By WBW Ireland, March 2, 2022
The third in this series of five conversations, “Bearing Witness to the Realities and Consequences of War,” with Malalai Joya, hosted by World BEYOND War Ireland.
An ardent advocate for women’s rights and for an independent, free, secular, democratic Afghanistan, Malalai Joya was born in the Farah Province of Afghanistan close to the Iranian border and grew up in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan. Elected to the Afghan parliament in 2005, she was at that time the youngest person ever to be elected to the Afghan parliament. She was suspended in 2007 for her denunciation of warlords and the endemic corruption that was, she believed, the hallmark of the US sponsored government at that time.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Malalai Joya takes us through the trauma that has engulfed her country from the Soviet invasion in 1979 to the rise of the first Taliban regime in 1996 through to the 2001 US-led invasion and the Taliban’s subsequent return in 2021.
