Diaspora Diaries

Tears streamed down Adeena Niazi's face at the news that over 100,000 Soviet troops had taken control of her country Afghanistan. It was December 25, 1979 and Niazi had left Afghanistan a year earlier on a scholarship to study Sanskrit at the University of Lucknow in India.

On that day, all hopes of returning home were crushed. The invasion sparked an era of autocratic rule that would last for more than two decades: first by Afghanistan's communist regime and later by warlords and the Taliban, an extreme Islamic fundamentalist faction.

Niazi would not return to Afghanistan for eighteen years and would never see her parents again.

The loss of country, family and friends was painful, but not having her mother close was particularly difficult. She revered her mother who, despite never having the opportunity to work outside the home, encouraged her to study, pursue a career and nurture her independent spirit. It was a foundation that later helped propel Niazi into becoming a female icon, a force in the fight for women's rights in her adopted home Canada and her birthplace Afghanistan.

While in India, Niazi began to demonstrate her determination to make a difference.

Adeena with women's group in Kabul

"When my country got occupied, I decided I would dedicate myself to helping my people," says Niazi. She spoke out against the Soviet-backed regime, organizing Afghan protests, while helping hundreds of refugees who fled to camps in India and neighbouring Pakistan.

In 1988, after completing a BA and MA in Sanskrit, a second MA in Persian Literature from Lucknow University, lecturing at Jawahar Lal Neheru University and working as a newsreader and producer with All India Radio, Niazi applied and was accepted as a government sponsored refugee to Canada.

She once again plunged into volunteering, helping Canada's Afghan refugee community cope with their new surroundings. Just two years after arriving she established the Afghan Women's Organization (AWO). Today, it is the largest Afghani women's organization outside of Afghanistan. It offers settlement services, language training, an employment program and refugee sponsorship to thousands of Afghan women and other community members in Canada.

From her position as AWO Executive Director, Niazi also began to advocate for the rights of women and children living in Afghanistan and not long after helped to found the Canadian Coalition in Support of Women in Afghanistan.

Many families were torn apart as approximately 5 million Afghans fled the country during the Soviet occupation. It is estimated that between 600,000 and 2 million civilians were killed, leaving thousands of orphans and widows. Chaos and corruption dominated post-Soviet occupation spawning the rise of the warlords, civil war and the Taliban, whose five-year rule was marked by the loss of many freedoms and violations of human rights. Women were banned from jobs, and girls were forbidden to attend schools or universities.

In 1997, one year after the Taliban took over, Niazi travelled to Pakistan.

"I wore the chaderi covering myself. My cousin and her husband helped me to cross the border into Kabul and I went back to my home," says Niazi. "I didn't recognize it. My home and the street were destroyed; people were living in tents and in the shells of houses. I spoke to some girls asking them if they were going to school. They said no. I said I would help them."

Niazi decided she would organize a group of underground schools for girls. Aware that she could be killed if caught by the Taliban, she was undaunted, setting up schools in homes in Kabul and soliciting the services of teachers banned for teaching girls.

Under Niazi's direction, the AWO provided Afghan women in Pakistan with training to help them support themselves. In 1998, the organization established a pilot sewing project helping the women to market and sell their products. The following year the organization initiated a Child Sponsorship Program for disadvantaged children in Pakistan and a poultry project for women living in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan.

Adeena with women's group in Kabul

Niazi's work in Canada and abroad has won her much recognition. In 2002, Maclean's Magazine named her one of their top ten Canadians. In 2003, she received the Skills for Change New Pioneers Award. She also received the Person's Award from Legal Action Education Fund and Women's Intercultural Network. The Centre for Refugee Studies at York University recognized her achievements with the Vincent Kelly Award and she has been featured in books such as Afghanistan: The Cross Road and At the Feet of My Mother. Recently Niazi became the subject of a television documentary, titled "A Woman of Freedom."

Her international work also extends into the highest political circles. She was one of only two Afghan Canadians elected to Afghanistan's Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) and was part of the Canadian contingent that monitored the 2002 elections in Afghanistan.

For Niazi one of the most pressing issues facing the world is inequality amongst peoples and nation states. "There isn't real equality or equal members of the globe. Third world countries are suffering. They don't have the same rights, economy, and living standards, millions are dying of aids and in refugee camps," says Niazi. Each half an hour one woman dies in Afghanistan from childbirth and related complications, she adds. However, she believes that "everyone has the capacity to be an agent of change."

Niazi, who never married and is at times referred to as the Mother Theresa of Afghani women, hopes that with education more global citizens will become engaged in the fight for women's rights and human rights.

Adeena visiting girls' orphanage

She says her next task is to develop a national program for widows and orphans in Afghanistan.

Since the fall of the Taliban, schools and universities have re-opened. Now, says Naizi it is critical she turn her attention to helping the thousands of poverty-stricken widows and orphans who are casualties of more than two decades of war, political social and economic instability. She hopes to establish a program that will meet all their needs including education, employment, health care and importantly says Niazi, education about their rights.