Medieval mindset in Afghanistan

"Women and children on Monday in Mazar Dara, Kunar Province, where male rescuers would not pull women from under rubble or tend their wounds, witnesses said".Credit...Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Excerpts from a report in the New York Times:

The first rescue workers reached Bibi Aysha’s village more than 36 hours after an earthquake devastated settlements across eastern Afghanistan’s mountainous areas on Sunday. But instead of bringing relief, the sight of them heightened her fears; not a single woman was among them.

Afghan cultural norms, enforced even in emergencies by the ruling Taliban, forbid physical contact between men and women who are not family members. In the village of Andarluckak, in Kunar Province, the emergency team hurriedly carried out wounded men and children, and treated their wounds, said Ms. Aysha, 19. But she and other women and adolescent girls, some of them bleeding, were pushed aside, she said.

“They gathered us in one corner and forgot about us,” she said. No one offered the women help, asked what they needed or even approached them.

Tahzeebullah Muhazeb, a male volunteer who traveled to Mazar Dara, also in Kunar Province, said that members of the all-male medical team there were hesitant to pull women out from under the rubble of collapsed buildings. Trapped and injured women were left under stones, waiting for women from other villages to reach the site and dig them out...

More at the link.  I'm looking forward to a discussion of this between Nepkarel and Crowboy, as per this extended interchange..