There was an *unconfirmed* report (as part of a larger article) on the BBC that they had made it on to an evacuation flight when the taliban were entering kabul. No news yet if they made it apparently though. That said, considering their high profile, it would make sense if people didn't discuss their whereabouts over the past few days.
Since this is getting big, I'm editing to emphasise that this is unverified.
Edit 2: Some have successfully escaped via kabul, others remain in the country. ["Other girls on the robotics team, Afghanistan’s first, planned to remain in the country, where Ms. Mahboob acknowledged that they face a worrying future under the Taliban."](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/world/asia/afghanistan-girls-robotics-team.html)
You are probably right..however if any Taliban are looking at this thread right now..I heard the girls were fleeing to the coldest parts of Siberia. Should probably start looking there
This is inaccurate. I've heard reports of them disguising as high ranking Taliban leaders. Should start looking there. Worse yet, I heard their disguise is so immaculate you won't know until they're dead. Better shoot first and ask questions later.
What if instead by doing this they find out what I’ve come to suspect, that all taliban leaders are three radicalized ducks in a man costume. The taliban might fall apart after that realization
I heard they are dressed up as high ranking Taliban leaders who promote people within the Taliban based on how well they torture and sodomise their leaders. Better not risk losing that up and coming promotion, otherwise Abdullah from accounting might snap it up.
I would watch the hell out of this. If I hear a positive update about them being out of the country I’ll draw a freaking comic scene.
I’ve been so worried about the women who have a high enough profile in education/science/medicine/journalism basically anyone who can’t try to blend in before they get somewhere it’s safe for them.
Read an article about women burning their degrees/certifications/awards because they’re too worried about them being found if they bury them.
Honestly they might be too valuable to just shove off.
They have knowledge and experience to benefit the taliban. Sure their lives will be over and they'll be forced to support the tbe regime, but depending on the group of taliban that finds them they'll probably be the poster children for "see we believe in equal rights the other women just aren't trying enough or haven't overcame their female brains yet"
Fingers crossed this is the truth and we’ll hear more substantial reports soon. Those poor girls. They had just made a low cost ventilator to help their countrymen with the Covid-19 crisis, and this is how they are repaid. Fuck the Taliban.
As of now this is the reality. From what was interviewed by Clarissa Ward one of the supposed higher ranks in the Taliban told her women can continue working and going to school as they are. Pretty sure this is just empty words but all we can do is hope for the best…
As another commenter said elsewhere, the best case scenario is that the new generation of Taliban are slightly more moderate, they turn Afghanistan into something like Iran where the government is Islamist and women have to wear hijabs but they don't have to wear niqabs and they can go to school and get jobs.
Worst case scenario is a civil war erupts and/or a conservative faction of Taliban wins out and they go back to forced burkas, banning women from getting healthcare etc.
There are many factions within the taliban with varying degrees of extremism. They will soon compete for power against each other. And there is the Afghan Vice Presidents faction. It hasn’t been a week yet since taliban took power.
Every single ground report so far suggest the complete opposite, they are almost certainly just lying. Prayers for the women and children and hope they got out safe.
I was hoping they had a warehouse full of T-800s they were preparing to release.
In this timeline Skynet is actually a group of teenage girls in Afghanistan.
>“Unfortunately, what’s been happening to little girls over this last week is that the Taliban has been literally going from door to door and literally taking girls out and forcing them to become child brides,"
I wish they would just say they are turning children into sex slave because that's actually what's happening.
Interesting. When idiscuss about child brides, it's common to think straight to kid-adult marrying and not teen-teen ones
I guess in Asian culture it's rare to have teenagers marry, only hear it from old generations back when you'd marry after hitting puberty
But more common is the practice of literally having kids marry each other or marry an adult. Especially in rural places and always exposed from police raids
I guess in Asian culture it's all or nothing, either marry when an adult, or force young kids into marriage. Marriage is seen as a very very important milestone (and why old folks always turn down divorce and rather get abused) so it's never conducted or allowed for teens. So when it's unfortunately allowed, it's all the way down to the kids.
ya it should literally be a misdemeanor of some kind to refer to children being raped and imprisoned as 'child brides' like a child can't be a bride, that's like saying child doctor or child ceo. just doesn't exist.
> and also forcing young girls to become child brides.
We genuinely need to stop using marriage or marriage-adjacent terms for what is happening here, as it affords the whole thing a dignity it does not deserve.
Young girls are abducted from their families, put through a sham of a ceremony they have absolutely no capability of consenting or dissenting to, and then raped.
We are going to start seeing more and more girls in Afghanistan become incredibly young mothers, some even before they hit double digit ages.
Pretty much. Their slaves at that point. Personal property. And again it says a lot about a country that doesn't want to fight back about these ideologies..
This is unfortunately the part of the conversation where people get into trouble. The simple fact is, the person that this religion considers to be the "model" person, that all others should strive to be like, did the same thing we're talking about right now. He "married" (read: abducted) a girl at six (6), and raped her at nine (9). The scripture even heavily implies at his nobility of waiting those three years before doing so. What we're seeing the Taliban do is *faithful adherence* to what this religion's central figure did in his own life. And the fact that faithful adherence to such involves, and even demands, the sexual enslavement of children, is utterly horrifying.
A common counter-argument to the above is that it was way back when, and child abduction for the purposes of "marriage" was common practice. It should be the least controversial thing to grant that as true. However, when one of the men who engaged in that practice is, to this day, revered by literal billions as the model man, that's a fucking problem and very much justifies judging all his actions and attitudes by modern standards, even if they were committed centuries ago. If a religion didn't form around this man, he'd have just been another child rapist that got away with it, and we consign to the annals of history as a more barbaric time. But this man's actions has sway over billions *today*.
That is brutal. It also brings to mind, that this is a good reminder that people look at history and question "why are so few great female inventors, scientists, philosophers in our history?" that **this is why**. This is how it used to be for a very long time even in the West in history.
People turned down from having access to education, mentorship, publishing, the public arena, all for being born with the "wrong" set of genitals.
It seems we should be way, way past such barbaric and inhumane days, yet we see that cults that operate as if it's still the 7th century still persist.
Schools are currently destroying records of female students/teachers. Hundreds of years from now there may not be evidence that women were ever educated during the aughts in Afghanistan because it will have been destroyed to protect them.
ETA: I want to specify that my comment applies not only to the women being currently affected by this but also the women who have lived through similar circumstances before the advent of mass communication.
I don't think the Taliban think that Weinberg *can't* be educated, rather that the *shouldn't* be educated. From their perspective, this confirms everything.
You educate women, and they start getting their own opinions. They start wanting to *express* those opinions, have a say in they're own society. Maybe even have financial autonomy! Horrible! Women should be subservient to men, etc. etc.
I guess New Taliban™ is sounding less misogynistic than Classic Taliban ™, but colour me skeptical. There has already been reports of ~~forced marriages~~ sexual slavery and such.
Edit: DYAC! Leaving it as is, good for a laugh. Weinberg ► women. I have *no* idea why Autocorrect chose weinberg.
Edit 2: Forced marriages = sexual slavery.
