In an unique interview with The Media Line, expert Cheryl Benard protected her questionable essay, which ladies’s rights activists state whitewashes the Taliban’s gender apartheid policies
[Islamabad] Recently, the American political researcher Cheryl Benard released a post in The National Evaluation arguing that the countless Afghan refugees whose short-term legal security in the United States has actually just recently been withdrawed should not withstand going back to Afghanistan. In the post, released under the heading “Afghan Refugees Must Not Worry Repatriation,” Benard particularly attended to those critiquing United States policy shift from a feminist point of view, arguing that reports of ladies’s injustice in Afghanistan are overblown and cherry-picked.
The post was released on the day that the refugees’ Temporary Protected Status ended in the United States. Describing the choice to permit the status to lapse, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem stated that “Afghanistan has a better security scenario, and its supporting economy no longer avoids them from going back to their home nation.”
Benard echoed those beliefs in her post, provoking speedy reaction. Lots of Afghan ladies’s rights groups and civil society companies released a letter contacting the International Wrongdoer Court (ICC) to start procedures versus Benard, implicating her of misrepresenting Taliban criminal offenses and helping the whitewashing of a routine extensively condemned for systemic gender-based injustice.
In the letter, which was dealt with to ICC, the United Nations, and the United States federal government, the companies highlighted the truth that Benard is the spouse of previous United States Unique Agent for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad.
” Ms. Benard’s participation is not restricted to her position as a scientist or analyst. It is straight connected to the popular political function of her other half,” the companies composed, connecting Benard’s views to her other half’s function in working out the 2020 Doha Arrangement with the Taliban, which critics state assisted legitimize the group globally.
In an unique interview with The Media Line, Benard waited her remarks, mentioning that her views are based upon individual observation and expert know-how.
As a political researcher, danger expert, and veteran Afghanistan scholar, I shared my evaluation that Afghanistan is safe for refugees to return.
” As a political researcher, danger expert, and veteran Afghanistan scholar, I shared my evaluation that Afghanistan is safe for refugees to return,” she stated, explaining a current go to where she saw ladies working and appearing in public without male guardians. She included that the United States federal government’s choice to permit Temporary Protected Status to lapse “was based upon the evaluation of offered realities.”
Benard, who explains herself in the post as a feminist, kept in mind that she favors ladies’s education and stated that rejecting women the right to an education is “unreasonable and undesirable.”
She firmly insisted that the return of Afghan exiles– consisting of informed specialists and activists– might assist improve the nation from within.
” I hope this can be changed by severe discussion– consisting of with the Taliban, who look for people’ return, acknowledgment, and raised sanctions– preferably covering female education and incomes,” Benard stated of the reaction to her essay.
When the Taliban was initially in power in between 1996 and 2001, the group implemented a stiff analysis of Islamic law, seriously limiting ladies’s rights– including their liberty of motion, access to education, work, health care, and public life– together with enforcing a stringent gown code. Because the group’s go back to power in 2021, many reports have actually emerged declaring prevalent human rights abuses, especially targeting ladies through harassment and curbs on education, work, and movement.
Fearing retribution and prosecution, countless Afghan people– consisting of previous authorities and ladies’s rights supporters– got away the nation. On Monday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stated that around 110,000 Afghans dealt with the danger of persecution if required to return.
” There are reporters, human rights activists, spiritual minorities, ethnic minorities, artists, vocalists, or some individuals who have actually operated in previous federal governments, or they are female-only households,” the UNHCR authorities included. The company has actually stated all returns ought to be voluntary, dignified, and sustainable.
In addition to the Afghan refugees presently remaining in Western nations, there are over 44,000 Afghans authorized for moving presently in Pakistan waiting for resettlement, according to Pakistan’s Foreign Workplace.
Amidst worries of a forced go back to Afghanistan, the companies that reacted to Benard’s post contacted the ICC to examine her function. They likewise contacted the organizations related to her to suspend or evaluate any associations that might have added to “legitimizing violent programs.”
They required legal action versus those complicit in the continued offense of their rights and required a worldwide hearing to analyze the function of “Western elites” in legitimizing the programs, especially in the context of Afghanistan.
