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Malalai Joya Won't Be Silenced by Warlords, Fundamentalists, or US Occupation
A lot of people have tried to silence Malalai Joya. When she spoke in the Afghan parliament as its youngest elected member, the microphones would be turned off. When that didn't deter her, her fellow parliamentarians expelled her.
She has survived four assassination attempts, and still she speaks out, denouncing the warlords, the ''criminals'' in the Hamid Karzai government, the terrorist Taliban, and the occupying troops.
Words pour out of Ms Joya, 32, in a rush, as if she must tell everything she knows in case someone tries to shut her up again.
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The democracy activist and campaigner for women's rights is in Sydney to deliver an uncompromising message: ''Democracy never comes by war, by occupation, by cluster bombs and white phosphorous,'' she says.
She wants foreign troops out of Afghanistan because that would mean one less enemy to fight. ''We are sandwiched between two enemies, the Taliban and warlords on one side, and the foreign troops on the other,'' she says.
She says more than 8000 innocent civilians have been killed during the nine years of US and NATO occupation, with a spike under the Obama administration's troop surge; opium production has flourished again, and even the heralded gains for girls and women are a sham.
''The situation in most provinces is as catastrophic as under the domination of the Taliban,'' she says. ''A few schools are built in big cities to justify the occupation but it's the law of the jungle for women in the provinces.''
In the album she carries, mostly photos of shockingly injured civilians, are also pictures of smart Afghan women in the 1960s in modern dress, stepping out. Today women were being whipped, stoned and shot in public for alleged illicit affairs, she said, and rape cases were skyrocketing.
''This is a caricature of democracy,'' she said.
She is unrelenting in her criticism of the Karzai government and sees its recent overtures to moderate Taliban as ''one terrorist group inviting another terrorist group to join the government, and both are misogynist''.
Ms Joya was born four days after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Her family fled to Pakistan in 1982, where she went to school in the refugee camps. She returned when the Soviets retreated, and taught girls in secret basement schools under the Taliban.
She was elected to the National Assembly in 2005 and expelled two years later. She decided not to run in the recent election, partly to protect her supporters whose lives would be endangered, and because ''any hope I've had for positive change through the ballot box is gone''.
She was invited to Australia by Deakin University to be the keynote speaker at the World in Crisis/ Business as Usual conference and spoke last night at The Sydney Institute.
''I'm an optimist about Afghanistan,'' she said.
''If I was negative I would come to the West and enjoy my life. But while hope is alive, anything is possible.''
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59 Comments so far
Show AllI'm optimistic about Afghanistan, too. They will continue forever to defend their land from the mercenary thugs (U.S. soldiers) of a brutal foreign power, giving hope to all except multinational corporations.
I too would like to see an Afghan victory over the invading mercenaries. The fact that I'm American just makes me sad. Afghanistan for Afghans. US OUT!!!!
Remember the MIMC loves endless War.
It's hard for you guys to write stories like this, because they are hard to classify. I feel your pain.
On the one hand, this should be a propaganda coup for the west, "daring woman takes on fundamentalists" made-for-TV style hope and change stuff. I can understand that.
But she was put into power on the heels of a massive military invasion in which many, many, MANY, people in the native country were killed.
So when the Taliban (those bad "fundies", remember?) start coming after your gal here, we now have the perfect storm (and absurd spectacle) of having to murder the natives in order for the tolerant secular female "leader" to lead.
Once again, this is an example of not getting your goals straight. Much like the gays in the army thing.
Why should one propped up stooge be lauded, and another stooge (Old Mr. Karzai) be demonized? Because this woman could be used to get women in America to rally around a war that was doomed from the start? Is that it?
Surely, that couldn't be it!
You're calling Joya a "propped up stooge"? Parallel to Karzai? While I recognize and agree that the situation in Afghanistan is much more complex than can be represented by a mere two players, or two opposing dynamics, I find your characterization of Joya as a "propped up stooge" completely inaccurate and unacceptable. Saddam Hussein was a propped up stooge, as was the Shah of Iran, or Noriega, Marcos, or Pinochet (supply any tin-pot dictator of choice), all propped up to implement American corporate goals in their respective countries.
But Joya?
One important reason to laud Joya and not Karzai is that she is working for human rights, defiant of the personal danger she finds herself in, not collaborating with foreign powers, terrorist gangs, and drug and weapons merchants enriching themselves on the misery of others. Yes, the women's rights issue gets trotted out every time someone needs to manipulate Westerners into agreeing to a military aggressionsomewhere, but it becomes eminently clear in very short order that such was just a manipulation. At that point, Joya should just have shut up and disappeared? She is working despite lack of support from the very entities that claimed a concern for human rights in Afghanistan. You may want to perk up a little on that, as Afghani men are also subjected to some of the abuses the women endure at the hands of morality and modesty squads.
