Malalai Joya versus US State Department

Malalai Joya versus US State Department

Malalai Joya is widely acclaimed across the globe for her work as an Afghan citizen, former elected official, as a critic of the Karzai’s government, warlords, druglords, the Taliban and oppressors of women, as an indomitable activist, as an author, and as an opponent of the US/NATO war and occupation. Why does she deserve wide attention? You can get a sense of her well-deserved achievements at Wikipedia, Malalai Joya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Entry Visa Denied

This extraordinary woman made the news on March 19, 2011, and ensuing days when she was initially denied an entry visa by the US embassy in Afghanistan to re-visit the United States. Joya had been scheduled for a three-week speaking tour in the US to discuss the paperback edition of her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords, written with Derrick O’Keefe, along with her views on the US/NATO war/occupation of her country and other issues.

She has long taken the position that all foreign troops should leave the country as soon as possible, not a slow multi-year withdrawal of troops, not a continuing occupation until 2014 or later, but a full withdrawal as soon as possible, certainly sometime this year.

Reason for rejection of Visa: Bureaucratic rigidity?

The Afghanistan Women’s Mission identifies the official US reasons for the visa rejection, namely, that “[c]olleagues of Ms. Joya’s report that when she presented herself as scheduled at the U.S. embassy, she was told she was being denied because she was ‘unemployed’ and ‘lives underground.’ http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/?p+1255"

It is true that Joya lives “underground” and may thus not conform to the rigid bureaucratic visa rules of the US State Department, but, hey, she does so to protect her life for having spoken the truth about the Karzai government, warlords, Taliban, and the war/occupation.

Here is what the Afghan Women’s Mission has to say about it. “Because of her harsh criticism of warlords and fundamentalists in Afghanistan, she has been the target of at least five assassination attempts. ‘The reason Joya lives underground is because she faces the constant threat of death for having had the courage to speak up for women’s rights – it’s obscene that the U.S. government would deny her entry,’ said Sonali Kolhatkar of the Afghan Women’s Mission, a U.S. based organization that has hosted Joya for speaking tours in the past and is a sponsor of this year’s national tour.”

Reason for rejection: Ideological exclusion?

Opposition to US decision quickly grew.

The news spread on the internet, stirring a widespread furor over the embassy’s decision to reject Joya’s request for an entry visa. Derrick O’Keefe gives some sense of this outpouring of support for Malalai Joya. In a post on malalaijoya.com, he shares his observations. “In just a few days, over 2500 people have signed an to protest the denial of a U.S. travel visa to Afghan women's rights activist and author Malalai Joya, who was to make a three-week U.S. tour to promote the updated edition of A Woman Among Warlords.

O’Keefe adds: “The effort to overturn this visa denial continues. On March 18, a letter signed by six congresspeople and three senators urged that Joya be allowed the right to travel and complete her book tour in the United States.”

US rescinds its earlier decision and grants Malalai Joya an entry visa, as she originally requested

The Afghan Women’s Mission happily posted that “US Responds to Broad Public Campaign, Grants Malalai Joya Visa!” http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/?p=1301.

Here are excerpts:

“A U.S. Embassy today granted acclaimed Afghan human rights activist and former MP Malalai Joya, a visa, a little over a week after she was initially turned down….

“Afghan Women’s Mission’s Co-Director Sonali Kolhatkar responded to the news saying, ‘We are ecstatic and gratified that the government finally did the right thing and allowed Malalai Joya into the country so that Americans could hear what she has to say about the reality of the war, and particularly how Afghan women are faring under the occupation.’

The basis for Malalai Joya’s optimism There can be an end to the foreign occupation and a transition to a better Afghanistan.

The fourteenth chapter of Joya’s book, A Woman Among Warlords, is titled “The Long Road Ahead,” where she offers her alternative vision for Afghanistan. The basis for Malalai Joya’s optimism is captured by her beliefs in the basic goodness of the majority of the Afghan people. Here is how she expresses this optimism.

“…I believe that, given the opportunity, the Afghan people are capable of charting a course toward peace and independence.” (211)

“You can kill me, but you can never kill my spirit.

“As I often say, there are many others to follow me. Afghans are more than just a handful of warlords, Taliban, drug lords, and lackeys. I have a country full of people who know what I know and believe what I believe: "That we Afghans can govern ourselves without foreign interference. That democracy is possible here but can never be imposed at gunpoint. That the blood of millions of freedom-loving martyrs runs through our veins, and their memories live on in every corner of our country. That Afghan women have been at the forefront of our struggle throughout our proud history” (228-229). “Our enemies can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring” (229).

>Is it all just wishful-thinking?

It is not when you read about the uplifting experiences and achievements described in Greg Mortenson’s books, Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. It is not when we learn about the challenges to or overthrow of dictators in North Africa and the Middle East. It is not when you become informed about the election of democratic governments in South America, despite generations of US domination. There may be possibilities for peace and justice that we have not dreamed of….

Malalai Joya is what such dreams, and their actualized expressions, are made of. As she titles the concluding chapter of her book, “A River is Made Drop by Drop.”

Voices from Afghanistan demanding an immediate withdrawal of US troops

After my two paragraphs, I reproduce a very moving and powerful letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace It does not mince words. With illuminating clarity, the letter calls for a withdrawal of US and allied troops immediately. The costs of the occupation are just too great. The letter offers a profound antithesis to President Obama's upbeat message to America on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010, in which the President insists that the occupation in Afghanistan is succeeding and that the US will remain in Afghanistan until at least 2014 and perhaps "beyond."

The President did not allude to polls of Afghan opinions or, for that matter, to recent polls of American opinion. Nor did he refer to the ongoing devastation of the country by an escalated US airwar, US special forces, undisciplined Afghan police and soldiers, Afghan warlords, or to the mounting civilian casualties and displaced persons among the Afghan people, or to the increasing casualties among US troops. President Obama insisted that our core goal is to wipe out al Qaeda, and to do this safe havens for al Qaeda in Pakistan must be eliminated, one way or another. In the meantime, US generals are suggesting yet more US troops are necessary to reign in the Taliban, a category implicitly covering diverse Afghan insurgent groups, to overcome widespread corruption, as well as to stamping out al Qaeda once and for all, which is a pipe dream given the decentralized nature of the group and how, according to many experts, most of the violence in Afghanistan is waged by local, not international, groups.


We Want You Out: An Open Letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace

Friday 17 December 2010

by: Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, t r u t h o u t Op-Ed

Voices for Creative Nonviolence representatives in Kabul are privileged to be meeting with representatives of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan, Afghanistan who campaign to promote nonviolence. As the Obama administration releases its December review of the US war in Afghanistan, the AYPV, along with Afghans for Peace, have issued a review of their experiences. To express support for their letter, follow this link.

To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the "Taliban/Al-Qaeda" and regional countries:

We are intolerably angry.

All our senses are hurting.

Our women, our men and, yes, shame on you, our children, are grieving.

Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.
President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?

America's $250 million annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anemic mother.

We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.

Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly unequal. They do not listen, do not think, and, worst, they do not care.

We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.

We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.

We are not beasts.

We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.

Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, laborers, teachers, doctors … people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide.

This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you.
Come arrest us all.

Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.

We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.

We refuse you.

Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.

Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for nonviolence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.

We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans, and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another's pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us! Email youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com to arrange a call.

We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of nonviolent resistance.
How can we do any less?

14-year-old Abdulai's father was killed by the "Taliban" and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.

But he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that "something is very wrong with the world I'm caught up in"; "these elders of the world are not getting it."

How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?

How does it make anyone safer?

How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?

Your policies, skewed-ly "diagnosed" and "reviewed" in a cold, clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people; thus we endeavor to have a People's Afghanistan December Review, because that's what ordinary people can do.

We would try not to "throw" our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner's tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.

We want peace.

We want you out.

With singular sincerity,

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Afghans for Peace

Quote from Malalia Joya: My people, the suppressed millions, are my heroes. They are the real source of any positive change in Afghanistan and their power is stronger than anything else. And anti-war protesters around the world, those who are standing against the destructive policies of world powers. There is a superpower in the world besides the US government - world public opinion. -Malalai Joya

Excerpts from Wikipedia's entry on "International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan":

International public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan.

The 25-nation Pew Global Attitudes survey in June 2009 reported that majorities or pluralities in 18 out of 25 countries want U.S. and NATO to remove their military troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.

Despite American calls for NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, there was majority or plurality opposition to such action in every one of the NATO countries surveyed: Germany (63% opposition), France (62%), Poland (57%), Canada (55%), Britain (51%), Spain (50%), and Turkey (49%).

In Europe, poll after poll in France, Germany and even Britain show that the European public want their troops to be pulled out and less money spent on the war in Afghanistan

ABC News/BBC/ARD/Washington Post poll of 1,691 Afghan adults from October 29-November 13, 2010

Afghans indicated they were more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident about US-led coalition troops providing security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than a year ago. More than half of Afghans interviewed said US and NATO forces should begin withdrawing from the country in mid-2011 or sooner.

Malalai Joya:

There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns.

If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice. - Malalai Joya

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan

Malalai Joya offers an inspiring example and vision for an Afghanistan of justice and democracy

Malalai Joya represents a voice for Afghanistan independence and democracy about which you rarely read or hear. She was elected to the lower house of the Afghan parliament in 2005. Then banned from the parliament after she criticized the warlords who were "chosen" or "elected" by the people in their districts. From Malalai's point of view, they were in the parliament not because of their desire to serve their constituents and the public good, but because of the fear of reprisal that they generated in the villages and towns.

In her book, A Woman Among Warlords, Malalai provides a memoir and political analysis of her journey from being a refugee with her family to her election to the parliament and to the years thereafter. As a member of parliament, she continued to speak out against the corrupt government of President Karzai and the warlords who dominate the parliament and Karzai's government. She does not mince words when it comes to the Taliban, speaking out agains them for their undemocratic, oppressive and mysogynist agenda and for their violence and extremist Islamic religious beliefs. As a result there have been assassination attempts on her life. She must move from safe-house to safe-house to avoid her would-be killers. And, all along, she continues to speak out against the warlords, Taliban, Karzai government, and the US-NATO occupation that causes more death and devastation than anything else. In the last pages of her book, Malalai writes these inspiring words:

"I am young [born in 1978 in a small village of Ziken] and value life; I don't want to be killed. But I don't fear death; I fear remaining silent in the fact of injustice...You can kill me, but you can never kill my spirit...Afghans are more than just a handful of warlords, Taliban, drug lords, and lackeys." She continues: "I have a country full of people who know what I know and believe what I believe: That we Afghans can govern ourselves without foreign interference. That democracy is possible here but can never be imported at gunpoint. That the blood of millions of freedom-loving martyrs runs through our veins, and their memories live on in every corner of our country. That Afghan women have been at the forefront of our struggle throughout our proud history....Out enemies can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of spring" (pp. 228-229).

An article

I just came across the following article by Malalai Joya, titled "Afghanistan neither wants nor needs NATO's occupying force," at: http://stopwar.org/uk/content/view/2132/1/

Afghanistan neither needs nor wants Nato's occupying forces

The question should be not "What happens if we leave Afghanistan" but "What happens while we are in Afghanistan", because crimes of mutilation, rape and murder against women are commonplace today. While Afghans want the world's support and solidarity, we neither need nor want Nato's occupying forces.

By Malalai Joya The Guardian 02 November 2010

One year ago Hamid Karzai was declared re-elected as president of Afghanistan, ending an election that had no legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Afghans.

The presidential election last year was a fraud, with ballot stuffing, vote buying and massive corruption reported by the world's media.

Even if the independent election commission had not cancelled the planned run-off between Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, it would have represented only a choice of the "same donkey with a new saddle".

People had no incentive to participate as they knew that both main candidates would bring nothing positive for Afghan people.

Karzai had lost his popularity way before the 2009 election. This was due to the ever increasing corruption of the government, the never-ending crimes of the many fundamentalists and warlords in his regime, and the financial scandals and corruption of his brothers. In Kandahar people even started calling Ahmed Wali Karzai the "little Bush", after the hated US president.
The vast majority of Afghans have lost all hope in Karzai. For us his words and actions have no value, and that includes his latest "peace negotiations" and other measures. Including killers like Mullah Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the government is not about negotiating for peace, but completing the decades-old circle of warlordism and fundamentalism.

It's important to say that these so-called elections haven't damaged Afghanistan as much as the US and its Nato allies have, with their bombing and occupation. Wikileaks has exposed some of the truth about the civilian toll of this war against the Afghan and Iraqi peoples. Afghans hold the US and Nato, and their puppet Karzai, responsible for these war crimes.

Biggest terrorists

They claim to fight terrorism, but in fact they are the biggest terrorists in the eyes of our people because of their crimes and brutalities.

Unfortunately the Afghan people are not yet strong enough to drive out the US, overthrow the mafia government of Karzai and bring an end to the crimes of the Taliban and other fundamentalists. Our history proves that this resistance to occupation will continue until we have won our freedom. Until both the US and the fundamentalists – of both the Northern Alliance and Taliban brands – are driven out of power in Afghanistan, we cannot see a bright future.

It is now more than five years since I was elected to the Afghan parliament. My experience of this "democratic process" was to see my microphone cut off, and to be threatened with death by other MPs – many of whom teamed up to remove me illegally from my seat. My case alone is enough to prove that women's rights in Afghanistan have not truly been safeguarded – our situation was just invoked to justify the war.

In fact, it's important to remember another document that Wikileaks exposed earlier this year: a CIA paper assessing western public opinion on the war that recommended using "testimonials by Afghan women" expressing fear about a Taliban takeover in the event of Nato pulling out. A Time cover story featuring the disfigured Bibi Aisha was a clear example of using the plight of women as war propaganda.

The headline – "What happens if we leave Afghanistan" – could have, or should have, been "What happens while we are in Afghanistan", because crimes of mutilation, rape and murder against women are commonplace today.

Many warlords and commanders aligned with Nato and Karzai carry out their sexist, misogynist crimes with impunity. Time could, for example, have done a cover story condemning the law signed by Karzai in 2009 that legalised crimes against Shia women, or about the shocking levels of women committing suicide by self-immolation.

Bad joke

We had another so-called parliamentary election in September, but I chose not to run. Any hope I had for using the ballot box to achieve change in Afghanistan is gone. Like last year's presidential vote, September's election was full of the buying and selling of votes – one province, Paktika, reported a turnout of 626%. This sort of thing is the reason elections in Afghanistan long ago became a bad joke.

Tomorrow there is an election in the US, and it is now two years since Barack Obama was elected president. His surge of troops has brought only a surge of violence, and his expansion of the war into Pakistan has claimed many innocent lives. Obama promised "hope" and "change", but Afghans have seen only change for the worse. Here he is now seen as a "second Bush".
The only change that can make us hopeful about the future is the strengthening and expansion of a national anti-fundamentalist and democracy-loving movement. Such a movement can be built only by Afghans. And while we want the world's support and solidarity, we neither need nor want Nato's occupying forces.

See also by Malalai Joya:
Memo to America: Stop murdering my people...
A troop surge can only magnify the crime against Afghanistan...
Afghan people want immediate end to US occupation...

Warlords run for re-election to Afghan parliament

Jonathan S. Landay reports (article below) that 60 percent of those elected to the central Afghan parliament have "links to armed groups." Landay's report updates and further documents that the Afghan parliament does not represent the Afghan people but rather those who have acquired power and political connections.

Near the end of his report, Landay refers to Malalai Joya, an elected representative to the parliament in 2005 who promised her constituents that she would use her "position in Parliament to expose the abuse of power and corruption whenever I found it" (A Woman Among Warlords, p. 133). She found it in the newly "elected" parliament. In May 2006, Joya relates what she has learned about the grisly backgrounds of the majority of the elected officials represented in the parliament:

"Some argue that the mistakes of the past must be forgotton, but I believe that there is a big difference between mistakes and crimes. Was it just a mistake to kill more than sixty-five thousand Kabulis during the civil war? Was it just a mistake to use rape as a weapon of war, to murder and mutilate, such as those who militias cut women's breats off to terrorize the popuation. These were not just mistakes, and that is why I use the term criminal muhahideen" (p. 134).

Joya was subsequently banned from the parliament for speaking the truth. Many of those who sat with her in parliament in 2005-2006 are now running to be re-elected, and pretty assured they will again succeed in the charade of another "democratic" election process.

Landay picks up the story in his report, as follows.

Warlords and killers seek re-election to Afghan parliament
Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: September 15, 2010 01:54:57 PM
http://www.mcclatchyde.com/2010/09/14/100574/warlords-alleged-killers-seek.html

KABUL, Afghanistan — Mohammad Eshaq vividly remembers cowering in a crowded Kabul basement as shellfire raged above, fleeing with his family when his Afshar neighborhood's defenses collapsed and returning a year later to find scores of corpses still moldering in the rubble.

"Some were shot and some died from the rockets," said the 55-year-old sweet shop owner, standing by a mass grave on a sun-baked hillside that he helped fill. "We weren't able to wash them. We just laid them side by side and covered them."

Hundreds of minority Hazara civilians were killed in Afshar in February 1993 in one of the bloodiest chapters of the battle for Kabul, between rival U.S.-armed guerrilla factions that had ousted the Soviet-backed regime the previous year.

The man who directed the onslaught, according to residents and human rights groups, was Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf, an Islamist member of parliament's lower house who's close to U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai. He's running for re-election from Kabul, and analysts say he could be the next speaker of the lower house.

Sayyaf is among a raft of former guerrilla chieftains and commanders implicated in war crimes who are likely to win re-election Saturday to the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga in polls that are expected to be marred by coercion, fraud and violence.

For many Afghans and human rights groups, these men symbolize the high-level impunity, bad governance and massive corruption that are helping to fuel the growing Taliban-led insurgency.

"If ordinary people had power they wouldn't vote for any of these men. The government is filled with traitors from top to bottom," said Najaf Ali, 57. He lost three family members in the 1993 assault on Afshar by Pashtun and Tajik forces.

That some of Afghanistan's most notorious figures haven't been barred from seeking re-election after last year's fraud-tainted presidential contest underscores for many experts a deeply flawed system for vetting the 2,513 candidates.

"I've serious concerns about the way the vetting process has gone," said Ahmad Nader Nadery, the head of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, an independent poll watchdog.
The U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, also voiced no confidence in the system.
"The process of vetting has not produced a satisfactory result so far," he said in a July statement.

Ninety percent of the Wolesi Jirga members who were elected in 2005 have been certified to seek re-election. One lawmaker has been disqualified, 15 are retiring and 10 died or were killed while in office.

