Malalai Joya

Malalai Joya, now 31, was the youngest member of the Afghan Parliament, elected in 2005. In 2007 she was suspended from Parliament because of her consistent criticism of the warlords and other human rights abusers in the Karzai regime. Joya has survived five assassination attempts to date, and has written her life story in the book A Woman Among Warlords (with Derrick O’Keefe, Scribner, 2009). She writes from Kabul, Afghanistan.