20 January 22
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Donald Trump wanted to prevent the Congressional committee investigating the insurrection of January 6, from getting access to White House records for that day, invoking executive privilege. The justices overwhelmingly, 8-1, ruled against him. What is in those records we can only guess, but we apparently won’t have to guess for long.
Make no mistake, this is a monumental setback for the former president, and one likely to make him madder than a mamma wasp. In the transactional way he views the world, the justices he appointed to the Court were “his” justices, there to do his bidding. They didn’t do that today in a way that opens him up to a lot of exposure. He is not likely to remain silent, no matter what his lawyers might counsel.
Where does this take the investigation, and what might it mean for the legal jeopardy of the defeated president and his abetters and enablers? The track record of Trump’s life - one of constantly escaping the consequences of his actions - is enough to provide caution that he will face any meaningful criminal judgment here. But one cannot also rule that out. And the chances he is in legal trouble, not to mention political peril, are a lot higher this evening than they were this morning.
But there is another aspect to this story, and the direction of the political winds more generally, that perhaps is being overlooked. And it boils down to the reality that Donald Trump is not a Republican. Yes there was an R next to his name, but it was just like the gaudy signage he affixes to his buildings - a marketing gimmick meant to achieve personal benefit.
Trump is and always has been loyal to himself. And only himself. He’s a party man, but it’s a party of one. In a life as inconsistent as a top in a tornado, the only thing you can bet on with him is that he will always put his own needs above all others, including those of his children.
Being a Republican was something he could co-opt to reach his own ends. And then he took over the party. He thinks, and for good reason, that he is more important to the Republicans than the Republicans are to him. In this case, his ego happens to be correct.
Now look at the Supreme Court, and consider what elected Republicans would feel like they need to do, for their own ambition, if he gets more enmeshed in the public accounting of January 6, or of the investigation in New York, or all the other legal predicaments in which he finds himself. If they try to cut him down, or even just distance themselves, he will go at them with all the fury he has leveled at the Democrats. Of this I have no doubt. We have already seen hints at it with Fox News or Republican politicians who even show a hint of objectivity.
What might it look like with Trump and Republicans at war? Or what might it look like if Republicans continue to surrender their backbones to a man who the public can see is increasingly unhinged and compromised?
Trying to predict the future with Donald Trump is a fool’s errand. But we would also be fooling ourselves if we think that this can’t get a whole lot messier in ways that exposes the Faustian bargain that the Republican Party has made with a man without conscience or loyalty.
New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks at a news conference in 2020. (photo: Kathy Willens/AP)
Letitia James made some bold new claims about her office’s ongoing investigation into Trump’s financial dealings, but landing criminal charges against the former president will be difficult.
The series of tweets represented a rhetorical escalation in the New York attorney general’s office’s yearslong investigation of the Trump family company. “No one is above the law,” James wrote at the end of her last tweet. The Trump Organization, for its part, released a characteristically blustery statement in response, claiming among other things, that “the only one misleading the public is Letitia James” and alleging that she “defrauded New Yorkers” by campaigning on a promise to prosecute Trump. Eric Trump tweeted that James’ announcement this week is “northing [sic] more than a PR move.”
But what does this development actually reveal about former President Donald Trump’s potential criminal culpability?
First, it’s useful to take a step back and disentangle some issues.
James’ comments accompanied a court filing that lawyers in her office made Tuesday night in an ongoing dispute concerning whether Donald Trump and two of his children — Ivanka and Don, Jr. — have to comply with subpoenas and appear for depositions over questions about apparent discrepancies in financial reports that cover various Trump properties.
The latest filing specifically relates to the office’s civil investigation — not the criminal investigations that concern potential financial misconduct on the part of Trump or others at his company. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has a criminal investigation that resulted in the indictment last year of the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, and that investigation remains ongoing. The Westchester County District Attorney’s office also has a criminal investigation that appears to concern, at least in part, potentially misleading valuations of a Trump golf club in Westchester. Further complicating matters is that last year, James announced she had assigned two of her office’s lawyers to work with the Manhattan DA’s office on its criminal investigation.
James’ decision to dispatch lawyers to the Manhattan DA’s office — overseen at the time by Cyrus Vance Jr., and now by the newly elected Alvin Bragg — resulted in so-called parallel criminal and civil investigations by James’ office, which is the proximate cause of the ongoing court dispute. Trump and his kids have claimed the civil subpoenas are an inappropriate effort to leverage the legal tools available in the civil investigation to advance the parallel criminal investigation and to “circumvent the entire grand jury process.”
The Trumps’ claim is very tenuous as a legal matter, and it mostly seems to reflect an effort to avoid a situation in which Trump, Ivanka and Don, Jr. might have to invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination under questioning in the civil depositions — something Eric Trump already had to do and that would be particularly awkward for Trump, who has publicly asked of others, “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
Reasonable minds could debate how well James’ office has managed its two investigations, but it is not unique for a government office to be conducting parallel civil and criminal investigations — the Justice Department sometimes does it too, though the arrangement can produce some tricky problems for both sides. The kind of complaint Trump and his kids are making is also not unique.
When potential defendants are subpoenaed to provide depositions in a parallel civil investigation, they often argue that they have been given a sort of a Hobson’s choice: either (a) they show up to the deposition and provide testimony that could be used against them in the criminal investigation or (b) they take the Fifth and suffer the impact of an “adverse inference” in a potential civil trial, in which, unlike in a criminal case, jurors are typically free to use that fact against the defendants in reaching their verdict. In the end, courts usually rule that the civil subpoenas are valid and enforceable, and the objectors have to show up and take the Fifth. There is no obvious reason that a court should rule otherwise here.
So, what does James’ office’s latest filing tell us about the parallel criminal investigation being led by the Manhattan DA’s office?
Tuesday night’s filing contained an unusually extensive discussion of facts that James’ office has gathered in the course of its civil investigation. This gives us some sense of the information that criminal investigators may also have gathered, but James’ office was careful to note that it had “not yet reached a final decision regarding whether this evidence merits legal action” even in the civil proceeding.
James’ office argued, for instance, that it had identified various ways in which financial statements concerning Trump’s business had been “inaccurate or misleading when compared with the supporting data and documentation that the Trump Organization submitted to its accounting firm” and said “evidence obtained” by the office “indicates that Mr. Trump was personally involved in reviewing and approving” those documents before they were used “to obtain a host of economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions.”
By itself, this might be good evidence in a civil case, but it would not form the basis for a particularly strong criminal fraud case. That is because in a criminal financial fraud case, material discrepancies among financial documents — say, an internal accounting document that shows one value and a financial statement provided to a potential lender that shows a very different value — are often just the start of an investigation. Prosecutors then have to identify culpable individuals who had criminal intent to mislead third parties.
