Afghan Voice of Resistance
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23558
A Voice of Resistance in Afghanistan
January 05, 2010 By Suzanne Weiss
Socialist Voice
A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared
to Raise Her Voice, by Malalai Joya, with Derrick O'Keefe. Scribner, 2009.
Afghan social activist and writer Malalai Joya is the voice of another,
hidden Afghanistan - the partisans of independence, democracy, and human
rights who have no voice under the corrupt U.S.-sponsored regime of
Hamid Karzai.
She has survived multiple assassination attempts for her outspoken
advocacy of women's rights and withdrawal of U.S., Canadian, and other
NATO armed forces. She believes the people of Afghanistan, especially
the women, can organize the struggle for fundamental rights such as
health care, education, control of their bodies and their lives - but
only when the foreign occupiers leave their country.
Her book challenges us all to redouble efforts for this goal. Written
from the heart and from profound experience, it tells the story of war
and warlordism in Afghanistan, and how it has devastated the fabric of
life there.
Tradition of resistance
Joya tells us of her background as an inquisitive child in a family and
community with a tradition of centuries of resistance to foreign
occupiers. She was named after a national hero, Malalai of Maiwand, who
rallied Afghan forces to win a decisive victory over British invaders in
1880, sacrificing her life in the famous Battle of Maiwand.
Joya chronicles her family's suffering under the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan, which began in 1979 when she was still an infant in her
mother's arms. During these years, millions of Afghans fled for their
lives to the neighboring countries of Iran and Pakistan. Most refugees
settled in detention camps that, Joya says, are like "concentration
camps, designed to humiliate and break the Afghan national spirit and
pride."
Joya's father, an important influence in her life, insisted that she and
her siblings be educated. This led the family to move from Iran to
Pakistan, where she was able to attend the Watan School for Afghan
refugees in Quetta. It was there that she first got acquainted with the
Revolutionary Women's Association of Afghanistan (RAWA) founded by
Meena, a social activist who was martyred in 1987. (See
http://www.rawa.org/meena.html )
For women's rights and democracy
Joya, although not a member herself, champions RAWA as waging an
"uncompromising struggle for women's rights and democracy." Today the
organization operates underground within Afghanistan, for fear of
retribution for their outspoken criticism of the Afghan government.
While still a student at the age of 14, Joya dedicated herself to
teaching other youth in Pakistan. She received a small stipend to help
her family income. She used innovative incentives to encourage women to
come to her classes. Later, she became a social activist with the
Organization for Promoting Afghan Women's Capabilities (OPAWC), a
non-governmental organization seeking to ameliorate the health and
education of women and girls.
During her 16 years in exile, Joya came to admire the Palestinian
resistance and resolved to "become a Palestinian" in her own country.
Betrayed hopes
The Taliban regime that ruled from 1996 to 2001 was widely hated for
institutionalizing anti-women and brutal practices. When the U.S.
attacked Afghanistan in 2001, it proclaimed the goal of releasing women
from this bondage. Many Afghans hoped that conquest by the U.S. might
bring a better future. But that was not to be.
The U.S. hypocritically clothed its invasion in feminist garb. "The
purpose of the American invasion [is] to restore women's rights," said
"First Lady" Laura Bush. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed,
"The rights of women in Afghanistan will not be negotiable."
Joya counters that it was obvious from the very first days of the war
that the United States had not the slightest intention of supporting the
women of Afghanistan, but aimed instead "to sustain the worst enemies of
women in that country."
The U.S. supported the Northern Alliance, a vicious league of
anti-Taliban warlords, notorious for the use of torture, as the Taliban
before them, used rape as a weapon to dominate and terrorize the people,
Joya says. "Men were also subjected to rape ... even children [were]
raped, as young as four."
When the Taliban fled under U.S. bombardment, the Northern Alliance
occupied Kabul. One of its first actions, in November 2001, was to ban a
planned women's march through the streets of the city. Conditions of
women did not improve.
If Afghanistan is a failed state today, Joya says, "it is because the
warlords who had failed our country before were once again in power."
In 2001, Joya returned to her native western Afghan province of Farah,
where she opened and directed the Hamoon Health Care Clinic under the
auspices of OPAWC. It had three physicians, half a dozen nurses, and an
ambulance service operated through volunteers.
The provincial government warned that they would not guarantee her
safety as project director, but at the initial opening, the local people
expressed their support, promising to guarantee her security themselves.