Yet the winners of the 2005 polls included 40 commanders still associated with armed groups, 24 who belong to criminal gangs, 17 drug traffickers and 19 who face serious allegations of war crimes and human rights violations, according to an analysis cited in a 2005 report by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent research center.

A second, bleaker analysis by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission cited in the report found that more than 80 percent of provincial lawmakers and more than 60 percent of those elected in Kabul had "links to armed groups."

"One of the biggest threats to Afghanistan's political stability and future comes from individuals who have committed serious human rights abuses," warned a 2005 Human Rights Watch report on the 1992-93 fighting in Kabul that implicated Sayyaf along with other top politicians and officials, including one of Karzai's two vice presidents, Mohammad Qasim Fahim. "To achieve long-term stability, the government will ultimately have to address the continuing threat from these individuals."

However, none of the former guerrilla chieftains and commanders, whom the George W. Bush administration rehabilitated and paid millions to help oust the Taliban and al Qaida in 2001, has faced criminal trial or been scrutinized by a South Africa-type truth commission.

A truth commission proposal, pushed by the United States and its allies as a way to assuage public demands for accountability, was quietly dropped amid resistance from Karzai. Citing the need for national unity, Karzai signed a bill in 2007 that granted amnesty to the former guerrilla chiefs and their followers.

The bill, which parliament passed secretly, was championed by Sayyaf, who denounced critics as being "against Islam" and "enemies of this country."

The electoral vetting system is supposed to disqualify candidates with links to private militias, or "illegal armed groups," that could be used to intimidate voters and hijack polling stations.
The Electoral Complaints Commission, which adjudicates alleged election law violations, announced the disqualification of 36 candidates in July and added eight others as they campaigned earlier this month.

The commission, however, didn't make those determinations. Officials from the Interior and Defense ministries, the National Directorate of Security — Afghanistan's top intelligence agency — and the Independent Election Commission decided them in secret.

Political activists and election experts, citing the lack of transparency, charged that there's no proof that those who were disqualified are tied to militias, while men who should have been excluded were given passes.

"A majority of the seats in parliament will belong to photocopies of Sayyaf," asserted Malalai Joya. Her fierce denunciations of Karzai and "warlords and drug lords" in parliament prompted her expulsion from her Farah province seat in 2007 in what many experts say was an unconstitutional action by the lower house. The chamber also lifted her official passport and banned her from talking to the media, which she refused to heed.

Joya, who's also an outspoken critic of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, contended that many lawmakers' police bodyguards are members of personal militias, and she called the candidate vetting process "just symbolic."

Numerous calls to a Electoral Complaints Commission spokesman requesting comment went unanswered.

ON THE WEB
Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit 2005 report "A House Divided," by Andrew Wilder
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McClatchy Newspapers 2010

Ann Jones: Abandoning women's rights in Afghanistan

Ann Jones is an award-winning journalist, author (Kabul in Winter), and women rights activist. In the highly informative article below, she argues that the position of women in Afghanistan has continued to be oppressive, with fewer exceptions over time. While there were some improvements for women in Kabul and other Afghan cities, she contends, the improvements are being lost. A statement from her book Kabul in Winter, published in 2006, remains as relevant today during the Obama administration as it was four years ago during the Bush years. Jones writes in her 2006 book:

"The subjugation of women in Afghanistan is extreme. but it's nothing new, and those of us who deplore the Bush administration's milking the issue for political gain must be forgiven our jaded feminist disgust. The subjugation of women in Afghanistan is not a consequence of their being Afghan. It's not a consequence of their being Muslim. It's a consequence of their being women. It's merely made worse by poverty, war, illiteracy, isolation, fundamentalism, imperialism, and the operative conditions of the current fourteenth century" (p. 181).

Here is most of Ann Jones recent article, "Afghan Women Have Already Been Abandoned
Ann Jones,"
http://www.thenation.com/article/154020/afghan-women-have-already-been-abandoned, August 12, 2010.

[....]

The Taliban do terrible things. Yet the problem with demonizing them is that it diverts attention away from other, equally unpleasant and threatening facts. Let's not make the common mistake of thinking that the devil we see is the only one.

Consider the creeping Talibanization of Afghan life under the Karzai government. Restrictions on women's freedom of movement, access to work and rights within the family have steadily tightened as the result of a confluence of factors, including the neglect of legal and judicial reform and the obligations of international human rights conventions; legislation typified by the infamous Shia Personal Status Law (SPSL), gazetted in 2009 by President Karzai himself despite women's protests and international furor; intimidation; and violence. Women legislators told the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) last year that they have come to fear the fundamentalist warlords who control the Parliament. One said, "Most of the time women don't dare even say a word about sensitive Islamic issues, because they are afraid of being labeled as blasphemous." (Blasphemy is a capital offense.) Women journalists also told UNAMA that they "refrain from criticizing warlords and other power brokers, or covering topics that are deemed contentious such as women's rights." A series of assassinations of prominent women, beginning in 2005, have driven many women from work and public life. Women working in women's organizations in Kabul regularly receive threatening letters and, recently, high-tech videos on their mobile phones showing women being raped.

The Taliban claim responsibility for some, but not all, of the assassinations and threats, while most members of the Karzai government maintain a complicit silence. These developments have sent into reverse what little progress women in the cities had made since 2001, while most women in the countryside have seen no progress at all, and untold thousands have been harmed and displaced by warfare. All this has taken place on Karzai's watch and much of it with his connivance. Our government complains that the Karzai administration is corrupt, but the greater problem—never mentioned—is that it is fundamentalist. The cabinet, courts and Parliament are all largely controlled by men who differ from the Taliban chiefly in their choice of turbans.

If our government were truly concerned about the lives of women in Afghanistan, it would have invited women to the table to take part in decision-making about the future of their country, beginning with the Bonn conference in 2001. Instead, they have been consistently left out.
Our long history of woeful policies has put us and Afghan women in a double bind. If we leave, the Taliban may seize power or allow themselves to be bought in exchange for a substantial share of the government, to the detriment of women. But if we stay, the Taliban may simply continue to creep into power, or they may allow themselves to be bought (or "reconciled") in exchange for bribes and a substantial share of the government, all to the detriment of women, while we go on fighting to preserve that same government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's assurance that "reconciled" Taliban will agree to observe women's rights under the Constitution is either cynical or naïve in the extreme. And the US pretense that somehow women's rights will be preserved if only we stay long enough to shore up the Karzai regime and the ragtag Afghan National Army is at best a delusion. Yet the specter of the demon Taliban somehow makes it seem plausible.

Before feminists and the antiwar left come to blows, we might do well to consider that every Afghan woman or girl who still goes to work or school does so with the support of a progressive husband or father. Several husbands of prominent working women have been killed for not keeping their wives at home, and many are threatened. What's taking place in Afghanistan is commonly depicted, as it is on the Time cover, as a battle of the forces of freedom, democracy and women's rights (that is, the United States and the Karzai government) against the demon Taliban. But the real struggle is between progressive Afghan women and men, many of them young, and a phalanx of regressive forces. For the United States, the problem is this: the regressive forces militating against women's rights and a democratic future for Afghanistan are headed by the demon Taliban, to be sure, but they also include the fundamentalist (and fundamentally misogynist) Karzai government, and us.

Malalai Joya captures the thrust of Ann Jone's article in A Woman Among Warlords (publ. 2009) when Joya writes:

"Today we Afghans remain trapped, between two enemies, the Taliban on one side and U.S./NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other."

Joya continues: "I take hope from the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said that no injustice could last forever: 'I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant'" (p. 227).

In the meantime, disastrously, injustice seems to grow for women in Afghanistan.

A happy story about love and an update on Malalai Joya

The Independent Friday, 09 July 2010

The Afghan love story with a happy ending

I found the following report at http://www.malalaijoya.com/dcmj/joya-in-media/527-the-afghan-love-story-with-a-happy-ending.html. Note that is written by Glyn Strong for the British newspaper The Independent. The focus of the story is about a joyous wedding and marriage that takes place under extraordinary, but hopeful, circumstances. The story also updates us on Malalai Joya's own journey and her connection to the marrying couple. You will have to go to the above website to view the photos of David Gill.


Rape victims are often violated twice: by their attackers and by society. But, as Glyn Strong reports, one girl has rebuilt her life
Glyn Strong, The Independent, July 9, 2010

Samia relaxes with her family and Malalai Joya. (Photo: DAVID GILL)

The day starts at Samia's parents' home. The young woman and her sweetheart are asked by a mullah if they understand what they are undertaking. Then begins the serious task of preparing the bride. Like any Western wedding, it revolves around hair, make-up and "the dress".
Here in Afghanistan, Samia's story is typical – its happy ending is not.

Samia is a rape victim, but now it's the morning of her wedding. By late afternoon, she will be married in a private ceremony in Karte Se, Kabul. One of the 150 guests at this extraordinary marriage ceremony will be the activist and suspended MP Malalai Joya: Samia's handsome husband-to-be, Faramarz, has been one of Ms Joya's bodyguards for more than four years.
Without the outspoken MP and her supporters, the wedding would not have been possible, and it is a bitter-sweet occasion for many reasons. Ms Joya, has reached a difficult decision about her own future: she will not stand in parliamentary elections scheduled for September. "Things are not good in my country" she sighs, "but this wedding brings me great joy. Faramarz is such a fine man – he is like my brother, and now he is my hero."