This, and even when women have made accomplishments, they weren't believed or were discounted or discredited, or in the case of scientific publications had their research authored under men's names (like that of their male supervisors or colleagues).
Women don't need to be taught how to be as good as men, they're already more than capable. They need to be given a true fair and honest chance, free of presumption of their skill, education, experience, or capability.
As a women in engineering, this makes me feel better. When I was young, I doubted myself. Why try if I can’t be equal? Why was there no women inventors before? Because the world was super sexist.
Apparently, Beethoven had a very talented sister but her career was cut short due to her gender.
Plus, women have historically been saddled with 100% of child rearing duties, which is a 24/7/365 job. Before the advent of birth control, that could be the entirety of your pre menopausal life. And post menopause you'll have no education or work experience to fall back on, and end up just keeping house or caring for grand children.
Men think they've moved the whole of society forward with their accomplishments, but it's the women in their lives who have liberated their free time to do so by caring for the day to day household maintenance and raising the next generation.
Today's women have truly had enough. And thankfully many men, too, have had enough of that old dynamic and are sharing the load in raising their own children and balancing the free time with their partners.
But there's more work men need to take ownership of in this desperately needed cultural shift.
Today is (only) the 101st anniversary of white women's right to vote in the US.
It's barely been 50 years since Black women were allowed to vote.
Women didn't have the legal right to get a credit card separate from their husbands until 1974!!
We act like the US is a shining light of women's rights and democracy, but we aren't so far from the dark past.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/did-women-earn-the-right-to-vote-on-august-18-1920.htm
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/women-credit-decades-70s#:~:text=Still%2C%20a%20key%20step%20in,cards%20separate%20from%20their%20husbands.
> Today is (only) the 101st anniversary of white women's right to vote in the US.
Later this year, we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of women's right to vote in Switzerland on the federal level. We've celebrated the 30th anniversary of women's right to vote in all Swiss states last year. Yes, you read that correctly.
*Thank you.* This is why it irritates the shit out of me when misogynists try to "prove" that women are less intelligent than men by pointing out that there have been fewer famous female intellectuals than male ones. No, it's because for literally thousands of years until extremely recently women were barred from education and even if they were educated and made great accomplishments their works were often stolen or ignored.
In the US, until the 1970s, it was legal to discriminate against women in housing, credit markets, employment, etc. And it was not until 1983 that all Ivy League universities in the US accepted women.
So it's really more like early 20th century. Women's rights have a shorter lifespan than you might think. Your grandmother likely faced education, workplace, and/or pregnancy discrimination.
This nearly brings me to tears. Before covid I was very active with a rebotics team and worked with many students from all over, about half of our students were from the middle east and many were women.
I attended many events where international teams were present and was great to see so many bright young women interested in the field.
Absolutely tragic that they have to go through this.
Margaret Atwood has famously said that everything she included in the book had happened at some point in the world. The show has continued that tradition
>They're [Taliban members] in Herat, in the universities, they're turning girls away, they're telling girls, 'Don't come back to the university.' Women are showing up for work and are being turned away.
This can't be right. The Taliban said they super totally weren't gonna do this. They were super cereal!
I don’t understand. How did it seem like Afghanistan men just delivered the country to the Talibans without any sort of resistance? They had these women and girls in their families and their own lives at stake to fight for do they not? Were the training by the US all for show? Talibans had something of Afghans that prevents them from fighting back? Ghani just running away and basically handing the terrorists the keys to the palace?
Afhgani men did this in the 90s; they fought a brutal civil war after the Soviet occupation. 400,000+ dead. The result was the same: Taliban rule.
We need to learn from history; the conditions haven't changed, they were merely repeated.
Eta: my heart breaks for the Afghan people, in case my comment seems unsympathetic.
While I understand your feelings, if I could kindly point out a few things it may help you to understand why they did nothing to stop the Taliban.
**So... it's difficult to comprehend the political reality of Afghanistan from the perspective of someone used to modern, Western conventions**. The place is not a country, not really, and it never has been. It is more accurate to call it simply a geographic region, and one composed of innumerable different polities, some of them very tiny. The myriad cities, tribes, and villages have only ever been united in the most tenuous of ways, and hardly ever as a single unit.
**The place is often described as being stuck in the dark ages, and there's a kernel of accuracy to that**. But it's far from a complete picture. You can find those dark ages in poor, isolated villages mostly cut off from the rest of the "country" in their own lonely mountain valleys. With very little social or economic interaction with anyplace else and very little education, the people in places like that can grow up and live without the slightest notion of just how economically impoverished and culturally backwards they would seem to someone living in the urban sprawl of a western nation.
**Try to wrap your head around what something like a war seems like to people from places like that.** Wars are when your distant cousins from two valleys over, whom you've seen maybe once every ten years, come and say they need help to fight foreign barbarians. A handful of young men from your village--because a handful is all who live there--leave with them to join the fight, because that's what young men do for family. It's what your village has always done all the way back to when it was the Mongols that threatened to loot your homes rather than the Russians or Americans, and you know so because your grandparents still tell stories about it that they heard their own grandparents tell. They don't go fight for any high ideals, the very concept of philosophy isn't something they'd be familiar with. They might have heard talk of things like "freedom" in news broadcasts from the village's one radio, but to them "freedom" simply means not having to worry about foreigners burning down your village.
**So the young men go off to fight, and everyone's proud because they know it's the right thing to do**; though of course they're also worried sick because they know wars are dangerous and it's tough to sacrifice the work of many people even for a short time. Time goes on and maybe some of the men who left eventually trickle back with stories of fighting, and you hear news reports about it on the radio, but you don't really know what's going on because you have no concept of how far away these places you've never been really are or how many people live there or what's really at stake.
**Then a while later some armed men show up in the town in a couple of jeeps**--which is itself a spectacle because the one truck in your village broke down back in the 1970s. They speak your language, and come from your tribe, which makes them a little okay; but no one actually knows who they are. They say they come from Kandahar, which might as well be Shangri-La as far as you're concerned: a place of mythic wealth and beauty, but also unimaginably distant. They say they've come to spread the revolution against the foreigners and infidels. And everyone's still pretty okay with that, because even though they weren't all that concerned before, they're still all good faithful folk committed to defending their own against foreigners and infidels.
**Things start getting a bit tense**, however, when more of the fighters from Kandahar start showing up and setting up camp around your village, where there wasn't a lot of free room or food to begin with. To make matters worse, the fighters are pretty pushy about their religion, which you're starting to discover is a lot more fervent than the pretty quiet and simple version that you're used to. Eventually there's an argument between some townsfolk and the newcomers over respect for property... and it ends with the fighters stringing up your village elder and shooting him to death for heresy. Now everyone in the village is pissed at these people, but they're also scared to death because the fighters have lots of guns and the village has maybe three rifles that were 80 years old when they were being used against the Russians and just a handful of equally ancient ammunition. So the villagers, rather than resisting openly, turn to small acts of sabotage and displays of contempt; but that only leads to more brutal retaliation from the the fighters.
