When men fail so profoundly, responsibility falls to WOMEN! - International Social/Political

When men fail so profoundly, responsibility falls to WOMEN!
by Sophia Gardner via talya - ABC (Oz) Thursday, Jul 2 2009, 10:54pm
international / social/political / other press

Countries 'wasting money and blood' in Afghanistan

Malalai Joya gained international attention for standing before Afghanistan's constitutional grand assembly and accusing her country's leaders of war crimes, human rights violations and supporting the Taliban.

She spent most of her childhood in refugee camps and as a young woman she worked as a women's rights activist under the Taliban.

She ran underground classes and clinics that would have resulted in her torture and execution had she been caught.

In 2003 the secular Muslim made a fearless and emotional public appearance at a constitutional assembly in Kabul.

"War lords are responsible for our country's situation," she said in the speech.

"Afghanistan is the centre for national and international conflicts. They oppress women and have ruined our country. They should be prosecuted.

"They might be forgiven by the Afghan people, but not by history."

Her remarks were met by uproar from the 300 delegates, most of them former Mujaheddin commanders and ex-Taliban officials.

In 2007 she was suspended from parliament for comparing it to a "stable or zoo" and later called the other members of parliament "criminals" and "drug smugglers".

"When I got into parliament, the war lords didn't allow me to talk. They turned off my microphone," she said.

"They beat me by throwing bottles of water at me and threatened to rape me inside the parliament. But they couldn't make me silent."

In hiding

Since then, Ms Joya has survived several assassination attempts and spent the last five years in hiding, never spending 24 hours in the same house.

But this hasn't silenced her. She has written a book, titled Raising My Voice, about her life and experiences as a female politician who dares to speak out.

"I have had five assassination attempts that you can read about in the book I have written on behalf of the 'war generation' and on behalf of innocent people," she said.

"The reason I accepted to write a book was first, to expose the mask of these war lords to the great people around the world and also to tell the truth, as mainstream media is always trying to put dust in the eyes of the people around the world by telling lies.

"Also... the pain and sorrows of my people are reflected in this book. I hope this book will open the minds and the eyes of more people around the world of this catastrophic situation that we are living in."

The book is currently being launched in Australia and is set to be published in 14 countries.

"One thing I am sure of is that not only my people, but people all around the world love the truth and what I did in this book is I said the truth," she said.

"Hopefully one day the truth will find its deserved place."

Intervention the 'wrong policy'

Ms Joya says she is disappointed in the United States' involvement in Afghanistan. She says her country needs to find its own way to democracy without military intervention.

"Everyone is always talking about what would happen if these troops leave us - a civil war will happen in Afghanistan - but nobody is talking about the civil war of today," she said.

"Unfortunately Australia has followed the wrong policy of the US, which is a mockery of democracy and mockery of the war on terror, and it is quite a war crime that they are doing there."

"We are between two powerful enemies. From the ground, the Taliban and the northern allies are continuing to commit crimes and fascism against women and men in our country.

"From the sky these occupational forces are bombing and killing the civilians."

She says she wants people to stand up to their governments against the "wrong policy" of military intervention in Afghanistan.

"These countries are wasting their money and blood in Afghanistan and I, on behalf on my people, pay my condolences to those people who lost their sons, their loves, their husbands in Afghanistan and have been killed," she said.

"They should raise their voices against the wrong policy of their governments."

Election

Ms Joya does not believe the upcoming election, scheduled to be held in August, will make any difference to the unrest and says it will just be "one puppet replaced with another puppet".

"The next president will be certainly selected behind closed doors at the White House. Our people will have no say in the selection," she said.

She says the system is corrupt and there is no justice.

"On behalf of my people I am risking my life so that one day, together with my people, we will bring these criminals to the national and international criminal court, which is a prolonged and risky saga," she said.

© 2009 ABC

Amid the chorus of denunciations in US and European ruling circles over the alleged theft of the Iranian elections, the Obama administration and its NATO allies are presiding over an election campaign in Afghanistan that is as corrupt as it is illegitimate.

The campaign for the August 20 presidential election officially began last month with 41 registered candidates, but it is little more than political theatre. The result has effectively been decided by previous US policy, sordid factional deals between a number of Afghan powerbrokers and an electoral system that facilitates vote rigging and voter intimidation.