That effort can be complicated by a bunch of different factors. For example, there could be different valuation methodologies that might support some variations in figures for different contexts and different audiences — a particular issue in the real estate and hospitality industries. Legal disclaimers of the sort in Trump’s financial statements can also carry some weight, though they are far from dispositive. A potential defendant might also plausibly say that he did not intend to mislead anyone, even if he nominally signed off on the relevant figures, because he was relying on the advice of others — for instance, in-house financial advisers or outside accountants. A good criminal investigation will try to get to the bottom of exactly what those people were doing and saying to someone like Trump — and, in fact, that appears to be what the Manhattan DA’s criminal investigators have been trying to do.
All of this is easier said than done, but ideally, a good criminal investigation will explore and rule out the major lines of defense — through some combination of extensive document review, interviews with cooperators and other witnesses, and perhaps expert analysis — before charges are filed. Criminal investigations like this are often extremely messy, both factually and legally. The odds generally disfavor the filing of criminal charges against the head of a complex business organization — someone like Trump — but from the outside, no one can decisively rule out that possibility in an ongoing investigation.
By the same token, the odds of a civil lawsuit by James’ office concerning Trump’s business dealings appear to be increasing. That is one reason that lawyers in James’ office may have decided to subpoena Trump and his kids at this time — in order to force a resolution to an issue (whether the office can seek an adverse inference in a future trial) that could be very important later in court.
At this point, however, the practical and political effects of such a civil lawsuit are hard to assess. After all, the Trump Organization is already under criminal indictment based on Weisselberg’s alleged tax fraud. Some pundits posited that the mere filing of those charges would doom the company — one analyst suggested the charges alone would be “devastating” and lead to the company’s “bankruptcy” — but that was far from clear then and remains so even today. A lot depends on the precise nature of a possible civil case — who the defendants are, what the legal claims are and what the facts at issue are.
Moreover, short of an actual criminal conviction of Trump himself, there is good reason to believe that Trump the politician will emerge largely unscathed after these investigations are over — even if James’ office files a significant and wide-ranging civil case concerning the Trump Organization’s business dealings. Prior civil proceedings — like the settlements of cases involving the so-called Trump University and Trump’s supposed charitable foundation — did not appear to have meaningfully dented his appeal to his supporters.
Among the legal commentariat, there is a robust market — and a pretty reliable path to cable bookings — for people who remain willing to predict the dramatic legal downfall of Trump, even years after the anti-climax of the Mueller investigation. Indeed, about a year ago, one especially excitable legal pundit said that it “would be easy” for the Manhattan DA’s office to prove a criminal fraud case against Trump, and he was not alone in broadcasting such a forecast. A year later though, that assessment is a good reminder that large investigations can take time, and that they do not always end as quickly or as neatly as we might like.
Former Minneapolis police officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao (left to right) are set to go on trial in federal court charged with violating George Floyd's civil rights. (photo: AP)
This week's trial is one of a series of legal consequences for the four ex-officers charged by federal and state authorities in Floyd's killing, which set off a wave of global protests over racial justice and police accountability after it occurred in May 2020.
Chauvin is white and Floyd was Black, and a video of the arrest showed Floyd lying face-down on the street and repeatedly saying "I can't breathe" as he became unresponsive. The footage captured the attention of the world and served as a key piece of evidence at Chauvin's state trial last year.
Three other former Minneapolis police officers – Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane – will now stand trial in federal court on charges that they violated Floyd's civil rights by failing to provide him with medical aid during the encounter. Thao and Kueng are also charged with failing to stop Chauvin's use of force.
"This trial is really unique and important because it does present the question of the duty of officers on what they didn't do, as opposed to reviewing actions themselves," Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at the University of St. Thomas, told MPR.
The Associated Press reported that Kueng knelt on Floyd's back and Lane held down his legs, while Thao kept bystanders at bay.
Chauvin isn't on trial with the other officers because last month he pleaded guilty to federal charges of depriving Floyd of his civil rights, resulting in Floyd's death.
A Minnesota jury found Chauvin guilty of Floyd's murder in a separate state trial in April 2021, and he is now serving a 22 1/2-year prison sentence.
The other three officers – Thao, Kueng and Lane – have also been brought up on state criminal charges of aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter, but a Minnesota judge delayed that trial until after their federal case, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The state trial is expected to begin in March.
The Justice Department has also launched a separate civil investigation into possible patterns of discrimination and excessive force in the Minneapolis police department.
Rudolph W. Giuliani at a Nov. 19, 2020 news conference at Republican National Committee headquarters. (photo: Sarah Silbiger/The Washington Post)
At the time, the gatherings in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin — all states that had officially approved Biden electors — were widely derided as political stunts intended to bolster Trump’s baseless allegations of fraud.
Understanding the origins of the rival slates has now become a focus of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to people familiar with the panel’s activities. Two Democratic attorneys general have asked federal prosecutors in recent days to investigate whether crimes were committed in assembling or submitting the Trump slates.
The Trump electors gathered in plain sight, assisted by campaign officials and Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, who said publicly that the rival slates were necessary and appropriate. Internally, Giuliani oversaw the effort, according to former campaign officials and party leaders who, like some others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. One of the people familiar with the plan said Giuliani was assisted at times by an anchor from the right-wing network One America News.
The extent and particulars of the behind-the-scenes coordination — and the refusal by some Trump electors to go along with the plan — have not been previously reported. The campaign scrambled to help electors gain access to Capitol buildings, as is required in some states, and to distribute draft language for the certificates that would later be submitted to Congress, according to the former campaign officials and party leaders.
The campaign also worked to find replacements for the electors who were unable to participate, or unwilling. Among the unwilling were a state GOP chairman, a lawmaker who was one of the first in Congress to endorse Trump and a son of legendary Republican senator Johnny Isakson, The Washington Post found.
When the electoral college votes were cast, Trump’s allies claimed that sending rival slates to Washington echoed a move by Democrats in a close race in Hawaii six decades earlier. They said they were merely locking in electors to ensure they would be available if courts determined that Trump had won any of those states. Republican electors in two additional states, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, sent certificates, but those documents explicitly stated that they were to be considered only if the election results were upended.
In ways that were not publicly known until months later, however, the rival slates were leveraged as evidence in last-ditch efforts to give Vice President Mike Pence the ability to reject Biden’s victory when he presided over the electoral vote count in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Before Election Day, presidential candidates or their parties nominate a slate of potential electors in each state where they appear on the ballot. After the popular vote is certified, the governor in each state is required under federal law to certify the winning candidate’s electors. The electors then meet in mid-December and send signed certificates recording their votes to, among other places, the national archivist and the president of the U.S. Senate. The votes are tallied on Jan. 6.
In a subpoena Tuesday to lawyer Jenna Ellis, who worked closely with Giuliani, the House committee wrote that she “prepared and circulated two memos purporting to analyze the constitutional authority for the Vice President to reject or delay counting electoral votes from states that had submitted alternate slates of electors.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D), who referred the matter to federal prosecutors, last week said that submitting the electoral certificates to historical archives and government officials turned what might have been a political event into a “an open-and-shut case of forgery of a public record.”
“This is not political theater. It‘s not protected speech,” Nessel said in an interview. “It’s an attack on the very fabric of our system of government. And so it deserves to have federal prosecutorial and investigative scrutiny.”
A spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, Gustavo Portela, accused Nessel of “playing political games.”
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said this week that he, too, had referred the matter to federal prosecutors, while his counterpart in Wisconsin — fellow Democrat Josh Kaul — said he believed the federal government should investigate any unlawful act that furthered “seditious conspiracy.”
Giuliani did not respond to messages from The Post seeking comment. A spokesman for Trump also did not respond.
Ellis declined to comment on her role in the Trump elector plan. She did not respond to a request for comment about the subpoena.
Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn told The Post he took part in conference calls with the campaign’s legal team, including Giuliani, to discuss elector participation.
“This was in total congruence with the overall effort to send it back to the states,” Epshteyn said last week. “With the rampant fraud across the country, the interplay of the 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act made it important to have alternate slates of electors be available when a challenge to states’ slate of electors would be successful.”
Multiple courts, recounts and audits have found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Epshteyn was subpoenaed Tuesday by the House committee, as was Giuliani.
Talk of rival electors dated to the days immediately after the election, according to communications released last month by the House committee. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, received text messages proposing a strategy in which Republican legislatures would appoint alternate slates of Trump electors. One text called the plan “highly controversial.”
“I love it,” Meadows responded, according to the committee, which did not release the names of the people who sent the messages. The committee said Meadows responded to a subsequent message about potentially appointing alternate electors by saying, “We have a team on it.”
In late December, Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official sympathetic to Trump, drafted a letter urging Georgia officials to call a special session of the legislature to reconsider Biden’s win. Though Gov. Brian Kemp (R) had certified Biden’s electors, Clark falsely implied that the Justice Department believed the Trump electors were valid rivals to those put forward by Georgia and other states for Biden. Clark’s bosses rejected the proposal to send such a letter, which surfaced publicly after Trump left office. Clark has said his communications were lawful.
Around the same time, Trump attorney John Eastman claimed in memos laying out options for Pence that the rival electoral slates allowed him to declare on Jan. 6 that no winner could be determined in those seven states.
Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, told The Post that Giuliani and his associates forwarded letters from individual state legislators objecting to Biden’s electors and arguing the Trump electors should be recognized instead. Short and Pence’s legal team reviewed the unsolicited letters but were not persuaded there was any legal basis to accept Trump electors who had not been certified by their states, Short said.
Robert F. Spindell Jr., a member of the Wisconsin Election Commission, said he and fellow Trump electors did what was right to preserve the president’s legal avenues should courts rule in his favor. Spindell said he viewed signing the certificate as a “ministerial act” and not as a stealth tactic.
“It was pretty straightforward. Show up, sign the stuff,” he said. “There was no attempt to be secretive about it.”
'Joe Biden won'
The Post attempted to interview the 15 Trump electors in those key states who were replaced ahead of the electoral vote. Several of them said they were recovering from covid-19 at the time or had other obligations. All the names are listed in documents the watchdog group American Oversight obtained through a public records request to the National Archives and Records Administration.
Among the electors who declined to participate was Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Lawrence Tabas, an election-law expert who had defended Trump in 2016 against a recount push by Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
“While Lawrence was originally selected to be an elector by the Trump campaign, he did not serve as an elector because Joe Biden won the election and it was Biden’s electors that were certified,” Vonne Andring, a senior adviser to the state party, said in a statement to The Post.
Andring also said that it was the presidential campaign that drove the process. The party, she said, “did not select electors, nor did it coordinate elector events and communications.”
In Georgia, John Isakson, an original Trump elector, told The Post that he bowed out because he did not want to attend what he had perceived as a “political rally.” Isakson has spent his career in real estate and has never served in public office or as a party official. His father, who was elected to the Senate three times, was hailed after his death in December as a bipartisan statesman, known for his friendship with the late John Lewis, the Democratic congressman and voting rights icon.
“It seemed like political gamesmanship, and that’s not something I would have participated in,” Isakson said in an interview last week. “We have a process for certifying the election. We have a process for challenging the election. The challenges failed, so I wouldn’t have participated in something that was going against all of that.”
By the time of the electoral college vote, efforts by Trump and his supporters to overturn the results had been rejected by at least 86 judges, including nine Supreme Court justices.
Former congressman Tom Marino of Pennsylvania, another original Trump elector, had been among the first members of Congress to back Trump’s presidential bid in 2016. But he, too, balked at casting an electoral vote for Trump in a state where Biden was the certified winner. Earlier in December, then-Attorney General William P. Barr said he had not seen widespread fraud that could have upended the election.
“I was disappointed in the election,” Marino said in an interview, “but as a former prosecutor, when the attorney general says he’s not finding anything here, that’s good enough for me.”
Marino, who retired in 2019, added: “I’m a constitutionalist and have always been a constitutionalist. … I believe in the rule of law and whatever the courts determined. I’m not going to jump on a bandwagon to say that I know better than the courts.”
Alternate slates
When the electoral college voted, it was no secret that GOP electors were gathering in some states won by Biden. In most of the seven key states, Republican leaders issued news releases trumpeting the fact that their electors had cast votes. Arizona party officials posted a video of their electors’ signing ceremony on Twitter. The Pennsylvania GOP issued a news release explaining that it took part “at the request of the Trump campaign.”
“As we speak, today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we’re going to send those results up to Congress,” Trump aide Stephen Miller said on “Fox … Friends” that morning.
He claimed that doing so would keep open legal avenues to certify Trump as the victor. “If we win these cases in the courts, then we can direct that the alternate slate of electors can be certified,” Miller said.
Former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon quizzed Giuliani that same day on his podcast, referring to the effort as “something Rudy and the team have worked on.” Bannon asked: “Why are you sending electors? … Why is the Trump campaign sending its own slate of electors to these state capitals?”
Giuliani said that based on his team’s legal research and “advice we‘ve gotten from a number of professors,” they decided to act “out of an excess of caution” to preserve the chance for the votes to be counted for Trump if any of the campaign’s remaining challenges succeeded.
Epshteyn, speaking on Bannon’s podcast that day, claimed that “President Trump is going to end up prevailing either through the legal front or the legislative front,” an apparent reference to the campaign’s efforts to press Republican legislatures in states such as Georgia and Arizona to claw back their states’ electoral votes for Biden and hand them instead to Trump.
Behind the scenes, in the days leading up to the electoral college vote, Giuliani participated in at least one conference call with campaign staffers and Republican activists that included detailed discussions about preparing the rival electoral slates, according to former campaign officials. Christina Bobb, an anchor on One America News, the far-right network that promoted Trump’s debunked allegations of a rigged election, was also on at least one call about preparing the rival slates, according to one of the former campaign officials.
Bobb, a lawyer, had started volunteering to help Trump’s personal attorneys in November, shortly after the president put Giuliani in charge of challenging the election results in court, Giuliani said over the summer in a deposition in a lawsuit brought by a former employee of a voting-machine company. Bobb has acknowledged that she assisted the campaign’s legal team at this time. She declined to comment on the elector strategy.
At one point, the leadership of the Republican National Committee was asked whether the party would help locate additional electors to replace Republicans who had declined to participate, according to a person familiar with the discussion. The RNC did not help in the effort to find new electors, the person said.
