Afghanistan sanctions from a first-person view
This is a short snippet from a BBC article presenting the stories of five Afghan women.
| Creator | Time | URL |
|---|---|---|
BBC | 1min |
This is an excerpt from a larger article named Five Afghan women who refuse to be silenced by the BBC.
“I humbly request the Taliban do not meddle in women’s right to education and employment,” she tells me. “Otherwise, they are amputating one arm from the body of society. Our society is made of two pillars, a pillar of men and another pillar of women. How can you run your life one-sided and one-handed?”
Fatima is fortunate in that she still has a job. “The Taliban cannot ban me from working in the hospital because they know that it is needed,” she says.
But she hasn’t been paid in months - and for that she blames Western sanctions, not the Taliban. “America and the international community have blocked Afghanistan’s money,” she says. Fatima often works a 24-hour shift, delivering as many as 23 babies in that time. But there's no money to feed the patients or staff.
And she has a message for the US and the international community: “Sanctions on the Taliban will kill us faster than the violation of our rights by the Taliban. A girl dies from hunger and a mother either sells her daughter because of hunger or from pressure to marry her by force. The issue of their education and literacy is meaningless when you’re dying from hunger.”
Takeaway Financial sanctions such as those employed on Afghanistan harm innocent citizens for behavior of a government they did not choose.
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