In Afghanistan the taboos that surround taking a "spoiled" bride are powerful. But Faramarz has been around Ms Joya long enough to have a more enlightened view of life. An open, friendly young man of 22 with light hair, film-star good looks and a warm smile, he blushes and smiles when we talk about shopping for the big day. His happiness is contagious. "When I got the news that Samia would marry me, I was so happy, I didn't know whether I was on the earth or in the sky," he says.

The consequences of rape are on a scale beyond comprehension, wiping out futures, annihilating dreams and generating tragedies of epic proportion. The raped are twice violated: first by their attackers, then by society. And sometimes "society" means friends and closest family. Girls frequently turn to self-harm or suicide. Those from the most uneducated families are sometimes killed by their own kin who find the "shared dishonour" unbearable.

Unusually in this case, both families have given the wedding their wholehearted blessing and while it won't mirror the expensive extravaganzas that saddle so many Afghan families with crippling debt, it will be neither a spartan nor a hasty affair.

Guests applaud Samia and her groom, Faramarz, as they marry. (Photo: DAVID GILL)
As Faramarz's sister is a beautician the preparations will be done at home. Samia will wear only one bridal outfit, not the three that grander ceremonies involve. "We want this wedding to send a message," says Joya. "To victims, that there is hope; to men, that they should love and protect girls like Samia, not shun them". It concerns me that when the excitement of the event is over, Samia and her new husband may regret letting the world know their story, but they and Ms Joya are adamant that the marriage be seen as a symbol of hope. And the circumstances of Samia's rape are already public property.

She was kidnapped and gang-raped in the month of Ramadan by eight armed men in the Sancharak District of Sar-e-Pul. Samia escaped but was devastated by the experience. Weeping she said at the time: "They have dishonoured me. I have no prestige among my relatives – no honour in my tribe and my town." In her anguish she called for her attackers to be hanged.
Her father, then a farmer, tried to get justice but was threatened and later imprisoned. "Aren't we human beings?" he said. "Aren't we citizens of this land? Is there no honour and dignity left for us? Our children are being tortured."

Harrowing footage of the aftermath records the tears of his wife Rozi Gul. The rapists were local gangsters and although President Karzai pledged police protection, the reality was that no-one could guarantee the family's safety. So they left their village for the anonymity of Kabul. Samia, like other abused girls before her, was taken under Malalai Joya's wing. Slowly, she began to heal, to smile again, and to find love. A spokeswoman for The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) – an organisation that profiles human-rights atrocities – said no reliable statistics are available on rapes in Afghanistan.

"Most of the rapists are warlords and powerful men that Afghanistan's corrupt and rotten system can't bring to justice," she said. Told of the wedding of the bodyguard and the rape victim, she was incredulous. "We have never heard of any rape victim make a full recovery and marry. Especially those whose cases are public: their entire life is bleak."

Samia's big day begins at the bride's house; a motley procession of cars decorated with small, pink ribbons and paper flowers. As we pass from Karte Se to Kahlai Wazeer, the rank smell of open sewage mingles with the stench of rotting rubbish as the mud walls of the dwellings close in on us.

Heat, dust and the wild lurching of the vehicle make this an uncomfortable rollercoaster ride, and the distance seems twice as long. Tambourines and the shrill sounds of ululating women announce our arrival. Indoors we are split into the two rooms shared by mother, father and 10 children ranging in age from four to 20. Samia's father appears; a happier face than the one I recalled from the post-rape news report.

Against the sound of the traditional wedding song, two of the younger children dance unselfconsciously until the bride is brought in like a china doll, motionless while pictures are taken and sweets passed around. Eventually the young couple is allowed to leave. Over the head of the bride a copy of the Koran is held. The groom Faramarz wears garlands of red, paper flowers. Back in Karte Se, the guests are gathered, a collection of relatives, friends, MPs, a senator, supporters of Ms Joya, and her loyal bodyguards.

Samia is congratulated by a guest. (Photo: DAVID GILL)

Since her election to Parliament in 2005, Ms Joya has had to accept many harsh truths. The woman who enabled Samia to marry and start a new life has learned that sometimes might does prevail over right; that passion and honesty are not always rewarded or appreciated, and that the toxic influence of corruption can penetrate even the highest levels of government.

She doesn't plan to give up her struggle, but she no longer believes that the Afghan parliament has any credibility. She does believe that small steps lead to longer journeys though, which is why weddings like Samia's are so important. As the long day draws to a close, men and women do withdraw to separate areas, but the boundaries are fluid. Women dance in front of men, all witness Faramarz take the floor with his new bride, before delivering her to the flower-decorated wedding table where she will receive gifts and before sharing a simple meal with her guests. Faramarz dances with his sister, a kind woman with her brother's striking good looks.
It is dark when the newly married couple leaves; the bride once more veiled, and suddenly tearful. I don't meet them again until two days later when the traditional visits of congratulation are made and more gifts delivered. Samia the young wife is radiant and animated. This time she does not take a passive role but welcomes us and serves sweets to her guests. The room that is both living and bedroom is still festooned with paper flowers and the couple are showered with rose petals.

Later, while guests dance, Samia and Faramarz laugh and whisper to one another – already creating a private world. Ms Joya teases Samia about who she loves best: the mother she thought she would miss, or her new husband? "Faramarz!" she replies instantly, adding quickly: "But of course I love my mother and my father."

It seemed an inopportune time to ask Faramarz to recall how he first felt when he heard about Samia and her plight. "I condemned those men, those people who committed this terrible crime against this blameless girl. She is a wholly innocent and wonderful girl. I hope in the future that Samia will get an education which is the best kind of revenge against her enemies."

The bridal party celebrates. (Photo: DAVID GILL)

The senator, Belquis Roshan, is a friend and staunch supporter of Ms Joya. "Faramarz, he really is a hero," she says, "because in Afghanistan no-one marries a raped girl. It's nothing to do with the Koran; it's just a tradition."

Ms Joya adds: "I hope this wedding sends two other messages: that people can celebrate marriage ceremonies simply and also together, without men and women being separated. This marriage shows that people are ready to take positive steps, to improve things – to embrace democracy, human rights, women's rights, equal rights.

"But those who are in power do not allow this. You saw how it was: no one raised their voice about men and women being together; everyone was happy. It is those who are in power who are the problem."

Malalai Joya - courageous and dedicated as ever

The following article by Syed Hamad Ali was first published in the GulfNews Weekend Review, and then at: http://www.malalaijoya/com/dcmj/joya-in-media/523-fearless-campaigner.html.

The article is based on highlights of Malalai Joya's activism as a Afghan citizen who has worked tirelessly and courageously for peace and justice in her country, openly criticized the Karzai government for its corruption, the Taliban, the warlords, and the US-led occupation.

The article also includes a long interview with Malalai that gives the reader an idea of her devotion to justice and peace, her values and goals and world view. She has an unyielding belief in the actual or potential fairness and rationality of ordinary Afghan people and especially in the women of Afganistan. Bear in mind that Malalai was once elected by those in her home district to the Afghan Parliament in 2005. She was later banned from the Parliament because of her outspoken criticisms of the warlords in the Parliament.

On this blog, we have been impressed by Malalai Joya's courage and ideas since we first came upon them in her book, A Woman Among Warlords.


Fearless campaigner

Defying threats to her life, Malalai Joya singlehandedly fights for Afghanistan

Syed Hamad Ali, GulfNews Weekend Review, July 2, 2010

Malalai Joya is an Afghan politician who has publicly railed against the presence of warlords in the country's parliament and is a vociferous critic of the Taliban and the government of President Hamid Karzai. "The warlords and the Taliban — they are cancer for my country," she says.

Her outspoken nature has drawn the ire of her detractors, resulting in threats to her life. "My life in Afghanistan is not quite normal and I keep changing houses," she says.

Joya believes the United States is occupying her country and committing war crimes. "Democracy never comes with occupation," she says.

She brands George W. Bush "criminal" and says Barack Obama should first change his foreign policy if he wants to be any different from his predecessor. "His supporters are losing hope because of his wrong policies." She demands withdrawal of all the troops as soon as possible from Afghanistan. "We don't need this kind of so-called helping hand," she tells Weekend Review. "My people are so fed up they don't expect anything good from them. Just stop the wrongdoing. This is a war crime. They are bombing and killing civilians."

Joya holds Pakistan and the CIA responsible for the rise of the Taliban. "By supporting the warlords, who destroyed our unity, and the Taliban, they [the US] are hindering the growth of national unity in my country," she says.

Describing the Karzai government as a "puppet, corrupt mafia regime", she alleges that the Afghan president has joined hands with dubious elements to stay in power.
Joya has immense faith in the women of Afghanistan, who she says can play a crucial role in the development of the country. "This is the part of the population of my country which I believe has power."

Excerpts from an interview:

Question: You have repeatedly called on President Obama to apologise to the Afghan people. Why?

Malalai's response: When Barack Obama took office, his first news for my people was more war and conflict. His foreign policy is quite similar to criminal [George W.] Bush, even worse because he sent more troops to Afghanistan. And now, adding a soft tag to the Taliban, these terrorists, [he says] we are ready to negotiate with moderate Talib, when we have no moderate Talib. They are terrorist Talib.

These eight years they supported the Taliban directly and indirectly. Now [President Hamid] Karzai has been calling on Mullah Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to join the government but Obama is silent. If he [Obama] is honest to my people, he must first apologise to my people, criticise the wrong policy of the criminal Bush, and at least make powerless the minister of war, this Robert Gates, who was in the Bush administration. And apologise to the democratic nation of America in whose name they are committing these crimes.

