My father always said he could spot me in any crowd of women wearing burqas
because I walk like a penguin. You have no peripheral vision because of the
netting in front of your eyes — and it’s hot and suffocating under there.
The most useful thing about these long blue robes is that you can hide
schoolbooks and other forbidden objects beneath them. Under the Taliban I
also appreciated the anonymity of the burqa when I had to walk to and from
the illicit lessons I gave for girls. Today, however, I don’t feel safe
under the thickest veil, even though I have armed guards. My visitors are
searched for weapons and even the flowers at my wedding had to be checked
for bombs.
I was driving through Kabul not long ago when a friend and I decided to stop
for ice-cream. I thought I’d be safe uncovering myself for just a few
minutes to enjoy it. “You are Malalai Joya, right?” said one of the
customers almost immediately. My friend and I had to eat up quickly and
leave. You never know who’ll make a telephone call.
I’m the youngest member of the Afghan parliament, but I’ve been threatened
repeatedly with death because I speak the truth about the warlords and
criminals in the puppet government of President Hamid Karzai. Having
survived at least five assassination attempts, I’m forced to live like a
fugitive, moving every night to stay ahead of my enemies.
For the 31 years I’ve been alive, my country has suffered from constant war.
After September 11, 2001, many of us thought that — with the overthrow of
the Taliban — we might finally see some light. But we’re still faced with a
foreign occupation and a government filled with warlords who are just as bad
as the Taliban.
Afghan women like me, who vote and run for office, have been held up as proof
that we enjoy democracy and women’s rights. It’s a lie. In Afghanistan,
killing a woman is like killing a bird. We remain caged, without access to
justice, and still ruled by women-hating criminals.
Fundamentalists preach that “a woman should be in her house or in the grave”.
In most places it’s not safe for a woman to walk on the street uncovered or
without a male relative. Girls are still sold into marriage and hundreds of
women have burnt themselves to death to escape their miseries.
War is all that most young Afghans have ever known. Within a year of my birth
we were occupied by the Russians — and one of my earliest memories is of
policemen ransacking our house, looking for my father. An educated man and a
democrat, he lost a leg fighting the Soviet occupiers.
I was still very young when we set out for Quetta, in western Pakistan, where
my father sent me to a progressive boarding school at seven. By the time I
was 15 I was teaching Afghan women in refugee camps how to read.
At the age of 20 I was back in Afghanistan, holding clandestine classes for
girls. Five years on, after the fall of the Taliban, I was director of a
medical clinic in Farah province and also running an orphanage. It was while
I was doing this that I was chosen by women in my district as their
representative in the new Afghan assembly, the loya jirga.
All the stops had been pulled out in Kabul for a big show of democracy, with
much talk of the “new Afghanistan”. It was clear to me, however, that the
old Afghanistan hadn’t gone away. Some of the warlord delegates to the loya
jirga were among the worst abusers of human rights that our country had ever
known. And they were seated in the first row. Nor did anyone seem to mind
the presence of Abdul Rab al-Rasul Sayyaf, the man who had invited Osama Bin
Laden to Afghanistan and trained Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of
the 9/11 attacks.
The voices of the countless widows who’d told me of their suffering rang in my
ears. It was terrible enough to hear about these men and their crimes, but
seeing them in person was like torture.
After four days, I finally got my chance to address the gathering. Because I’m
only 5ft tall, an official lowered the microphone. I spoke as rapidly as I
could and directly from my heart: “My criticism of all my compatriots is why
you are allowing the legitimacy and legality of this loya jirga to come into
question due to the presence of those criminals who have brought our country
to this state ... They are responsible for our situation now.”
Many in the huge tent where we were meeting applauded, but most of the
warlords glowered at me with faces as hard as stone. I went on: “It is they
who turned our country into the centre of national and international wars.
They are the most anti-women elements in our society who brought our country
to this state and they intend to do the same again.”
By now a number of the warlords were on their feet, yelling and shaking their
fists in my direction.
“They should be prosecuted in the national and international courts,” I said.
Then, suddenly, I could no longer hear my voice echoing over the PA system:
the chairman had cut off my microphone.
There was an enormous commotion, with angry men lurching in my direction. One
of the female delegates started shouting: “Take the pants off this
prostitute and tie them on her head!” In the midst of the pandemonium, a
widow called Ayeesha grabbed me and shielded me with her body. She knew the
depravities of which these angry men were capable.
My supporters and a group of United Nations facilitators huddled around me,
arms locked, to protect me as they escorted me through the mob that was
still screaming insults and threats. That night, a group of people came
looking for me at the university residence where I was staying. Carrying
sticks and screaming insults, they demanded: “Where is that prostitute girl?
When we find her, we will rape her and kill her!”
Subsequently there were several attempts to kill me. A huge roadside bomb, for
example, exploded just ahead of my car, spattering debris onto its roof.
Once, a man who claimed to be one of my former bodyguards asked to see me
after I’d delivered a speech — but was found to have a concealed pistol.
That’s why I was always surrounded by bodyguards; they wouldn’t let me eat or
drink anything within the parliament building in case it was poisoned and
they forbade me from using the women’s loo — after a fundamentalist woman
tried to lure me there for a private chat. Even gifts had to be checked for
bombs.
Soon after one thwarted attack, Karzai agreed to meet me. When I told him the
horrific details of some of the rapes, abductions and murders that had been
covered up, sanctioned or ordered by the warlords, tears fell from his eyes.