Hawaii 1960
Republican officials in several of the seven states said at the time that they were adopting a strategy used by Democrats after the 1960 presidential election in Hawaii. That race, however, was much closer than any state was in 2020, and it was ultimately decided by a margin of fewer than 200 votes.
On Dec. 19, the day the electoral college voted that year, Republican nominee Richard M. Nixon had been declared the winner in Hawaii, pending a recount. GOP and Democratic electors met and voted, each declaring themselves the state’s “duly and legally appointed electors.”
Days later, after the recount concluded, a state court found that Nixon had lost to Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy. On Jan. 4, 1961, Hawaii’s governor sent a new certificate to Washington replacing the Republican electors with Democrats.
When Congress convened on Jan. 6, Nixon — then the vice president and thus the presiding officer — suggested that the Democratic electors’ votes from Hawaii be counted, putting an end to the controversy. At the time, Nixon said he did so “without the intent of establishing a precedent.”
Kennedy won the presidency easily, and Hawaii’s three electoral votes would not have changed the outcome in any case.
Edward Foley, an Ohio State University law professor who has studied disputed elections, said that Trump’s 2020 effort stands apart because, unlike the Democrats in Hawaii in 1960, he had no plausible basis for challenging Biden’s clear and legitimate win.
“You shouldn’t be going down this road in 2020 at all, because the predicate of it is the ‘big lie,’ ” Foley told The Post, making reference to Trump’s repeated claim that the election was stolen. “There was no responsible basis for any of these people in any of these states” to claim that they were the duly elected electors, he said.
Foley is among legal scholars who have advocated for changing the 1887 law that governs the counting of electoral college votes so there is no ambiguity about what Congress should do if confronted with dueling slates. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has signaled that he is open to the debate.
January 6th committee asks Ivanka Trump to cooperate in their inquiry. (photo: Getty)
Ms. Trump apparently has direct knowledge of the former President’s attempt to persuade Vice President Pence to take action to stop the counting of electoral votes. Chairman Thompson wrote, “As January 6th approached, President Trump attempted on multiple occasions to persuade Vice President Pence to participate in his plan. One of the President’s discussions with the Vice President occurred by phone on the morning of January 6th. You were present in the Oval Office and observed at least one side of that telephone conversation.”
The Select Committee is also seeking information from Ms. Trump about concerns in the office of the White House Counsel, from Members of Congress, and among the Vice President’s staff about plans to pressure Vice President Pence to overturn the election. “[T]he Committee would like to discuss any other conversations you may have witnessed or participated in regarding the President’s plan to obstruct or impede the counting of electoral votes,” wrote Chairman Thompson.
Ms. Trump’s role and actions on January 6th as the riot was underway at the Capitol are also a key focus for the Select Committee. Chairman Thompson wrote, “Testimony obtained by the Committee indicates that members of the White House staff requested your assistance on multiple occasions to intervene in an attempt to persuade President Trump to address the ongoing lawlessness and violence on Capitol Hill.”
Given Ms. Trump’s presence in the White House on January 6th, the Select Committee is seeking her knowledge about the former President’s actions related to the deployment of the National Guard to respond to the violence. “The Committee is aware that certain White House staff devoted time during the violent riot to rebutting questions regarding whether the President was attempting to hold up deployment of the guard[…]. But the Committee has identified no evidence that President Trump issued any order, or took any other action, to deploy the guard that day. Nor does it appear that President Trump made any calls at all to the Department of Justice or any other law enforcement agency to request deployment of their personnel to the Capitol,” wrote Chairman Thompson.
The Select Committee believes that Ms. Trump may have knowledge about efforts to advance unsupported claims about the 2020 election in the aftermath of the January 6th riot. Chairman Thompson wrote, “The Committee has information suggesting that White House staff and others were attempting to persuade President Trump to halt his statements regarding a ‘stolen election’ and were working directly with other supporters outside the White House in an effort to persuade President Trump to do so.”
The letter to Ms. Trump can be found here.
Afghan women take part in the awareness meeting on violence against women, at a coastline tourist resort in Golem, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Tirana, Albania, Friday, Dec. 10, 2021. (photo: AP)
Since taking control of the city of Ghazni on August 12, 2021, days before entering Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, the Taliban have imposed rights-violating policies that have created huge barriers to women’s and girls’ health and education, curtailed freedom of movement, expression, and association, and deprived many of earned income. Afghanistan’s rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis exacerbates these abuses. Following the Taliban takeover, millions of dollars in lost income, spiking prices, aid cut-offs, a liquidity crisis, and cash shortages triggered by former donor countries, especially the United States, have deprived much of the population of access to food, water, shelter, and health care.
“Afghan women and girls are facing both the collapse of their rights and dreams and risks to their basic survival,” said Halima Kazem-Stojanovic, a core faculty member of SJSU’s Human Rights Institute and a scholar on Afghanistan. “They are caught between Taliban abuses and actions by the international community that are pushing Afghans further into desperation every day.”
Human Rights Watch and SJSU remotely interviewed 10 women currently or recently in Ghazni province, including those who had worked in education, health care, social services, and business, and former students.
They described spiraling prices for food staples, transportation, and schoolbooks, coupled with an abrupt and often total income loss. Many had been the sole or primary wage earner for their family, but most lost their employment due to Taliban policies restricting women’s access to work. Only those working in primary education or health care were still able to work, and most were not being paid due to the financial crisis.
The Taliban have banned women and girls from secondary and higher education, and altered curricula to focus more on religious studies. They dictate what women must wear, how they should travel, workplace segregation by sex, and even what kind of cell phones women should have. They enforce these rules through intimidation and inspections.
“The future looks dark,” said one woman who had worked in the government. “I had many dreams, wanted to continue studying and working. I was thinking of doing my master’s. At the moment, they [the Taliban] don’t even allow girls to finish high school.”
The women said they had acute feelings of insecurity because the Taliban have dismantled the formal police force and the Women’s Affairs Ministry, are extorting money and food from communities, and are targeting for intimidation women they see as enemies, such as those who worked for foreign organizations and the previous Afghan government. Most interviewees cited serious mental health consequences since the Taliban takeover, including fear, anxiety, hopelessness, insomnia, and a deep sense of loss and helplessness.
“The crisis for women and girls in Afghanistan is escalating with no end in sight,” said Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Taliban policies have rapidly turned many women and girls into virtual prisoners in their homes, depriving the country of one of its most precious resources, the skills and talents of the female half of the population.”
For detailed findings, please see below.
Methodology
Ghazni province, in southeastern Afghanistan, has a population of about 1.3 million people, predominantly ethnic Pashtun and Hazara. The provincial capital, Ghazni, is on the road from Kabul to Kandahar, and was often attacked during the fighting of the past 20 years.
SJSU and Human Rights Watch conducted interviews remotely, using secure communications, with women currently in Afghanistan, all of them from Ghazni province. Most were in Ghazni province; a few were in other parts of Afghanistan. Most of those in Ghazni province were living in Ghazni city but some were in other parts of the province. The interviewees had worked in education, health care, government, and nongovernmental organizations or had been higher education students. Interviews were conducted in Dari with the consent of the interviewee. Seven of those interviewed are Hazara, one Pashtun, and two members of an ethnic minority group.
The value of the Afghan currency, the afghani, has fluctuated rapidly since the Taliban takeover. It was about 120 afghanis to 1 US dollar at the time of the research, and we have used this exchange rate for conversions.
Loss of Income, Employment
Nearly all the women interviewed who previously had paid employment had lost their jobs. “In Ghazni [province], only female healthcare workers and teachers can go to work,” a nongovernmental organization worker said. “Women working in other fields are forced to stay home now.”
“A few days after the Taliban took over Ghazni and Kabul, Mullah Baradar [a senior Taliban leader] said that women can go back to work,” a government worker said. “I went to work, but I was not allowed to go in. The Taliban members said, ‘We don’t need women to work anymore. You should not come back until further notice.’ But we are breadwinners of our families.” Her last paycheck was in July, and she is losing hope of being paid. “We used to go to show attendance, but they asked us to stop that as well.” She said some of her male colleagues were also dismissed and most government offices were closed because they did not have qualified staff.
Those still working have largely not been paid because health care and education were almost entirely financed by foreign donors, whose aid has been cut off. The only interviewee being paid regularly was working for an international nongovernmental group. “We haven’t been paid for more than five months,” a midwife said. “It’s very hard to manage for nurses and service staff because we don’t have any other source of income. The doctors have their private clinic or healthcare center. I personally find it very hard since I’m the breadwinner.” As of early January she still had not received her salary.
While primary schools for girls are open, the teachers have not received their salaries. A primary school teacher who is the main wage earner for her family of 10 said: “It’s been three months that we haven’t been paid. We go and teach, but nothing.” Her salary was 5,500 afghanis (US$46) per month and she previously supplemented this by teaching at a private school, but the private school also stopped paying teachers. She spends 300 to 350 afghanis ($2.50 to $2.90) a month for transportation to work, money she now takes from savings or family members.
“UNICEF has taken the responsibility to pay the teachers, but we don’t know when and how,” she said. This teacher later received one month’s salary from her principal, but no back pay, and did not know the source of the payment.
Taliban restrictions have compounded the financial crisis for women. The owner of a business exporting products produced by female farmers said the farmers are no longer allowed to work, the products cannot be exported, and the farmers she sources from cannot afford transportation costs. “The Islamic Emirate [the Taliban government] does not allow women to work; even the women farmers cannot work on lands,” she said. “They used to work with us, but they all must stay home now.”
The financial crisis has decimated even paid work within the home. “We would weave or do embroidery – there was a market for that,” one woman said. “Now there are no jobs, no buying and selling. People have no jobs, no motivation and hope.”
A single mother who has not been paid for five months borrowed 10,000 afghanis ($83) from a cousin living in Saudi Arabia for a birthday celebration for her young daughter. “I want her to know that at the height of poverty, I care about her birthday and happiness,” she said.
Financial Crisis and Rising Prices
A financial crisis followed the Taliban takeover on August 15, as the economy collapsed and banking system froze. About 75 percent of the previous government’s budget came from foreign donors, but most halted their aid to government agencies and institutions shortly before or after the Taliban takeover. The Central Bank of Afghanistan, under Taliban control, has been cut off from the international banking system and access to the country’s foreign currency reserves.
The International Monetary Fund, reportedly at US request, prevented Afghanistan from accessing credit and assets. Past United Nations Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions and other restrictions on the Taliban for terrorism-related actions prevent the Central Bank of Afghanistan from receiving new paper Afghan currency, which is printed in Europe.
Much of the state bureaucracy is no longer functioning because many workers from the previous Afghan government have fled the country, or are afraid of returning to work, and the Taliban authority lacks funds to pay workers. Some humanitarian aid and other assistance provided by UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations has gradually restarted but remains severely curtailed due to Taliban restrictions, logistical difficulties including barriers to transferring money into the country, security concerns, staff evacuations, closures, and legal uncertainties including fear of violating sanctions. The UN World Food Programme has issued multiple warnings of worsening food insecurity and the risk of large-scale deaths from hunger throughout Afghanistan.
Ghazni interviewees, regardless of their financial situation before August 15, all said they felt the consequences of the financial crisis. “Our money has been frozen; we have no cash, we cannot feed our children,” a former worker for a nongovernmental group said. “It’s hard to run our lives.”
“The prices are getting higher on a daily basis,” a former government worker said. “Widows and female breadwinners who were the sole provider of their families are now facing high levels of difficulty. It’s painful to watch them turning to beggars with their children.”
“In Ghazni city, an egg costs 13 afghanis; it was 6 afghanis before [$0.11 versus $0.05],” one woman said. “All the essential food items have become impossible to purchase. Even Ghazni’s vegetables and its products have become so expensive. …Twenty-five kilograms of wheat would cost 1,500-1,700 afghanis [$13-$14]; now it’s sold at 2,500 afghanis [$21].” Another woman said the price of a jug of cooking oil had increased in her area from 500 afghanis to 3,000 [$4 to $25].
“We don’t go to the city anymore,” a former student said. “We can’t afford to buy anything.”
Because of a lack of liquidity and the freezing of the banking system, banks have often run out of cash and the Central Bank imposed a limit on withdrawals of 30,000 afghanis ($250) a week. Individual banks impose their own limits, usually $200 per week. Those with savings have difficulties accessing their money, and are afraid as their savings dwindle.
“We are a family of eight, and I have a university student in my family, I have school students, and my grandchildren are still kids,” a former nongovernmental agency worker said. “I was the only breadwinner of the family… No one works in our family now. We have survived by our friends’ support. We can only get 20,000 afghanis [$167] cash from the bank. My savings are ending.”
The financial crisis has affected daily lives in various ways. One woman also said that her area had experienced rising power cuts: “Most families do not have access to electricity even at night.”
Intimidation and Threats
Taliban authorities in Ghazni city search for women they see as having engaged in behavior they find unacceptable. A woman previously with a nongovernmental agency said she was in hiding, moving locations frequently:
I heard that they [the Taliban] entered our office. They collected our computers, saying, “These are the women who work for the foreigners.” …The night that the Taliban attacked the center of Ghazni, I fled to [another province] early the following day. They had asked about me. The imams have told me that the Taliban have asked them to report women who have worked with foreign NGOs [nongovernmental organization] and those who attempt to leave the country. …I was worried that our neighbors would report me to get credit from the Taliban. … I fear my colleagues as well; they might report me just to save their own lives.
Several said they had relatives or friends in hiding who were afraid to be interviewed. “Women who were in the army or worked as police were targets,” a government worker said. “Women’s rights activists feared for their lives and either left the province or stopped their activities. I fear for my life too: I worked, and I was active in civil society. I don’t do those activities anymore.” Several cited the Taliban’s killing of two female police officers in Ghazni, days before the province fell to the Taliban, as having struck particular fear among women in the community.