The government created by the US invasion was based on giving control over various regions of the country to the ethnic Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and Pashtun warlords who collaborated with the overthrow of the Taliban. Hamid Karzai, a representative of the pro-monarchist Popalzai branch of the Pashtun Durrani tribe, was installed as a figurehead president in 2002. Real authority, however, has been exercised by the US and NATO forces and the regional powerbrokers.

The result has been what US intelligence agencies described last year as “rampant corruption”. David Davis, a conservative British politician, observed after a fact-finding tour to Afghanistan that the country “appears to have been run for the financial benefit of 20 families... who are old-time warlords and faction leaders responsible for past atrocities”.

Ministers, governors and military commanders sell contracts and positions to the highest bidder. Police and public servants openly demand pay-offs and bribes. Numerous figures within the state apparatus are believed to be involved in Afghanistan’s vast illegal trade in opium and heroin, including Karzai’s brother, who controls areas of Kandahar province. Large amounts of international aid and so-called reconstruction funds have vanished into the pockets of government officials and local tribal leaders.

As the war dragged on and the consensus emerged during last year’s US elections that more American troops would have to be sent, there were indications that US policymakers were considering installing a more authoritative figure than Karzai as the head of their puppet regime.

Despite faithfully serving US interests, the Afghan president had at times angered the US military by mildly criticising the slaughter of civilians with air strikes and other operations. More importantly, he had not emerged as a respected figure among any significant section of the Afghan people. Instead, his general subservience to a brutal foreign military occupation and the corruption of his government had contributed to popular support for the Taliban and other insurgent movements.

The dilemma facing the US/NATO occupation in the lead-up to the Afghan elections, however, is that no-one among the list of potential alternative presidents has any more credibility than Karzai. They are either warlords guilty of human rights abuses or individuals who are viewed as even more open agents of the US government.

A poll conducted by the right-wing International Republican Institute found that just 31 percent of the respondents intended to vote for Karzai, compared with over 50 percent in the 2005 elections. His closest challenger however, former foreign minister Abdullah, polled only 7 percent. The third-placed contender registered barely 3 percent.

Senior New York Times foreign correspondent Dexter Filkins, who has covered the Afghan war since 2001, commented last month: “Some American officials express resignation that they may be stuck with him [Karzai] for the next five years. Indeed, the Obama administration appears to have begun preparing for that prospect.”

With at least the implicit consent of the Obama White House, Karzai has struck alliances with various warlords who can guarantee he wins the vote in the regions under their control.

His nominee for the post of first vice president is Mohammad Qasim Fahim, whose ethnic Tajik movement lords over much of north-eastern Afghanistan and whose militiamen make up a large proportion of the Afghan army. A 2005 Human Rights Watch report named Fahim as one of the commanders who ordered the “intentional killing of civilians, beating of civilians, abductions based on ethnicity, looting and forced labour” during the 1990s Afghan civil war.

Karzai has re-nominated Karim Khalili for the post of second vice president, in order to secure the support of ethnic Hazara powerbrokers in the central provinces of Afghanistan. Khalili, who commanded Hazara militias during the civil war, is also suspected of ordering atrocities against ethnic Pashtun civilians.

In the main provinces of the Pashtun south—large areas of which are actually controlled by Taliban insurgents—Karzai has secured the backing of some key pro-occupation powerbrokers.

In Kandahar, his family and tribal loyalists have influence. In Helmand, the former governor, suspected drug baron and Karzai ally Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, still retains considerable authority. In the south eastern province of Nangarhar, Pashtun warlord and governor Gul Agha Sherzai, a man with a bloody history in the 1990s when he was in control of Kandahar, has also endorsed Karzai. Earlier this year, Gul was touted in US ruling circles as a possible alternative president.

In the Uzbek-populated areas of northern Afghanistan, Karzai is relying on one of the country’s most despotic figures to deliver votes: Abdul Rashid Dostum. During Afghanistan’s tortured 30 years of war, Dostum served in the Soviet occupation forces and backed the pro-Moscow Najibullah government before switching sides. He joined with the US-backed Islamist militias that overthrew Najibullah, then was part of the fierce factional rivalry for power in Kabul before the Taliban finally took control.

