The Labour party may well implode over the course of this year. One man who seems wholly unconcerned about this is Gordon Brown. He writes in Project Syndicate about
Ratcheting Up the Pressure on Afghanistan’s Gender Apartheid
This is because in pubs and working men's clubs across England's green and pleasant land, the hot topic for discussion is getting the Taliban to shave regularly and appoint more lesbians of colour to important offices of State.
Despite recent efforts to make gender apartheid an international crime
like being Jewish?
and to charge Afghanistan, countries have begun resuming relations with the Taliban regime.
Russia was the first, and so far is the only, country to fully recognize the Taliban regime. But the Chinese always maintained such relations. China counts in that part of the world. Most Central Asian countries have Ambassador level ties with Kabul.
The United Nations must accelerate efforts
it has zero influence.
to hold the Taliban accountable for its denial of girls’ and women’s rights, particularly their right to an education.
The Taliban can rely on the Russian and maybe also the Chinese veto. As for Field Marshal Munir, he may have his own problems with the Taliban but he is an Islamist. He doesn't think Pussy Riot should rule the neighbouring country.
Brown doesn't seem to realize that the West can no longer interfere in the internal affairs of non-Western countries.
EDINBURGH – As we enter a new year, 2.13 million primary-school-aged children remain out of school in Afghanistan, while 2.2 million girls have been excluded from secondary education since the Taliban’s 2021 ban, part of a broader campaign to erase women from public life.
Because women in public life were so useless the Taliban was able to take over with nary a shot fired once Biden cut and ran.
But despite this egregious abuse of human rights
Iraqi human rights were upheld very well by Blair & Bush- thinks nobody at all.
(which Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan,
he was appointed in 2022 after the Taliban took over. He is utterly useless.
has labeled “gender apartheid”),
what label does he give to Whites invading and occupying a Muslim country? Crusader apartheid?
countries have begun resuming relations with the Taliban regime.
The Taliban supports the Iranian regime. Pakistan too is cautiously supportive portraying the current unrest as purely economic in origin (though the hint is that it is a Jewish conspiracy).
The UN mission to Afghanistan noted in a 2025 human-rights report that the Taliban regime has intensified its restrictions on girls and women. International negotiations, including the Doha meetings hosted by the UN and Qatar, have made no progress on the matter, owing to the Taliban’s insistence on excluding women’s organizations from any talks and refusal even to discuss girls’ rights. Given this, it is hardly surprising that global mediators and the Taliban have not established a working group focused on female education.
Because it is a non-issue. If Afghan men want their daughters to get an education, that is what they will get. Don't mess with Afghan dudes.
Worse, restoring normal relations with the Taliban regime means relinquishing countries’ only leverage – international isolation, further diminishing prospects for restoring access to education.
Pakistan's attitude does matter but that has nothing to do with women's rights. China seems keen to develop the country because it has a lot of 'rare earth' and other such resources.
Last July, Russia became the first country to recognize the Taliban government and restore full diplomatic relations – without securing any concessions on girls’ and women’s rights.
How strange! Putin is well known for his support for Pussy Riot.
This followed the Russian Supreme Court’s decision in April to remove the Taliban’s classification as a terrorist organization, allowing for closer security cooperation against the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan (ISIS-K) that attacked Russia in 2024.
There you have it. If Afghanistan is useful in the fight against Islamic State, it will have de facto recognition from all and sundry.
China, for its part, accepted the credentials of an ambassador from the Taliban regime in January 2024, but stopped short of de jure recognition of the government, some key members of which remain under UN sanctions. That has not prevented China from pursuing closer economic ties with Afghanistan. Chinese companies have made significant investments in Afghanistan’s resource sectors. In August, Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Kabul to discuss the country joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
China matters. The UN matters only about as much as Gordon Brown matters.
After Afghanistan’s falling out with Pakistan, previously the Taliban’s biggest supporter, in October, India upgraded its ties with the regime, including by formally reopening its embassy in Kabul. That same month, Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, a sanctioned official who required a travel waiver from the UN Security Council, visited India and proclaimed that “the future of India-Afghanistan relations seems very bright.”
