NY Times: A Young Afghan Dares to Mention the Unmentionable (true hero)

[La_Serpiente]

This woman is a hero. She risked her life speaking out against the warlords that murdered her people in front of the entire Afghani Constitutional Convention. She did it for the sake of other women in Afghanistan.

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A Young Afghan Dares to Mention the Unmentionable

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 17 — Malalai Joya pushed her black head scarf forward to cover her hair fully, then opened her mouth.

Out poured a torrent of words, in a voice rising with emotion. Why, she asked the delegates assembled here on Wednesday to ratify a new constitution for Afghanistan, were her countrymen and women tolerating the presence of the "criminals" who had destroyed the country?

"They should be brought to national and international justice," she said. "If our people forgive them, history will not."

It took a moment for the 502 delegates to absorb the import of her words. When they did, the result was bedlam: shouts of "Death to Communism!" and a rush by some toward the stage, and toward the diminutive Ms. Joya as well.

All of 25, Ms. Joya, a social worker from Farah Province, in the southwest, had crossed several lines at once. She had spoken her mind as few Afghan women dare to do. More important, as many interpreted her words, she had spoken against the mujahedeen, or holy warriors, who fought and humbled the Soviet Union. They are a sacrosanct constituency in this country, and a powerful political force in this assembly, a traditional meeting called a loya jirga.

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A Young Afghan Dares to Mention the Unmentionable

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[katusha]

1. malalai joya is descended

from the article,

"And she had pointed out that she was the namesake of a legendary Pashtun woman, Malalai, who had fought the British in 1880. "

background on malalai-

July 1880, Afghan woman named Malalai carries the Afghan flag forward after the soldiers carrying the flag were killed by the British. She becomes a heroine for her show of courage and valour.

An Afghan woman named Malalai became an enduring symbol of valor when she carried the Afghan flag forward during a battle with British soldiers in the second British-Afghan war in 1880.
The British eventually won that conflict. But in the heart of Kabul, a girls high school was built in her honor. Yet the Taliban shut the Malalai School almost immediately after coming to power in 1996, part of their blanket ban on girls' education.

7/25/1880 In the Battle of Maiwand an Afghan woman named Malalai carried the Afghan flag forward after the soldiers carrying the flag were killed by the British. She becomes a heroine for her show of courage and valor. The 1892 Kipling poem “Barracks Room Ballads” recalled the Battle of Maiwand.

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this girl certainly has a lot to live up to. hope she lives. her point is valid though. how could you(mujahadeen) fight like heroes, then govern like villains?