Press Release
The United States’ Support of Afghan Women Joining the Army is Exploitation NOT Liberation!

According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction recent quarterly report published on the 30^th October,“In fiscal year 2016 alone, the United States budgeted $93.5 million to increase the recruitment of women to the ANDSF (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces). The money has also gone to build facilities, provide training, and supply equipment for female members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP).” The present war in Afghanistan which has been created by the US has affected the lives of millions of Afghan Muslim women who have been killed, injured, widowed, made homeless, displaced, and have lost their children and families. This merciless colonial war has made Afghanistan one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women. But as if all this was not enough, there is yet another deceitful US plan to achieve their agenda in Afghanistan, namely to heavily promote women to join the Afghan military to aid the achievement of US colonial interests in the country. Under the false guise of women’s liberation, empowerment and progress, the US and its puppet secular Afghan government want once again to exploit and destroy Muslim women with the dogma of democracy. A military veteran says that some of the women may go on to assist special forces with missions like night raids and the searches of homes. The president, Ashraf Ghani, welcomed this issue and he has been working to promote the Western concept of gender equality throughout Afghanistan’s staunchly conservative Muslim society. However, this hardly comes as a surprise from a ruler and government which are secular lackeys and which slavishly serve the enemies of Islam and sit silently while they destroy the Ummah.

The Afghan National Army (ANA) is led and trained by the US forces. That means that the US military also supervise the female soldiers. Even a brief look at the actions of US forces exposes the danger that Afghan women and hence also female soldiers are exposed to. Since the beginning of the US occupation of Afghanistan in 2001, American troops have abused and tortured the people of Afghanistan. Women and girls are particularly targeted and subjected to sexual violence which is used as a tactic of war to humiliate and dominate. Because US soldiers are trained to be violent in war fields and show no mercy, rape becomes a weapon of war and there are reports about over 16000 cases of rapes against women. Many such rapes by American troops take place during nighttime raids in the rural community – the same raids which Afghan female soldiers will participate in.

Now the drive to recruit more Afghan Muslim women into the military who will be directed by and fight alongside the same US forces who have slaughtered, abused and dishonoured thousands of their Muslim brothers and sisters, only heralds further humiliation and destruction to the country’s women. How it is possible that Muslim women find progress and liberation in joining hands with the US army which is filled with rapists, torturers and murderers? How can we as Muslim women accept to be used as pawns by the enemies of Islam to achieve their destructive agendas against the Ummah, under the deceptive pretext of ‘women’s liberation’? The real liberation is the liberation of the whole Ummah from the unscrupulous secular system and subservience to colonial powers through the reestablishment of the Khilafah "Caliphate" on the method of the Prophethood. It is only within this glorious state that dignifies men likewise it is Islam that dignifies women that protects them for the sake of their Ummah and their Deen to gain the Pleasure of Allah (swt).

﴿لاَّ يَتَّخِذِ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ الْكَافِرِينَ أَوْلِيَاء مِن دُوْنِ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَمَن يَفْعَلْ ذَلِكَ فَلَيْسَ مِنَ اللّهِ فِي شَيْءٍ﴾

“Let not believers take disbelievers as allies rather than believers. And whoever [of you] does that has nothing with Allah” [3:28].

Women’s Section
in The Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir