A rare public demonstration by Afghan women demanding equal rights turned violent yesterday, with Taliban security forces firing on the crowd. Witnesses report at least three dead and a dozen wounded in Kabul. The protest, one of the largest since the Taliban’s return to power, was met with live ammunition and baton charges.
The British government has condemned the crackdown, calling it a ‘brutal suppression of fundamental freedoms’. The tragedy is a stark reminder that the Taliban’s promises of a softer rule have long since evaporated. Markets, however, barely flinched.
The FTSE 100 edged up 0.2%, more concerned with gilt yields and the Bank of England’s next move than with human rights abuses in a far-off capital. This is the cold calculus of global finance: capital flees instability, but Afghanistan has long been a non-event for investors.
The real story here is the West’s moral bankruptcy. We issue statements, impose sanctions that bite no one, and shuffle papers at the UN. Meanwhile, the Taliban knows that its real audience is not the protesters on the streets but the creditors in Beijing and Doha.
The pound sterling’s strength against the dollar owes nothing to our foreign policy and everything to energy prices and interest rate expectations. The women of Kabul are the latest sacrifice to our collective indifference. The bottom line: we value fiscal stability over human dignity, and the market has priced it in.
