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February 23rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Koofi is 36, her daughters just 11 and 12. She admits: “Sometimes they ask me
to step down, but I think much of the time they understand the value of my
work. They are very brave. They want to change the world. I make these
sacrifices for my daughters.”
Given the threat of death that hangs heavily over all of their lives, one has
to ask why she continues in her quest to become president of Afghanistan,
even if the answer – emancipation for women, and for the country as a whole
– is obvious. “We all die anyway,” she says simply, and it is interesting
that in many ways, she is as fatalistic as the suicide bombers she is on
constant watch for. But then Koofi was supposed to die the day she was born.
Koofi is as experienced in death as she is in life.
Koofi was born in Badakhshan, a province in the north-east of Afghanistan that
borders Tajikistan and China. It is remote, wild, and to this day has the
world’s highest rate of child mortality. She was the 19th of her father’s 23
children, born to the second of his seven wives, her battle beginning as
soon as she was conceived. In the village where her parents lived, baby
girls were considered worthless, and so it was that Koofi’s mother spent the
duration of her pregnancy praying for a boy. It could not have helped that
she was exhausted, having already borne seven children, or sick with worry
about being usurped because her husband had just taken his latest wife – a
14 year old – who had recently given birth to a son.
When Fawzia was delivered after a 30-hour labour, her mother was only
semi-conscious, and refused to hold her. Fawzia was wrapped in a cloth and
placed on the ground outside in the baking sun, where she was left until the
next day. The family, hearing the newborn’s screams and seeing the burns to
her face, expected her to die. But she didn’t. And when her mother was
better she vowed to do her best by her daughter – though illiterate herself,
she made sure that Fawzia was the first girl in the family to be allowed to
go to school.
Fawzia, who has now written a memoir, remembers her father beating her mother.
Yet she doesn’t feel any ill will towards him. As she points out, that was
the norm in Afghanistan during the Seventies. In many parts of the country,
it still is.
If anything, Fawzia’s father was her inspiration. Like Koofi today, he
represented the province of Badakhshan in the Afghan parliament, serving
under the Shahs, the communists, and the Mujahideen, who assassinated him
when she was just three years old. In the many bloody battles that have been
fought in Afghanistan, Koofi has also lost several of her brothers. Her
husband was imprisoned by the Taliban for marrying her, a member of a
political family perceived by them to be troublesome. He died of
tuberculosis shortly afterwards, and Koofi says she has been married to
politics ever since.
We meet in a hotel in London. She has come here to tell her story to the West
– she feels that as long as President Hamid Karzai continues to attempt
so-called reconciliation talks with the Taliban, it is an important story to
tell. “I feel that the international community is not planning a peace
process based on the realities on the ground in Afghanistan. It is based on
the realities of their own countries, and what it will take to be
re-elected. But with the Taliban involved there will never be peace.
Already, the people that Obama and Cameron talk to [in the Afghan
government] are in turn trying to bribe the Taliban with promises to curb
the freedoms of women. Oh yes, there was stability under the Taliban, but it
was a dead stability. There was no life. Nobody on the streets could
breathe.”
There have been massive improvements for women since the Taliban were
overthrown in 2001. According to an Oxfam report released to mark the tenth
anniversary of this momentous occasion, 2.7 million girls are now in school,
compared to just a few thousand during Taliban times. In the new Afghan
parliament, 27 per cent of MPs are female – far higher than the world
average and more than the UK figure of 22 per cent. But Koofi still sees
examples of horrific brutality, and she worries about the imminent
withdrawal of British and American troops: look, she says, at what happened
to her country after the withdrawal of the Soviets (the 23rd anniversary of
which was marked just last week).
“A month ago, I met a girl who had been locked underground by her husband
because she refused to go into prostitution. She was just 15, and had never
even had a period. Her nails had been pulled out. There was no part of her
skin that hadn’t been bruised or marked in some way. They fed her only every
other day. In Afghanistan, these things still happen.”
And so she is not scared. “Life does become heavy for me,” she says. “There is
a huge responsibility on my shoulders. But they [the Taliban] could get me
anywhere. And I know that if they want to kill me, then it is only because I
am a threat to them. That means I am succeeding.” Does she think that she
could be the first female president of Afghanistan, so beating America to
this milestone? She hopes so. But mostly, she wants the world to remember
the following: “Women have not been involved in the country’s destruction.
We do not have blood on our hands. We have been agents of peace, and if
anyone tries not to include us in the process of peace, then it will not be
easy for them.”
‘The Favoured Daughter: One Woman’s Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the
Future’ by Fawzia Koofi with Naden Ghouri (Palgrave, £16.99) is available
from Telegraph Books at £14.99 + £1.25 pp. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit
books.telegraph.co.uk
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