The international nongovernmental group worker said international groups were still functioning: “Because these organizations are run by the foreigners, the Taliban don’t tamper with them,” but national groups that “worked in legal sectors, promoting human rights and justice” had all been shut down. She said the group she works for had instructed its employees not to be involved in activism and to stay off social media: “The Taliban have communicated their policies and informed [the organization] not to engage with human rights, women’s rights, and other issues. It can only work in the health sector.”
Some women felt heightened risk because of both gender and ethnicity or religion. “It’s difficult for us because we are the Hazara minority,” a healthcare worker said, referring to her ethnic group, which has long been persecuted in Afghanistan. “When we talk to [Taliban members], they don’t even look at us, they don’t consider us at all,” she said, referring to Hazara staff members at her health facility. “I am impatient, and I confront them sometimes, but they threaten us, saying we would get fired, or be killed.”
The Taliban’s return to power has made members of some ethnic and religious minorities feel more vulnerable to threats even from those not affiliated with the Taliban. The healthcare worker said a colleague who is Shia, a religious minority, was threatened by a patient’s family she believed might be connected to the Taliban, who said: “‘We will kill you, terrorize you, or get you fired from your job.’ They warned my colleague that they know her address.”
She said that a Taliban administrator monitors the hospital: “The Taliban know name and details of each one of us. All the internal administrative details regarding our work and shifts are shared with and reviewed by the Taliban. For instance, they know about details such as a nurse’s duty shift.”
“The violence of the Taliban is seen in many ways,” a government worker said. “It is a form of violence when they don’t let women to work. It is violence when they don’t let young people get education. They have taken every hope from people – that is violence… They rule by fear. It’s painful to watch the society living in fear.”
Taliban authorities have also used intimidation to extract money, food, and services. “When the Taliban visit a village, they force the households to feed them and collect food items from people,” a woman from a village said. “The Taliban and their fighters call us in the middle of the night to cure and give special treatment to their patients and families,” a health worker said. “They enter the hospital with their guns, it’s difficult for the doctors and nurses to manage.”
Interviewees said the Taliban extorted money. They sometimes said they were demanding “taxes,” but the demands were made without standard rates or transparency and in a context in which communities have lost many government services. One woman said the Taliban had dramatically increased taxes on her farming community to a level that families simply could not afford.
“The problem is that in the Taliban’s government, you cannot complain anywhere,” she said. “Who would you complain to? There’s no one to monitor the situation. There’s also no help from the government, no humanitarian assistance as before. Unfortunately, all windows of hope are closed on us.”
“The Taliban collect taxes from the districts,” a former government employee said. “We have no choice but to pay the amount – we have seen and experienced Taliban’s cruelty. If they don’t pay, the Taliban fine and detain them.”
New Forms of Insecurity
After the Taliban takeover, the national police, which had functioned as a counterinsurgency force, largely disintegrated. Fighting has mostly ended in the country, but people expressed fear of violence and arbitrary arrests by the Taliban and lack of rule of law, and reported increased crime in some areas. “Since the Taliban started their government, the security situation in [a district of Ghazni] hasn’t gotten any better – in fact, it has been getting worse,” a student said. “Previously, women could go outside and commute freely to the town, but now even men don’t feel safe walking outside. There are increasing cases of robbery and theft in the district…And there’s no [organized] police to protect the area or to monitor the situation.”
“We kept hearing from some people that with Islamic Emirate there will be more security, no explosions and theft, but we see that they still happen,” a teacher said. “Banks are empty, no businesses, no economy. Theft and robbery have increased. We hear that in the districts [outside the provincial capital] there’s increased robbery every day. They steal cars and motorbikes in daylight…In Ghazni [City], in an educational center, they caught a person who wanted to explode himself – he didn’t succeed.”
One woman felt that crime had fallen – although there are no reliable crime statistics – but said for her that was not the most important measure of security:
What does it mean to have some level of security, but not having a job, no income, no food, when you don’t feel safe, what kind of security is that?…The human rights activists, journalists, and others are hiding; they don’t feel safe. Wherever we go, we fear for our lives, every time. What kind of security and safety is that?… I don’t feel safe at all.
Women also felt more insecure because the Taliban dismantled systems that assisted women facing gender-based violence. The former nongovernmental group worker said women used to turn to Ghazni’s Provincial Department of Women’s Affairs (a branch of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs) for help. But after the Taliban closed the ministry, they turned over the Kabul headquarters to the reinstated Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which monitors residents’ behavior and in the 1990s had beaten women who violated Taliban policies including its strict dress codes or work or education prohibitions. In Ghazni city, she said, the Department of Women’s Affairs office “has now been turned into military space.”
New Rules for Women’s Conduct, Dress
The Taliban have imposed new restrictions on women’s dress and conduct, which affect every aspect of their lives, including their career options. “Women can only become teachers or nurses, nothing else,” the government worker said. As the Taliban took control, new rules were imposed immediately. A health worker described going to work on the day the Taliban took over her city. “When I was trying to pass, they didn’t allow me to go,” she said. “They said you don’t have a mahram [male family member chaperone], and you’re not wearing a burqa.”
Women dress carefully to avoid the Taliban’s notice. “I wear a burqa, and my life has changed so much,” a former nongovernmental group worker said.
“The Taliban government has affected our daily lives,” a student said. “In the past, when I would come to Ghazni, I would wear the same dresses as in Kabul, and I could go around the city on my own. But now we are required to wear a burqa, and our commute to the town is restricted.”
A primary school teacher said she and her colleagues changed their dress to avoid Taliban abuse. “In the past we had a particular uniform. …It’s just long dresses now. …Long dresses, burqa, no high heels, and no sandals.”
Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, said in an interview in Kabul on September 7 that being accompanied by a mahram would only be required for travels longer than three days, not for daily activities such as attending work, school, shopping, medical appointments, and other needs. Interviewees said they are usually not required to have a mahram, but there seem to be new pressures by the Taliban on taxi drivers not to transport women traveling alone.
The ambiguous rules and atmosphere of fear encourages caution and impairs freedom of movement. “It’s affecting our morale watching the Taliban’s behavior with women,” one woman said. “In cases when they beat women, it’s hard for women to think of leaving their houses without a mahram.
“For now, we aren’t asked to have a mahram,” a former nongovernmental group worker said. “But I take my husband with me because I’m not sure. In Kabul, they seem to be more tolerant currently. In other provinces, they make a problem for those who don’t dress up and comply with their rules.”
“We don’t leave our home much,” a government worker said. “When we leave, we leave with a mahram. Some things like sanitary pads must be purchased by women themselves, but it’s hard to do it with a man accompanying us. …Women can’t take transport, they either must go out with a mahram or walk. They should walk with burqa, no heels, no makeup.”
Not everyone has a mahramavailable. “Most women bring their mahram when they visit my mother,” said a woman whose mother runs a home-based tailoring business. “But some women do not have their mahram, as their men work in other countries. There’s no jobs for men in Ghazni or Afghanistan. They’ve gone to Iran or other neighboring countries for work.”