By 2001, Dostum was part of the US-backed Northern Alliance that overthrew the Taliban regime. His militia and American special forces committed one of the worst war crimes of the Afghanistan invasion. Following the capture of the city of Kunduz in November 2001, they sealed hundreds of Taliban prisoners inside shipping containers and left them to die in blistering heat.

Karzai will not only benefit from his alliances with the warlords, but his ability to use the state apparatus to assist his campaign. In the last election in 2005, he blatantly awarded development projects to areas where he needed to consolidate support. The state-owned media gave him biased coverage and 75 percent of air time.

If these factors are not sufficient to guarantee Karzai’s victory, there is ample opportunity for wholesale fraud. A report this month by the International Crisis Group (ICG) pointed to the scale on which it may take place. Over 17 million voting cards have been issued in a country where half the population of 30 million is under the voting age, vast areas are under the control of the Taliban and women are culturally pressured not to participate.

In other words, a large number of people are likely to hold multiple cards. In the eastern province of Nuristan, for example, which has an estimated adult population of 130,000 and a large Taliban presence, there are 443,000 registered voters. The adult population of approximately 130,000 in the Tajik province of Panjshir has spawned 190,000 registered voters.

Tens of thousands of women are believed to have been registered to vote via their husbands or male relatives. The men will use the women’s cards to cast additional votes, with the knowledge and acquiescence of local ballot officials. According to the ICG, the female turnout in Paktika province in the 2005 elections was so “unbelievably high” that the figures were never officially released.

On February 1, Barack Obama remarked in an interview that the US could not “rebuild Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy”. An accurate and honest statement would have been that his administration’s only concern is that the Afghan government is subservient to American imperialist interests.

In the final analysis, the August 20 elections in Afghanistan are being held only to sustain the fiction in the US and NATO countries that the war has some noble agenda, not the predatory motive of geo-political control over strategic territory in resource-rich Central Asia. The result will have no credibility or legitimacy.

© 2009 James Cogan, World Socialist Web Site

Five assassination attempts have failed to silence a woman determined to defend Afghans from warlords, drug lords and the Taliban.

It is a year since I last saw Malalai Joya. She was at Stansted airport preparing to return to Afghanistan: a tiny figure clutching a large holdall and a gold-coloured trophy. It was the Anna Politkovskaya Award for human rights campaigning and Ms Joya was the second recipient. Some might say the trophy brings with it a curse. It was created in memory of the Russian journalist gunned down outside her Moscow apartment in 2006. The first recipient, Natalya Estimerova, was murdered last week in the Chechen capital. As Ms Estimerova passed on the trophy to her in 2008, her message was blunt: "Malalai, be brave."

Having survived five assassination attempts, if there is one thing the Afghan woman is, it is brave. Her story is inextricably linked to the recent history of her country. Through her own determination she has become part of its legend; first as a teacher in the refugee camps of Pakistan, then as an activist covertly running schools for girls in Herat during the Taliban years. Politicised beyond her years she was elected to the Afghan parliament in 2005 as its youngest member.

Today she lands in Britain. She has a new book to promote, Raising My Voice, but she is also here to deliver an unequivocal – and uncomfortable – message that Nato troops are not wanted in her country. "Afghans are more than just a handful of warlords, Taliban, drug lords and lackeys," she says. "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."

From her first controversial speech in the National Assembly in 2003, at the age of 23, to the day she was suspended from parliament for allegedly insulting other MPs, Ms Joya has never been one to mince her words. Her message is unlikely to be well received by Gordon Brown or Barack Obama.

When I first met her in Kabul two years ago, the rendezvous followed several changes of vehicle as well as body, camera and baggage searches. Her life had already been threatened so burqas and bodyguards were de rigeur for even the shortest journey.

We were together one day when news broke that three British soldiers had been killed in Helmand. Ms Joya didn't want Nato troops in her country, but she expressed sorrow for the parents and families who, like so many Afghans, had lost loved ones. Grief, the universal leveller, was something she has always understood. As the "Wootton Bassett effect" reminds Britons of how much the war in Afghanistan is costing in human terms, she says: "There can never be lasting peace if the lives of Afghans are not valued as much as the lives of Western soldiers. Every death is a tragedy, but too often the Afghan victims of this war are merely nameless 'collateral damage' reported in the media as having been killed by 'mistake'."

