The latest hackings, stabbings, and loppings of the waste, fraud, and abuse that plagues the sprawling federal bureaucracy.
Afghan women studying abroad on the USAID dime could face severe punishment now that their scholarship funding has been cut, human rights groups are warning.
Via NBC News (emphasis added):
A group of more than 80 Afghan women who fled the Taliban regime to study in Oman say they are at risk of imminent deportation to Afghanistan after their U.S.-funded scholarship was canceled as part of the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid.
The female students received an email on Feb. 28 informing them that the scholarship program administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development at the Middle East College of Oman had been terminated along with thousands of other foreign aid initiatives…
In a letter to aid groups, the Afghan women are appealing for urgent help to allow them to continue their studies abroad and avoid returning to a country where, they say, they will face certain persecution and life-threatening risks.
“The situation is catastrophic,” the letter says. “Being sent back to Afghanistan would mean the permanent loss of our education and exposure to severe risks, including oppression, insecurity, and a future without opportunities. This is a life-or-death situation for many of us.”
Related: The State of Feminism in Southeast Asia
Of course, drumming up sympathy for the plight of these women is understandable, as they likely face harsh sanctions if and when they are returned to their home country. So ringing the alarm bell is a rhetorical asset for corporate state media desperate for human-interest stories in the information war — and one of the few cards they have to play in a political climate highly supportive of slashing government waste.
But what is the end-game? The United States is just on the hook in perpetuity for keeping these women out of Afghanistan?
And what about Oman, an oil-rich country, where they are currently housed? These women are under their protection; Oman is a Muslim country, much closer culturally to Afghanistan than the West; Oman has the resources to finance their scholarships; why should the burden fall on the United States taxpayer to continue to fund this venture?
Afghanistan was a cultural mess long before the U.S. tried to remake the nation in the image of the West, and it will be for long after the withdrawal. The turning-Afghanistan-into-a-feminist-Mecca project was doomed to fail from the start. The only outcome was that a lot of people died and a lot of defense contractors got very rich at American taxpayer expense.
Furthermore, would transforming the women into empowered girlbosses in the Western mold via higher education actually improve their lives? Materially, it might, but the psychological health of women in the West appears not to have been substantially improved by a century-plus of more and more “human rights” bestowed upon them.
Related: Poll: Liberal Women Experience Worst Mental Health of All Demographics
Of course, I wouldn’t ever minimize the brutal leash that Afghanistan keeps on its women. But surely there is some middle ground between 6th-century savagery of women and the socially engineered destruction wrought upon them in the West.
At any rate, Afghanistan isn’t and shouldn’t be America’s nation to build.