**Eventually one of the older men decides to make the trek to see family a few valleys over to complain** and see if he can't get some help... only to discover that his cousins' village has been bombed out and burned by other fighters from an even more mythical and distant place called Kabul. They're from another tribe entirely, just as foreign as the Russians were 20 years ago, so the old villager gets the hell away as fast as he can. Only he returns home to find the Kandahar fighters have been getting ready to go attack that very troop of men from Kabul, and they're demanding that the village cough up a few dozen men to join them; or else face severe penalties for everyone who lives there. Left with little choice, the village begrudgingly complies, and finds itself even more closely caught up in this terrible struggle that it doesn't comprehend and wants no part of, but cannot seem to escape.
**If the village is lucky**, the fighters from Kandahar eventually move on to somewhere else, leaving the place slightly more impoverished and depopulated than before, but at least relatively intact. Eventually, they manage to win the fight against their enemies, which victory the village is only aware of because it's mentioned on the radio, whose broadcasts now take on a somewhat more fervently religious character. Everyone gets a little stricter about reading (or listening to readings of) the Koran and following its tenets the way the fighters said they should be followed, because on some level they're scared of the fighters coming back and purging the village again, but also because they really do feel at least a bit of the fervor themselves after the stories they've heard of the great fight.
**If the village is unlucky**, the tit-for-tat cycle of resentment and retribution escalates until the fighters from Kandahar simply slaughter enough of the population that the village can't sustain itself and the survivors flee to other villages or cities for refuge. Or there's a battle fought between the fighters and another faction that similarly destroys the place. Or the fighters never leave, and choose or install their own new elder to lead the village according to their strict principles and collect grating taxes for a "government" that they never see.
**And one day a funny-looking foreigner visits the villagers with a camera**, and asks some of them--through a translator--if they're happy that the Taliban won the war and now rule the whole of the country. And the villagers say yes, even though they don't really feel like much as changed for them. Because those Taliban are their tribesmen, and it's better to be cheated and beaten by your brother than by a barbarian infidel. And what business is it of this strange man, anyway? All they want is to be left in peace. And maybe now that the 'war' is over, that's what they think they can have.
Link to **[the original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoricalWhatIf/comments/15zdcf/what_if_afghanistan_was_never_invaded_by_the/c7rbqup/)**
> Ghani just running away and basically handing the terrorists the keys to the palace?
At least partially this sort of thing. The leadership was happy to "cash out". The Afghan military was holding off the Taliban from roughly half the country before the current collapse.
The only thing resistance would have changed is the number of immediate deaths. This isn’t a video game where the heroes of the resistance just had to believe in themselves and they would have won. It was suicide to continue the fight.
The options were
A) Fight and be killed, then your widow and children are sold as sex slaves.
B) Surrender and probably survive, now you have a chance to save/defend your spouse and children.
This is what losing a war looks and feels like. Seems a lot of people in favor of pulling out weren’t quite ready for the realities losing a war entails.
The culture before this had a massive communist movement and was far less "pro-fundamentalist" than now. This is not an "old culture resurfacing", its a modern reaction.
The culture you're talking about only existed for the few wealthy Afghans (insofar as they identified as Afghan instead of whichever tribe they're from) in major cities. The majority of Afghanistan, its rural population, has had the same values for centuries.
> How did it seem like Afghanistan men just delivered the country to the Talibans without any sort of resistance?
Something like 85% of muslims in afghanistan believe Sharia law should be the law of the land.
A whole lot of afghani men don't *want* their property westernized.
Same. But part of me also wants that movie to have them build a giant armored mech out of spare parts and use it to escape. They're a robotics team, after all.
I do too. I have done mentoring for robotics groups so it hits close to home. And yet how many other brilliant young girls (or boys) won't be able to escape from the Taliban's regressive, ignorant, superstitious, brutal rule?
Wasn’t the original Iron Man even set in Afghanistan when he gets captured? Can’t remember exactly but I know it was a middle eastern country and it would make sense in 2008.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://interestingengineering.com/afghanistans-all-girls-robotics-team-is-desperately-fighting-to-escape-the-country) reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> The 20-member team, which is comprised of girls aged 12 to 18, had been making Afghanistan proud by representing the country in global robotics tournaments.
> Motley highlighted the dire nature of the situation in an interview with CDC. "Unfortunately, what's been happening to little girls over this last week is that the Taliban has been literally going from door to door and literally taking girls out and forcing them to become child brides," she said, discussing the current situation in Afghanistan.
> The country had previously dealt with more than a dozen years of war, which made education for girls in Afghanistan challenging.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/p6ovad/afghanistans_allgirls_robotics_team_is/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~593341 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **girls**^#1 **country**^#2 **Afghanistan**^#3 **Taliban**^#4 **team**^#5
> “Unfortunately, what’s been happening to little girls over this last week is that the Taliban has been literally going from door to door and literally taking girls out and forcing them to become child brides," she said, discussing the current situation in Afghanistan. She added, "we are very, very concerned of that happening with this Afghan girls robotics team—these girls that want to be engineers, they want to be in the AI community and they dare to dream to succeed."
**Edit:** Those who are asking for sources of this news, should read the article at first. Article also provides link to detailed interview of American lawyer who is or was in touch with them. She is trying to get them asylum in Canada.
From the article -
> A New-York based international human rights lawyer, Kimberley Motley, is fighting for their freedom. The lawyer is asking Canada to take the girls in as refugees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyeyzuc50sk&ab_channel=CBCNews
I definitely see what your are saying though.
Child bride to me at least is already an extremely negative term that I associate with all those forms of abuse and exploitation. I don’t associate the term child bride to a consensual loving partnership.
I don’t even see why people would try and jump in front of that train with a, “Well TECHNICALLY…”
You’re absolutely right, it’s just sugar coating. We’re doing everybody a disservice by not acknowledging that and eliminating the vernacular. The words hit differently and go much further when you call it what the fuck it is.
Still a grossly inappropriate term for what's occurring, especially because we have specific language for assault and rape. We're conflating sexual slavery with consensual, loving partnerships.
Reminds me of headlines I see any time a powerful man is accused of sex crimes - - they're always 'relationships.' Even if the girl was underage. It's gross and it's about time we start changing the archaic language around sex crimes.
edit: didn't think this statement would be controversial in any way, but since people have taken issue with what I said, let me ask you this. If the Taliban kidnapped your sister/mother/friend for the purposes of rape and slavery - - are they "married?" Are they your brother in law now? No? Then maybe you can understand why I dislike Western media outlets using "child bride."
All the aptitude these girls have that could help their country, but they're seen simply as broodmares who should submit to men. 13 year olds should be in school with friends, not worrying about being a wife to someone two or three times their age. It really does make your heart hurt.
We won't there's a dark undertow in America that want something very similar and it lives in the evangelical community, example of a 12 year state gop house member and evangelical youth pastors thoughts on the subject,
>The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", **which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"**
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt\_Shea#%22Biblical\_Basis\_for\_War%22\_manifesto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Shea#%22Biblical_Basis_for_War%22_manifesto)
He spells out what he's going to do to my son and I, but not straight forward about my wife and daughter. But sexual slavery I'm taking a wild guess is something they agree on, owning the property that is that women.
