The Most Famous Woman in Afghanistan

That's how CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans introduced Malalai Joya on Thursday, in the U.S. on a book tour for her memoir A Woman Among Warlords. A more telling modifier often describes Malalai Joya as the bravest woman in Afghanistan. After all, is she not the one-time youngest member of Parliament who has survived four assassination attempts on her life and routinely lambastes the Taliban, the Karzai government and President Obama for persisting in what she refers to as the occupation of Afghanistan?

In her earnest yet high-pitched voice she emphatically proclaimed,"The Afghan people are sandwiched between two enemies -- the Taliban on one side and the US/NATO forces and the Karzai government with their warlords and fundamentalists on the other."

She explained to the west Los Angeles women gathered in her honor why the Afghans and those of us in the room should reject all three and instead back progressives such as herself and the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).

WATCH Malalai Joya's historical speech:

Progressives like Joya are virtually ignored by our government and the mainstream media. Hence, the most famous woman in Afghanistan is virtually unknown here. In Afghanistan progressives are ridiculed at best and often threatened or killed by the government and warlords alike.

Joya returned again and again to the theme of the illegitimacy of the Karzai government and the U.S. presence. She believes the elections were efforts by the United States to give legitimacy to its puppet regime in Afghanistan. She explained that the three main candidates (Karzai, Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani) all had long relationships with the United States, and are considered U.S. agents in Afghanistan:

"Everyone knows that there could not be free elections while the Taliban have a presence in 80% of Afghanistan and murderous warlords control the rest of the country. Karzai will serve first U.S. interests and not the people of Afghanistan. Democracy cannot be imported but must be home grown."

She denounced the Karzai government as hopelessly corrupt and many members as criminals and narco-traffickers. She alluded to the New York Times articlethat exposed Ahmed Wali Karzai, Karzai's brother as both a drug dealer and CIA asset to substantiate her point.

Joya sees the Obama administration's reservations about Karzai as disingenuous. She sees the U.S.-backed Karzai government as a mockery of democracy, created as a corporate-friendly puppet regime to facilitate the business interests of fossil fuel pipelines, critical in the"New Great Game."

During the Q&A Jodie Evans first called on CODEPINK benefactors and women that had been with her and the organization to both Afghanistan and Gaza. From them came the expected flurry of questions about the state of women in Afghanistan. Joya again returned to her theme and insisted that the people of Afghanistan, including women, are worse off after "the occupation" than before and that the country would be much better off without U.S. presence since they would be fighting only two enemies and not three.

She went on to explain that "the occupation" has not liberated women, that Karzai and the Parliament of warlords have done little to improve the lives of women: "President Obama is not assisting in the liberation of Afghan women by empowering the warlords and fundamentalists."

The last question was: What would you like to say to President Obama? She became agitated as if she were right in front of him and spoke directly:

"I speak for the peace loving people of Afghanistan. We reject your brutal occupation. We reject corruption, warlords and drug lords. You say this is Bush's war but you do not denounce the warlords who destroy my country. Why do you not reverse course one hundred percent and end the occupation? If you do not then, this is now Obama's war too."

So why the rebranding of Malalai Joya? Perhaps because to call Joya the bravest woman in Afghanistan is to dismiss the millions of other brave Afghan women who every day live under the Karzai government and face the real threat of abuse, discrimination and rape. Malalai Joya represents these women as well as all the voiceless people of Afghanistan.

Joya was in Los Angeles not so much promoting her book, of which one hundred percent of the proceeds go to her activist organization, but promoting her ideas and ideals and spreading the word that the Afghan people want the U.S. forces out of Afghanistan now.

In Los Angeles, Joya is accompanied by her advocate, supporter and friend Sonali Kolhatkar, journalist and host of Pacifica's KPFK radio morning show Uprising. When asked what we could do to help Sonali answered, "Friends want to buy Malalai a safe car. It is appalling to see her car stalled on the side of the road putting her life in great danger."

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Comments

[TheMediaRanger]

PART FOUR
Here are links to Mr. Hari's article and interview:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/malalai-joya-the-woman-who-will-not-be-silenced-1763127.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/everythign-you-have-been_b_327914.html

[TheMediaRanger]

PART THREE
And it is "false" to say Afghan culture is inherently misogynistic. "By the 1950s, there was a growing women's movement in Afghanistan, demonstrating and fighting for their rights," she says. "I have a story here" – she rifles through her notes – "from The New York Times in 1959. Here! The headline is 'Afghanistan's women lift the veil'. We were developing an open culture for women – and then the foreign wars and invasions crushed it all. If we can regain our independence, we can start this struggle again."

If she were president of Afghanistan, she would begin by referring all the country's war criminals to the International Court of Justice at the Hague. "Anybody who has murdered my sisters and brothers should be punished," she says, "from the Taliban, to the warlords, to George W Bush." Then she would ask all foreign troops to leave immediately. She says that it is wrong to say Afghanistan will simply collapse into civil war if that happens. "What about the civil war now? Today, people are being killed – many, many war crimes. The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan doing what they are doing, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people."

[vivienwe - Huffpost Blogger]

yes i agree there is a general misconception that Afghan culture is misogynistic. there is so much misinformation.

[TheMediaRanger]

PART TWO
Joya decided to set up a clinic for poor women just before the 9/11 attacks. When the American invasion began, the Taliban fled her province, but the bombs kept falling. "Many lives were needlessly lost, just like during the September 11 tragedy," she says. "The noise was terrifying, and children covered their ears and screamed and cried. Smoke and dust rose and lingered in the air with every bomb dropped."

As soon as the Taliban retreated, they were replaced – by the warlords who had ruled Afghanistan immediately before. Joya says that, at this point, "I realised women's rights had been sold out completely­... Most people in the West have been led to believe that the intolerance and brutality towards women in Afghanistan began with the Taliban regime. But this is a lie. Many of the worst atrocities were committed by the fundamentalist mujahedin during the civil war between 1992 and 1996. They introduced the laws oppressing women followed by the Taliban – and now they were marching back to power, backed by the United States. They immediately went back to their old habit of using rape to punish their enemies and reward their fighters."

[TheMediaRanger]

PART ONE
British journalist Johann Hari, debunking several myths recently about the value of NATO involvement in Afghanistan, had this to say:

"Argument Two: By staying, we are significantly improving Afghan human rights, especially for women. This, for me, is the meatiest argument – and the most depressing. The Taliban are indeed one of the vilest forces in the world, imprisoning women in their homes and torturing them for the "crimes" of showing their faces, expressing their sexuality, or being raped. They keep trying to murder my friend Malalai Joya for the "crime" of being elected to parliament on a platform of treating women like human beings not cattle.

But as she told me last month: "Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords." Outside Kabul, vicious Taliban who enforce sharia law have merely been replaced by vicious warlords who enforce sharia law. "The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women," she said. Any Afghan president – Karzai, or his opponents – will only ever in practice be the mayor of Kabul. Beyond is a sea of warlordism, as evil to women as Mullah Omar. That is not a difference worth fighting and dying for."