Lawfare Archive: Afghan Parliamentarian and Female Presidential Candidate Fawzia Koofi on Afghan Security and the Condition of Women and Girls
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2021
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
From February 16, 2013: Fawzia Koofi (website, Twitter) is an Afghan Member of Parliament and Vice President of the Afghan National Assembly. She is also running for President of Afghanistan in the planned April 2014 elections, and would be the first female president in Afghan history. She has a remarkable backstory: Born as the nineteenth of her father's twenty-three children, Koofi was left to die from exposure as a baby girl. She survived and witnessed during her childhood father's and brother's deaths from political unrest. She was forced to leave medical school when the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996 and banned the education of women and girls, and, soon after her own daughters were born, her husband died from tuberculosis he contracted while a political prisoner in a Taliban jail. After the new Afghan government was formed after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, Koofi ran for and won a seat in the Afghan parliament. She currently represents the Badakshan region in northeastern Afghanistan and is a leading advocate for the rights of women and girls. Koofi has also written a recently published memoir, The Favored Daughter, about her life and her journey into politics.
Koofi delivered the closing remarks at the Harvard Women's Law Association's annual conference. (Special thanks to the association's president and conference organizer, Stephanie Davidson, for arranging the interview.) Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Koofi at her snowed-in hotel about the current state of Afghanistan and the challenges facing her country.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:39.8 | This is the LawFair Archive. |
| 0:42.8 | Hello, this is LawFair in turn Christiana Wayne with an episode from the LawFair Archive |
| 0:48.4 | for July 18, 2031. The United States is withdrawing from Afghanistan after a two decade long |
| 0:55.4 | war. Left behind is the fractious government and a Taliban forest gradually resafewing land |
| 1:01.0 | and power. At particular risk is the female population of Afghanistan, which is suffered |
| 1:07.7 | under the Taliban's repressive laws. For today's episode from the Archives, I chose a conversation |
| 1:13.9 | from 2013 to an Al-Aranstein and the Afghan politician and woman's rights activist Paussi |
| 1:20.1 | Kuhfi. At the time Kuhfi was a member of parliament and was planning a presidential run. And |
| 1:27.1 | she talked to a Rosenstein about women in Afghanistan and the continued threat of the Taliban |
| 1:32.3 | during and after US occupation. She is still in Afghanistan's parliament today and most |
| 1:38.9 | recently served as a member of Afghan delegation negotiating peace with the Taliban. She also |
| 1:44.8 | recently called the ongoing US withdrawal from Afghanistan and moral defeat. Apologies |
| 1:50.4 | for the advance for the quality of this recording, but we thought the content was nonetheless |
| 1:54.6 | for sharing. |
| 1:55.6 | Hello and welcome to the LawFair podcast. I'm Benjamin Whittes. Today something different |
| 2:05.1 | on the podcast. Faussi Kuhfi is a member of the Afghan parliament and vice president |
| 2:10.7 | of its national assembly. She is also running to be Afghanistan's first female president |
... |
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