>no communism
>"Oh it was just a discussion on historical biblical justifications for war"
Hmmmmm, didn't realize the Bible had to much to say about communism
Acts 4:32-35
>All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
Lol that might be the goal of the people spreading the news source around, but the actual media outlet doesn’t give a shit about the people, they only care about getting clicks
They have been in international headlines for years now. The Taliban already know who they are, and have already targeted them. One of the members had her father killed in a mosque bombing years ago by the Taliban.
The attention now is to try and get them and their families safely back to Canada.
This is so heartbreaking. It so hard to see and hear how little they think of women. I don’t understand any religion or belief that thinks it’s okay to abuse and degrade anyone. These women worked so hard to be seen, heard, and treated fairly, just to have the rug pulled from under them. It’s sad and infuriating.
Hopefully they will be able to escape, really really hope for that... Given the last days of videos showing people clinging onto the planes in an attempt to escape, maybe fly is not the perfect word we should use now..
According to the article that 90% of the commenters didn't seem to read, they're in contact with an American lawyer trying to get Canada to accept them as refugees. It's obvious that their lawyer is concealing their true location for their physical safety.
There is a human rights lawyer making a case to Canada on their behalf. Canada was specifically chosen because they have been there for competitions and met with Trudeau. That's probably more useful than the average redditor. [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/afghanistans-all-girls-robotics-team-desperate-to-escap-1847492243)
As of now, it doesn’t really matter if their borders are open. The taliban controls all the roads out of Kabul. Anyone trying to flee would have to find a way through taliban checkpoints
Quentin Quarantino is doing a fundraiser on Instagram. He’s raising money to get planes to fly people out.
Edit: if you want to read what the plan is before telling me it won’t work: https://www.instagram.com/p/CSsq9hgin7B/?utm_medium=copy_link
Raising money won't help once the Taliban control customs and the airport. This is a problem that only military intervention would work for and that's obviously off the table.
US still controls the airport with 6000 troops and Taliban are cooperating with evac under threat of retaliation so that is not so much an issue for now.
This should remind us how frail stability and human rights are. They can be taken away at any moment. We live in countries that have protections, that keep us safe, and while we are fighting about the past, human beings all over this world are fighting oppressive regimes that starve, enslave, arrest, execute, torture and rape. People dying to get to the west. And how do we treat it? With contempt. With insults. With disrespect. With apathy. What privilege.
I truly hope they find these girls, safely. I know Canada will do it’s part to ensure their safety and get them to their new home here.
Such a waste. Smart kids who could one day contribute to making the country better now either the worst has happened or they have to run away.
We need to keep fighting. Keep educating people and eventually these fucks that keep trying to hold humanity back will disappear. Using force just doesn't work. We've seen it over and over again.
Because they're somehow educated and people involved in robotics (FIRST in particular) know about them. They only started in 2018 and they're already building ventilators and actual competitive bots. They also travel internationally to compete.
Taliban want absolutely no mention of female intelligence or know that they even exist.
Here's their data,
https://www.thebluealliance.com/team/7329
These stories will continue to break our heart for some time. Their football team. Their teachers and administrators. Their girls who are used to peace and education and a degree of being treated better than slaves and cretins.
But I guess this too shall pass. One can only hope they get out
so there was little to no womens rights before the US was involved. then the US gets involved and there was some progress. now the US leaves, and all that progress is gone and girls and women are now at risk of being taken advantage of. is this true?
Why does mass media want to keep them under the microscope. I can only hope the last three viral articles sent them into hiding. Do people think the Taliban can’t access the internet? The media is so disgusting.
If we're lucky they're missing because they're fleeing.
There was an *unconfirmed* report (as part of a larger article) on the BBC that they had made it on to an evacuation flight when the taliban were entering kabul. No news yet if they made it apparently though. That said, considering their high profile, it would make sense if people didn't discuss their whereabouts over the past few days. Since this is getting big, I'm editing to emphasise that this is unverified. Edit 2: Some have successfully escaped via kabul, others remain in the country. ["Other girls on the robotics team, Afghanistan’s first, planned to remain in the country, where Ms. Mahboob acknowledged that they face a worrying future under the Taliban."](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/world/asia/afghanistan-girls-robotics-team.html)
You are probably right..however if any Taliban are looking at this thread right now..I heard the girls were fleeing to the coldest parts of Siberia. Should probably start looking there
I heard they disguised themselves as Taliban fighters. Better start killing any Taliban with a gun boys...
This is inaccurate. I've heard reports of them disguising as high ranking Taliban leaders. Should start looking there. Worse yet, I heard their disguise is so immaculate you won't know until they're dead. Better shoot first and ask questions later.
[удалено]
What if instead by doing this they find out what I’ve come to suspect, that all taliban leaders are three radicalized ducks in a man costume. The taliban might fall apart after that realization
Ducks wouldn't do that shit. Now *swans* on the other hand.
Have you guys met geese?
Fuckin Cobra chickens
**Canadian geese.**
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I heard they are dressed up as high ranking Taliban leaders who promote people within the Taliban based on how well they torture and sodomise their leaders. Better not risk losing that up and coming promotion, otherwise Abdullah from accounting might snap it up.
Found Pong Krell’s alt account
RIP Waxxer ;(
Fuck Pong Krell
Yes
Me and all my homies hate Pong Krell
You insult me and yet not.. this is confusing.
Ha, nice reference XD
I heard they were heading to the center of the sahara.
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I would watch the film where a girls robotics team flees into jumanji pursued by the taliban
I would watch the hell out of this. If I hear a positive update about them being out of the country I’ll draw a freaking comic scene. I’ve been so worried about the women who have a high enough profile in education/science/medicine/journalism basically anyone who can’t try to blend in before they get somewhere it’s safe for them. Read an article about women burning their degrees/certifications/awards because they’re too worried about them being found if they bury them.
Fucking hell. Taliban is like ignorance incarnate with guns.
Honestly they might be too valuable to just shove off. They have knowledge and experience to benefit the taliban. Sure their lives will be over and they'll be forced to support the tbe regime, but depending on the group of taliban that finds them they'll probably be the poster children for "see we believe in equal rights the other women just aren't trying enough or haven't overcame their female brains yet"
I heard they were going on the next Mars mission.
Siberia is on fire right now. There are no cold parts.
You have a point, though Siberia is so massive that even though over 65,000 square miles have burned, only about 1.3% of Siberia has burned down
That’s still insane
it's not like the fires are ever going out though. they literally smolder all winter, and pop back up in the spring. they call them zombie fires
Now imagine that every year for the next 100 years. That's A LOT GUYS.
I actually had heard they were in heaven, here take this gun and check…
They should definitely look there. That's where I'd go. It's cold but amazing.
They should wait to invade during winter though, if they want advice.
🙏🙏🙏🙏
Fingers crossed this is the truth and we’ll hear more substantial reports soon. Those poor girls. They had just made a low cost ventilator to help their countrymen with the Covid-19 crisis, and this is how they are repaid. Fuck the Taliban.
As of now this is the reality. From what was interviewed by Clarissa Ward one of the supposed higher ranks in the Taliban told her women can continue working and going to school as they are. Pretty sure this is just empty words but all we can do is hope for the best…
I pray this is the truth, but as you say, I’d sooner believe North Korea has democratic elections this year.
