She hasn't received much attention because she is an Afghan MP. In the context of a planets worth of news that does not rank very highly. Fawzia Koofi who has been very critical of ISAF did a book tour in the US and had an appearance on the Daily Show because she wrote a book and she is saying she will run for President in 2014. This aroused attention and garnered interest. Jumping to conspiratorial explanations rarely pays off.
There's no conspiracy. Rather, I suggest an (admittedly rough) institutional analysis of the difference in reception of these two women is the proper way to understand the disparity. It's a good test case, because the similarities between the women are obvious.
Joya too has received some attention; after being banished (for harshly criticizing a warlord) several Parliamentarians, from Canada, Italy, and elsewhere, have issued calls for her reinstatement.
She was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of the year.
And that would seem to contradict my point...and yet...she remains a shadow figure, less known than other high-profile Muslim women who, similarly, have battled Islamist Orthodoxy. And I would suggest it's because of a single crucial difference:
Unlike Koofi, who has remained mostly silent on the behaviour of the NATO allies--and moreso unlike Aayan Hirsi Ali, who is openly hawkish, even joining the AEI--Joya is vocally critical, even condemnatory, about NATO's actions, and particularly about US foreign policy.
Even the Time piece was singularly telling: each "influential person" got a paragraph extolling their virtues, a little puff-piece explaining their munificence.
Joya's--alone!--was a mixed review, underlining her courage and tenacity but wondering how she could say such mean things...about us! God forfend. Hell, even Sarah Palin was spared this sort of critique in the lineup.
So ok, a small matter, but I think an instructive one.
And I believe in the larger sense, those most critical of Western power are far more likley to be sidelined than, say, one who joins the AEI in declaring the need for militaristic American imperialism. (It does, you know!)
Criticizing tactics and strategy is ok, and fits within the properly-defined parameters; fundamental critiques are anathema, and even considered "loony" (the preferred nomenclature).
And I'm not deriding Ali, who has shown terrific bravery as well...though I consider her credulity to the beneficience of American military might to be a sort of religious belief in itself, a kind of secular faith in the State that is puzzling to me.
And certainly there are exceptions; some very harsh critics find a willing public ear; but as a general rule, appeals to adolescent nationalism and Western Good Intentions (while scant on evidence) is a more likely path to fame...and subsequent accolades.
So that's my take on it. I don't believe there's the faintest whiff of conspiracy to any of it.