And what the H do you mean by "the gays in the army thing"? Is your understanding of politics really that shallow and careless that it doesn't matter how inarticulate you are about them?
I couldn't find any indication to suggest the Joya could possibly be propped up. I'd take her in place of either one of my senators of NY any day. Speaking of gays, I am reminded that in Idaho, a same sex local politician won a state legislature seat. I don't remember who it was but he/she must have been in the same position as Joya in Afghanistan. I hope Joya survives and gets some more likewise company in Parliament.
Nope.
This women is being used, ever so slightly, to make us feel good about having nice decent "westernized" people over there who oh-so-conveniently need the protection of a western army.
You can talk about democracy all you want, I've heard it all before.
I'm puzzled as to how you can draw this conclusion from a reading of the article. From what I read, the article makes it clear that she in no way wants the US occupation to continue, and states that in unequivocal terms.
Some quotes from the article:
''Democracy never comes by war, by occupation, by cluster bombs and white phosphorous,'' she says.
''The situation in most provinces is as catastrophic as under the domination of the Taliban,'' she says. ''A few schools are built in big cities to justify the occupation but it's the law of the jungle for women in the provinces.''
''This is a caricature of democracy,'' she said.
She says more than 8000 innocent civilians have been killed during the nine years of US and NATO occupation...
She wants foreign troops out of Afghanistan because that would mean one less enemy to fight.
Seems alot of posters did not read the article.
I think the point is, is regardless of whether the women herself has laudable goals that praising her casts the "democracy" by gunpoint U.S. puppet government in Afghanistan in a good light. The first goal of any anti imperialist ought to be cheer on a U.S. defeat in Afghanistan and a total collapse of the puppet government there IMO. The only way apparently the U.S. will learn to stop interfering in other countries for oil and Israel is having it's ass brutally kicked over and over again, that's reality much as nicey, nice "liberals," may not want to face that harsh reality. So I think this article is pablum that indirectly supports U.S.imperialism by giving the illegitimate imposed by violence puppet government a veneer of legitimacy.
Yes, she is denouncing everything about the US occupation of her homeland, what an obvious stooge for the US occupation of her homeland...
Is someone paying you to spout such utter idiocy?
Point is even sincere people can be *used* to provide cover for the idea that Afghanistan's society was not OK the way it was before and ought to be changed into a western style democracy. IMO we have no say in that whatsoever, that's up to the people in Afghanistan to decide. I am not saying she is a direct stooge for the U.S. in her own mind, I am saying articles like this are being used by the elite to drum up hate against the Taliban which is useful for the pro war imperialist agenda.
We need to fix our own drastic problems of inequality, and infrastructure and environmental degradation here first and foremost, and let the rest of the world make its own decisions in an autonomous fashion without U.S. interference or propaganda spin.
Here's a suggestion, guitarist: Leave Israel out of it, since our war on Afghanistan and Iraq have NOTHING what.so.ever to do with Israel.
Kudos to Joya for denouncing our occupation of Afghanistan.
All wars in the middle east serve the oil companies and Israel's interest you'd be naive to think any different. BTW, I shouldn't even need to say this, but that is not a slam on Jewish people, some of the most courageous resistance to the child murdering racist nationalist land thieves in Israel are people of Jewish descent like Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Norman Finklestein, etc. The problem with Israel is a problem with *all racist nationalist states that steal land for reasons of greed* the U.S. obviously being the biggest racist nationalist land thieving state of them all.
And I suppose it's just a coincidence that her promoting an idea of western "democracy" and criticizing the Taliban very much serves the needs of empire and the idea that some areas of the world benefit from western interference? Does it ever occur to anyone that the pre western village rule in Afghanistan where leaders are directly accountable to people at a local level might be more democratic than western representative democracy where money and power interests hold sway?