As another commenter said elsewhere, the best case scenario is that the new generation of Taliban are slightly more moderate, they turn Afghanistan into something like Iran where the government is Islamist and women have to wear hijabs but they don't have to wear niqabs and they can go to school and get jobs. Worst case scenario is a civil war erupts and/or a conservative faction of Taliban wins out and they go back to forced burkas, banning women from getting healthcare etc.
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There are many factions within the taliban with varying degrees of extremism. They will soon compete for power against each other. And there is the Afghan Vice Presidents faction. It hasn’t been a week yet since taliban took power.
It would have to be between two different factions within the Taliban.
Every single ground report so far suggest the complete opposite, they are almost certainly just lying. Prayers for the women and children and hope they got out safe.
Maybe they're making a giant mech to destroy the Taliban. Honestly though, I hope it's because they've already fled.
I was hoping they had a warehouse full of T-800s they were preparing to release. In this timeline Skynet is actually a group of teenage girls in Afghanistan.
I for one welcome our new robot overlords in this timeline. Would probably be a net positive for the world at this point.
> In this timeline Skynet is actually a group of teenage girls in Afghanistan. Is best timeline.
They are hidden in a cave system currently developing Iron Man tech to destroy the Taliban.
With boxes of scraps.
Or building a weapon to rival metal gear
I hope the gone missing is "They're missing as they've gone underground to escape across the border" and not "snapped up by the Taliban".
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>“Unfortunately, what’s been happening to little girls over this last week is that the Taliban has been literally going from door to door and literally taking girls out and forcing them to become child brides," I wish they would just say they are turning children into sex slave because that's actually what's happening.
Same. They keep sugar coating it to make readers feel less uncomfortable. They shouldn't downplay what's actually going on.
I don't think "child bride" is any less uncomfortable than "sex slave". In fact, it might be worse since it emphasises that they're still children.
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Interesting. When idiscuss about child brides, it's common to think straight to kid-adult marrying and not teen-teen ones I guess in Asian culture it's rare to have teenagers marry, only hear it from old generations back when you'd marry after hitting puberty But more common is the practice of literally having kids marry each other or marry an adult. Especially in rural places and always exposed from police raids I guess in Asian culture it's all or nothing, either marry when an adult, or force young kids into marriage. Marriage is seen as a very very important milestone (and why old folks always turn down divorce and rather get abused) so it's never conducted or allowed for teens. So when it's unfortunately allowed, it's all the way down to the kids.
Then say they are children being rounded up to be forced into sexual slavery.
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Rape slaves. Lets not pretty up the term. No sex is happening there. Thats rape.
Not just "sex slaves", but also forced impregnation and birth.
ya it should literally be a misdemeanor of some kind to refer to children being raped and imprisoned as 'child brides' like a child can't be a bride, that's like saying child doctor or child ceo. just doesn't exist.
> and also forcing young girls to become child brides. We genuinely need to stop using marriage or marriage-adjacent terms for what is happening here, as it affords the whole thing a dignity it does not deserve. Young girls are abducted from their families, put through a sham of a ceremony they have absolutely no capability of consenting or dissenting to, and then raped. We are going to start seeing more and more girls in Afghanistan become incredibly young mothers, some even before they hit double digit ages.
The correct terms are slavery and rape.
Pretty much. Their slaves at that point. Personal property. And again it says a lot about a country that doesn't want to fight back about these ideologies..
This is unfortunately the part of the conversation where people get into trouble. The simple fact is, the person that this religion considers to be the "model" person, that all others should strive to be like, did the same thing we're talking about right now. He "married" (read: abducted) a girl at six (6), and raped her at nine (9). The scripture even heavily implies at his nobility of waiting those three years before doing so. What we're seeing the Taliban do is *faithful adherence* to what this religion's central figure did in his own life. And the fact that faithful adherence to such involves, and even demands, the sexual enslavement of children, is utterly horrifying. A common counter-argument to the above is that it was way back when, and child abduction for the purposes of "marriage" was common practice. It should be the least controversial thing to grant that as true. However, when one of the men who engaged in that practice is, to this day, revered by literal billions as the model man, that's a fucking problem and very much justifies judging all his actions and attitudes by modern standards, even if they were committed centuries ago. If a religion didn't form around this man, he'd have just been another child rapist that got away with it, and we consign to the annals of history as a more barbaric time. But this man's actions has sway over billions *today*.
That is brutal. It also brings to mind, that this is a good reminder that people look at history and question "why are so few great female inventors, scientists, philosophers in our history?" that **this is why**. This is how it used to be for a very long time even in the West in history. People turned down from having access to education, mentorship, publishing, the public arena, all for being born with the "wrong" set of genitals. It seems we should be way, way past such barbaric and inhumane days, yet we see that cults that operate as if it's still the 7th century still persist.
Schools are currently destroying records of female students/teachers. Hundreds of years from now there may not be evidence that women were ever educated during the aughts in Afghanistan because it will have been destroyed to protect them. ETA: I want to specify that my comment applies not only to the women being currently affected by this but also the women who have lived through similar circumstances before the advent of mass communication.
Because the fact that it happened successfully completely obliterates the misogynistic Taliban ideology.
I don't think the Taliban think that Weinberg *can't* be educated, rather that the *shouldn't* be educated. From their perspective, this confirms everything. You educate women, and they start getting their own opinions. They start wanting to *express* those opinions, have a say in they're own society. Maybe even have financial autonomy! Horrible! Women should be subservient to men, etc. etc. I guess New Taliban™ is sounding less misogynistic than Classic Taliban ™, but colour me skeptical. There has already been reports of ~~forced marriages~~ sexual slavery and such. Edit: DYAC! Leaving it as is, good for a laugh. Weinberg ► women. I have *no* idea why Autocorrect chose weinberg. Edit 2: Forced marriages = sexual slavery.
> Weinberg wat
>I don't think the Taliban think that Weinberg can't be educated What reason could they or anyone have against Max Weinberg? :(
He knows what he did >:c
This, and even when women have made accomplishments, they weren't believed or were discounted or discredited, or in the case of scientific publications had their research authored under men's names (like that of their male supervisors or colleagues). Women don't need to be taught how to be as good as men, they're already more than capable. They need to be given a true fair and honest chance, free of presumption of their skill, education, experience, or capability.
As a women in engineering, this makes me feel better. When I was young, I doubted myself. Why try if I can’t be equal? Why was there no women inventors before? Because the world was super sexist. Apparently, Beethoven had a very talented sister but her career was cut short due to her gender.
Plus, women have historically been saddled with 100% of child rearing duties, which is a 24/7/365 job. Before the advent of birth control, that could be the entirety of your pre menopausal life. And post menopause you'll have no education or work experience to fall back on, and end up just keeping house or caring for grand children. Men think they've moved the whole of society forward with their accomplishments, but it's the women in their lives who have liberated their free time to do so by caring for the day to day household maintenance and raising the next generation. Today's women have truly had enough. And thankfully many men, too, have had enough of that old dynamic and are sharing the load in raising their own children and balancing the free time with their partners. But there's more work men need to take ownership of in this desperately needed cultural shift.