I urged him to weaken the warlords’ power by denying them appointments to
key government posts.
Karzai said he agreed with most of what I was saying, but he avoided making
any firm commitments. Afterwards he went on to make compromise after
compromise with the warlords. The truth is that he relies on the Americans
and his alliances with the warlords to stay in his post. In the end I came
to think of Karzai’s tears as mere crocodile tears.
In 2005 I decided to stand in Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections in
33 years. My enemies spared no effort to block me, distributing leaflets
that called me a “prostitute”, “anti-Islamic”, and a “communist”. One had a
photo of me with the doubly false slogan: “She took off her scarf at the
loya jirga, she’ll take off her pants in parliament.”
My enemies failed: I became the youngest member of parliament. Afterwards I
learnt that many of those who’d voted for me had been beaten — or worse. An
18-year-old called Ibrahim who’d campaigned for me very effectively was
abducted and killed. His eyes had been gouged out, probably while he was
alive.
Once again many warlords forced their way into the government. I shouldn’t
have been surprised that when it was my turn to speak in the new parliament
the sound was again cut off.
Indeed, I have never once had the chance to speak — my microphone has always
been cut off. And I was constantly attacked and insulted by other MPs.
But, sometimes, even among those who work for fundamentalists, there are
people who quietly support me. In one case I was tipped off by one of my
would-be assassins. The house where I was living in Kabul was a two-storey
building next to a construction site — and my bedroom window was deemed safe
because it looked out onto the works. One day, however, a man notified my
bodyguards that they shouldn’t allow me to use that room. He was one of
three men, he said, who’d been assigned to monitor me from the building
under construction. They had a rifle with a silencer and orders to shoot me
when I entered the room.
The day before, they had waited all day for their chance but I’d appeared in
my room only once in the evening. He said it hadn’t been possible for them
to fire as they couldn’t get a clear view of my head. We knew he was telling
the truth because he was right: I’d entered my room only once that evening.
In 2006 I was invited to Spain to attend an international conference on the
future of Afghanistan. At a dinner for delegates I found myself sitting with
a number of Afghan ministers — among them Abdullah Abdullah, the foreign
minister at the time. I told him about the threats hurled at me — and I also
condemned the warlords’ domination of the government.
Abdullah, who was eating his dinner, cut me off: “Is there really nothing else
to talk about?”
I continued: “Why are you getting angry? Is it because I am tearing the mask
off your brothers? Did they not use rape as a weapon? Did they not kill
65,000 people during the civil war and destroy the country?”
Hanif Atmar, the minister of education at the time, joined in the
conversation: “Malalai, please forget the past, do not be harsh.”
I said I wanted only to tell them the truth — we weren’t in parliament now,
after all, where I was never allowed to finish my remarks: “How can we
forget? If they raped your mother, would you forget? Those mothers who
buried their daughters — should they forget and forgive?”
Atmar, who is now minister of the interior, had no reply. But another Afghan
minister warned me to be careful at the conference and not to let anyone
know my room number.
In April 2007 I gave an interview to a US-based TV channel in which I used
strong words against the warlords and warned that people would soon be
calling our parliament a zoo.
This led to a great row in Kabul — indeed, one friend overheard a warlord MP
saying I’d be killed by a suicide bomber — and my suspension from
parliament. But that hasn’t stopped people coming to me with evidence of an
epidemic of abduction and violence against women and children.
Halim, the father of two children, age six and seven, had accused local
commanders of being criminals. They retaliated by sending their gunmen to
abduct and murder his children. Their bodies were thrown into a river. Halim
said he’d told Karzai his story. “I showed him pictures of my sons and he
cried but told me to forget it,” Halim said. “He said, ‘You are young — have
more babies’.”
Meanwhile, attacks on female teachers and students are on the increase. Last
November in Kandahar, eight schoolgirls were splashed with acid by men on a
motorcycle. Little wonder that fewer girls are going to school.
To all intents and purposes the position of women is the same now as it was
under the Taliban. In some respects it’s worse, with higher rates of suicide
and abduction — and impunity for rapists.
Few rape victims have had the courage to raise their voices publicly because
rape is regarded as a shame to the family. Even so, a 14-year-old girl named
Bashira and her father decided to seek justice. Bashira had been gang-raped
while going to pick up supplies from an aid distribution centre. It turned
out that one of the accused was the son of an MP, who quickly intervened to
ensure his son wasn’t arrested.
Bashira was so distraught after the rape that she tried to burn herself to
death — I saw her scars. Her father said the rapists had tried to bribe him
to drop the case; when he refused, they beat him so badly that he ended up
in hospital.
Because I’ve been deprived of my parliamentary rights, I’m not in a position
to do much for such people except to listen and then tell the world. Sadly,
there are thousands of Bashiras in Afghanistan. I try to comfort the women
and girls who come to me with their sorrows and I urge them not to choose
suicide, but to choose to be part of the struggle to achieve justice for
women.
For now, I continue my fight to return to parliament to denounce the tyrants.
I still receive death threats and my supporters have uncovered — and
thwarted — yet more assassination plots. But I don’t fear death; I fear the
consequences of remaining silent in the face of appalling injustice.
© Malalai Joya 2009
Extracted from Raising My Voice by Malalai Joya, to be published by Random
House on July 16 at £11.99. Copies can be ordered for £10.79, including
postage, from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0845 271 2135
