Friends, sisters and brothers,

This message is from women living in the depth of the most horrendous inferno set up at the end of the twentieth century by indescribable criminals. This is a message from RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, an organization of women fighting for the emancipation of a country which for six mortal years has been living the living nightmare of women's life under Islamic fundamentalists of the 'holy warrior' Jihadi and 'religious student' Taliban brands. And despite all tall claims to championing human rights and democratic values, a great number of powerful and influential countries, including the United States, have never desisted from helping these criminal fundamentalists.

Our founding leader, Meena, who was assassinated in 1987 at the hands of KGB agents with the active connivance of Golbodin Hekmatyar's rabid Islamic Party, had foretold that in the event of Islamic fundamentalist parties coming to power after the collapse of the Soviet stooges, it would be as if the wolf had been driven out the door but the bloodthirsty hyena had been allowed back through the window. What has happened in Afghanistan has been far worse. What the people of Afghanistan, particularly Afghan women, have been through since the downfall of the Soviet puppet regime is doubtless unparalleled and unprecedented in the history of any land. The inhuman fundamentalists have not even desisted from raping 7-year-old children and 70-year-old grandmothers and grandfathers. They have enjoyed themselves by driving nails into the skulls of their captives, gouging out their eyes, and broiling captives alive in large metal freight containers. Innumerable young girls have committed suicide out of fear of being raped by religious fascists. The list of fundamentalists horrors and the agony of our people, and in particular our women, is too long and too blood chilling to enumerate here.

Western European countries and the United States, because of their own particular interests and agenda, do not tire of highlighting atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo, but when these very same circles and their media come to the situation in Afghanistan they close their eyes, or at best give it insultingly scanty coverage. This is because for two whole decades they themselves nurtured these very same predators as their darling lapdogs, armed them to the teeth and let them loose on the people of our unhappy country.

The Governments of the United States and its allies are the patrons of Zionists and a number of Arab fundamentalist regimes. It would be ridiculous to expect them to expose and restrain their protégés. It therefore devolves upon partisans of freedom and justice around the world to take upon themselves the duty of exposing and laying bare the inhuman criminality of religious fundamentalism. Due to their economic and political rivalries, the United States and Western European countries vie with each other in supporting one or another Afghan fundamentalist band and in giving them a free hand in their vital drug trade. If the United States had been a true friend of the people of Afghanistan it would have treated each and every Afghan fundamentalist warlord the way it treated its one-time crony Noriega of Panama. It should have ousted political representatives of both Rabbani and Taliban bands from the United States. Alas, what happens in actual fact is that Mrs. Madelein Albright speaks of political engagement with the Taliban. A policy of 'engagement' with the most odious mediaeval savages can never be called a gesture of friendship with our people.

Dear friends,

If, for whatever reason, the proposed 2 billion dollar UNOCAL deal does not go through, it should not be forgotten that this in no way means that the Taliban's umbilical cord to the United States has been severed. There are countless 'invisible' bonds that tie the US Government and different Afghan fundamentalist bands together. Our struggle must go forward at any cost. The agonized people of Afghanistan are looking for succor not to the government but to the people of the United States. When a devastating earthquake killed 5,000 of our countrymen in the north of Afghanistan a month ago the US government hardly paid any heed because the earthquake had devoured our desperately destitute people and not the spoiled fundamentalist bands for the US government to mind. What the US and certain Western European governments would very much mind and dread is the eruption of the simmering volcano which is the people of Afghanistan, an eruption which would bury all fundamentalist entities in the molten lava of its fury. The people of Afghanistan, in solidarity with the people of the United States and justice-seeking people around the world, will sooner or later erupt in a devastating earthquake, which shall wipe out all vestiges of religious fascism. Only then will the weary eyes of our women see the sunlight of freedom.

We salute the organizers and the participant of this glorious march.