This article and movement frankly has the same sort of U.S. A.I.D. stench to it that the western manufactured "green" movement in Iran does. :(
P.S. it's interesting her photo shows up on this U.S. government propaganda website taken by a U.S. A.I.D. photographer an organization notorious for destabilizing governments hostile to "western interests." Coincidence? Ask Hugo Chavez about U.S. A.I.D...
http://photos.state.gov/libraries/usinfo-photo/39/week_4_0607/
Good point! Glad to know I'm not the only one sick of these women "heroes" that want to have their cake ("I'm as liberal as some feminists you see in college, full rights for everyone! Yay!") and eat it too ("...but not you native resistance fighters, you need to 'adjust'")
Psycho-babble and feel-good western style rhetoric does not work after bombers have raked the country side. All of you who are cheering this woman on are in fact demanding that she face death at the hands of the ENTIRELY LEGITIMATE AFGHAN RESISTANCE MOVEMENT. What about this is so hard to see?
If you really care about this woman's well being, STOP ENCOURAGING HER TO STAY IN AFGHANISTAN!!! Nothing she can do will ever, ever ever ever ever (one thousand evers...) redeem her for coming in with the invaders (WHICH NONE OF YOU ARE REFUTING, I CANT HELP BUT NOTICE) because that's how resistance works. At no point, ever, will the Taliban accept this person as a legitimate ruler, why in the name of God would they?
Your very insistence that the Taliban do this as some sort of imposed "concession" is a blatant encouragement of violence on the ground in that country! What in the name of GOD is wrong with you all for not seeing this?!?!?! Leave these people alone!
Guitarist, I'm glad you recognize that the United States is the worst of the worst when it comes to genocide, but I still stand by my position that Israel doesn't belong in an essay about a woman who's courageous enough to rightly condemn our vicious policies in Afghanistan.
If you know something we don't, please share it with us, because right now you're just slandering someone who might actually be a pretty awesome person. This article at least doesn't in any way support you. If you're accusing someone of something so low and despicable, you should definitely show your proof. It's super easy to call someone a liar and a puppet, but if you do that to people who actually deserve respect, you're the worst kind of scum.
Malalai Joya is not the kind of Afghan woman US and Western media want to deal with because she does not fit into the "brand" of Afghanistan that can be peddled in self-serving soundbites and catchy images:
http://cursor.org/stories/emptyspace3.html
rawa.org/temp/runews/2010/03/26/recruit-afghan-women-to-sell-war-to-europeans-cia-report.html
In this sense, she is like the Jewish Moroccan democracy activist, Abraham Serfaty who died yesterday and suffered much more than, say, celebrated pro-democracy poster childs like Aung San Suu Kyi and Benazir Bhutto. He was tortured by a despotic monarchy that relies on Western support and is not averse to "disappearing" of dissidents. Even the obituaries of Serfaty, who was ignored for decades, do not mention his rejection of Zionism which does not fit into the narrative of Israel as the homeland of Jews everywhere:
Zionism is above all a racist ideology. It is the Jewish reversal of Hitlerism....It proclaims the state of Israel "Jewish above everything" just as Hitler proclaimed an Aryan Germany.
vosizneias.com/69159/2010/11/19/rabat-noted-jewish-moroccan-democracy-activist-abraham-serfaty-dies
guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/29/france-accused-over-moroccans-vanishing
"It is the Jewish reversal of Hitlerism....It proclaims the state of Israel "Jewish above everything" just as Hitler proclaimed an Aryan Germany."
Not quite. Chauvinism has been written right into the laws in the Old Testament. Tribal purity is a concept older than Hitler or Aryanism.
The thought pattern / psychology / psychopathy is the same. Only the superficial details vary.
Just get your history in the right order.
There's a colon that you missed, i.e. these words were spoken by Abraham Serfaty, not me. As for arguing about recent history using 3,000 year old religious texts to make your point is an approach not likely to get you far at any academic institute apart from some of the more harebrained theological seminaries.
My evidence that she is being used is the fact that she came to "prominence" after the U.S invasion despite having not spent her entire life there (which matters to natives I've noticed, but not to pundits for some reason) much like the "hated" Karzai whom you are openly encouraged to despise.
She is useful to the occupation because as you can clearly tell from her own words, she hates the Taliban and seems to feel that this native form of rule is equally on par with a foreign occupation. How is that consistent?
Once again, as I seem to say about article after article here, you CANNOT have it both ways. No matter how 'wonderful' and 'exceptional' you are. It's like having only a little bit of evidence connecting you to a bunch of killings versus having a whole truckload of evidence.
Sorry. Don't buy it.
She will be thrown to the wolves you say? Why do the wolves want her? Because they are 'evil'? 'Backwards'? 'Sexist'? 'Woman Haters'? 'Girl-Cutters'? Not because she in any way collaborated with the invasion and slaughter of the native Afghans?