Unmarried women linked the potential need to have a mahram and increased pressure to marry. “Thankfully, in Ghazni having a mahram is not an issue yet,” a single woman said. “If we are forced to walk with a mahram, I will stay home. Who can agree to a forced marriage? I have brothers [who could serve as mahrams], but they’re married and are busy with their own lives.”
When women are allowed to work, their workplaces operate under new Taliban restrictions. A health worker said her boss arranged a meeting with a senior Taliban official. “The hospital assembled all female staff to tell us how we should behave after this,” she said. “How we should dress, and how we should work separately from the male personnel. We were advised to talk to male personnel in an insolent manner and angry tone, not in a soft tone, so that we don’t evoke sexual desires in them.”
There were also new requirements to wear a burqa and a long dress. “The white uniform was to be worn over the dress,” the health worker said. “It’s so hard to walk and work with a long dress as a nurse,” adding that they sometimes need to run when handling emergencies. She tried to switch back to her normal uniform – trousers, knee length tunic, and lab coat – after a few days but was reprimanded and threatened with dismissal.
In the meeting, she said Taliban members refused to speak with the women. “They’d ask male personnel’s opinion,” she said. “But when it came to women, they said, ‘Whatever problem you have, don’t raise your voice. Don’t talk to us, write your problems so we can read them…Men should not hear women’s voices.’”
Restrictions on women’s access to technology harm their access to information, including health information. “Women are asked to not carry smart phones,” a health worker said. “They said women should keep simple Nokia phones that don’t have many options.”
A government worker said the Taliban told male shopkeepers and tailors that they may no longer interact with women, and women had been told they should sew their own clothing rather than go to a male tailor. The new rules for dress and conduct – including that woman should not socialize outside their houses – were sent in writing to the mosques, an interviewee said. Men also face restrictions, she said, including not being permitted to wear non-traditional clothing or shave their beards.
A business owner said she tried to join Chamber of Commerce and Investment meetings but was turned away. She was allowed to attend a conference on women’s business, but women were separated from male attendees with a curtain and not permitted to speak. “Around five or six men spoke in the event – they were from the Ministry of Commerce, Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Investment, and the Ministry of Culture,” she said. “The exhibition was held symbolically – with women brought to show.” She gave a media interview at the conference, but it was not released. “The Ministry of Culture will edit the news before any media can publish their reports. … Our media are being censored now so that they couldn’t publish the conference report.”
Rules are enforced through Taliban inspections. “The cleaning staff said they come around sometimes and ask about the teachers’ clothing,” a primary school teacher said. “The guard would tell them, ‘Yes, they wear hijabs, both teachers and students.’ The principal tells us to be more careful with our clothing and hijabs.”
“Men with local clothing come and check the personnel and the hospital,” a health worker said. “We don’t know if they are Taliban or not.”
Barriers to Health Care
Taliban restrictions on women, difficulty discerning what they are, and arbitrary enforcement impair women’s access to health care. “Doctors are also scared of treating female patients,” a government worker said. “It’s also hard to find female doctors.” She said there used to be more women healthcare workers in private hospitals and clinics, but they are harder to find now.
A former medical student accompanied her pregnant sister-in-law to the doctor. “The Taliban didn’t let us enter the clinic because we didn’t have a mahram,” she said, adding that the appointment was with a female doctor and the clinic was segregated by gender inside. To enter the facility, however, they had to register and receive a card and the person handling this process was a man. Taliban rules prohibited him from interacting with women, and only permitted him to speak with their mahram. The women were forced to call the interviewee’s brother, who arrived an hour later, to register them. “They don’t even have mercy on pregnant women, let alone others,” the student said. “This is so humiliating.”
Barriers to Education
Girls and women in Ghazni face a range of barriers to accessing education, including the current Taliban ban on the operation of girls’ secondary schools in 27 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, including Ghazni. “I am so worried for the girls,” a teacher said. “They have worked so hard. Girls in grades 7 to 12 have to stay home. They call us and ask about schools reopening. We tell them we don’t know yet. I can’t give them a false promise. I ask them to follow the news and internet, [and tell them] you can come when it’s announced.”
Another teacher said of her secondary school students, “Now we are asked to grade them with a ‘pass.’ How can we grade them if we don’t know where they have been, where they are? We don’t know if they are dead or alive, are they still here, have moved to another province or country?”
University students, many of whom studied outside of Ghazni, have seen their classes close with no information about when or whether they will be able to resume studying. “All the university students like me who left Ghazni for education are forced to return,” a medical student said. “We are all sitting at home, not knowing what will happen to us.”
“My younger sister wanted to go to the university but now she must stay home,” one woman said. “All universities in Ghazni are closed.”
Girls’ primary schools are open, but the knowledge that secondary school is closed distracts them. “The girls in 6th grade are worried,” a teacher said. “Their mental health is affected – they worry about their future. Seeing the older girls not going to school, they have lost morale.”
“The students ask what would happen to them after grade 6, and we tell them, ‘God is kind,’ another teacher said. “Hopefully they can continue.”
Primary school teachers come to work while secondary school teachers wait at home to see if their schools will reopen and their employment will resume. A teacher said that nonpayment of teacher salaries even for open schools is affecting the quality of education: “Some teachers who come to school don’t have the motivation to teach their class, because there’s no salary.”
Private schools have had more flexibility to stay open, but the financial crisis has also hit them. “There are some private schools, but they are about to go broke,” a former government worker said. “People cannot pay for their children’s private schools because they have lost their jobs.”
Teachers reported varying student attendance. One said that at her school only about 50 percent of the students enrolled in grades five and six attend. Another said that after the Taliban took control many students stayed home out of fear, but they gradually returned to school. “We were scared as well,” she said of the teachers. “It would make us panic seeing them [the Taliban], but now, we are used to it.”
The humanitarian crisis also affects children’s ability to learn. “Many come to school hungry, a teacher said. “It is hard because as a teacher I can’t do much for them because we don’t feed kids at school.”
“Some girls don’t have money for books or supplies,” the same teacher said. The price of schoolbooks has increased.
“Our students cannot afford to buy schoolbooks,” another teacher said. “If a schoolbook cost 30 afghanis [$0.25] before, now it’s no less than 80 afghanis [$0.67]. …In a class of 40 students only four or five manage to buy books.” She said teachers try to write a summary of the lesson on the board, but lack of books was severely harming their ability to teach.
Curriculum Changes
Teachers reported that the Taliban had already made changes to the curriculum. “More religious subjects have been added,” a teacher said, and subjects such as physical education and art that were deemed “unnecessary” were removed to make space in the school day. Islamic religious studies were already part of the curriculum, but the Taliban have significantly increased the focus on these studies. “The Taliban think that before them there was no Islam and Muslims in the country,” a former government worker said.
These changes alarmed some teachers. “Even if the teachers are not ready to teach the subjects, they must do it,” one said. “There was a rumor that if we can’t teach religious subjects, they will bring in their own religious teachers from the madrasas [Islamic schools]. Teachers are anxious, everyone thinks their subject will be removed.” An interviewee whose brother teaches at a boys’ secondary school said that its curriculum was also changed: “The Taliban have removed some of their subjects like sports, civil rights subjects, social studies, and some other subjects.”
