianship, home sequestration, raising young, cooking, cleaning; above all satisfying their husband's sexual appetite -- on demand.

 

Loving husbands, in turn, take due care to avoid striking their wives' faces. Focusing instead on the body which in public is well shielded by the black, all-encompassing burqa through which the eyes are seen, and nothing more; take care not to expose an ankle, a wrist, or bear the flogging penalty. There is no need for women or girls to be educated beyond the skills of housework and all that it entails. Nor is there any patience for music, dance, celebrations, colour, gossip or female get-togethers; no good comes from any of it.

 

What the world fails to appreciate is that the Taliban are scholars, all-knowing and infallible, deeply and faithfully entrenched in the reading of the Koran and the Hadiths, inspired by the politics of Islam to scorn non-Islamic issues, cultures, religions, laws, education and social niceties. All of it is haram and harmful and to be avoided at all costs. The women of Afghanistan have no use for a "colonialist saviour" coming to their rescue and guiding them toward a more satisfactory way of life, suitable for the decadent West, certainly not for Afghanistan.

In reality Afghan women have made strides since the ouster of the Taliban, and have no wish to see them return, and themselves once again returned to male bondage and a dreary, miserable life of obedience and brood-mare status. They are invested now in professions of law, education, science, have received social status and employment with the absence of the misogynistic Taliban, urged upon them by the intelligence establishment of Pakistan's Inter-agency group. 

 

The Asia Foundation has found over its 15 years of publishing public-opinion through polling in Afghanistan that both men and women overwhelmingly support women's right to work outside the home, to vote, to run for public office and be fully independent. Now an air of crushing despondency has set in, with the near-advent of complete U.S. troop withdrawal from the country. Polls indicate that between 82 and 85 percent of respondents feel it to be "very important" that women's rights be protected, regardless of a 'peace deal' between the government and the Taliban.

 

Knowing full well that a peace agreement will be but a temporary screen rolled out for Western view, while the Taliban speedily return to power, inactivating the current government and all the social infrastructure that has benefited Afghans -- and dismissing all the gains that the women of Afghanistan have realized since the NATO, U.S.-led invasion to oust al-Qaeda from the country following the 9/11 atrocities. 

Afghan women at an earlier rally to support peace talks. Many fear the withdrawal of Nato troops will lead to severe restrictions of their freedoms. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Taliban Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice

"We don't want a peace that will make the situation worse for women's rights."
"Come that time [should the Taliban be given a share of government power in Afghanistan], they will complete their incomplete dreams and they will be crueler than in the past."
Robina Hamdard, head, legal department, Afghan Women's Network

"We don't want to be the victims of the peace process with the Taliban."
"But the Afghan government totally ignores Afghan women on the peace process."
Laila Haidari, Afghan businesswoman

"[I well remember during the years of Taliban rule being] forced to be inside a dark cage when out of our houses -- I mean the burqa."
"I have been an M.P. twice and a university professor, but no one has ever asked me about peace talks with the Taliban."
"We have had 40 years of war and everybody is tired of fighting, but that peace should not be at the price of losing our rights and freedom as women."
"We want the Taliban to accept women's rights and publish a statement where they guarantee women's rights."
Shukria Paykan, Kundiz, Afghanistan

"Acute misogyny in Afghanistan goes way beyond the Taliban. Without a strong U.S. hand there, it is not looking very good for Afghan women."
"They [Afghan government and the Taliban] can do as they like to them [women] after we leave."
Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan

"When we heard that U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan in 18 months, we girls were asking each other, 'Now what will become of us'?"
"People already think we are bad girls for dancing. What will happen to us if the Taliban become part of the government?"
Qadria Azarnoosh, Hazara traditional dancer

In March 2002 in Kabul, an Afghan girl learns the Dari alphabet during a lesson in an outdoor classroom. Girls who the Taliban banned from education were attending classes for the first time in six years. Photograph: Natalie Behring-Chisholm/Getty Images

Women in Afghanistan who were freed from the Taliban insistence that they appear in public only in the presence of a male guardian and only totally enveloped in a black burqa, to be enabled to become students once again from primary grades to university, will obviously revert back to the time when music was disallowed, girls and women were not permitted to attend school, to work or to celebrate weddings should the Taliban return to power.

Without the civilizing presence of the U.S.-led NATO countries' presence as NGOs, military, civilian monitors and foreign civil infrastructure guides the advantages that women in Afghanistan were able to access finally would never have occurred under the Afghan government.

The Taliban are merely the most fundamentalist of the Islamist clerics and males in Afghanistan, most other Muslim males are only moderate by comparison; conventionally, traditionally, women have had no place in the public sphere, in the workforce, within the educational system. Women requiring medical help had to attend to female-only hospitals where all staff were women, and even they were required under the Taliban to be fully geared in Burqas within the hospital environs, even surgeons performing surgery. This is what awaits women in Afghanistan.

The United States fully realizes that the only way they will be able to pull their troops out of Afghanistan is to convince both the government and the Taliban -- all most of the Pashtun majority tribe -- to make peace by sharing governance. This would be a face-saving device for the Americans while at the same time performing a similar function for the Islamist adversaries. The position of Afghan women is purely co-incidental to the process. This is, after all, with or without the ideological fundamentalism of the Taliban, an Islamist society.

Within Islam it is entirely permissible to appear to be agreeing with an adversary until such time as opportunity presents to pursue the original agenda. The Taliban has been unwilling to meet with the Afghan government despite the government's willingness, even eagerness to reach an agreement with their ideologically pure counterparts. A peace agreement would simply be the initial step in 17 years of conflict for the Taliban to resume their former control of the country. And the fate of the women of Afghanistan will once again be dismal beyond belief.

For a woman as liberated as Shukria Paykan, parliamentary member, and one-time university professor, the concern is that her daughter's school will once again be forced to close. "Women need to raise their voices so they are not forgotten", Habiba Sarabi, deputy of the High Peace Council in Kabul, one of 14 women on the 75-member council stated. All previous efforts at peace talks had excluded women. "We came a long way to achieve the rights we have now", said Saira Sharif, a politician from Khost. "Just to lose them after a peace deal."

As for the Taliban, they do have a stated position on women's rights in Afghanistan. Their spokesmen have pointed out that the Taliban is more than willing to assure Afghan women that their rights will be fully respected. Those rights the Taliban speak of, they emphasize, represent all the rights that Islamic script guarantees them. Those are the rights the Taliban recognize and are fully committed to, just as they were in the days of their rule when al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were honoured in Afghanistan as one among them in the faith.

In February 2002, a man looks at Afghan women waiting to apply for jobs at Kabul’s Ministry of Women, which initiated a drive to encourage professional women to re-enter the workforce after the demise of the Taliban. Photograph: Natalie Behring/Getty Images