I remember all that being trotted out in 2002 as reasons these people deserved to die. I refuse to let that meme have power in determining which countries we attack, leave these people alone.
This part is particularly revealing:
"She was elected to the National Assembly in 2005 and expelled two years later. She decided not to run in the recent election, partly to protect her supporters whose lives would be endangered, and because "any hope I've had for positive change through the ballot box is gone."'
Did you catch that? 2005. Not 1998, not 1996 or 1997 or even 2000. Two thousand and five, what does that mean? I can tell you that from the point of view of the Afghan resistance, which I am sorry to say does not subscribe to the American liberalism that you wish they did, this would make her part of the problem. That's the kindest way I can put it, and I have NOTHING against this individual, but I won't cover for her.
Maybe I'm not seeing something I should, but I'm still having a hard time with this portrayal of her as some kind of stooge for the USA. She sounds like she just wants foreigners out of her native land. Are you sure that not living in Afghanistan for part of her life taints her, or is reason for suspicion? Looked her up on wiki, here's what they say:
*The daughter of a former medical student who lost a leg while fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Malalai Joya was 4 years old when her family fled Afghanistan in 1982 to the refugee camps of Iran and later Pakistan. After the Soviet withdrawal, Malalai Joya returned to Afghanistan in 1998 during the Taliban's reign.*
That doesn't sound to me like someone like Ahmed Chalabi of Iraq who arrived in the country after the US military to make the most of the situation.
I know wiki isn't the end-all authority, but the entry on her is worth a look.
Look, I don't care if she thinks pot should be legal, I don't care if she wants girls uncovered by burkas, none of that is relative. None of that.
The fact of the matter is this: She came back to the country and began being politically active AFTER the U.S army and air force killed tens of thousands of Afghans. As I have read in article after article for the last TEN YEARS, many of which reference this woman, I have heard about:
-her campaign workers being attacked.
-her offices being bombed.
-and as they always mention "many assassination attempts" against her.
Read between the lines. The country of Afghanistan is rejecting her as the human body rejects an organ if (for reasons unknown to us sometimes) it doesn't want it.
By wanting to have a "heroic female figure" that you wish to rally around, you are offering de facto encouragement to the murder of anyone in that country who just might be offended by someone claiming to be a 'ruler' after three years of surgical strikes and death squads (remember, she 'ran' in 2005, HELLO!) during an election which was supervised by the occupiers.
Untangle your goals.
I don't know whether you noticed this, so I'll point it out - the western army is not protecting anyone, more likely it is contributing to the problem. Afghani women were much more "westernized", i.e. modern, BEFORE the western heroes came to rescue them.
Yes, in a way the woman is being used - by media, lefty or otherwise, to garner support for somebody's cause. Nobody really honestly gives a tinker's damn about Afghani women, or Congolese women, or Sudanese, Ethiopean, Chadian, Rwandan, Haitian, Balkan women. The plight of women in conflict zones is trotted out in order to enrage the western audience into compliance with some act of state force, or at least somnolence.
Seems to be working...
In the late 1970's the USA armed the landlords and fundamentalists rebelling against the socialist government implementing GENDER and agrarian reform, thus initiating 30 years of warfare. Afghanistan was stabilized by the Taliban which imposed Sharia law which included swift justice to rapists and murderers. The USA attacked again, this time in person.
Thanks Redbaloon
For the record,I did have the honor to meet Malalai Joya she is indeed a joy, a life force with passion & fire with a dragon in here throat she speaks, you can't stop her, like a train trying to reach destination before it burns entirely, troy-gen horses & double agents do not talk about getting imperialism out of the region, or call the Talliban rapists & corrupted regime. she is not just talks, she walks it, I wont even go there.
The loathing the intellectual masturbation about her is sad and staggering.
Some of us ether don't read well, are apolitical, lack compassion or worst. I would like to believe its just a case of circonstancial bad something.
You want to sea bad l00k at Kissinger, he was sitting next to Obama (right hand side), the father of PREEMPTIVE STRIKE. Trying to strike a deal with Russia to isolate china. Its no detente.
he tried force now he's trying fineness for the greater good of course. The wisdom to choose who lives who dies & who pays the price.
In soulidarity
No Terror No Torture Just Truth.
A reply to Whatswrong...& Guitarist - I think Guitarist in a comment below infers certain facts from Malalai Joya's visit to DC that are not supported by reality.
Whatswrong..." "Why should one propped up stooge be lauded, and another stooge (Old Mr. Karzai) be demonized? Because this woman could be used to get women in America to rally around a war that was doomed from the start? Is that it?"