After the war crimes they apologise to the Hamid Karzai regime. And Karzai's administration says thank you. That's it!

[It is] the blood of my people, not water, that they shed. It's worth as much as the blood of a Westerner.

My message to democratic people around the world, especially those from the countries with troops in my country, is that democracy never comes by cluster bombs, by white phosphorous. The troops themselves are the victims of the wrong policy of their governments, who send them for a bad cause. They are not children of Obama or Michelle that they will be sad if the soldiers get killed. It is the ordinary Afghans they are killing, not their family. This is just a war crime. They must end it.

Malalai Joya being welcomed in Kabul. 'Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed,' she says [must go to source for photo].

Question: Many still insist on calling Iraq the ‘bad war' and Afghanistan the ‘good war'. How would you respond?

Malalai's response: They are wrong politicians who say good war and bad war. There are many similarities between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the main being both these countries have been occupied. My country [has been occupied] under the banner of woman's rights, human rights and democracy — but they betray these values. In Iraq as well, they destroyed a Fascist regime when they made powerless a dictator such as Sad-dam Hussain. But now they have their own puppet regime there. The civilians are the victims. Ditto in my country, where they destroyed the Taliban — terrorist, fascist people — but they got into power a photocopy of the Taliban.

The US occupied Iraq because of oil. They occupied Afghanistan mainly because of the geopolitical location of Afghanistan. When they have their military base in Afghanistan, they can easily control Iran, China, Russia, Uzbekistan, etc. They will have easy access to the gas and oil of Central Asian republics.

The third reason is that they turned Afghanistan into a centre of drugs. Ninety-three per cent of the world's opium is produced from Afghanistan and billions of dollars are received for its distribution. This is not only a so-called war on terror in my country. This is a war of propaganda as well. Look at history of the US since the Second World War. In several countries, they have destroyed democrat regimes and supported dictators instead.

Question: What do you make of President Karzai's statement when he said that he might join the Taliban if he continues to be put under foreign pressure and also his accusations about fraud in the elections?

Malalai's response: For eight years he [Karzai] has deceived my people and now wants to deceive them again. But he cannot do that because now they understand him very well.
He supported compromise with dirty-minded elements such as Khallili, Fahim, Dostum and Esmail Khan. Hadi Arghandiwali, who is Karzai's minister of economy, is the key person in Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party. Gulbuddin is not in power but his photocopy is. While Arghandiwali publicly says he belongs to this terrorist party, the US says Gulbuddin is on its blacklist. It makes no sense to my people. Now Karzai is inviting the terrorist Mullah Omar to join the corrupt, puppet regime. Karzai only wants to complete the circle of druglordism, warlordism and terrorism.

Question: When Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Professor Noam Chomsky suggested your name as someone who should have been picked instead. What was your reaction when Obama won this prize?

Malalai's response: The support of Noam Chomsky, who I respect as an anti-war activist, and many others put extra responsibility on my shoulders. Because when you are involved in a struggle against occupation, against enemies of my people, warlords, the Taliban and their foreign master, their support gives me more courage, determination and hope.

But regarding the award that Obama got, I think it is a question for himself as well — in nine months what did I [Obama] do to receive the Nobel Peace Prize? There are thousands in the world who are risking their lives. They are the real heroes and heroines who do a lot for peace. But nobody even knows their names. In my country, around the world, they are the ones who must be winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. So this [award] is just making fun of peace.
What is going on in Palestine today? He is silent on the wrong policy of the Israeli regime. But he follows on in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen and then receives the Nobel Peace Prize.

Question: You have spoken out against some of the NGOs and aid agencies in Afghanistan, calling them NGO-lords, similar to the terms warlords and druglords.

Malalai's response: Unfortunately most Afghan and foreign NGOs are corrupt as the system is corrupt. Eighteen parties have been registered but we know what their backgrounds are. They belong to these warlords. And they have beautiful names. Same is the case with NGOs.
My life itself should be an example. Many attempts have been made to assassinate me and I am now receiving more death threats. I have been banned from meeting the media and going abroad. They took my diplomatic passport. I have gone underground and going from one country to another with great difficulty.

Unfortunately the NGOs — and heads of some of the NGOs are women — are getting into a compromise with warlords. For example, they are building schools with cheap material and most of the money goes into their pockets. After a year, if you see the school, you cannot believe it is the same building.

Question: In your book you mention how Benazir Bhutto helped in giving rise to the Taliban in the Nineties. Do people in Afghanistan blame her for it?

Malalai's response: She herself said that in an interview. Anyway she is not alive anymore and was even talking about secularism before she got killed. I condemn those who killed her. Of course they are terrorists but her policy when she was in power unfortunately supported the Taliban.

My people say Pakistan supported the Taliban and now the Taliban have become a problem for the Pakistanis themselves. Caught between all this, the ordinary people are the victims. Ordinary Pakistani people such as taxi drivers call the madrassas Talib-making factories because that is where they do the brainwashing.

The CIA created the Taliban.

Question: You are also critical of another figure, Ahmad Shah Masoud, looked upon almost as a legend in certain quarters in the West. Is he a misunderstood character?

Malalai's response: A terrorist of yesterday, he is a hero today. So the terrorist of today will be a hero of tomorrow. Ahmad Shah Masoud was imposed on my people as a hero by the CIA and the French government.

They even compare him with Che Guevara. His first act of treason was he signed a ceasefire with Russia. In Panjshir he killed at least 85 anti-Russia intellectuals. When he was in power from 1992-1996, he was the defence minister of warlords. This point says enough about this so-called hero of Afghanistan.

When you come to Kabul you go to Afshar, populated by the Hazara people. There was a massacre there during the civil war. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was shooting from one side and Ahmad Shah Masoud from the other. My people, caught in between, were the victims. People of

Afshar call him the butcher of Afshar.

After 9/11, when Masoud was killed by his brothers in creed, the Taliban, the US tried to present him as a hero. The brothers of Masoud came to power. And this puppet, non-democratic, regime has named a street in Kabul after him.

Still today people do not call the street by Masoud's name because they hate him. A hero is always made by the people, not by a foreign country. Masoud has been imposed on my people.
Whether a person is alive or not, we have this famous saying in Afghanistan, if you want to know a person well, ask who his or her close friends are. As long as Masoud was in power, his close friends were Rabanni, Qanooni, Abdullah Abdullah, Sayyaf, Fahim. You can look up the Human Rights Watch website. These dirty-minded elements were close friends of Masoud. So this is enough to know who Masoud was.

Malalai Joya in a girls' school in Afghanistan (go to source for photo).

She believes if women are educated and play their role, many positive changes will take place
You grew up being inspired by Palestinian children who throw stones at those who have occupied their country.

Question: Do you draw strength from the Palestinians' struggle for the freedom of your own country?

Malalai's response: Every day that I spend, I realise the meaning of a sentence which my father told me: Try to be a ‘Palestinian of your own country'. When you compare my country with Palestine, there are many differences, but also similarities. The main similarity is that in both countries, ordinary people are the victims. For example, there the Israeli regime is killing ordinary people by the gun; in my country America plus 40 other countries who have occupied Afghanistan, are bombing and killing people. But the difference is: In Afghanistan, the regime in power is 100 per cent under the control of the US; but in Palestine, Israel is still trying to establish such a regime.

In Palestine, the people are part of a movement against Israel, even with stones, to defend their country. But in my country it is a prolonged struggle. Why? Because Palestine is a country where most people are educated. In my country most people are uneducated, so it takes more time.

Question: Given your fierce criticism of President Obama's Afghan policy, have you ever thought about arranging a meeting with Obama in the White House to explain your viewpoint?

Malalai's response: If I were to meet Obama in the White House or outside, I will tell him to stop this war crime and end this tragic drama of a war on terror which is a war on innocent civilians. I will tell him to stop the occupation. No nation can donate liberation to another nation. These eight years have been enough for my people to know about the wrong policy of the US government.

I love what Patrick Tyler says. He says there are two superpowers in the world. One is the US government and other is public opinion. I will tell him you are hiding the truth. You are betraying the truth through the mainstream media. But you cannot deceive the people forever. One day world public opinion will stand up [for our cause]. I trust the power of my people and the world. If the truth is told, I am sure they will never sit silent.

Similarly, in the parliament I exposed the warlords. That is why they couldn't tolerate me, they expelled me and even wanted to eliminate me.

Question: You are incredibly outspoken. Don't you feel scared?

Malalai's response: I don't fear death. I fear political silence against injustice. One day everyone will die. But I hope to be alive. As I always say, I am young, I have lots of energy and want to do a lot for my people — especially for women. If they get education and play their role, a lot of positive changes will take place. I compare my country, every society, to a bird. One wing is the woman, the other is the man. If one wing is injured, it will be impossible for the bird to fly.

Same is the case with society.

I always quote Samad Behrangi. He says death can come easily but I should not be the one to seek it. If it is my turn to go, it should not matter. What matters is whether my living or dying has a ramification on the lives of others. This is the only point I am always thinking about. I am sure if something happened to me, my people will not remain silent.

Question: During Obama's surprise trip to Afghanistan, he said: ‘The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something. You don't quit, the American armed services do not quit. We keep at it, we persevere, and together with our partners, we will prevail. I am absolutely confident of that.' What gives you hope in light of Obama's determination to continue this war?

