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Hello, and welcome to the LawFair podcast. I'm Benjamin Whittes. Today, something different

on the podcast. Fauziya Kufi is a member of the Afghan Parliament and Vice President

of its National Assembly. She is also running to be Afghanistan's first female president

in the upcoming 2014 elections. Kufi was forced to leave school when the Taliban took

power in Afghanistan, and she was widowed when the Taliban imprisoned her husband shortly

after their marriage. Kufi is now a leading advocate for the rights of women and girls in

Afghanistan and has recently published a memoir, The Favorite Daughter, about her life. Kufi

recently gave the closing remarks at the Harvard Women's Law Association's annual conference.

LawFair's Alan Rosenstein spoke with her about the current state of Afghanistan and the

challenge is facing her country. Miss Kufi, thank you so much for joining us. The first

thing I'd like to ask is just to have you describe the road that brought you to doing the

first female candidate for President of Afghanistan? Well, I come from a political family, so

politics is like inside my blood, but because of the losses I had in politics, because

of the fact that I lost my father, he was assassinated and my brothers in politics, and then

of course our house was looted, and we paid a high price for being in politics. Therefore,

I didn't want to become a politician, but the fact that there was a civil war in Afghanistan

and then during Taliban time, there was a lot of what I have experienced was so much discrimination

and injustice towards citizens, including women. That gave me the passion and the determination

...