I attended Malalai's talk in DC. At the time, a group of well-meaning, left-of-center, Am. women had just come back from Afghanistan, having concluded that Afghani women did not want the US out for fear of the ensuing conditions. That view caused a raucus in certain circles, and one article I read said that the women with whom the Am. ladies met were Warlord wives. Eventually this group recanted their conclusion that the US should stay in Afghanistan partly because of Malalai's opposition to that position and information she presented.
In her DC talk, Malalai disabused the Am. women of the belief that women were safe under the Warlords or during the occupation. As much is mentioned in the above article about the terrible present condition of Afgh. women. She called the Warlords, allied with Karzai & supported by the US, criminals and more dangerous to women than the Taliban because the Warlords were rapists, etc. She was definitely against the occupation and all the usual players. She wanted the US and all foreign troops out of Afghanistan. She talked about true democracy where people run their own affairs, with no outside interference, and said there are a lot of democratic leaders in Afghanistan, waiting in the wings, who are in danger and who are not presently players because they cannot be bought.
Those who really want to know her positions can read her books. I have no idea who took that picture in the article above. Is it possible that the US is accommodating her because of her international standing and possible future status? Not unheard of to keep their fingers in many pies. Is that a reflection on Malalai and what she stands for? Not at all. She has made herself quite clear.
Can my conclusions be wrong and the two posters mentioned above be right? Anything is possible. However, my conclusions are not based on mere opinions.
I think you need this woman more in D.C.
Not in Afghanistan.
Clearly.
If she inspires you so much.
Joya, you look lovely and keep up plugging away. You'll also need allies to help you. You don't want to go alone on this one. One person alone can't do it. Forge an alliance and put the US to shame for trying to turn your government into another US sock puppet regime. You can do it. You go girl !
When our beloved president was spending many days considering the Afghan surge, consulting with all his decorated advisors, Ms Joya was in DC. I called my congressional delegation and the white house to see if they had spoken with her, as her knowledge, experience and female perspective might be of some use. I found no one who had even heard of her. Both my senators are women, but alas, no one in their offices had heard of Malalai Joya, considered by some to be the
bravest woman in Afghanistan, and others who believe one of the most courageous in the world.
If she were assasinated, who would give the order?
How many even know her name? We are all guilty. Fill er up, on more time. See you all in hell.
This so called freedom fighter who claims to hate the U.S. occupation was in D.C.? How utterly telling, I wonder if she was consulting with U.S. A.I.D. and the leaders of the Iranian "green" movement how to whip up fake "grassroots" hate against the Taliban and Afghan resistance among naive western "liberals," something that serves NATO/U.S./Israelis interest to a tee, which is just a coincidence, no doubt?
I wonder what "color" her movement will be?
http://www.chavezcode.com/2010/02/colored-revolutions-new-form-of-regime.html
Sigh...
[Joya] "collaborated with the invasion and slaughter of the native Afghans..."
How did she do that? Evidence please!
How can you claim to speak "from the point of view of the Afghan resistance"?
You make no sense.
I have an irrational right-wing sibling (and had a similarly nutty father). Neither have ever been able to defend a single position or adhere to a rational argument; everything devolved into a wacky, emotion-triggered, usually-hate-filled rant, one statement often contradicting a previous statement. Many years ago, I simply chose to ignore the sibling and cordon off political and economic topics with my parental unit.
I choose to do likewise with WhatsWrongWithB...
"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger
Good advice!
I am glad to see so far no CD reader is swallowing this feel good about democracy in Afghanistan pap.
What drugs are you on?
Did you read the article?
There is absolutely zero "feel good about democracy in Afghanistan" in this article.
You just sound completely ridiculous.
Fomenting hate among nicey nice western "liberal" "progressives" against the Muslim based Afghan resistance very much serves western interests, and also helps to weaken and divide the resistance in Afghanistan internally which is classic western destabilization tactics as deployed against Hugo Chavez for example. If we want to be hard leftists and not mere soft "liberal" dupes of empire it behooves us to look below the surface and try to sus out exactly whose interests are being served by an article like this IMO.
And note I am not saying Joya is necessarily actively plotting with the U.S., she may sincerely believe she is fighting the occupation, but it's very telling IMO that her story is being spread far and wide by neo-con war mongers for example. It's very possible IMO she is a unwilling pawn/dupe of western destabilization efforts.
http://open.salon.com/blog/judy_mandelbaum/2010/05/04/how_time_magazine_hoodwinked_afghan_activist_malalai_joya
Is any of this provable in an absolute sense? Of course not, but just as many of us were rightly suspicious of a deeper story in the coup against Chavez I also think we should keep out eyes to the ground when an ostensible "revolutionary," is hyped by the MSM. How often does that happen?