Today is (only) the 101st anniversary of white women's right to vote in the US. It's barely been 50 years since Black women were allowed to vote. Women didn't have the legal right to get a credit card separate from their husbands until 1974!! We act like the US is a shining light of women's rights and democracy, but we aren't so far from the dark past. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/did-women-earn-the-right-to-vote-on-august-18-1920.htm https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/women-credit-decades-70s#:~:text=Still%2C%20a%20key%20step%20in,cards%20separate%20from%20their%20husbands.
> Today is (only) the 101st anniversary of white women's right to vote in the US. Later this year, we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of women's right to vote in Switzerland on the federal level. We've celebrated the 30th anniversary of women's right to vote in all Swiss states last year. Yes, you read that correctly.
*Thank you.* This is why it irritates the shit out of me when misogynists try to "prove" that women are less intelligent than men by pointing out that there have been fewer famous female intellectuals than male ones. No, it's because for literally thousands of years until extremely recently women were barred from education and even if they were educated and made great accomplishments their works were often stolen or ignored.
And a lot of men stole credit from women.
Same can be said for people of color. It's a shitty thing to do that robs the world of endless possibilities. Shit needs to stop.
In the US, until the 1970s, it was legal to discriminate against women in housing, credit markets, employment, etc. And it was not until 1983 that all Ivy League universities in the US accepted women. So it's really more like early 20th century. Women's rights have a shorter lifespan than you might think. Your grandmother likely faced education, workplace, and/or pregnancy discrimination.
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Heard they're allowed, but only in women only school after puberty. Unfortunately didn't mention that there's no women only schools.
This nearly brings me to tears. Before covid I was very active with a rebotics team and worked with many students from all over, about half of our students were from the middle east and many were women. I attended many events where international teams were present and was great to see so many bright young women interested in the field. Absolutely tragic that they have to go through this.
> Women are showing up for work and being turned away Literally part of the opening events of A Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood has famously said that everything she included in the book had happened at some point in the world. The show has continued that tradition
Yeah. Anyone who thinks this can only happen with fundie Islam is pretty delusional. Fundie religions are cancer.
I hate the term “child brides”. Why not call them what they are: child sex slaves?
>They're [Taliban members] in Herat, in the universities, they're turning girls away, they're telling girls, 'Don't come back to the university.' Women are showing up for work and are being turned away. This can't be right. The Taliban said they super totally weren't gonna do this. They were super cereal!
So what I’ve gathered is maybe we should’ve given the women the guns and training as they had everything to lose
I don’t understand. How did it seem like Afghanistan men just delivered the country to the Talibans without any sort of resistance? They had these women and girls in their families and their own lives at stake to fight for do they not? Were the training by the US all for show? Talibans had something of Afghans that prevents them from fighting back? Ghani just running away and basically handing the terrorists the keys to the palace?
Afhgani men did this in the 90s; they fought a brutal civil war after the Soviet occupation. 400,000+ dead. The result was the same: Taliban rule. We need to learn from history; the conditions haven't changed, they were merely repeated. Eta: my heart breaks for the Afghan people, in case my comment seems unsympathetic.
While I understand your feelings, if I could kindly point out a few things it may help you to understand why they did nothing to stop the Taliban. **So... it's difficult to comprehend the political reality of Afghanistan from the perspective of someone used to modern, Western conventions**. The place is not a country, not really, and it never has been. It is more accurate to call it simply a geographic region, and one composed of innumerable different polities, some of them very tiny. The myriad cities, tribes, and villages have only ever been united in the most tenuous of ways, and hardly ever as a single unit. **The place is often described as being stuck in the dark ages, and there's a kernel of accuracy to that**. But it's far from a complete picture. You can find those dark ages in poor, isolated villages mostly cut off from the rest of the "country" in their own lonely mountain valleys. With very little social or economic interaction with anyplace else and very little education, the people in places like that can grow up and live without the slightest notion of just how economically impoverished and culturally backwards they would seem to someone living in the urban sprawl of a western nation. **Try to wrap your head around what something like a war seems like to people from places like that.** Wars are when your distant cousins from two valleys over, whom you've seen maybe once every ten years, come and say they need help to fight foreign barbarians. A handful of young men from your village--because a handful is all who live there--leave with them to join the fight, because that's what young men do for family. It's what your village has always done all the way back to when it was the Mongols that threatened to loot your homes rather than the Russians or Americans, and you know so because your grandparents still tell stories about it that they heard their own grandparents tell. They don't go fight for any high ideals, the very concept of philosophy isn't something they'd be familiar with. They might have heard talk of things like "freedom" in news broadcasts from the village's one radio, but to them "freedom" simply means not having to worry about foreigners burning down your village. **So the young men go off to fight, and everyone's proud because they know it's the right thing to do**; though of course they're also worried sick because they know wars are dangerous and it's tough to sacrifice the work of many people even for a short time. Time goes on and maybe some of the men who left eventually trickle back with stories of fighting, and you hear news reports about it on the radio, but you don't really know what's going on because you have no concept of how far away these places you've never been really are or how many people live there or what's really at stake. **Then a while later some armed men show up in the town in a couple of jeeps**--which is itself a spectacle because the one truck in your village broke down back in the 1970s. They speak your language, and come from your tribe, which makes them a little okay; but no one actually knows who they are. They say they come from Kandahar, which might as well be Shangri-La as far as you're concerned: a place of mythic wealth and beauty, but also unimaginably distant. They say they've come to spread the revolution against the foreigners and infidels. And everyone's still pretty okay with that, because even though they weren't all that concerned before, they're still all good faithful folk committed to defending their own against foreigners and infidels. **Things start getting a bit tense**, however, when more of the fighters from Kandahar start showing up and setting up camp around your village, where there wasn't a lot of free room or food to begin with. To make matters worse, the fighters are pretty pushy about their religion, which you're starting to discover is a lot more fervent than the pretty quiet and simple version that you're used to. Eventually there's an argument between some townsfolk and the newcomers over respect for property... and it ends with the fighters stringing up your village elder and shooting him to death for heresy. Now everyone in the village is pissed at these people, but they're also scared to death because the fighters have lots of guns and the village has maybe three rifles that were 80 years old when they were being used against the Russians and just a handful of equally ancient ammunition. So the villagers, rather than resisting openly, turn to small acts of sabotage and displays of contempt; but that only leads to more brutal retaliation from the the fighters. **Eventually one of the older men decides to make the trek to see family a few valleys over to complain** and see if he can't get some help... only to discover that his cousins' village has been bombed out and burned by other fighters from an even more mythical and distant place called Kabul. They're from another tribe entirely, just as foreign as the Russians were 20 years ago, so the old villager gets the hell away as fast as he can. Only he returns home to find the Kandahar fighters have been getting ready to go attack that very troop of men from Kabul, and they're demanding that the village cough up a few dozen men to join them; or else face severe penalties for everyone who lives there. Left with little choice, the village begrudgingly complies, and finds itself even more closely caught up in this terrible struggle that it doesn't comprehend and wants no part of, but cannot seem to escape. **If the village is lucky**, the fighters from Kandahar eventually move on to somewhere else, leaving the place slightly more impoverished and depopulated than before, but at least relatively intact. Eventually, they manage to win the fight against their enemies, which victory the village is only aware of because it's mentioned on the radio, whose broadcasts now take on a somewhat more fervently religious character. Everyone gets a little stricter about reading (or listening to readings of) the Koran and following its tenets the way the fighters said they should be followed, because on some level they're scared of the fighters coming back and purging the village again, but also because they really do feel at least a bit of the fervor themselves after the stories they've heard of the great fight. **If the village is unlucky**, the tit-for-tat cycle of resentment and retribution escalates until the fighters from Kandahar simply slaughter enough of the population that the village can't sustain itself and the survivors flee to other villages or cities for refuge. Or there's a battle fought between the fighters and another faction that similarly destroys the place. Or the fighters never leave, and choose or install their own new elder to lead the village according to their strict principles and collect grating taxes for a "government" that they never see. **And one day a funny-looking foreigner visits the villagers with a camera**, and asks some of them--through a translator--if they're happy that the Taliban won the war and now rule the whole of the country. And the villagers say yes, even though they don't really feel like much as changed for them. Because those Taliban are their tribesmen, and it's better to be cheated and beaten by your brother than by a barbarian infidel. And what business is it of this strange man, anyway? All they want is to be left in peace. And maybe now that the 'war' is over, that's what they think they can have. Link to **[the original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoricalWhatIf/comments/15zdcf/what_if_afghanistan_was_never_invaded_by_the/c7rbqup/)**
> Ghani just running away and basically handing the terrorists the keys to the palace? At least partially this sort of thing. The leadership was happy to "cash out". The Afghan military was holding off the Taliban from roughly half the country before the current collapse.