Mental Health Consequences
Interviewees spoke often about trauma, fear, uncertainty, and a loss of their identities as students or workers in the months since the Taliban’s return. One woman said that on the day Ghazni fell to the Taliban: “I felt so hopeless that day, because I have a small daughter. I was working so hard to make a brighter future for her. I had imagined many things for her to learn and become. I felt that I lost all the plans I had for my daughter’s future.”
“I am keeping low profile now,” said a woman who said she had been active on social media advocating for justice and women’s rights. “I have stopped activism and it’s as if I have closed my eyes to reality.
“I’m an independent woman – I used to travel alone, and I lived alone,” a former medical student said. “It’s hard to think of staying home now…It affects my mental health. We had so many dreams and many big goals in life; dreams and goals vanished before our own eyes. Psychologically, this state of uncertainty affects us too much. A group of people who are complete misogynists is controlling our life now. It’s too hard to bear this.”
Many interviewees struggled to find purpose. “I suggested teaching girls in my community for free,” the medical student said. “But no one accepted. There is no motivation. They came back to me asking, ‘What have you achieved when you studied?’ Because we are all staying home, there’s no point.”
“I wanted to serve my family and society, but unfortunately, I can’t now,” another former student said. “Since I’m not working and there are no activities outside for women, I don’t leave home at all. It’s very hard, staying home.”
Interviewees described intense social isolation. A woman who previously worked for a nongovernmental group with other women said her brothers had asked her to stay at home, but she missed her work desperately. “It feels as though I have lost something when I don’t check in with other women.”
“Before the Taliban, I used to hang out with my male friends,” one woman said. “I used to go to places and sightseeing with my friends. But after the Taliban everything is banned for us. For men, things haven’t changed…A few days ago, when my male friends were arranging a trip, I told them they have forgotten about me. They said the situation is dire, it’s difficult – but they miss me… We are not comfortable anymore. We used to be ourselves, but now, we need to perform, look angry, so that the Taliban think we are decent women.”
Feelings of isolation were sometimes exacerbated by others celebrating the Taliban’s return. “When the Taliban took over, most of the people in the hospital turned out to [support the Taliban],” a health worker said. “They thanked God, saying jihad and mujahidin won and the infidels lost. I didn’t expect it from some people.”
Recommendations
The Taliban should fully respect the human rights of all women and girls and ensure full gender equality in accordance with their obligations under international human rights law. The UN and other international bodies, foreign governments, and other entities, including UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and the incoming UN special rapporteur on Afghanistan should press the Taliban to meet its international human rights obligations. Donors should engage with the Taliban regarding their violations of the rights of women and girls in Ghazni and across the country and should work to resolve the humanitarian crisis without deprioritizing the rights of women and girls.
The Taliban should urgently:
- Clarify that women and girls are free to leave their homes at any time, alone or with others, and dress as they choose;
- End all requirements for women to be accompanied by a mahram, and at least reiterate and require Taliban members to comply with the Taliban spokesperson’s statement in September that women are not obliged to have a mahram for journeys of less than three days’ duration;
- Reopen all government secondary schools and universities, and encourage and facilitate the reopening of private educational institutions;
- Permit all women to participate in any form of employment;
- Reestablish the Women’s Affairs Ministry and its subnational offices; and
- Appropriately discipline Taliban members who harass, threaten, or otherwise interfere with women’s and girls’ rights and establish a meaningful system for women and girls to report abuse.
Donors should urgently support assistance to women and girls in Ghazni and across the country that is tailored to the current crisis. This assistance should include:
- Humanitarian support and livelihood opportunities, especially for women-headed households and households in which women were the primary wage-earners;
- Education support, including through community-based education programs operated by nongovernmental groups;
- Psychosocial support and mental health services, provided in a gender-sensitive manner;
- Protection services for women and girls facing gender-based violence; and
- Support for Afghan women and girls facing persecution, including outside of Afghanistan.
ExxonMobil has promised to achieve net zero emissions for its operations by 2050, but activists are skeptical. (photo: Getty)
The pledge includes emissions from the company’s oil, gas and chemical production and the energy used to power these operations, Reuters reported. However, it does not include emissions from consumers who use its products, and environmental activists expressed skepticism about the company’s promise.
“What are we going to see next, Darth Vader sending out a press release about a sustainable Death Star?” Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn told The Independent. “ExxonMobil remains a planet destroyer and the obfuscations and half-truths they’re using to claim a pathway to ‘net-zero’ won’t change that in the slightest. The gaps in this plan are big enough to fly an asteroid through.”
Exxon is one of 20 fossil fuel companies responsible for 35 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions since 1965. There is also evidence that the company was aware of the consequences of its actions but acted to cast public doubt on the science behind the climate crisis.
However, Exxon underwent a change in leadership last year when shareholders forced out three directors and replaced them with candidates proposed by a hedge fund that wanted the oil giant to prepare for a low carbon future, Reuters reported. Since then, it has directed $15 billion toward emissions initiatives over the next six years and promised to achieve net zero for its operations in the Permian Basin by 2030.
The new commitment extends this to global operations.
“We are developing comprehensive roadmaps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our operated assets around the world,” Exxon Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods said in a statement reported by Reuters.
The company said it had pinpointed 150 ways to change its production practices; for example, by powering operations with renewable energy and ending the flaring and venting of methane, The New York Times reported.
“We’ve got a line of sight,” Woods told The New York Times. “By the end of this year, 90 percent of our assets will have road maps to reduce emissions and realize this net-zero future.”
The pledge only covers emissions from production and the energy used for that production, otherwise known as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions respectively. It does not cover Scope 3 emissions, which are the emissions generated when people drive cars or power their homes using Exxon products. These emissions usually account for the majority of a company’s carbon footprint.
This puts Exxon behind competitors like Shell, Equinor, BP and Occidental Petroleum, which have included Scope 3 emissions in their net zero pledges. However, Occidental Petroleum is the only U.S. company that has included Scope 3 emissions. Chevron’s net-zero target is similar to Exxon’s in that it only covers operations.
“Exxon’s lack of a scope 3 target reflects a strategy that may leave it behind the curve in growing clean energy sectors,” Will Scargill, managing energy analyst at GlobalData, told Reuters.
While the new pledge does not include Scope 3 emissions, Woods told The New York Times that Exxon was working to address them by working on carbon capture, as well as developing low carbon alternative fuels for airplanes and heavy transportation.
But environmental advocates worry that carbon capture technology is just a stalling tactic to stave off a rapid and thorough transition to renewable energy.
The Center for International Environmental Law, for example, argued that it was “expensive, energy-intensive, and unproven at scale” and “entrenches reliance on fossil fuels,” as The Independent reported.
Henn also noted that Exxon is still spending most of its money on fossil fuels.
“The investments in climate solutions that Exxon is touting are still only around 10 per cent of their capital expenditures per year, meaning the other 90 per cent is going to oil, gas, plastics, and other polluting products,” he told The Independent.
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