On Afghanistan

By now, Malalai Joya should need no introduction. If you haven’t read the interview with her in the current edition of Overland, or the except of it in The Age last Monday; if you didn’t catch her on Q&A on Monday night or speaking to John Faine in the Conversation Hour, or even picked up a copy of her autobiography Raising My Voice, then I hope you were lucky enough to catch one of her sessions at the MWF.

On Saturday night, Joya addressed a packed BMW Edge, speaking frankly about life in Afghanistan today. 10 years of occupation has doubled the misery of the Afghan people, she claimed. The US-led invasion that was instigated as a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, and justified since with references to the dire situation for women and children (Afghanistan is the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman, according to UNIFEM) and the serious human rights abuses perpetrated by the Taliban, has not made things better for the Afghan people, Joya claimed. In fact, they have made them worse. If, in the time of Taliban rule, some women in Kabul were mildly better off, certainly nobody listens to their voices now. They are lashed in public, raped by corrupt police, shot. Women sell their babies for loose change because they cannot afford to feed them. Men are hung for being pro-democratic, and then their bodies are harvested for organs.

“Democracy never came from bombing a wedding party.”

Afghanistan has billions of dollars in mineral resources, Joya explained, that could be exploited for the benefit of the people. However, they also have the second most corrupt regime in the world, so the Afghan people don’t see any of the benefits from these resources. The money goes straight into the pockets of the already wealthy, powerful and ruling elite. In attempting to bring about democracy and bring down the Taliban, the NATO forces have, in Joya’s words, ‘propped up’ a regime of ‘criminal war lords’. These war lords only differ from the Taliban in their fiscal approach, not their anti-democratic or anti-humanitarian mentalities.

Joya does not deny that things are bad. After years of underground activism and persecution, she knows better than anyone that they are devastating. But the Afghan people are ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ now because foreign military forces are occupying the country. The people dropping bombs and killing civilians in air strikes are NATO forces. In fact, some of the worst massacres, she claimed, happened in Afghanistan after President Obama came into power. Nobody wants to believe that a superpower like the US would lend its support to these kinds of travesties, and yet 14 countries are allied with them over the war in Afghanistan. The lawlessness that exists because of their presence is their excuse to stay longer. They are currently scheduled to leave mid 2014, but they are now talking about setting up permanent military bases in the country. This is part of the reason why Joya believes they are not in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people but for their own strategic interests. ‘I do not believe it is a war on terror,’ Joya said, ‘simply war crime.’

The most striking thing about Joya’s speech – and the part of her message that I think is most crucial, and perhaps what is lost in the contemporary mainstream coverage about Australia’s presence in Afghanistan – is her focus on what the people of Afghanistan want. Neither the war lords currently in power nor the Taliban act in the interests of the people, she says. To assume that the Afghan people want these corrupt and violent war lords in power – and further, to assume that outside forces negotiating with them at gunpoint could possibly bring about democracy – is naïve, as though a population would choose to be exploited, to be tortured, to be oppressed. And yet by trying to work within the existing power structures, she claims, the NATO forces are actually uniting the enemies of the people against the people.

“Democracy without independence or justice is meaningless.”

Afghanistan needs honest helping hands, Joya said – they need schools and they need hospitals. But through the military occupation, the money and power falls into the pockets and hands of the corrupt. The media never reports the internal resistance, to not only the Taliban and the war lords, but to the NATO forces themselves. The question is always asked: ‘But what will happen if the troops leave?’ Except, Joya said, that nobody asks what is already happening while NATO forces occupy the country. Civil war in Afghanistan is not a possibility; it is an actuality. But if the foreign troops leave, she said, actually leave, the backbone of the corrupt regime will break. And then, finally, perhaps the people of Afghanistan will be able to liberate themselves.

Get political

Feel like a bit of grit in your Saturday?

Power Without Responsibility

Over the last 10 years, The Australian has become one of the most prominent conservative political campaigners in this country – so comfortable in this assumed role that in an editorial in September 2010, the paper announced that it believed the Greens ‘should be destroyed at the ballot box’. But what does it mean for a newspaper, which claims to uphold the ideals of fair and balanced reporting, to be such an overt political actor? And what effect does this have on the political debate in Australia? 

If you’re quick this morning you could get along to BMW Edge at 10am to see Robert Manne and Eric Beecher talk about Manne’s new Quarterly Essay: Bad News – Murdoch’s Australian and the Shaping of the Nation, examining The Australian’s political voice and it’s role in public debate. For those of you still coming down from the New News conference and Jay Rosen’s excellent keynote last week, this could be the perfect antidote.

Middle East – Spring or Fall?

The popular uprising in Egypt that began on January 25 toppled the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Soon Egypt will be holding its first elections post-uprisings. But how did the uprising come about? What did it mean for the people? What are the complications involved and how might it be seen in the context of the revolutions occurring all across the Middle East? Professor Amin Saikal, commentator Mona Eltahawy and narrative non-fiction writer Joseph Braude will be discussing with Louise Adler the history and the possibilities for the region, today at 2:30pm in BMW Edge.

Big Ideas: 10 Years After 9/11 – Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Struggle for Democracy

“They are wasting your taxpayers’ money and the blood of your soldiers.”

If you haven’t yet heard former Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya speak – if you missed her Monday night appearance on Q&A, or her appearance on the Conversation Hour with John Faine on Friday morning – here’s your chance. Joya’s uncompromising politics are underpinned by years of underground activism for women’s rights, a public fight against internal corruption in Afghanistan, foreign occupation and war. Defying death threats and surviving assassination attempts, Joya continues to speak out despite attempts to silence her, making her one of the strongest and clearest voices against the war. She is speaking tonight at BMW Edge at 6:30pm as part of the MWF’s Big Ideas program.

To speak out and to listen

It is difficult for women in Australia to express a political opinion, let alone have that opinion taken seriously, because of the stigma that still surrounds their gender. For Islamic women these difficulties are further compounded, not only in the West where prejudice against Islam is rising, but also in Islamic countries where it may be physically dangerous to speak out at all, particularly when that involves condemnation of their own government and international military forces.

Malalai Joya is a former Afghan MP and outspoken activist against the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and the presence of allied forces in Afghanistan. During the Taliban regime, Joya worked underground to promote women’s health and education for girls. At age 23, she publicly denounced the presence of warlords and criminals at a constitutional assembly and was thrown out amid tremendous uproar. Two years later, in 2005, she was elected to parliament where she was repeatedly threatened and silenced every time she attempted to speak. She has received death threats and survived multiple assassination attempts.

A fierce critic of US foreign policy and presence in the region – and recently denied an entry visa to the US after speaking out against it – Joya is firm about her position that Afghanistan is occupied not for the greater good but for the purposes of power. Tens of thousands of Afghan people have been killed by allied forces, she says, predominantly via air strikes, most of them women and children. When the dominant voices in Australia on this country’s continued involvement in the occupation of Afghanistan are our own politicians, who for eleven years have been postulating that Allied forces in the region are for the benefit of all Afghan people, hearing the voices of women like Joya becomes even more important.

Malalai Joya will be speaking at two Melbourne Writers Festival events: Big Ideas: 10 years after 9/11 – Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Struggle for Democracy and The Pity of War: Afghanistan and Iraq where she will appear on a panel with Jeff Sparrow, John Martinkus and Karen Middleton. Joya’s appearance at the Melbourne Writers Festival is sponsored by Overland Literary Journal, the forthcoming edition of which features her in an extended interview. Overland 204 is being launched by Sophie Cunningham as part of the MWF on 27 August.