” To advise Afghan ladies to ‘return and recover their rights’ under among the world’s most repressive programs is deeply insensitive,” Maria Noori, creator of the Afghanistan Women’s Light of Flexibility Motion, informed The Media Line.
Noori, a direct witness to the Taliban’s repression who is now residing in exile, stated she discovered Benard’s current post “not just deeply offending however seriously deceptive.” She stated that the post overlooks the experiences of countless Afghan ladies who have actually suffered under a routine that has actually “methodically removed ladies from public life, rejected us education, work, and liberty of motion”.
She kept in mind that such declarations as Benard’s “serve nobody however those who gain from silencing Afghan ladies, suppressing the Taliban, and weakening our require global justice and responsibility.”
Marzia Hashmi, a females’s rights activist who was put behind bars by Afghan unique forces in 2023, revealed surprise at Benard’s tip that Afghan ladies in exile ought to think about returning. She informed The Media Line that such a suggestion disregards the lived truths of ladies under Taliban control.
Women are disallowed from studying beyond the 5th grade, ladies are prohibited from hearing the voice of a complete stranger, and even rejected the right to have skylights in their cooking areas so they can not peek the outdoors world.
” Women are disallowed from studying beyond the 5th grade, ladies are prohibited from hearing the voice of a complete stranger, and even rejected the right to have skylights in their cooking areas so they can not peek the outdoors world,” she stated.
( In her post, Benard composed that even before the Taliban went back to power, “whole areas of the nation never ever had anything beyond the Taliban’s existing cutting-off point for women, lots of had no schools for women at all, and some had no schools whatsoever for anyone.” She likewise kept in mind that independent schools in Afghanistan are enabled to inform women of any ages.)
Natiq Malikzada, a London-based political expert and human rights scientist, condemned Benard’s essay as “more than false information.” “It runs the risk of providing a veneer of authenticity to a pattern of gender persecution in Afghanistan that human rights supporters think total up to gender apartheid,” he informed The Media Line.
The Taliban’s restrictions on women’ secondary education, female work, and ladies’s liberty of motion make up “persecution versus a recognizable group” performed as part of a state-like policy, in offense of Post 7 of the ICC’s Rome Statute, Malikzada stated. He included that require asylum hunters to return and challenge their oppressors echo rhetoric in some cases utilized by states to validate forced returns in offense of the 1951 Refugee Convention’s non-refoulement concept.
By mentioning Kabul coffee shops and fragrance stores as indications of normalcy, she provides the Taliban the optics they require to open frozen funds and look for acknowledgment, without genuine modification to their anti-women, anti-rights policies.
” By mentioning Kabul coffee shops and fragrance stores as indications of normalcy, she provides the Taliban the optics they require to open frozen funds and look for acknowledgment, without genuine modification to their anti-women, anti-rights policies,” he stated.
Giorgia Pietropaoli, a leading human rights activist and Afghan affairs skilled based in Italy, kept in mind that the danger of required repatriation locations thousands at restored danger– reporters, judges, legal representatives, trainees, teachers, and others who when served the Afghan state are all susceptible.
To declare that the Taliban support the wellness of Afghan ladies is to be complicit with a routine that has actually strongly removed them of their standard rights and continues to impose sweeping constraints, Pietropaoli informed The Media Line.
She advised the global neighborhood to raise its voice in uniformity with the ladies of Afghanistan, who deal with a day-to-day battle to safeguard one of the most standard human rights.
Momina Fatima, previous deputy head of Islamic research studies at Kabul University, protected Benard’s post in an interview with The Media Line.
All Afghan people, specifically ladies residing in the United States and European nations, ought to return home so they can safeguard future generations from what I view as the damaging impacts of Western way of lives and liberal worths.
” All Afghan people, specifically ladies residing in the United States and European nations, ought to return home so they can safeguard future generations from what I view as the damaging impacts of Western way of lives and liberal worths,” Fatima stated, explaining Afghanistan as safe, especially for ladies.
She stated that she has actually long been vital of United States policy on Afghanistan now credits American authorities for a “proper choice” concerning Afghan migrants.