The Woman Who Wants Us Out, Ctd.

A reader responds to my post on Malalai Joya:

I admire the guts of this young woman and believe it will eventually be the women of Islam who prove to be its salvation.

However, having left Afghanistan at 4 and not returning until she was 20, in 1998, it appears she spent the period of the Taliban's reign of terror in Iran and Pakistan. Ironically, the world would never have heard of Malalai Joya had the US not invaded Afghanistan and created an opportunity for her to even serve in its legislature.

The Afghan region has been in a state, in varying degrees, of perpetual tribal war for centuries and it is easy to understand its people know no other state of affairs. The reality, though, is Afghan existence is mostly defined by raw power from the barrel of a gun.

I don't have a great deal of confidence in American success there, but I am willing for us to make the effort to buy enough time to hopefully allow more Joyas to step forward and blossom. To reasonably compare any current statistical evidence on crime and security to the earlier Taliban era is preposterous. One would have to assume the Taliban actually kept those records and kept them accurately.

I fear Joya is making the Hobbesian choice of native, dictatorial power over a gamble for a better environment in the future, even if it is provided temporarily by a foreign power. If she believes the withdrawal of all coalition forces and an immediate return to local determination is the best solution, she is indeed living in a world of "bellum universale" and "jus non retinendum".

I wish her and her countrymen the best of all luck.