 Zakia Zaki (center), owner and manager of Peace Radio, was murdered June 5. |
(June 7, 2007) Internews mourns the devastating loss of Afghan journalist Zakia Zaki, the owner and manager of radio Sada-i-Sulh, or Peace Radio, an Internews partner station. Late in the evening of June 5, gunmen entered her house and shot her seven times, including in the chest and head, while she lay asleep in her bedroom with her baby.
Warlords Killed My Friend
The murder of Zakia Zaki, and her nation.
By Christopher Grabowski, The Tyee, 19 June 2007
In the summer of 2003, I sat in the dining room of the fortified UN compound in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan drinking Russian vodka smuggled in from Tajikistan. At room temperature of 32º C, it tasted like industrial strength sake. The owner of the bottle, a Muslim UN worker from the former Yugoslavia, was telling me about the UN’s efforts in preparing voters lists for the approaching election.He regarded his work mostly as a PR campaign. In his words, anybody who believed that the upcoming Afghan election was going to even remotely resemble a democratic, western style, election was either “extremely naïve or plain stupid.”
At that time, I regarded the cynicism of a burned out and disillusioned UN worker as premature. “After all,” I thought, “you need to start somewhere.” History however has proven my drinking buddy correct. Currently, both houses of the Afghan National Assembly are dominated by warlords of various affiliations. In January 2007, they legislated themselves immune to the charges of war crimes and human rights violations. Malalai Joya, the outspoken female member of the Assembly who opposed the bill, was simply “voted” out of this august body.
[ Read the report ]
Democracy NOW!: “The Bravest Woman In Afghanistan”: Malalai Joya Speaks Out Against the Warlord-Controlled Afghan Government & U.S. Military Presence