Skip to content
The World Can't Wait
Menu
  • Home
  • Events
  • About
    • About World Can’t Wait
      • History of World Can’t Wait
  • Projects
    • War Criminals Watch
    • We Are Not Your Soldiers!
    • Fire John Yoo
    • Sudan’s Struggle
  • Media
    • Audio
      • Video
    • Public Svc. Announcements
    • Press & Press Releases
      • Press Releases
      • Press Coverage
    • Photos
  • Take Action
    • Materials in English
    • Materials in Spanish
    • What You Can Do Now
    • Donate
    • More Resources
      • News & Analysis
        • Alternet
        • Antiwar.com
        • Black Agenda Report
        • Common Dreams
        • CounterPunch
        • Dissident Voice
        • Media Matters
        • Next Left Notes
        • OpEd News
        • Project Censored
        • Raw Story
        • Revolution Newspaper
        • Truthdig
        • Truthout
      • Anti-War
        • Afghans for Peace
        • Courage to Resist
        • Drone Warfare Awareness
        • Iraq Vets Against the War
        • Peace of the Action
        • Veterans for Peace
        • Voices for Creative Non-Violence
        • War is a Crime
      • Anti-Torture/Detention
        • Andy Worthington
        • Close Guantanamo
        • Free Detainees
        • Int’l Justice Network
        • No More Guantánamos
        • Religious Campaign Against Torture
        • Witness Against Torture
      • Political Repression
        • Bill of Rights Defense Committee
        • Center for Constitutional Rights
        • Committee to Stop FBI Repression
        • Drop the Charges on Gregory!
        • National Lawyers Guild
        • No Separate Justice
        • Project Salam
        • Stop Mass Incarceration
      • Women’s Rights/Theocracy
        • Defend Science
        • Feministing
        • RH Reality Check
        • Stop Patriarchy
        • Talk 2 Action
        • Theocracy Watch
        • Walk for Choice
      • Environment
        • Bill McKibben
        • Climate Connections
        • Enviros Against War
        • Grist
        • Tar Sands Action
  • En Español
Menu

Malalai Joya, Noam Chomsky Denounce US Occupation of Afghanistan

Posted on March 30, 2011
Share:

Malalai Joya and Noam Chomsky

Malalai Joya and Noam Chomsky in Boston on Mar. 25, 2011. Joya said that the Administration did not want to give her a visa because her message exposes the lies that justify the U.S. war in Afghanistan

By David Swanson

March 26 – In two jam-packed appearances this weekend, Afghan feminist leader Malalai Joya reached at least 1500 people with her denunciations of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. She spoke with Professor Noam Chomsky to 1200 people at Harvard’s Memorial Church Friday night and to 300 in Jamaica Plain this afternoon. The Harvard event was the largest single Boston area event focused on opposing the Afghanistan war since the war’s start almost ten years ago.

 

The U.S. State Department initially denied Joya a visa, even though her publisher, Simon & Schuster, and antiwar groups had lined up a three week speaking tour with dozens of speaking engagements coast to coast. After letters from at least a dozen Members of Congress, the American Civil Liberties Union, American Association of University Professors, and PEN, as well as 3000 online petition signatures and a phone-in day to the State Department last Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy relented and granted Joya a visa.

Joya said that the Administration did not want to give her a visa because her message exposes the lies that justify the U.S. war in Afghanistan. She told her audiences that after 10 years of U.S. occupation and "development aid", Afghanistan ranks next to last among all countries on the UN Human Development Index, and that the conditions of Afghan women have not improved.

Warlords and drug lords dominate Parliament and the Karzai government, Joya said, while U.S. troops kill civilians and rain destruction from the air. Afghan women and democratic people are caught between three enemies: the misogynist Taliban, the fundamentalist and misogynist warlords and Karzai regime, and the U.S. occupation forces. If the U.S. occcupation forces leave her country, Joya said that it will be easier, because Afghans will only have two enemies to fight, instead of three.

Joya said that the U.S. in Afghanistan for its own regional strategic interests, and not to help the Afghan people. She said that U.S. forces do not plan to leave by 2014, as President Obama has promised, but plan to stay a long time.

Prof. Chomsky agreed that the U.S. military is not in Afghanistan or other countries for humanitarian reasons or to promote security or democracy, but to advance the interests of a corporate elite that controls U.S. policy. He pointed to the dangerous destabilization of Pakistan that has been driven by U.S. aid to the military there over many decades, by U.S. support of fundamentalist Islam which began under Reagan and continues via Pakistan to this day, and by the U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan which are causing many civilian casualties, and suggested that no one could possibly think these policies were intended to advance security.

