Taliban brainwashing runs so deep that boys betray their mothers
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Afghan boys as young as ten are informing on their own mothers and sisters, encouraged by propaganda that has taken the Taliban’s assault on women’s freedoms deep into the home.
Since the group seized back power in Kabul almost four years ago they have passed more than a hundred edicts, most against women, barring them from parks, hair salons and many other places, and even from training as midwives. Afghanistan is the only nation on earth where girls are banned from school from the age of 11 and where women are officially prevented from working.
“We need to think about boys too and the influence of the messaging they are getting growing up seeing women treated as second-class citizens,” said Richard Bennett, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan.
“Women are telling me they’ve been disempowered not just in society but inside their own homes,” he added. “One woman told me, ‘I am surveilled by my own sons.’ Imagine, a little boy asking, ‘Mum, why aren’t you wearing hijab inside the house?’ or spying on his sisters.”
Boys are being encouraged to report female relations to the authorities if they are not covering their hair in the privacy of their own home, if they are attending secret schools or online classes, or if they are receiving visits from clandestine hairdressers and beauty stylists.
Content retrieved from: https://www.thetimes.com/world/asia/article/afghan-boys-brainwashed-taliban-betraying-mothers-nvf8gcj2c.