The Ministry of Defence publishes a rolling toll of service casualties – a grim reminder of the daily cost of the war. A man who has earned Ms Joya's heartfelt gratitude for trying to honour Afghanistan's anonymous dead in the same way is Professor Marc Herold who has established a memorial website for her countrymen. It makes sobering reading. "Civilian killings are entering into thousands whereas the Taliban death toll might not even reach hundreds,"Ms Joya says.

As the British media goes into overdrive about helicopter numbers, boots on the ground and exit strategies, she cuts to the quick. Her assessment of the past seven years is seen in purely human terms. "Along with the terror from the sky, there is terror in the ground. The fields and roadsides of Afghanistan are still riddled with unexploded landmines from as far back as the Soviet occupation – like the kind that cost my father his leg."

She kept diaries throughout her adolescence but she was initially resistant to the idea of writing a book. A quiet, self-effacing character, she dedicates her biography to women and children, the invisible casualties of conflict and oppression to whom she has given a voice in recent years: "The Bashiras, Rahellas, Bibi Guls, Pukhtanas and all my oppressed people whose sighs, tears and sorrows nobody sees."

Ms Joya is sceptical of the surge in the south of her country. "Helmand is not the whole of Afghanistan. Even if they annihilate Taliban there, they should not call it a success because Taliban are logistically and militarily stabilised in hundreds of other parts of Afghanistan ... and growing stronger as each day dawns."

She has often been accused of identifying problems but not offering solutions (the assumption being that if US and British troops pulled out, Afghanistan would descend into chaos, a bloody free-for-all). But she is unrelenting: "The current situation is already quite catastrophic, it cannot get any worse. The Taliban have taken over many districts and are nourished as each hour mounts."

"But it is the responsibility of our own people to fight for their rights, to achieve values like democracy and women's rights, human rights in our country. It's a prolonged struggle, it's a risky struggle full of hardships and challenges, but I trust in my people."

One of the most widely-cited advantages of Nato's intervention has been improved conditions for Afghan women. Ms Joya disagrees. "Just as the US air strikes have not brought security to Afghans, nor has the occupation brought security to Afghan women. The reality is quite the opposite. The now infamous 'Family Law' is but the tip of the iceberg of the women's rights catastrophe in our occupied country. The whole system, and especially the judiciary, is infected with the virus of fundamentalism and so, in Afghanistan, men who commit crimes against women do so with impunity."

Ms Joya is now 31 and married; she has the hopes and dreams of any young woman but her commitment to her cause is absolute. A deeply compassionate individual, she is as ruthless in her condemnation of Western "whitewash" as she is of the unpunished "war criminals" who sit in the Afghan parliament. "It is a shame that so much of Afghanistan's reality has been kept veiled by a Western media consensus in support of the 'good war'," she says.

Next month's elections offer little hope of change, she believes, and will be tainted by vote-rigging. "It is clear that the future president is already chosen in Washington. As in the proverb of our people 'Same donkey but with a new saddle!'"

So is she not tempted to return to politics, or even contest the presidency, as many have urged her to? Her answer is suitably gnomic. "I love my people and of course, if they wish, I will do that but let's see what's in the future."

In her own words: 'I'm not afraid of an early death'

"I am forced to live like a fugitive in my own country. A trusted uncle heads my detail of bodyguards and we move to different houses every night to stay a step ahead of my enemies. To hide my identity, I travel under the cover of the burqa, which to me is a symbol of oppression, like a shroud for the living. Even during the dark days of the Taliban, I could at least go outside under the burqa to teach girls in secret. But today I don't feel safe under it, even with armed guards to escort me. My visitors are searched for weapons and even the flowers at my wedding had to be checked for bombs... I know that because I refuse to compromise my opposition to the warlords and fundamentalists... then I may join... the long list of Afghans who have died for freedom. But you cannot compromise the truth. And I am not afraid of an early death if it advances the course of justice."

This is an extract from Malalai Joya's book Raising My Voice

© 2009 Independent.co.uk

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