This is a useful bargaining chip against Islamabad.
Even more concerning, some European countries have increased engagement with the Taliban as part of a push to deport failed Afghan asylum seekers, lending credibility to the regime despite its persecution of girls and women. This stands in stark contrast to the efforts to make gender apartheid an international crime, which in Afghanistan’s case would imply imposition of further sanctions.
In other words, we should import lots of Afghans to rape girls in London so as to protest against girls not being allowed to go to school in Kabul.
In July, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Haibatullah Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, two senior Taliban officials charged with gender-based persecution.
That's all very well, but what if the Taliban retaliates by putting a price on the head of judges in the Hague? The US may impose financial sanction of judges, but jihadis will chop off your head.
Despite this progress, outside powers have become less interested in confronting the regime, appearing to justify this, at least in part, by weak internal opposition. Whereas India, Iran, and Russia backed forces that put the Taliban under real pressure in the 1990s, there is no organized armed opposition in Afghanistan this time around.
Pakistan is trying to ally with the Tajiks under Ahmed Masood.
The United States, however, has taken a hostile attitude toward Afghanistan, which President Donald Trump recently called “a hellhole” after an Afghan man killed two National Guard members. As a result, the administration has stopped issuing visas to Afghan nationals and vowed to re-examine every immigrant from Afghanistan who entered the country under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.
Trump can always send Afghans to some Central American or African shithole.
Up until now, negotiations at the UN on gender apartheid in Afghanistan have focused more on advocacy than on binding agreements, although there have been calls more recently to classify it as a crime against humanity.
Shitheads classifying shite don't matter if they have no military or economic power. China has both. If you can't pressurize China, you can't pressurize Afghanistan.
The 59th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in June-July 2025, debated this matter, and Bennett, the special rapporteur, has persistently advocated referring such crimes to the ICC, making girls’ rights a condition for engagement with the Taliban, and devising mechanisms to hold the regime accountable.
ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu & Gallant. Going after Jews is one thing. Go after Jihadis and they may suicide-bomb your ass. That is, if they can be bothered.
While no treaty amendments or sanctions have been adopted yet, the UN’s Sixth Committee (Legal) has advanced a draft global treaty targeting crimes against humanity.
Trump is putting the financial squeeze on the UN to get rid of this sort of useless shite.
Further discussions about the treaty, expected later this month, should consider codifying gender apartheid as a crime under international law.
Death should be outlawed under international law. I'm not getting any younger you know.
Such a move would bolster efforts to pressure the Taliban. The Security Council, to its credit, has sought to do this in its briefings, but the UN system currently lacks a unified enforcement strategy.
So does the Institute of Socioproctology which banned death three years ago. We don't have the money to arrest the Grim Reaper. Kindly contribute to our kick-start campaign.
Pressuring the Taliban to end its gender apartheid is not only a moral imperative; it is also a strategic one.
It is futile.
Afghanistan’s population has swelled to more than 42 million and is only growing: Iran and Pakistan forcibly returned 2.6 million Afghan refugees in 2025 alone. This huge influx has strained an already teetering economy. But escaping poverty will be impossible so long as the Taliban denies half its population the chance to be educated and join the labor force.
The solution is female only factories or piece-work done by women within their own homes.
Kanni Wignaraja, the UN Assistant Secretary-General and the UN Development Programme’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, put it best: “The primary issue facing Afghanistan’s economic future” is girls’ and women’s rights.
This is silly. The primary issue is transport infrastructure and investment in mineral & metal extraction.
“That is the issue,” she added, “that will kill the country, economically, socially, politically.”
More Afghan women should get degrees from Bryn Mawr & Princeton. Kanni herself is very productive- thinks nobody at all.
Education is not a panacea. Most educated Afghan men can't get jobs. That is an urgent problem for the regime. ISIS will happily recruit such people. Women simply don't matter though if you get paid a fat tax-free UN salary, it may be in your interest to pretend otherwise.
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