Convenience Big Store: The Taliban’s war on Afghan women

17 August, 2021

In the headlines

Cabinet ministers watched President Biden's unrepentant speech last night "in genuine disbelief", says Politico. He blamed Afghans for allowing the Taliban to overrun their country, saying they were not "willing to fight for themselves". Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab scrambled back from his five-star hotel in Crete to tell BBC Breakfast that the UK is creating a "bespoke arrangement" for Afghan refugees. New Zealand has gone into a three-day national lockdown because of a single case of coronavirus. A 58-year-old man in Auckland has been infectious since last Thursday.

Comment of the day

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The Taliban's war on Afghan women

The world told Afghan women it had their backs, says Ruth Pollard in Bloomberg. "It doesn't." A generation of women who had taken their place in society "are now watching that space shrink before their eyes". They entered life as lawmakers, local governors, doctors and teachers, working for two decades to create a civil society. Now the Taliban is going door to door in some areas, "compiling lists of women and girls aged between 12 and 45 for their fighters to forcibly marry". Schools and colleges are being forced to shut; businesses are being destroyed. Women are again being told they cannot work, study, dress as they please "or leave the house without a male escort".

Does the West really plan to talk to the Taliban as if it isn't murdering women and children? In 2001 George W Bush's wife, Laura, said: "The fight against terrorism is also the fight for the rights and dignity of women." Where is the West now? Civilian deaths are up 50%, and more women and children were killed in Afghanistan in the first half of 2021 than in any year since records began in 2009. Unless the international community acts, the US and its allies "will have made martyrs of the very women and children they had promised to protect".

Australia pays the price for its vaccine "strollout"

My adopted country, Australia, feels "like Putin's Russia", says Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun. In its futile battle for Zero Covid, the "Lucky Country" has become "LockDownUnder". As Britain returns to near-normal, Australia is staying shut until eight out of 10 are immune. "At the current rate of vaccinations, that won't be until next year at the earliest." Three key cities, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, are closed to each other and to outsiders. The economy is "creaking", and police riot squads and troops roam the streets to maintain order.

Keeping the borders closed has meant fewer than 1,000 Australians have died, compared with more than 130,000 people in Britain. Brilliant enough. But a golden opportunity to get 26 million people jabbed has been squandered. PM Scott Morrison insisted this was "not a race". His rollout "slowed to a strollout". Anti-vaxxers smeared AstraZeneca, of which there was plenty. Everyone wanted Pfizer, of which there was none. Thousands of Aussies are marooned overseas, barred from their own country. In a new twist, those who made it back have been told not to leave again. One stranded group has lodged a human-rights complaint with the UN. "It's the biggest failure of public administration I can recall," storms ex-PM Malcolm Turnbull. Australia has turned "into a gilded cage".

Inside politics

Relations between Boris Johnson and Joe Biden aren't "all sweetness and light", says Ben Riley-Smith in The Daily Telegraph. There are "genuine tensions" over Brexit, travel rules and the COP26 climate summit. They've chatted on the phone just twice this year – in the first seven months of 2020, Johnson and Donald Trump had seven calls. In a not-so-subtle metaphor, the $10,000 handmade bicycle given to the PM by Biden at the G7 meeting in June is now collecting dust in Whitehall. Presents worth more than £140 are verboten for government ministers.

Gone viral

Hedgehog influencers have taken over Instagram, says Noelle Mateer in Wired. Top of the hedgie tree is Mr Pokee, above, whose 1.9 million followers tune in to see him wearing tiny socks, visiting the Eiffel Tower and popping out of ice-cream cones. But the pet trend has a darker side. The Instagram stars tend to be African pygmy hedgehogs, half of which develop tumours by middle age. And 10% succumb to "wobbly hedgehog syndrome", which begins with loss of body control and ends in total paralysis.

Noted

In 2013, 25% more university students studied arts and humanities subjects than Stem (science, technology and maths). This year, however, the gap is just 1%. The driving force? Science obsessive Dominic Cummings, who was behind Michael Gove's "shock and awe" education reforms, which prioritised science subjects in the early 2010s, says Ed Dorrell in The Independent.

Snapshot

Eating in

The seven astronauts on the International Space Station, 408km above the Earth, are expecting a pizza delivery on Thursday, says Sky News. It's part of a 3,720kg shipment launched today from Virginia, which also includes apples, kiwis and a cheese smorgasbord. The world's longest terrestrial pizza delivery was 19,870km from New Zealand to Spain in 2006.

Snapshot answer

It's a Boeing 707 that's been turned into a restaurant in the West Bank city of Nablus. Palestinian twins Khamis and Ata al-Sairafi bought the decommissioned aircraft from an Israeli businessman for $100,000 in 1999. It took 13 hours to transport it on a giant truck from Israel to the West Bank. The twins stripped out the seats, put wooden floors into the cabin and added furniture. A Palestinian uprising in 2000 delayed their plans, but the restaurant is now ready for take-off.