World News

22057 readers

82 users here now

Breaking news from around the world.

News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.

Guidelines for submissions:

Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

For US News, see the US News community.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

240

‘Despair is settling in’: female suicides on rise in Taliban’s Afghanistan (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

First, her dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed by the Taliban’s ban on education. Then her family set up a forced marriage to her cousin, a heroin addict. Latifa* felt her future had been snatched away.

“I had two options: to marry an addict and live a life of misery or take my own life,” said the 18-year-old in a phone interview from her home in central Ghor province. “I chose the latter.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree with you in general. My concern is specifically with a place which for centuries has asked us to leave them alone and we refuse to. This situation is of course terrible, and our (my country's) actions in their country is the indirect cause of their dilemma, but I don't think that we (meaning our institutions) are the ones we can trust to help them. That being the case my view is softened by your appeal just to express support on an individual level because it's probably the best we can do with the way things are. I really do hope they can find some way to resolve this. My concern is just with encouraging support in our part of the world to go make things worse again, which is all we have been doing to their part of the world for a very long time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I understand the concern you feel - and I agree that public support for invasive interventions can be inflamed (or in some cases, downright manufactured) by news media.

I think you're right to be wary of encouraging support, and we in the west as a whole should resist buying into or perpetuating those kinds of discourses.

In this case, I don't think that's what this article, or the partner journalists, or the underlying study, are intending, though. This is a "world news" section so by its very nature it is mostly about things outside our remit. (I acknowledge that this is easier for me to say as someone in a small nation that did not join the coalition to invade Afghanistan. If I were in a country with huge global political power it would probably feel a bit glib to just say "we" are not in charge).