MALALAI JOYA talks to HUMA
Interview with the young Afghan deputy thrown out of Parliament for having exposed foreign interference in her country.
Malalai Joya is an angry woman. She’s angry about the war being carried out by the international coalition in her country, Afghanistan, angry about the UN bombs that are killing civilians in their villages, angry about calls for reconciliation with the Taliban and the war lords. “Stop the massacres in my country. Withdraw your foreign troops so we can stop Talibanization,” is what the young Afghan deputy tells Western public opinion.
Huma: The conference in London, which took place at the end of January, formalized negotiations with the Taliban. What could happen next?
Malalai Joya: Millions of dollars have been promised to the Karzai regime so that insurgents will lay down their arms: at the same time millions of Afghans are dying in poverty. This will lead to the Taliban being rehabilitated, they will take control of the Loya Jirga, the meeting of the elders and the tribal leaders which is to be held soon. Can we really expect to establish democracy with such reactionaries? The Taliban aren’t the only fundamentalists. When the USA and their allies overthrew Mullah Omar’s regime, they replaced him with the war lords and the Northern Alliance who were led by Massoud. This group resembles the Taliban in its way of thinking. Over the past few years there’s been a series of laws and judicial decisions that are scandalous. Under the pretext of national reconciliation, immunity was extended to the war lords and other known war criminals, many of whom sit in Parliament. These war lords are highly placed, they’re in the Parliament, in ministries, the judiciary and they are all corrupt. And now the UN itself is crossing off the names of the ex-Taliban leaders from their black list. Is this the way to build the future of a people? Unless you want to persuade them that the Coca-Cola plant inaugurated by Karzai in the suburbs of Kabul, in our impoverished country where water is a precious resource, should serve as an emblem of the benefits of Western progress.
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