Sima Samar

A physician who refused to deny treatment to women during the Taliban years, Samar is a true symbol of resistance, whose appropriation by the unctuous Bush was short-lived. In December 2001, Samar attended the Washington-sponsored “peace conference” in Bonn at which Karzai was installed as president and three of the most brutal warlords as vice- presidents. General Rashid Dostum, accused of torturing and slaughtering prisoners, is currently defence minister. Samar was one of two women in Karzai's cabinet.

No sooner had the applause in Congress died away than Samar was smeared with a false charge of blasphemy and forced out. The warlords, different from the Taliban only in their tribal allegiances and religious pieties, were not tolerating even a gesture of female emancipation.

Today, Samar lives in constant fear for her life. She has two fearsome bodyguards with automatic weapons. She travels in a blacked-out van. “For the past 23 years, I was not safe”, she told me, “but I was never in hiding or travelling with gunmen, which I must do now... There is no more official law to stop women from going to school and work there is no law about dress code. But the reality is that even under the Taliban there was not the pressure on women in the rural areas there is now.”