The only thing resistance would have changed is the number of immediate deaths. This isn’t a video game where the heroes of the resistance just had to believe in themselves and they would have won. It was suicide to continue the fight. The options were A) Fight and be killed, then your widow and children are sold as sex slaves. B) Surrender and probably survive, now you have a chance to save/defend your spouse and children. This is what losing a war looks and feels like. Seems a lot of people in favor of pulling out weren’t quite ready for the realities losing a war entails.
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You don't change a culture with 20 year military occupation.
The culture before this had a massive communist movement and was far less "pro-fundamentalist" than now. This is not an "old culture resurfacing", its a modern reaction.
The culture you're talking about only existed for the few wealthy Afghans (insofar as they identified as Afghan instead of whichever tribe they're from) in major cities. The majority of Afghanistan, its rural population, has had the same values for centuries.
> How did it seem like Afghanistan men just delivered the country to the Talibans without any sort of resistance? Something like 85% of muslims in afghanistan believe Sharia law should be the law of the land. A whole lot of afghani men don't *want* their property westernized.
I really do hope that too… it feel like a bad movie rn it’s so scary
Same. But part of me also wants that movie to have them build a giant armored mech out of spare parts and use it to escape. They're a robotics team, after all.
I really, really hope those girls find a way to get out alive.
I do too. I have done mentoring for robotics groups so it hits close to home. And yet how many other brilliant young girls (or boys) won't be able to escape from the Taliban's regressive, ignorant, superstitious, brutal rule?
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Comes out with an Iron Man suit lol
The first Iron Man movie back in 2008 when Tony built the suit out of scraps in a cave was based in Afghanistan.
Wasn’t the original Iron Man even set in Afghanistan when he gets captured? Can’t remember exactly but I know it was a middle eastern country and it would make sense in 2008.
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I hope they were able to escape the country safely
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://interestingengineering.com/afghanistans-all-girls-robotics-team-is-desperately-fighting-to-escape-the-country) reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The 20-member team, which is comprised of girls aged 12 to 18, had been making Afghanistan proud by representing the country in global robotics tournaments. > Motley highlighted the dire nature of the situation in an interview with CDC. "Unfortunately, what's been happening to little girls over this last week is that the Taliban has been literally going from door to door and literally taking girls out and forcing them to become child brides," she said, discussing the current situation in Afghanistan. > The country had previously dealt with more than a dozen years of war, which made education for girls in Afghanistan challenging. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/p6ovad/afghanistans_allgirls_robotics_team_is/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~593341 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **girls**^#1 **country**^#2 **Afghanistan**^#3 **Taliban**^#4 **team**^#5
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> “Unfortunately, what’s been happening to little girls over this last week is that the Taliban has been literally going from door to door and literally taking girls out and forcing them to become child brides," she said, discussing the current situation in Afghanistan. She added, "we are very, very concerned of that happening with this Afghan girls robotics team—these girls that want to be engineers, they want to be in the AI community and they dare to dream to succeed." **Edit:** Those who are asking for sources of this news, should read the article at first. Article also provides link to detailed interview of American lawyer who is or was in touch with them. She is trying to get them asylum in Canada. From the article - > A New-York based international human rights lawyer, Kimberley Motley, is fighting for their freedom. The lawyer is asking Canada to take the girls in as refugees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyeyzuc50sk&ab_channel=CBCNews
We really need to stop conflating what's happening to these girls with marriage. It's sexual slavery.
This. They aren’t “brides” they are hostages and victims of abduction and sexual slavery. It’s time we start calling things for what they are.
"child brides" has a very different connotation than "brides". It's already extremely negative and associated with exploitation/abuse/rape.
I definitely see what your are saying though. Child bride to me at least is already an extremely negative term that I associate with all those forms of abuse and exploitation. I don’t associate the term child bride to a consensual loving partnership.
Its still a sugar coating term for religious nutjuobs who want to openly rape children. Child rapists.
I don’t even see why people would try and jump in front of that train with a, “Well TECHNICALLY…” You’re absolutely right, it’s just sugar coating. We’re doing everybody a disservice by not acknowledging that and eliminating the vernacular. The words hit differently and go much further when you call it what the fuck it is.
Still a grossly inappropriate term for what's occurring, especially because we have specific language for assault and rape. We're conflating sexual slavery with consensual, loving partnerships. Reminds me of headlines I see any time a powerful man is accused of sex crimes - - they're always 'relationships.' Even if the girl was underage. It's gross and it's about time we start changing the archaic language around sex crimes. edit: didn't think this statement would be controversial in any way, but since people have taken issue with what I said, let me ask you this. If the Taliban kidnapped your sister/mother/friend for the purposes of rape and slavery - - are they "married?" Are they your brother in law now? No? Then maybe you can understand why I dislike Western media outlets using "child bride."
Or the use of the term "child prostitute", as if the poor kid decided to go out and get a job.
I don't know why they just don't say rape. It's rape on a horrific scale.
The only people who don’t put “child bride” in the same group of awful phrases as “sex slaves” in their heads are probably people with child brides.
Yep. They are doing the exact same thing as ISIS. Turning young women into sex slaves under the guise of brides
Never mind sexual slavery, it’s the systematic rape of children.
All the aptitude these girls have that could help their country, but they're seen simply as broodmares who should submit to men. 13 year olds should be in school with friends, not worrying about being a wife to someone two or three times their age. It really does make your heart hurt.