Malalai's response: The resistance of my people is a big hope for Afghanistan. We are proud to have a history that we never accept occupation. The British wanted to occupy Afghanistan on three occasions but faced the resistance of my people. Russia, a superpower, wanted to occupy Afghanistan and faced the resistance of my people. Still the US government plays the role that the British did in the past — which was to divide and rule.

In front of every audience, I say no nation can donate liberation to another nation. Regarding Obama's comment, [I can say] as a democratic intellectual of my country, as a freedom-loving fighter, only this sentence is enough. In an interview before he came to power, Obama had said the war in Iraq was bad but the one in Afghanistan was a good war. Someone should ask him what is the difference between these two? He just deceives himself with such comments. He is a pro-war person, unfortunately no different from Bush.

[Because he was black,] some people even compared Obama with Martin Luther King. If King were alive today, he would have said, ‘Don't insult me.' King believed our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.

Blacks already had power in Bush's regime. Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell are examples. Black and white solve nothing. What matters is their policy. Unfortunately the foreign policy of Obama is quite similar to that of the criminal Bush, even worse. Why? Compare the number civilians killed in the short time that Obama has been power with the figures during Bush's presidentship.

It's a big question for my people. How does Obama recognise which terrorist is moderate and which one is not? Moreover, they have never apologised to my people. By making such comments, Obama is only deceiving himself, and maybe for a while, the people of the world.
He is the first president who in a short time — in one year — has lost lot of support. Do you know this extraordinary man John Pilger? In one of his speeches, he spoke about how Obama as a senator had voted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pilger also exposed Obama with many other examples.

Syed Hamad Ali is a writer based in London.

Time Magazine award to Malalai Joya distorts what she stands for

MAY 4, 2010 11:10AM
How TIME Magazine hijacked Afghan activist Malalai Joya
http://www.salon.com/blog/judy_mandelbaum/2010/05/04/how_time_magazine-hoodwinked_afghan_activist_malalai.joya

Malalai Joya (Source: Women's Space)

Judy Mandelbaum (JM) offers excerpts from her interview with Malalai Joya (MJ) and related commentary.

JM - Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, Homer wrote thousands of years ago. Today human rights activists would be well-advised to beware of major American news magazines passing out honors. Last week, noted Afghan politician Malalai Joya, the author of "A Woman Among Warlords" whom the BBC has called “the bravest woman in Afghanistan,” was named one of TIME Magazine’s “World’s Most Influential 100 People” of 2010. The trouble is, the magazine presented her to the world in a brief but misleading text by Islam critic and American Enterprise Institute fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who concluded her tribute with the words: “I hope in time she comes to see the US and NATO forces in her country as her allies. She must use her notoriety, her demonstrated wit and her resilience to get the troops on her side instead of out of her country.”

JM - What an odd choice of words, considering that Ali is writing about a woman who wrote in the Daily Beast last week that:

MJ - more than eight years of occupation have made life bleak, and we are tired of being pawns in the US and NATO's game for control of Central Asia. We can longer bear the killing of our pregnant mothers, the killing of our teenagers and young children, the killing of so many Afghan men and women. We can no longer bear these "accidents" and these "apologies" for the deaths of the innocent.

JM - Are Ali and the editors of TIME really entitled to tell Malalai Joya what to think about her country's plight? To set the record straight and to find out what really motivates this activist, journalist Sonali Kolhatkar of UprisingRadio contacted Ms. Joya yesterday and conducted an interview, which I have excerpted below (you can – and should – read the entire discussion here):

MJ - I am very angry with the way they have introduced me [Joya said]. They have a completely painted a false picture of me that does not mention at all about my struggle against the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and NATO, which is disgusting. In fact every one knows that I stand side by side with the glorious-anti war movement around the world and have proved again and again that I will never compromise with the US and NATO who have occupied my country, empowered the most bloody enemies of my people and are killing my innocent compatriots [inaudible] in Afghanistan. What TIME did was like giving an award to someone by one hand and getting it back by another hand. I have sent my protest to it to the Defense Committee [for Malalai Joya] but TIME did not bother to even answer than protest letter. Perhaps this is the kind of freedom of expression exercised by TIME and the USA. …

JM - Regarding this freedom and the war that is supposedly designed to secure it:

MJ - Most of the civilian casualties take place in remote areas of Afghanistan where there is no media to report it. So no one notices it. In many cases after killing people NATO [releases] statements saying that many insurgents were killed. When you try to find out from the local people, they are actually many women and children, not insurgents. Afghan media are also truly in the hands of the Afghan criminal bands. They rarely report civilians killed by the US and NATO. … For the US it’s not just fighting a war through military means, but they also fight on the propaganda front. I think propaganda plays a major role. They are trying to show the war as justifiable. For this they are using their lie-machines. When they kill civilians they immediately deny it and say all they have killed are Taliban. …

JM - Regarding the upcoming US and NATO offensive in Kandahar, Ms. Joya said:

MJ - [T]he US does not want to defeat the Taliban forever. They only fight with them here and there to show the American people that the US is at war in Afghanistan and their presence is necessary here. The offensive of Kandahar will not be different from Marjah and other areas of Helmand where they had such operations in the past. They make such hue and cry about their military actions but in fact they just push the Taliban to other areas and then install some corrupt officials and police forces who are worse than the Taliban. In a few days the Taliban return as we experienced in the past as well. … They will launch the operation and then allow the Taliban to go to another area and then later start an operation there. This is a battle for show, not a real war against terrorism. Otherwise for the US and NATO, it is a task of a few days to uproot the Taliban and defeat them forever. But then everyone will ask them to end the occupation of Afghanistan. The only outcome of such operation is civilian casualties. Poor and innocent are killed in the war. But the Taliban do not experience any defeat and even major casualties. Afghans know well that the US will neither bring democracy nor peace in Afghanistan.
… I will continue the struggle as long as these criminals are in power, these sworn enemies of democracy, women’s rights, human rights, and as long as these occupation forces are bombing from the sky, and [inaudible] supporting the enemies of my people and killing innocent people of my country. So as long as I am alive I am the same person. As always I am saying if a thousand times they will kill me and again I will be alive, and see that these same enemies are in power with the mask of democracy and continue with their wrong policy and their crimes and war crimes, these internal enemies of my country, these warlords, also Taliban, and also their foreign masters, these occupation forces, the US and NATO.

JM - How to explain this discrepancy? Is TIME Magazine pursuing a sinister or at least tendentious editorial policy? You can bank on it. But TIME is also a commercial enterprise, and I suspect that this choice - like so much of our politics - has a lot to do with the middle-brow American take on the world, which always follows the rules of melodrama. As far as the money-driven mainstream media are concerned, our planet is packed to the rafters with heroes and villains, perpetrators and victims. It is particularly shaped by long-suffering heroines and noble fighters for human rights and justice, who must by necessity be allied with the United States, the leader of the “free world" and the very essence of truth and justice. If Malalai Joya hates the Taliban, it follows that she must love the US, right?

JM - I’m afraid that a heroine who hates both – and who openly protests the ongoing destruction of her country by remote-controlled drones in order to "save" it for... whom exactly? – is too complex for most Americans in the age of talk radio and “24.” Their brains simply can't process this sort of information anymore, rather like those African famine victims whose emaciated bodies can't absorb rich Western food supplies. Malalai Joya asks too many embarrassing questions and leaves behind too many messy loose ends. But I'm sure the American Enterprise Institute would love to have a go at her.

Malalai Joya - the unrepresentative Afghan government, the occupation, warlords, and Taliban are all the enemies of the people

Malalai Joya talks about her hopes for her country, her heroes and the London conference


The US government doesn't want a democratic Afghanistan, so it counts on its puppets who are anti-democracy and anti-woman to the marrow of their bones.


Interview by Mehdi Hasan


What is your earliest memory?


I was only four days old when the coup of 27 April took place and the Russian puppet regime was installed in Afghanistan [in 1978]. One of my earliest memories is of clinging to my mother's legs while police ransacked our house, looking for my father. They turned it upside down searching for clues, emptying everything out of drawers, ripping open mattresses and pillows.


Do you still hope to return to the Afghan parliament?


Yes. I have challenged my illegal suspension in court, although in two years there has been no progress. My case is being followed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, but it is also deeply fed up with the Afghan parliament, as it only makes empty promises.


I knew from the very first day in parliament that it is a meeting place for the worst enemies of the Afghan people. The majority are warlords, drug lords and human rights violators. The parliament in occupied Afghanistan is a show of democracy. It has not brought anything positive to the Afghan people in the past five years and it will not do anything for my people in future. They have only passed laws that are anti-democratic and anti-woman.


When I was in parliament, these brutal men and women gave me a hard time. They regarded me as an obstacle to their sinister plans. My suspension was a political conspiracy. But I still want to return to this defamed and undemocratic parliament, as I regard it as a good platform from which to raise the voice of my voiceless people and expose the parliament's reactionary nature from within. There, I can challenge the brutal and powerful warlords, so they cannot pass their laws easily, far from the eyes of the Afghan people.


Who are your political heroes?


I don't want to name a specific person. My people, the suppressed millions, are my heroes. They are the real source of any positive change in Afghanistan and their power is stronger than anything else. And anti-war protesters around the world, those who are standing against the destructive policies of world powers. There is a superpower in the world besides the US government -- world public opinion.


What inspires you to keep going?


The suffering of my people, especially women.


Do you live in fear, or hope?


