Malalai Joya

Malalai Joya rose to fame in December 2003 when, as an elected delegate to the Constitutional Loya Jirga, she spoke out publicly against the domination of warlords. Since then she has survived four assassination attempts, and travels in Afghanistan under a burqa and with armed guards. Her newly published book, A Woman Among Warlords, has been widely praised; Noam Chomsky has written that it “leaves us with hope that the tormented people of Afghanistan can take their fate into their own hands if they are released from the grip of foreign powers”.