(This didn’t get quite the attention it deserved. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Malalai Joya has been called “the bravest woman in Afghanistan” by many in the media. When you hear her story and read her words, you’ll know why.
Born in Afghanistan in 1978, Joya’s family escaped to the refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan in 1982 during the Soviet invasion. When she was 20 years old, her family returned to Afghanistan, where she became a vocal opponent of the Taliban and worked to establish an orphanage and health clinic.
In 2003, Joya was elected delegate to the Loya Jirga convened to ratify the Afghan Constitution, where she spoke out publicly against the involvement of warlords and was summarily dismissed.
Here’s how World Pulse Magazine reported the incident:
When her time came to make her 3-minute statement, she tugged her black headscarf over her hair, stepped up to the microphone, and with emotional electricity made the speech that would alter her life.
After she spoke, there was a moment of stunned silence. Then there was an uproar. Male mujahideen, some who literally had guns at their feet, rushed towards her, shouting. She was brought under the protection of UN security forces.
In a nation where few dare to say the word “warlord” aloud, Joya had spoken fiercely against a proposal to appoint high clergy members and fundamentalist leaders to guide planning groups. She objected that several of those religious leaders were war criminals who should be tried for their actions-not national heroes to influence the new government.
Despite the commands of Assembly Chairman, Joya refused to apologize.
Since then, she has survived four assassination attempts, and travels in Afghanistan under a burqa and with armed guards.
But all that didn’t stop Ms. Joya. In September 2005, she was elected to the 249-seat National Assembly, or Wolesi Jirga, as a representative of Farah Province, winning the second highest number of votes in the province.
On May 7, 2006, Malalai Joya was physically and verbally attacked by fellow members of parliament after accusing several colleagues of being “warlords” and unfit for service in the new Afghan government. After shouting death threats, fellow lawmakers suspended her for three years.
Joya explains her views of the Afghan government and the role of the US in its corruption in an email interview with the PBS show NOW:
It seems that the U.S. government and its allies want to rely on them (the warlords) and install them to the most important posts in the executive, legislation and judicial bodies. Today the whole country is in their hands and they can do anything using their power, money and guns. They grab billions of dollars from foreign aid, drugs and precious stones smuggling.
The U.S. wants a group or band in Afghanistan to obey its directions accurately and act according to the U.S. policies, and these fundamentalists’ bands of the Northern Alliance have proved throughout their life that they are ready to sacrifice Afghanistan’s national interests for their lust for power and money. The U.S. has no interest in the prosperity of our people as long as its regional and strategic interests are met.
Parliament is just a showpiece for the West to say that there is democracy in Afghanistan, but our people don’t need this donated B52 democracy. I am very fed up with the parliament and have no hope for it to do anything for our people. It is a parliament of killers, murderer, drug-lords and traitors to the motherland.
In 2006, Danish filmaker Eva Mulvad made a documentary film titled Enemies of Happiness that chronicled Joya’s campaign in the country’s first democratic parliamentary elections in 35 years. Here’s a short clip from the movie. Remember that at the time of the first scene, Joya is 25 years old.
Listen to the voice of this beautiful brave young woman and take heart from her courage:
Never again will I whisper in the shadows of intimidation. I am but a symbol of my people’s struggle and a servant to their cause. And if I were to be killed for what I believe in, then let my blood be the beacon for emancipation and my words a revolutionary paradigm for generations to come.
They will kill me but they will not kill my voice, because it will be the voice of all Afghan women. You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of spring.
9 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
about this amazing young woman, here’s a link to her website.
More on this in “The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban” by Sarah Chayes.
Thank you for this essay, NP!
Great diary, NL: Thank you.
Pull out troops, politician urges
Canada is supporting a corrupt administration, says suspended parliamentarian Malalai Joya
Toronto Star, November 5, 2007
Isabel Teotonio, Staff reporter
Afghan lawmaker Malalai Joya, shown at a Kabul press conference in May, speaks in Toronto tomorrow night on “Women and War in Afghanistan.” (MUSADEQ SADEQ/AP)
Canada must pull its troops out of Afghanistan and no longer support a government full of “warlords, drug lords and criminals” if it wants to aid in rebuilding the stricken nation and avoid another 9/11, says a controversial Afghan politician.
“(Canada) must act independently and not follow the policy of the United States,” says Malalai Joya, 29, a firebrand currently on a nationwide speaking tour that brings her to Toronto tomorrow night.
Canadian soldiers fighting the Taliban are unwittingly promoting U.S. foreign policy, which is propping up a corrupt government, says Joya, who has garnered a legion of fans for her advocacy work on women’s rights. “This policy is a mockery of democracy and a mockery of the war on terror,” the youngest member of the Afghan parliament says during a telephone interview from Vancouver.
Despite the likelihood that Afghanistan will collapse into civil war if foreign troops leave, she says their presence is making the country more unstable and will fuel “another Sept. 11.”
Instead, Canada must lend moral and material support to “freedom-loving democratic parties” that can’t even afford to print party literature, and non-government organizations, with a proven track record, that can’t finish key projects aimed at rebuilding the nation.
“You can support them instead of giving billions of dollars to the pockets of this corrupt government,” says Joya, whose incendiary comments about the government earlier this year got her suspended from parliament for three years.
“Today 80 per cent of the members of parliament are warlords, drug lords and criminals … They have deceived people around the world. They have a democratic mask on but they do not believe in it.”
Peeling back that mask has become her mission – one that has drummed up immense support, particularly amongst women, and fiercely enraged her detractors.
Yet she refuses to be silenced. This, despite repeated death threats, four assassination attempts and the need to travel in the shadows of armed bodyguards. She does not have a home because it was bombed and moves from house to house each night, unable to see her husband for months at a time.
“I’ve said to these fundamentalists, `Physically, one day you will kill me,'” says Joya, who fled Afghanistan with her family during the Soviet invasion and returned during the Taliban’s rule. But, “I will never sit silent, I will never compromise.”
In May, she sparked international headlines when she spoke out in parliament against mujahideen leaders, now legislators, whom she accused of human rights abuses. She was pelted with water bottles and was the object of death and rape threats. Two weeks later, she was suspended from parliament after comments she made to a local broadcaster were aired.
“A stable or a zoo is better (than the legislature), at least there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk,” she said. “This parliament is worse than a stable or a zoo.”
Today, she remains unapologetic. “When telling the truth there’s no need to apologize, no need to regret. … As long as these fundamentalists are in power I will continue with my struggle.”
For crossing the line of “what is considered common courtesy”?
For foregoing “decorum”. For not being “civil”?
To warlords and terrorists who have destroyed her country.
It could never happen in America.
There is too much decorum and civility extended here to the counterparts of the people she criticized.
How much is too much to take?
… man, that is one beautiful name to say outloud (and I’m probably mispronouncing it, but a very musical name).
Now this is some hip lady, imo.
To tie this to your chalice concept, a way-out thought — imagine Malalia being given the kind of attention that Brittney Spears is given today in America.
As I said, a way out thought.
Great stuff, NL. I had not written a comment before because I’ve been thinking about what you wrote.
And this woman is not in the history books, she’s here right now. That’s the part that I feel is important if we chalice type folks are going to start paying attention to certain leaders in the real world.
We already had the guy who wrote The Sutras of Abu Gahraib, Aidan Delgado. Buhdy also said to go after the writer of the book you quoted from and I’m sorry, but I don’t remember her name. I think Malalia should be in that number, if this makes any sense. (I call this raw analysis, lol.)