Both. I fear that I will not live to see freedom for Afghanistan and a joyful life for my people in a democratic and just society. But I have great hope that we will eventually be free, democratic and prosperous and that this can be achieved by the men and women of my own country.
In the past 30 years of conflict, we lost everything in Afghanistan. But it also taught us many things. Our people's political consciousness and awareness were raised and they do not accept the domination of national and foreign invaders or criminal forces. This is a great asset in the Afghan people's struggle for liberation and it gives me hope for a bright future.


What do you believe the Afghanistan summit in London can achieve?


I don't expect anything positive from the London conference at all. Since 2001, there have been a number of conferences. They have only pushed Afghanistan further into the hands of the occupying forces and their local agents.


The Afghan government begs for funding from the international community in the name of its people, but the billions of dollars poured into the country are looted by warlords, drug lords, national and international NGOs and government officials. Much of it goes back into the pockets of the donor countries.


According to US government sources, more than $60bn in aid has been given to Afghanistan since 2001. Such a huge amount could have turned Afghanistan into a paradise, if it were properly spent. But that money did not reach the needy people, so I am sure that any other amount sent in future will have no impact on poor Afghans and will only widen the gap between rich and poor.


Over 70 per cent of Afghans are living below the poverty line, but the Afghan government spent $4.2m on a luxury apartment in the Trump World Tower in New York for Zahir Tanin, the permanent representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations. This is one small example how the international aid is wasted.


The conference will prepare the ground for the return to power of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Islamic Party [Hezb-e-Islami]. The Afghan government says it will ask the world leaders there to remove the name of Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, from the Security Council's blacklist. Ordinary Afghans have no faith in such conferences.


What is your opinion of Hamid Karzai?


Among Afghans, a king called Shah Shuja is hated for being an agent of 19th-century British rule. When the Russians installed Babrak Karmal, he was called the second Shah Shuja. The US and its allies have tried hard over the years to portray Hamid Karzai as a powerful leader but, for Afghans, his government is the most corrupt and unpopular in our modern history. Karzai is the third Shah Shuja -- a US puppet who has also joined hands with our internal enemies.


His own brothers have been accused of involvement in the drugs trade. Ahmed Wali Karzai, his half-brother, is allegedly on the payroll of the CIA.


What about Barack Obama?


It is now clear to many people around the world that Obama is a warmonger, no different from Bush. The big hopes that the US people had for him are gradually turning into despair. His popularity is dropping faster than any previous US president's at this stage of office.
Obama is making the world more unjust and insecure by waging new wars in Pakistan, Iran and Yemen, and also by increasing troops in Afghanistan. While billions of people around the world and inside the US are living in poverty, he is increasing the Pentagon's overall budget in fiscal 2011 to a record $708bn, which is ridiculous. Spent in the right way, this huge amount could ensure peace and prosperity around the world

Those who supported Obama as a hope for change should have reviewed his past. During his time in the US Senate, he voted for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he voted for the Patriot Act, he refused to support a bill for single-payer health care, he supported the death penalty, and so on. He came to power with corporate backers. They want him to continue the US's militarism and he obeys.


I hope Obama will be a lesson to the US people that, as long as the current political system is in place there, no president, white or black, will bring any major "change". In the best case, they will cause some cosmetic changes, nothing more.


How has Afghanistan changed since the fall of the Taliban?


The US and its allies occupied Afghanistan after 11 September 2001 under the banner of bringing peace, democracy and women's rights. But they replaced the barbaric Taliban with the brutal Northern Alliance -- who look different but are mentally similar. This act betrayed human rights.


Afghanistan is not only a safe haven for terrorism today, it is a mafia state and is ranked at the top of the most unstable countries in the world. Afghanistan produces 93 per cent of world opium and even some ministers and Karzai's family have been implicated in the dirty business. Turning Afghanistan into the world capital of opium was part of the US's and Nato's hidden agenda and they have reached their goal.


The situation for women is as catastrophic today as it was before. In some big cities, some women and girls have access to jobs and education, but in most provinces women's lives are hell. In rural areas, most women do not even have a human life. Forced marriages, child brides and domestic violence are very common. Gang rape is becoming more common day by day in Afghanistan, more common than it has ever been in the history of our country. Self-immolation is at a peak. Every day, we receive news of women who burn themselves to death to get out of their awful destitution and plight.


What was the last book you read?


Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam by Robert Dreyfuss. Reading this book, one can better understand that the current "war on terror" is a hoax -- a family issue between the US government and its fundamentalist creations. I do not agree with certain points in the book, but I recommend it to everyone who wants to know about the hidden, dirty games played by the US and its allies in Afghanistan over the past decades. It will be an eye-opener for those who regard the Taliban, Iran's fascist regime and other fundamentalist forces as "anti-imperialist".


What security precautions do you have to take, now that your life is under threat?


Since I was expelled from parliament, life has been very difficult for me inside Afghanistan. I have been restricted from free movement and meeting people in different parts of Afghanistan, so I have tried to advance my efforts on international platforms. I change homes often and can't have an office. I wear a burqa outside and travel with bodyguards, and I don't attend public meetings. But I still don't feel safe. I receive threats.


Do you think the majority of Afghan women support your view of the Karzai government?


Yes, I am very sure they do. I am talking about women who are suffering and have no voice, those women who mostly live in the countryside, deprived of everything. They are completely ignored by the media, too.


Your critics say you don't represent them.


ost of my critics are warlords, Taliban or US puppets. Many of the women in the Afghan parliament are critics, as they are, unfortunately, female warlords. The US government has a handful of Afghan women in Kabul who are used as showpieces: they are given awards, featured by the western mainstream media and sent to important international meetings as representatives of Afghanistan. Such women try to whitewash the wrongdoings of the US and its puppet regime and justify the US occupation of Afghanistan.


They comprise a small minority, living luxurious lives in Kabul or other major Afghan cities, and have not experienced the brutalities of recent years. From the occupation, they have gained wealth and fame, and they are afraid to lose it from the withdrawal of the US troops. It is natural that such Afghans rise against me.


What are the chances for a better life for Afghan women while foreign troops are still in the country? Do you believe that is part of their purpose in being there, as they say it is?


"A Woman Among Warlords", a book by Malalai Joya.


Only some cosmetic and symbolic changes have been made. Most of the 68 women sent to the parliament are pro-warlord; the women's ministry has done nothing for women at all.
We Afghans know well that the US and its allies occupied Afghanistan for their own strategic, economic and regional interests and don't care about the wishes of our people. So the "liberation" of Afghan women was never part of the real agenda. It is just a lie. The so-called freedom given by the US to Afghanistan is enjoyed mainly by the warlords and drug lords, who are free to commit their crimes and do their drug trafficking.


Don't polls show Afghan support for the western military presence?


This is not only a military war, but also a war of propaganda. A recent BBC survey said that 70 per cent of Afghans think that the country is headed in the right direction and 71 per cent support Karzai. Even animals make fun of the figures! If Karzai is so popular, why did he have to win the election by fraud? Unfortunately, the western mainstream media are playing a very negative role. It is not honest to the Afghan people.


You want foreign forces out -- but what then?


Afghans face three enemies: the occupying forces, the Taliban and the warlords. When the US pulls out, the Taliban and the warlords will lose their guardian. It will be easier for Afghans to unite and crush these internal enemies.


The US government doesn't want a democratic Afghanistan, so it counts on its puppets who are anti-democracy and anti-woman to the marrow of their bones. Today, friends of the US in Afghanistan are dark-minded, criminal people.


Afghanistan will never see democracy and freedom when such dirty elements are real power-holders and policymakers.


Can democracy ever flourish in a tribal and conservative society like Afghanistan?


We are living in the 21st century. The world has turned into a global village. Years of conflict have changed Afghanistan and its people's political knowledge has increased. It is the US and its puppets who try to give a bad name to democracy in Afghanistan.


Our people want democracy but now know that occupation will never bring democracy for them. Because democracy without independence has no meaning. When Afghan people raise their voice for independence, western forces call them "tribal" and "anti-democracy", while those barbaric warlords and Taliban who have accepted the US occupation and are in the parliament are called "democrats"!


What would you like to forget?


The cheap attacks of my enemies.


Are we all doomed?


No. We can change our destiny by our struggle and efforts.


This interview is originally published in the New Statesman Magazine on January 25, 2010
Category: Taliban, Women, US-NATO, HR Violations, Corruption - Views: 3435

Time Magazine choses Malalai Joya as among most influential but distorts what she represents

I found the following article at http://www.zcommunications.org/time-magazine-sneaky-way-of-muffling-the-message-of-an-afghan-peace-activist-by-malalai-joya

The article is based on an interview with Malalai Joya by Sonali Kolhatkar, both well-known and well-regarded in progressive circles for their courageous work in Afghanistan and their writing in support of an independent, democratic, and just Afghanistan. One of the basic points of the article is that Time Magazine included Joya in their "100 Most Influential People of 2010" but failed to identify her as an activist and leader who wants the US/NATO occupation ended and who has been an outspoken critic of the Afghan government, Afghan warlords allied with the government and occupation, and the misogynist and authoritarian Taliban.


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Time Magazine's Sneaky Way of Muffling the Message of an Afghan Peace Activist
Malalai Joya gets named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2010, but allows Ayaan Hirsi to make the announcement and distort Joya's message.
By Malalai Joya and Sonali Kolhatkar

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Malalai Joya's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
(May 3, 2010) -- Outspoken Afghan activist and former member of the Parliament, Malalai Joya has been one of the most vocal opponents of the US and NATO war in Afghanistan. In a recent op-ed she called on the US to "stop murdering my people."

