Dilip Simeon's blog

The photographer Jim Huylebroek travelled across the country with the international children’s agency Save the Children, from the drought-ravaged plains of the north to the freezing streets of Kabul, capturing the stories of children whose lives have been devastated by the humanitarian crisis, for the series titled: children on the edge of life. The images tell the stories of their fight for survival. Families making impossible decisions about which child they can afford to feed, and which will go hungry; mothers giving birth alone on dirt floors because they cannot afford to travel to hospital; children forced to work on the streets to put food on the table. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/22/children-on-the-edge-of-life-in-afghanistan

Throughout the long, documented  history  of the United States illegally overthrowing governments of foreign lands to build a global empire there has emerged three ways Washington broadly carries out “regime change.”  From Above . If the targeted leader has been democratically elected and enjoys popular support, the C.I.A. has worked with elite groups, such as the military, to overthrow him (sometimes through assassination). Among several examples is the first C.I.A-backed  coup d’état , on March 30, 1949, just 18 months after the agency’s founding, when Syrian Army Colonel  Husni al-Za’im  overthrew the elected president,  Shukri al-Quwatli.    Chilean presidential palace during U.S.-backed coup, Sept 11, 1973.  Library of the Chilean National Congress/Wikipedia) The C.I.A. in 1954 toppled the elected President  Jacobo Árbenz   of Guatemala, who was replaced with a military dictator. In 1961, just three days before the ...

I currently live in Pakistan with my family. Before I left Afghanistan, I was working as a programme administrator for an NGO and I also studied business at university. When the  Taliban took over , I had no certain future. My education was not clear; my school was closed. I was happy before the  Taliban  took over. This semester we were supposed to have in-person classes. We had online classes because of the coronavirus, but it was so difficult because we didn’t have a good internet connection. So I was like a child preparing for the first day of school when we got told we could come back to the class. I was so happy and ready to go and sit in my class and learn. What followed was worse than I could ever imagine.  I never thought that everything could  vanish like that . My sister is in grade 12 and supposed to graduate high school. But after the collapse of Kabul, we had no choice but to leave. I don’t see any future for her. When I see her, my tears come. I c...

The Afghan fiasco pales compared to the multi-dimensional tragedy created by the Iraq invasion and occupation. The scorecard: Hundreds of thousands dead, wounded, orphaned T he fostering of sectarian blood-letting that institutionalizes the country’s political fragmentation. The massive destruction of economic infrastructure. The welding of ties between Shi’te majority governments in Iraq with Iran’s clerical regime Torture and abuse in dedicated camps that permanently blemished America’s cultivated image as the champion of human rights. The spawning of the Islamic state – conceived, organized and recruited in American prison camps – Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Camp Bucca foremost. The resulting mayhem in Iraq and Syria with deleterious effects across the region. One effect: the flood of refugees into Europe that fueled the rise of far-right and neo-fascist movements across Europe – disrupting political life in friendly countries and undermining the EU. In Syria, prioritizing the overthr...

There is no better symbol for the disappearance of women’s rights in Afghanistan than the end of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the return of the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. When the Taliban on September 7 announced their new interim government, the vice and virtue  ministry  featured on the list, with a cleric as its newly appointed minister. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs had disappeared, and there were  no women  in the new cabinet. The situation has a feeling of impending doom as a largely unchanged Taliban comes into direct conflict with a generation of young women who grew up hearing about the abuses that the Taliban inflicted on their mothers and older sisters and seizing the opportunities those older women were denied. On a chat group of people who have worked many years in Afghanistan, a journalist friend wrote, “Does anyone else fear these protests are going to end in a massacre?” This possibility seems all too real… h...

Last month we wrote about  the end of the American occupation of Afghanistan and the Taliban victory . This piece is about climate change in Afghanistan. The topic is urgent. Afghanistan is one of countries in the world most vulnerable to climate change. This year a long-running drought caused by climate change has reduced the harvest by almost half. Hunger and famine threaten unless Afghans receive a great deal of aid, quickly. But there is the looming danger that US financial sanctions will make aid work impossible and combine with hunger to create economic collapse. This article begins with the effects of climate change in Afghanistan over the last 50 years. Then we talk about the situation now. We argue that instead of making war for twenty years, the Americans could have worked to create climate jobs and prevent the climate crisis. We end with ideas of what people in other countries can do politically to help Afghans facing climate disaster. In many parts of the world...

More than a dozen women staged a protest in Kabul on Sunday, holding up signs calling for the participation of women in public life. The protest came as female government employees in Kabul were told to stay home, with work only allowed for those who cannot be replaced by men. The order was given by the interim mayor of Kabul, detailing the latest restrictions on women by the new Taliban rulers. Kabul government’s female workers told to stay at home by Taliban ‘We don’t want people to be in a panic,’ says chief of Taliban morality police https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2021/sep/19/afghan-women-stage-protest-in-kabul-after-taliban-crack-down-on-womens-rights-video-report

Noted film personality Javed Akhtar says he is as opposed to Muslim fundamentalists as he is to Hindu extremism, noting that he has even received death threats from Muslims because of his outspokenness. Defending his recent interview in which he drew parallels between  the Taliban and Hindu extremists , he said Hindus are the most decent and tolerant people in the world but while the Taliban have a free hand in Afghanistan, India”s secularism is protected by its Constitution and courts. Akhtar expressed the views in a statement to PTI, days after remarking on a TV channel that while the Taliban were “barbaric”, those in India supporting Hindu right-wing organisations were “all the same”. “ India can never become like Afghanistan  because Indians by nature, are not extremists; it is in their DNA to be moderate, to keep to the middle of the road,” he said in the emailed statement. Sunita Viswanath: Why I feel the need to bring my Hinduism to the streets Sunita Viswanath - I re...

A group of Afghan women activists staged a small protest in Taliban-controlled Kabul Friday calling for equal rights and full participation in political life, CNN has confirmed. In spite of the risk, a group called the Women's Political Participation Network marched on the street in front of Afghanistan's Finance Ministry, chanting slogans and holding signs demanding involvement in the Afghan government and calling for constitutional law. Footage showed a brief confrontation between a Taliban guard and some of the women, and a man's voice could be heard saying, "Go away!" before chanting resumed... https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/03/asia/kabul-afghan-women-protest-intl/index.html Noor’s case will be a test for the authorities and for Pakistani society in more ways than one Pakistani professor Junaid Hafeez gets death sentence in blasphemy case HAMNA ZUBAIR - Qandeel Baloch is dead because we hate women who don't conform / When it comes to honour killing, Ind...