Joya praised Chomsky’s work in exposing U.S. imperialism, expressed her pleasure in sharing a podium with him, and said that although Presidents Bush and Obama have brought only grief to Afghanistan, Prof. Chomsky is an example of the freedom- and democracy-loving American people.

The Harvard event was sponsored by Haymarket Books, several Harvard student groups, the UJP Afghanistan-Pakistan Task Force, and Massachusetts Peace Action; at least 50% of the audience appeared to be students. The Jamaica Plain event was sponsored by Jamaica Plain Forum, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and several women’s organizations; a majority of its audience were women.

At both events the audiences gave multiple standing ovations to the speakers, interrupted the talks with applause, bought large numbers of Malalai Joya’s books, and signed petitions calling on President Obama to end the Afghanistan war.

The Boston Globe’s report on the Jamaica Plain event is at http://bo.st/ffWdyy.

This article originally appeared on warisacrime.org on March 27, 2011.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Because humanity & the planet come first...
store
Don’t stop… Don’t conciliate... Don’t accommodate... Don’t collaborate... and support World Can't Wait.

Sign up for email

Stop FBI Repression
Know your rights
If An Agent Knocks

About

World Can't Wait mobilizes people living in the United States to stand up and stop war on the world, repression and torture carried out by the US government. We take action, regardless of which political party holds power, to expose the crimes of our government, from war crimes to systematic mass incarceration, and to put humanity and the planet first.

Read More

Subscribe to E-Newsletter

Contact World Can't Wait

TOPICS

  • Afghanistan & Pakistan
  • Covert Drone War
  • Crimes are Crimes
  • Culture of Bigotry
  • Environment
  • G.I. Resistance
  • Haiti
  • Immigrants
  • Iran
  • Iraq
  • Libya
  • Mass Incarceration
  • Obama
  • Occupy
  • Palestine
  • Police State Repression
  • Real History Lessons
  • Reproductive Rights
  • Reports on Protest & Resistance
  • Theocracy
  • Torture
  • Wikileaks
  • Calls to Action
  • The Expanding War on the World

Projects

  • War Criminals Watch
  • We Are Not Your Soldiers
  • Get Involved

  • Donate
  • Download filters, stickers and posters
  • More ways to get involved
  • ©2025 The World Can't Wait | Design: Newspaperly WordPress Theme
    Menu
    • Home
    • Events
    • About
      • About World Can’t Wait
        • History of World Can’t Wait
    • Projects
      • War Criminals Watch
      • We Are Not Your Soldiers!
      • Fire John Yoo
      • Sudan’s Struggle
    • Media
      • Audio
        • Video
      • Public Svc. Announcements
      • Press & Press Releases
        • Press Releases
        • Press Coverage
      • Photos
    • Take Action
      • Materials in English
      • Materials in Spanish
      • What You Can Do Now
      • Donate
      • More Resources
        • News & Analysis
          • Alternet
          • Antiwar.com
          • Black Agenda Report
          • Common Dreams
          • CounterPunch
          • Dissident Voice
          • Media Matters
          • Next Left Notes
          • OpEd News
          • Project Censored
          • Raw Story
          • Revolution Newspaper
          • Truthdig
          • Truthout
        • Anti-War
          • Afghans for Peace
          • Courage to Resist
          • Drone Warfare Awareness
          • Iraq Vets Against the War
          • Peace of the Action
          • Veterans for Peace
          • Voices for Creative Non-Violence
          • War is a Crime
        • Anti-Torture/Detention
          • Andy Worthington
          • Close Guantanamo
          • Free Detainees
          • Int’l Justice Network
          • No More Guantánamos
          • Religious Campaign Against Torture
          • Witness Against Torture
        • Political Repression
          • Bill of Rights Defense Committee
          • Center for Constitutional Rights
          • Committee to Stop FBI Repression
          • Drop the Charges on Gregory!
          • National Lawyers Guild
          • No Separate Justice
          • Project Salam
          • Stop Mass Incarceration
        • Women’s Rights/Theocracy
          • Defend Science
          • Feministing
          • RH Reality Check
          • Stop Patriarchy
          • Talk 2 Action
          • Theocracy Watch
          • Walk for Choice
        • Environment
          • Bill McKibben
          • Climate Connections
          • Enviros Against War
          • Grist
          • Tar Sands Action
    • En Español