Joya was suspended from the Afghan Parliament nearly 3 years ago for challenging warlord domination and lives in constant fear of her life. She has survived several assassination attempts but chooses to live in Afghanistan. Her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords with Derrick O'Keefe was published late last year (Simon and Schuster). Last week Malalai Joya was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2010. I reached her for an interview via satellite phone in Afghanistan on May 3rd 2010.

Sonali Kolhatkar: You were just named one of the 100 most influential people of 2010 by TIME Magazine. But author Hirsi Ali, who wrote the announcement, said "I hope in time she comes to see the U.S. and NATO forces in her country as her allies. She must use her notoriety, her demonstrated wit and her resilience to get the troops on her side instead of out of her country." How do you respond to this statement?

Malalai Joya: I am very angry with the way they have introduced me. TIME has painted a false picture of me and does not mention anything at all about my struggle against the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and NATO, which is disgusting. In fact every one knows that I stand side-by-side with the glorious anti war movements around the world and have proved time and again that I will never compromise with the US And NATO who have occupied my country, empowered the most bloody enemies of my people and are killing my innocent compatriots in Afghanistan. What TIME did was like giving an award to someone with one hand and getting it back with another hand. I have sent my protest through my Defense Committee, but TIME did not bother to even answer than protest letter. Perhaps this is the kind of freedom of expression exercised by TIME and the US. But I'm happy to see that many of my friends and supporters have objected to the write-up and expressed it by posting their comments on TIME's site or sending me many emails.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Earlier this year some journalists were able to confirm that US troops had killed two pregnant women during a night-time raid. How common are such occurrences in Afghanistan today?

Malalai Joya: Yes, the US and NATO often lie when they kill innocent people and also stop media from reporting civilian casualties. Most of the civilian casualties take place in remote areas of Afghanistan where there is no media to report it, so no one notices it. In many cases after killing people NATO [releases] statements saying that many insurgents were killed. When you try to find out from the local people, they are actually women and children killed, not insurgents. Afghan media are also mostly in the hands of the Afghan criminal bands. They rarely report civilians killed by the US and NATO. In Afghanistan most media outlets, especially TV channels, are a tool for warlords of the Northern Alliance. For example warlords like Atta Mohammed, Qanooni, Mohseni, Mohaqqiq, Rabbani and others, each have their own TV channel and they naturally do not want to report civilian casualties by their US and NATO masters.

The US Embassy in Kabul has an office that carefully monitors all media in Afghanistan and if they find any of them reporting against US interests, they try using different means to stop it. Bribes are a very common means used. For the US it's not just fighting a war through military means, but also on the propaganda front. I think propaganda plays a major role. They are trying to show the war is justified. When they kill civilians they immediately deny it and say that all the people killed are Taliban. When there is no chance for any independent confirmation, the lies are the only things reflected in the world media. There are only a few cases where some brave and justice-loving journalists like Jerome Starkey have come forward to unmake their shameful lies.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Much has been made recently of Karzai's statements in favor of the Taliban. How close is the Afghan central government to forging a peace with the Taliban? What will that mean for the US/NATO war? What will it mean for the people of Afghanistan?

Malalai Joya: I think Karzai cannot dare to make such a statement or try to meet the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party leaders without having an "OK" from the White House. Actually it is the US that asks him to make peace with the Taliban and Hekmatyar's party or at least share power with them. Also the US government needs to show the people of NATO countries that it is not a war-monger and is in favor of peace talks with the Taliban. But it is just a show. The US doesn't want to fight the Taliban forever as it needs them as an excuse to continue the occupation of Afghanistan in the implementation of its strategic, regional, and military interests. I think some of the Taliban and Hekmatyar's leaders are already part of Karzai's regime. One of the main leaders of Hekmatyar's party called Hadi Arghandiwal is now the Minister of Economy under Karzai.

This is what the US wants. These brutal and inhuman leaders have been created by the US in the past and are ready to work for the US as long as their pockets are filled with dollars and high posts are offered to them in the government. Actually the US government is trying hard to empower reactionary forces and individuals in Afghanistan as they can use them to stop the emergence of pro-democracy and nationalist forces and groups in my country.

Sonali Kolhatkar: You recently wrote in an op-ed in the Daily Beast that there are a lot of anti-US protests happening in Afghanistan today that go unreported. Tell us more about these protests - where are they happening, who is protesting, and are they also against the fundamentalists or just the US/NATO?

Malalai Joya: Yes, we have witnessed the protests of people especially in the Eastern and Western parts of Afghanistan over the past year. They are mostly reactions to civilians killed by the US and NATO. With every bombardment by NATO, angry people come to the streets to raise anti-US slogans. But unfortunately they are not organized and in some cases the Taliban uses them. We have seen most of these protests in Nangahar, Ghazni, Loghar, Herat, and Helmand provinces but they are usually not reported. A few days ago angry protestors burned about 20 fuel tankers of NATO in Loghar which was one out of many such protests reported by the world media.

These protestors are not only against the US and NATO but also against the Afghan government. People see that this government is deeply corrupt and in the hands of looters and murderers of the Northern Alliance. So they are deeply fed up. Last month a large crowd of thousands of workers in Baghlan province protested against Mahmood Karzai [vice chairman of the Afghanistan chamber of commerce and Hamid Karzai's younger brother], head of the "economic mafia" of Afghanistan who has his hold on some previously state-owned factories. The US and NATO and the Afghan government usually ignore people's protests. But I believe that given enough time, such protests will become even more organized out of people's anger. Afghans are on the verge of uprising but poverty, destitution, and the non-existence of powerful democratic-minded forces in our country stops them from a very serious uprising. I'm sure in the next few years such forces will emerge and these protests will turn more powerful to shake the Afghan puppet government and the occupation forces.

Sonali Kolhatkar: The US has made no secret for many months that it is about to launch an offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar. What do you think will happen this summer as a result of this offensive?

Malalai Joya: As I said before, the US does not want to fight the Taliban forever. They only fight with them here and there to show the American people that the US is at war in Afghanistan and their presence is necessary here. The offensive in Kandahar will not be different from Marjah and other areas of Helmand where they had such operations in the past. They make such a hue and cry about their military actions but in fact they just push the Taliban to other areas and then install some corrupt officials and police forces who are worse than the Taliban. In a few days the Taliban return as we experienced in the past. They declared Marjah as a Taliban-free district but in fact the Taliban has a permanent presence there. They had just left the area for a short time.

After the Marjah operation, a spokesperson of the Afghan Defense Ministry was asked at a press conference why they allowed the Taliban to leave the area and why the Taliban were neither killed nor arrested in Marjah. He answered that the purpose of the operation was not killing or arresting the Taliban, instead it was to push them out of the area.So we expect that they will do the same thing with Kandahar. They will launch the operation and then allow the Taliban to go to another area and then later start an operation there. This is a battle for show, not a real war against terrorism. Otherwise for the US and NATO, it is a task of only a few days to uproot the Taliban and defeat them forever. But then everyone will ask them to end the occupation of Afghanistan.The only outcome of the Kandahar operation will be civilian casualties. Poor and innocent people are the only ones killed in the war. But the Taliban do not experience any defeat or even major casualties. Afghans know very well that the US will neither bring democracy nor peace to Afghanistan. They know that the US and NATO are empowering the enemies of democracy. But it is the duty of the Afghan people to fight for their values and understand that the occupation will only drag us more deeply into slavery. As always I pass this message to justice-loving people around the world that no nation can donate liberation to another nation.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Can you tell us what the status of your own parliamentary position is right now, since you were stripped of your elected position by the fundamentalists some years ago. Have you ever been made to face a court? Can you run again for parliament in the next elections?

Malalai Joya: In the last stage of the Interparliamentary Union meeting, a delegation of Afghan parliamentarians promised that they would end my suspension so I could return to Parliament. But it was just a lie and they did not stand by their promise.

I received a letter from the court some months ago and I answered truthfully what my strong position was against the warlords. They asked me to apologize [for my statements made in a TV interview --and said that they would allow me back to the Parliament. But I stressed the truth of my statements and said that I would never apologize to criminals and looters. However, I still can run for elections which are due to happen later this year. But I have not made up my mind to run.

But whether I serve in Parliament or outside it, I will continue my fight for justice, democracy and against the occupation. Parliament was just a small part of my struggle but I still have many other options and fields. Going to a Parliament of criminals was a big torture for me. It was a torture everyday to see the faces of these brutal men such as Qanooni, Sayyaf, Mohaqqiq, Piram Qul, Haji Almas, Haji Fayeed, etc there. But I accepted the task on behalf of my people.

I think the next election will be even more disgusting and full of fraud. The new chief of the election commission is a known warlord of the Northern Alliance and he will try to bring all these warlords to the Parliament and stop the emergence of democratic-minded people like me. Many people think that at this point they will never allow me to win the election as they can't bear to have me inside the parliament once more. But I will continue the struggle as long as these criminals are in power, these sworn enemies of democracy, women's rights, human rights, and as long as these occupation forces are bombing from the sky, and supporting the enemies of my people and killing innocent people of my country.

For more information, visit malalaijoya.com.

Sonali Kolhatkar is Co-Director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a US-based non-profit that funds health, educational, and training projects for Afghan women. She is also the host and producer of Uprising Radio, a daily morning radio program at KPFK, Pacifica in Los Angeles.