Joya experienced many acts of solidarity which represent what she
describes as the "quiet resistance of people who are risking their lives
to rescue their fellow countrymen."
Afghanistan was now dominated by new occupiers - the U.S. and its NATO
allies. Joya accuses the new U.S.-sponsored rulers of using the "name of
Islam and Jihad to make war on their own people and oppress Afghan women."
Most people in the West believe that the "severe oppression of women
there began under the Taliban regime" (1996-2001), Joya notes. "But this
is a lie." The main props of the entrenched subjugation of women are the
warlords who have dominated Afghanistan both before and after the
Taliban and now provide the main support for the government of Hamid
Karzai. The "worst atrocities ... were committed during the civil war
[in the 1990s] by the men who are now in power," she says.
Hypocrisy and deception
The widely hated burqa, or full body veil, is often seen as a symbol of
subjugation linked to the Taliban. However, Joya testifies that even
today, "Afghanistan women are obliged to wear the burqa for fear of
being kidnapped, raped, and murdered." Joya assures us that "many Afghan
men are very sympathetic," and risk their lives to protect women.
However, the many women who are raped or abused often become despondent
and fall into hopelessness and "self-immolate to escape their misery."
Joya cries out, "Afghanistan remains like a bird with one
wing-women-clipped. As long as the subjugation of women persists, our
society will not be able to take off and move forward."
The U.S. is now sending tens of thousands of additional soldiers to
"fight the Taliban." But war and occupation brings only grief to the
Afghan people, Joya says. Money flows freely for military expenses and
policing, but funds for health care, education, or day care are scarce.
Joya's book honors the memory of many women martyred under the NATO
occupation because they struggled for social services and education,
women's rights and bettering the conditions for children.
"There is nothing in Islamic religion," Joya explains, dictating that
women should be subjugated. In fact, women suffer similar religious
constraints under some forms of Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism. The
hijab - veil, or headscarf - is not unlike the wigs or scarves worn by
women of other religions.
Voice of resistance
Malalai Joya does not stand alone. The people of her province elected
her in 2005 to the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the Afghan
parliament. She received the second-highest number of votes in Farah
province. Joya aimed to find a way to put an end to the rule of "the
warlords and fundamentalists," she tells us. "I knew the great majority
of Afghan men and women shared this aim," she writes. "My mission would
be to expose the true nature of the Jirga from within it."
Inside the parliament, she boldly challenged leading politicians who
were drug lords and criminals of the Northern Alliance. In response, she
was undemocratically suspended from the Wolesi Jirga in 2007 and
threatened with sexual violence by members of that body.
Many people demonstrated against her suspension, in the streets in Kabul
and other towns and cities across the country. But often the police
prevented peaceful protest on the pretext that they were protecting
demonstrators from potential violence. In Jalalabad, women and men
marched to the UN office to demand her reinstatement. Joya found that
many women had defied the odds and voted for her at tremendous personal
risk. Joya recalls the words of Meena, the martyred founder of RAWA,
"Afghan women are like sleeping lions who when awakened ... [they] will
play a tremendous role in any Afghan social revolution."
Joya lashes out at these rulers and spits out their names like poison
off her tongue, bearing witness to the anger of her people who know each
one of these politicians and their crimes. These men shamefully "use the
name of Islam and jihad to make war on their own people and oppress
Afghan women," she declares. They received millions from the American
CIA and the Pakistani ISI [security force]. Joya also denounces the
women who have been appointed to the Wolesi Jirga to rubber stamp the
repression of the government, although she concedes that these women,
are "themselves victims of the system."
Joya sees the Afghans today as "trapped between two enemies: the Taliban
on one side and U.S./NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the
other." One wonders about the hopes and goals of the resistance
fighters, universally labeled "Taliban" by pro-U.S. media. Are they
really identical in outlook to the brutal rulers of the late 1990s? This
question remains unexplored.
Joya herself is not a solitary figure. She is a bold spokesperson for a
current of opinion in Afghanistan that is silenced by the Karzai regime
and its NATO backers. She cites the firm convictions and courageous
actions of many of her women co-thinkers in Afghanistan.
Joya is clear on the role of the United States and NATO, which "brought
the warlords and druglords to power." She views Obama's insertion of
another 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan "as continuance of the Bush
policy." As she would say: "same donkey, but with a new saddle."
Her clarion call is for all the foreign troops to leave Afghanistan now.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"