Afghanistan today "a mockery of the war on terror"

A member of the Afghan parliament speaks out on the state of her country.

Afghanistan today "a mockery of the war on terror"
On Line opinion
By Judy Cannon

"Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya, who will be 28 in April, is a slight woman who maybe reaches 5ft but against whom four assassination attempts have already been made. This does not prevent her from speaking out, as she sees it, the ... sometimes brutal, truth about ... the "terrible crisis" now faced by Afghanistan."
" 'They should know that bringing the Northern Alliance to power was the key to all the disasters we are experiencing today,' she said ... who she claimed are, 'as brutal and undemocratic as the Taliban and even worse,' "
"The US government keeps promising not to repeat its past mistakes ... but the US is making the same mistake, ... demanding the trial of the war lords and former Moscow puppets but they had not been brought to justice. Instead, shamelessly they were offered higher positions and found their way into the parliament with the support of the US"
" Some 20 per cent of those in parliament had been accused of things such as war crimes, drug-dealing and killing."
"criminals, some of them parliamentarians, had been scared by the hanging of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and, as a result, a parliamentary Bill had been brought into parliament providing immunity to all criminals over the past 25 years. A UN report had expressed disapproval of the Bill"
" 'Today we have a drugs mafia in Afghanistan and the so-called government is deeply implicated in drugs and the war lords,' she claimed."
"Women's rights were as catastrophic as they had been under the Taliban and the number of suicides had never been as high as they were today. She listed examples of recent violence against women and girls, including the case of an 11-year-old who was abducted, raped and then exchanged for a dog. The position of women would never change as long as the war lords were not removed from the political scene"
" 'No country can deliver liberation to another country,' she said. It had to be done by the people themselves."