Martyred Afghanistan

The death of the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, shot down by an American drone, has underlined almost a year after the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan the character of the regime installed in Kabul, which has become a refuge for jihadists since the return of the taliban

The fact should not overshadow the enormous hardships that the Afghan population is suffering under the Islamist dictatorship after a year of Western abandonment, in particular women through an atrocious repertoire of coercion of all kinds.

In one year, Afghanistan has lost the few good things that it had achieved in two decades of war and occupation by the US, in public freedoms, in political pluralism and even in welfare, despite the rampant corruption of the authorities.

The Shiite Hazara minority has been hardest hit by the persistence of terrorism, along with the peaceful Sufi sect, whose Kabul mosque suffered an attack that killed 10 people in April at the end of Ramadan.

The threat of famine weighs on some six million citizens, although the effects of malnutrition already affect 19 million of the 39 that Afghanistan has.

The setback in the rights of women, totally disappeared and invisible from public life, and especially in the access of young women to education, definitively prohibited by the Taliban last March, is continuous.

Limitations on freedom of movement and the right to work are increasing, while forced marriages and violence are increasing, with worrying intensity in areas far from cities.

The most rigorous clothing restrictions are also increased by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Persecution of Vice,

Nor is anything stopping the collapse of an economy subjected to growing isolation.

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Steadily rising since 2007, it has fallen sharply by more than 30%.

Even agriculture has decreased its production by 5%, affected by drought and inflation.

A country as unfortunate as Afghanistan was missing only the earthquake that caused more than a thousand fatalities and destroyed 10,000 homes in a region bordering Pakistan last June.

The humanitarian aid that Afghanistan needs to deal with all its misfortunes is far from the efforts made so far by international organizations, with the additional limitation of blocking state assets in Western accounts, to which they will not have access the Taliban as long as the repression against women is maintained and continues to increase.

The mistakes made by successive US administrations in Afghanistan, especially since 2001, culminated in the withdrawal last August.

But first there are the errors of two decades of war and the attempt to build a protected democracy.

It would be good not to add to these errors now, especially after the elimination of Al Zawahiri, the neglect of the need for help and solidarity with Afghanistan and, above all, with Afghan women, girls and women who cruelly suffer from the repressive regime.