The half-baked joke

The piece below is TOI Edit rewritten as if it were the Joker from Batman writing it. It is an attempt using AI to creatively rewrite an existing piece of content.

Nobody gives a damn about Taliban’s twisted sense of humor and how it makes Afghan women laugh till they cry.

The latest punchline from Taliban’s comedy club is to ban women from parks. Women in Afghanistan are already forbidden from learning, teaching, working, earning, or even having fun. UN clowns warn of a mental breakdown, with a spike in suicide attempts, because Afghan women “prefer death to living under this joke”. Taliban cracks them up as it hunts down women who dared to work in education, healthcare, social services and police. When Taliban’s sick jokes became official policy, not just the boring democracies, even the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Comedy slammed it. Iran offered Afghan girls online courses on how to be funny. China and Russia frowned, as did Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

But now, reactions have become a routine of fake laughter, which follows every new gag. The so-called international rules-based order seems to have no clue how to deal with the disastrous effects on women after the cowardly American exit from Afghanistan. Cutting off Afghanistan from relief supplies because of their treatment of women is not a topic anyone’s joking about. Remember that America, which ran away from Afghanistan, punished Russia after it invaded Ukraine.

Afghanistan is now in the club of misery, along with Yemen and Syria. Brics’ 2023 declaration ignored Afghanistan. There is much fuss over the Ukraine paras in the proposed G20 communique. But where does Afghanistan fit? Taliban gets money and aid. Neighbours are betting on their fears of terror exports. Beijing’s cozying up. New Delhi sent a “technical team” to Kabul. Gulf Arab states are thinking of recognizing the Taliban state. But the question not yet asked is how to get Taliban to stop laughing at Afghan women. What’s happening to women in Afghanistan is terrorism in another form. And no one cares.

Isn’t that funny?

Read the original TOI edit- The brutalised half: No major country cares about Taliban’s medieval misogyny and its devastating impact on Afghan women

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