I agree 100%.
You do not get the resistance you want western liberals, I'm sorry to have to tell you that.
"Argue" with that all you want.
You get the resistance you deserve.
It's absolutely hilarious the way you keep attributing intentions to people who hold no such intentions. Your mind applies the categories it has adopted and nothing outside those categories makes any sense to you.
Like any good fundamentalist.
What you are calling "fundamentalist", as far as I can tell, my brain is constructing as "merciful".
I do not consider it "fundamentalist" at all to expect of my leaders and rulers that they not ride out a wave of violence and misfortune, a wave instigated by others I do not know, in order to "help" me. I consider that a fair standard for both friends and the elite.
guitarist, If you play guitar the way you think, you need to go back to scales.
Nice ad hominem do you have anything substantive to add? Like why this so called revolutionary is hyped by the corporate owned MSM when ALL other true revolutionaries are criticized by them? Couldn't be because her rhetoric (sincere or not) divides and destabilizes the legitimate resistance to western occupation could it? And yes that resistance is sexist fundamentalist Muslims, deal, it's still better than letting empire win, as Arundhati Roy wisely said if western liberals wait for the perfect by their academic standards resistance fighters no resistance will ever happen and the empire wins by default. If you don't think western spook agencies aren't capable of using naive sincere people like Joya towards there own nefarious ends of destabilizing resistance movements I suggest you read some radical history, start with William Blum, then google COINTELPRO for the U.S. domestic version.
Also how many true revolutionaries get a receptive audience among the elite in D.C.? Think, don't drink in propaganda unfiltered.
I suggest there are a lot of readers/posters who
also wonder...Whats wrong with B?
I understand you all really really really want to believe in this woman.
Clearly, there are a lot of posters who want desperately to believe and rally around something tangible, something real, and I am sorry that a lot of people feel that way because it would appear (to me) that it is being cruelly exploited here.
And we understand you really really want to believe in your rigid doctrinaire ideology.
i'm not desperately looking for anything, and i think what she is doing is admirable. You can interpret the hell out of that, and you obviously do, but you frankly don't know the first thing about me or what i do in the world.
Rave on.
What you are calling "doctrinaire", my brain is calling "kindness". I'm not saying that to be provocative, I'm just wondering how far our minds are differing on the concept of "kindness".
If Malalai’s parents and all the other Afghan ‘nationalists’ hadn’t fled to Pakistan and then cheered as the barbaric CIA-backed mujahadin ‘freedom fighters’ were butchering Soviet soldiers and Afghan women, if they had joined the PDPA and their Soviet allies in the struggle against warlords and fundamentalists, young Malalai might also be wearing modern dress.
Here’s an interesting contrast in quotes:
• Tahmeena Faryal, a prominent representative of the petty-bourgeois nationalist Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan: “Soviet forces … were trying to give some rights to Afghan women that are obviously okay in Western societies, but are not acceptable in our societies ... For example, they wanted to give so-called liberties of having a boyfriend or dancing in a nightclub, which are not acceptable in our society” (Z Magazine, January 2002);
• Saira Noorani, a young woman doctor: “Life was good under the Soviets. Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go wherever we wanted and wear what we liked” (Observer, 30 September 2001).
Thank you for your memory. I've heard these and many more stories, too many in fact, that's why I cannot blindly support westernized avatars of so-called "democracy".
This reminds me of all of the aid workers who were butchered by Washington D.C backed death goons in Iraq during the mass slaughter of 2004-2006, aid worker after aid worker, shot, stabbed, butchered, filmed, butchered, by people they had worked alongside for years.
All I could think as I heard of death after death after death of people that I would have probably had a drink with and chatted with in real life, people I could have tossed a football with during my college years, people in their mid-to-early twenties as I was, butchered.
These people were not imperialists, their were socialists at heart and everybody knew that. I'm convinced that was the point of unleashing that barbarism with easy access to palette-loads of cash and weapons. It changed how I viewed money forever.
All I could think was: "These guys were set up. All of them. Those poor people."
That's what I'm feeling towards this woman in question. Malalai Joya.
Because if we are to give consent to her ascension among the Afghans, we must give our consent to the massive amount of violence, however so small we feel that consent to be, deployed in securing her rights.
To that I say: No, thank you. You will be required to do it another way.