First, her dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed by the Taliban’s ban on education. Then her family set up a forced marriage to her cousin, a heroin addict. Latifa* felt her future had been snatched away.
“I had two options: to marry an addict and live a life of misery or take my own life,” said the 18-year-old in a phone interview from her home in central Ghor province. “I chose the latter.”
I’m really not sure how that is a valid summary of what I wrote. There were plenty of stories about the issues of US occupation of Afghanistan otherwise I wouldn’t know about them. What I meant was that these particular stories were pretty much absent other than abstractly from mainstream discourse and publication. There is a long history of Western powers causing destruction in Afghanistan. To name a few examples, I blame the imperialist behavior of the English and Russian governments in the 19th century, the Soviet and US government in the 80’s when we were training the Taliban to take their present form to resist Soviet invasion, various western NGOs which shipped weapons to Afghanistan in the guise of providing aide, and I blame the behavior of the American-lead coalition forces whose destruction once again cemented what I understand is the only unifying idea of the various Afghani peoples, which is to resist Western influence in their country. During this period I paid taxes in the United States instead of rebelling, so I am indeed partially to blame for their current state of affairs. For all these reasons I am encouraging people of Western nations, whose governments have done nothing but harm to Afghanistan for centuries despite Afghani objections for the entire period of time, not to support further intervention and therefore destruction in Afghanistan. I would like to see this issue resolved of course but it will have to be through methods which do not involve the West. I also think it’s our responsibility to accept refugees from Afghanistan since we caused the issues which they are fleeing.
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Sorry to offend you with my writing style. I’m not proofreading myself and am not encouraged to do so by your framing which is pretty needlessly disrespectful. I mentioned I did read about what was happening in Afghanistan otherwise I wouldn’t know about it. I did know about these events from alternative publications such as Al Jazeera or TYT at the time or else I wouldn’t now be advocating for us not to do exactly that again. What I am saying is that these stories were absent enough in mainstream publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, etc. that I recall the Afghanistan occupation flying under the radar for almost the entire time we occupied their country other than when we killed someone or if designated enemies did something particularly bad. I am seeing far more mainstream news stories about social problems in Afghanistan since the withdrawal than I have seen in those publications for decades which causes me to suspect the idea of continuing to mess with Afghanistan under any pretense is still an issue.
Hopefully you are able to address what it is that’s really bothering you. I’m finished.