“It seemed that women were invisible“, Said those volunteers in Eastern Afghanistan who witnessed, amazed, the rescue operations after the ruinous earthquake of August 31 which caused more than 2 thousand and the collapse of entire buildings.
That’s right: due to the prohibition of contact between women and men who were not related, many women have not been rescued, they have not been treated or, worse, were literally left trapped under the rubble caused by the earthquake. A tragedy within the tragedy, due to the will of the Taliban, who impose, even in the event of an emergency, the ban on physical contact between men and women who are not members of the family.
And so, in the village of Saarluckakfor example, in the province of Kunar, the emergency team carried men and children in a hurry men and children wounded and took care of their wounds, but the teenage women and girls, some of whom are bleeding, were set aside.
They gathered us in a corner and forgot about us – Aysha, 19 years old. Nobody offered women help, he asked what they needed or approached them.
Tahzeebullah muhazeba volunteer who was in Mazar Dara, always in the province of Kunar, reported that the members of the medical team of men only men were reluctant to bring out women from under the rubble of the collapsed buildings. Women trapped and injuries were left under the stones, waiting for women of other villages to reach the site and dug them.
It seemed that women were invisible -Muhazeb, 33 years old. He added: men and children were treated first, but women were sitting on the sidelines, waiting for care.
If there was no male relative, he said, the rescuers dragged out women who died for clothes, so as not to get in touch with the skin.
More than 2,200 people died and another 3,600 were injured in the magnitude 6 earthquake which razed countless villages and villages to the ground. And the answer to this disaster embodies the double drama that women and girls face in Afghanistan, trapped both under the rubble and under the weight of gender discrimination, as humanitarian groups and humanitarian organizations say
Besides the damage, then, the mockery: Afghanistan finds himself facing a serious lack of health workers, in particular of women in this field. The reason? Last year, the Taliban imposed the ban on the registration of women to medical education.
And not only that: girls are forbidden to go to school beyond the sixth grade; Women cannot travel far without a male companion and are excluded from most of the works, even in non -profit and humanitarian organizations. Afghan women who work for the United Nations agencies, to say one, suffer repeated harassment, often culminated in threats so serious that this year the agencies have ordered their employees to work temporarily from home.
God saved me and my son – said Aysha. But after that night, I understood: being a woman here means that we are always the last to be seen.
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