Afghan war nothing to do with democracy or justice or terrorism

"Surge" will only increase Afghan civilian casualties and resistance to occupation

By Malalai Joya, the youngest member of the Afghan Parliament, from which she was suspended in May 2007. Described as "the bravest woman in Afghanistan", her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice, will be published later this year. She is speaking at a Stop the War public meeting in London on Thursday 23 July.

When the US and its allies replaced the Taliban with the old notorious warlords and fundamentalists of the Northern Alliance, I could see that the only change we would see was from the frying pan to the fire.

There have been a whole series of outrageous laws and court decisions in recent years. For instance, there was the disgusting law passed on the pretext of ‘national reconciliation’ that provided immunity from prosecution to warlords and notorious war criminals, many of whom sit in the Afghan Parliament.

At that time, the world media and governments turned a blind eye to it.

My opposition to this law was one of the reasons that I, as an elected MP from Farah Province, was expelled from Parliament in May 2007. More recently, there was the outrageous 20-year sentence handed down against Parvez Kambakhsh, a young man whose only crime was to allegedly distribute a dissenting article at his university.

We are told that additional US and NATO troops are coming to Afghanistan to help secure the upcoming presidential election. But frankly the Afghan people have no hope in this election – we know that there can be no true democracy under the guns of warlords, the drug trafficking mafia and occupation.

Most of the candidates are the known, discredited faces that have been part and parcel of the mafia-like, failed government of Hamid Karzai. We know that one puppet can be replaced by another puppet, and that the winner of this election will most certainly be selected behind closed doors in the White House and the Pentagon. I must conclude that this presidential election is merely a drama to legitimize the future US puppet.

War has not brought liberation to Afghanistan

Just like in Iraq, war has not brought liberation to Afghanistan. Neither war was really about democracy or justice or uprooting terrorist groups; rather they were and are about US strategic interests in the region. We Afghans have never liked being pawns in the ‘Great Game’ of empire, as the British and the Soviets learned in the past century.

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.’ Perhaps if the citizens of North America had been better informed about my country, President Obama would not have dared to send more troops and spend taxpayers’ money on a war that is only adding to the suffering of our people and pushing the region into deeper conflicts.

A troop ‘surge’ in Afghanistan, and continued air strikes, will do nothing to help the liberation of Afghan women. The only thing it will do is increase the number of civilian casualties and increase the resistance to occupation.

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

To really help Afghan women, citizens in the US and elsewhere must tell their government to stop propping up and covering for a regime of warlords and extremists. If these thugs were finally brought to justice, Afghan women and men would prove quite capable of helping ourselves.

Stop the War Public Meeting

Eye Witness in Afghanistan

with Malalai Joya, MP in the Afghan Parliament

Malalai Joya's new book Raising My Voice will be launched at this meeting.
More information and a video about Malalai Joya...

Thursday 23 July 7pm
Conway Hall, Red Lion Square
London WC1

Speakers:

Malalai Joya, MP in the Afghan parliament.
Lindsey German, Stop the War's national convenor
Rose Gentle, Military Families Against the War

Tickets: £4 / £2 concessions

Waged £4.00 Unwaged £2.00