ABSTRACT
For Meena and RAWA the Soviet invasion in December of 1979 confirmed that the education and emancipation of women would be meaningless in a country ruled by repressive forces against whom no one was safe or free. From that point on, RAWA expanded their activities and mission to include resistance to the series of brutal regimes that ruled Afghanistan, from the various PDPA despots1 and the Soviet invaders, through the Jehadi and Taliban periods, to the present. They vowed to continue to work for the day when the government in Afghanistan is free, secular, and democratic. Meena told Afsana, one of the early members, that RAWA was (as it still is today) “an organization of women struggling for the liberation of Afghanistan and of women.” The uniqueness of Meena’s vision was her ability to make the connections between women’s needs and the country’s need, and to see how each could inform and advance the cause of the other. Nonetheless, in the context of the times, RAWA is not an exotic aberration (as it is sometimes viewed), but a natural outgrowth of the pride, resistance, and patriotism of Afghan women and young people catalyzed into action by Meena and the other founding members.
