OPINION:
It’s been about a year since the Joe Biden administration ceded Afghanistan to Taliban members who in turn promised the new nation, the new nation of tribes, would be one of freedom for women, freedom for all, free, free, freedom, nothing but freedom.
Today? Today the nation burns while Biden turns blind eyes.
“Violence, hunger and fear: Afghanistan under the Taliban,” NBC just wrote in a headline.
That says most all. Meanwhile, the source of the headline says the rest.
NBC — the media outlet that traditionally kisses Biden’s you-know-what. So if NBC is reporting negatively on the fallout of Biden’s disastrous withdrawal of America from Afghanistan, just think how bad it truly must be.
Two decades of American presence in the country — gone. Whisk. Out with the rule and order, in with the madmen. Initially, Taliban leaders vowed to create a fair and impartial government, respectful of differing viewpoints, respectful, even, of women.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in an Aug. 17, 2021, press conference, said not to worry.
“He promised the Taliban would honor women’s rights within the norms of Islamic law, without elaborating,” The Associated Press wrote at the time.
He pointed to how “the Taliban have encouraged some to return to work and have allowed girls to return to school,” AP wrote.
He said “the Taliban have offered full amnesty to Afghans who worked for the U.S. and the Western-backed governments,” AP wrote.
And he also said “private media should ‘remain independent,’” AP wrote.
My, how a year can show the lies that few outside the Biden White House believed in the first place.
As Amnesty International wrote, the Taliban instead have implemented a government that’s more akin toe “repression” than representation — that “discriminates against women and girls in almost every aspect of their lives.”
It’s now so horrible for females in Afghanistan they’re facing “suffocating crackdown[s]” on an increasing “day-by-day” basis.
Child marriages? Check. Domestic violence? Check, check. Forced out of their jobs? Check, check, check.
Then comes the poverty.
As the world watched Biden’s bungled withdrawal, governments of the world quit financing the country.
Combined with the challenges of Ukraine and the economic fallout for the entire world — some genuine; some fabricated — the average Afghanistan individual is suffering from hunger.
Almost 20 million, in fact, which is about half the country’s population, are “experiencing high and critical levels of acute food insecurity,” The United Nations put out in June.
That was June.
This is August.
It’s no doubt gotten much worse.
This is Biden’s doing; this is Biden’s Afghanistan. It won’t get any better any time soon.
Elections are coming and the Democrats can’t afford to acknowledge, never mind clean or fix, their foreign policy mistakes. Their only hope for wins is to focus on taking down Donald Trump. Afghanistan doesn’t figure into that platform.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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