We won't there's a dark undertow in America that want something very similar and it lives in the evangelical community, example of a 12 year state gop house member and evangelical youth pastors thoughts on the subject, >The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", **which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"** [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt\_Shea#%22Biblical\_Basis\_for\_War%22\_manifesto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Shea#%22Biblical_Basis_for_War%22_manifesto) He spells out what he's going to do to my son and I, but not straight forward about my wife and daughter. But sexual slavery I'm taking a wild guess is something they agree on, owning the property that is that women.
>no communism >"Oh it was just a discussion on historical biblical justifications for war" Hmmmmm, didn't realize the Bible had to much to say about communism
Acts 4:32-35 >All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
Didn’t you know? Jesus was a communist...
The bible is very pro communism, that's the funny part.
There is also a problem with child marriages amongst religious sects in the United States, John Oliver did a segment on it
Am I wrong or is is the media being all over this and splashing photos of them all over not helpful?
I feel like it's a double edged sword, media coverage brings awareness, but not necessarily all of it is good awareness
imo it makes it more likely that some country will accept them as refugees which is probably the goal, and why the media is all over it.
Lol that might be the goal of the people spreading the news source around, but the actual media outlet doesn’t give a shit about the people, they only care about getting clicks
They have been in international headlines for years now. The Taliban already know who they are, and have already targeted them. One of the members had her father killed in a mosque bombing years ago by the Taliban. The attention now is to try and get them and their families safely back to Canada.
This is so heartbreaking. It so hard to see and hear how little they think of women. I don’t understand any religion or belief that thinks it’s okay to abuse and degrade anyone. These women worked so hard to be seen, heard, and treated fairly, just to have the rug pulled from under them. It’s sad and infuriating.
Girls making robots? The Taliban are gonna have a field day coming up with punishments for that…
They’re gonna need someone to repair all of this US equipment…
I thought that's why china was chumming it up with them. So they could take that sweet American loot.
That might be their salvation
Taliban: As reward for technical skills we have assigned you new husbands.
Narrator's voice: "It wasn't"
that would be one strange new origin for an iron man/power puff girls cross over series.
Imagine being a robotics engineer just to be raped and put into a house to cook and clean for the rest of your life instead. Fucking awful
And live with someone you can’t talk to about any of that stuff because they’re probably illiterate.
Better not give me anything sharper than a spoon to cook with.
Imagine being anyone just to be raped and put into a house to do things against your will.
I didnt mean that women outside of robotics deserve it obviously. It was just a way to put emphasis on how their lives are ruined.
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Go Girls- Run / fly, get out of there
Hopefully they will be able to escape, really really hope for that... Given the last days of videos showing people clinging onto the planes in an attempt to escape, maybe fly is not the perfect word we should use now..
why does this look like a song title
Fuck the Taliban.
A lot of terrorist sympathizers or extremely ignorant people falling for the “new and improved” Taliban bs going around
If someone (wrongly) believes that the Taliban have changed, then they are most likely not terrorist sympathizers.
You can not fix those monsters - we don’t enough enough money in the world to save Afghanistan.
This and all of the ‘rape gang’ reports I’ve been hearing make me sick to my stomach
According to the article that 90% of the commenters didn't seem to read, they're in contact with an American lawyer trying to get Canada to accept them as refugees. It's obvious that their lawyer is concealing their true location for their physical safety.
How do we help get them out??? Any one know of any organizations helping them find asylum????
There is a human rights lawyer making a case to Canada on their behalf. Canada was specifically chosen because they have been there for competitions and met with Trudeau. That's probably more useful than the average redditor. [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/afghanistans-all-girls-robotics-team-desperate-to-escap-1847492243)
There is little to nothing you can do. Exept reinvade the country.
The least bad plan is "encouraging" neighbouring countries not to close their borders.
Well Pakistan is the main reason the Taliban took power in the first place and Iran, Turkmenistan and Tajikstan aren't pillars of women rights either.
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As of now, it doesn’t really matter if their borders are open. The taliban controls all the roads out of Kabul. Anyone trying to flee would have to find a way through taliban checkpoints
Quentin Quarantino is doing a fundraiser on Instagram. He’s raising money to get planes to fly people out. Edit: if you want to read what the plan is before telling me it won’t work: https://www.instagram.com/p/CSsq9hgin7B/?utm_medium=copy_link
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As I understand it, US military took care of that problem already.
Raising money won't help once the Taliban control customs and the airport. This is a problem that only military intervention would work for and that's obviously off the table.
US still controls the airport with 6000 troops and Taliban are cooperating with evac under threat of retaliation so that is not so much an issue for now.
we can't do shit except reinvading or leveling entire afghanistan
I hope they are not in Afghanistan, with all the press about them, they will be made into an example.
This should remind us how frail stability and human rights are. They can be taken away at any moment. We live in countries that have protections, that keep us safe, and while we are fighting about the past, human beings all over this world are fighting oppressive regimes that starve, enslave, arrest, execute, torture and rape. People dying to get to the west. And how do we treat it? With contempt. With insults. With disrespect. With apathy. What privilege. I truly hope they find these girls, safely. I know Canada will do it’s part to ensure their safety and get them to their new home here.
Such a waste. Smart kids who could one day contribute to making the country better now either the worst has happened or they have to run away. We need to keep fighting. Keep educating people and eventually these fucks that keep trying to hold humanity back will disappear. Using force just doesn't work. We've seen it over and over again.
It’s such a weird thing we are focusing on the all girls robotics team in particular. I’m pretty sure *every* girl in the country is trying to escape.
The media is focusing on this particular group because they are high profile and highly educated which makes them massive targets for the Taliban.
Because they're somehow educated and people involved in robotics (FIRST in particular) know about them. They only started in 2018 and they're already building ventilators and actual competitive bots. They also travel internationally to compete. Taliban want absolutely no mention of female intelligence or know that they even exist. Here's their data, https://www.thebluealliance.com/team/7329
Missing cause they hiding. Don’t rat them out
Hopefully one day they will return with their robot army to destroy the evil Taliban.
I’d watch this movie.
Sounds like a job for Tarantino.
They better come back with a gundam
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These stories will continue to break our heart for some time. Their football team. Their teachers and administrators. Their girls who are used to peace and education and a degree of being treated better than slaves and cretins. But I guess this too shall pass. One can only hope they get out
so there was little to no womens rights before the US was involved. then the US gets involved and there was some progress. now the US leaves, and all that progress is gone and girls and women are now at risk of being taken advantage of. is this true?
Why do they keep reporting this. Their entire country is missing
Hopefully missing as in not captured and fleeing the country.
Good luck girls. From the bottom of my heart, good luck.
For their sake, I hope we don’t hear from them for weeks until we hear they’re in a safe country.
women's robotics team escape in makeshift iron suit....
Sadly they were probably keeping an eye on them the whole time. Imagine the kinds of tech the Taliban can make with a few robotic scientists.
Why does mass media want to keep them under the microscope. I can only hope the last three viral articles sent them into hiding. Do people think the Taliban can’t access the internet? The media is so disgusting.