8 March : Long Live our Sisters and Comrades in RAWA

Today we celebrate 8 March, International Women’s Day, an initiative launched in 1910 by Clara Zetkin and the International Socialist Women’s Conference. Today, as in the past, in the face of the risk of global conflict we need to strengthen international solidarity between all of those who are exploited, first and foremost women.

It is in this context that we once again salute our courageous sisters and comrades of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).

RAWA was founded in 1977 by Meena Keshwar Kamal to work for women’s liberation, but since 1979 our sisters in RAWA have also had to carry the flag of true national liberation both against the Soviet invaders and their Afghan puppets and against the fundamentalist warlords supported by the Western powers.

45 years later, the peoples of Afghanistan and women in particular continue to suffer under the Taliban’s fundamentalist and misogynist dictatorship, misery and insecurity, spurred on the various imperialists, including France, who seek to profit from the situation.

As revolutionary militants in France, we see it as our duty to stand in solidarity with our sisters and comrades in RAWA.

Supporting RAWA means supporting the fight for real hope for democracy, secularism and women’s rights in Afghanistan, which is why we launched the RAWA solidarity tour in France (2003), followed by two subsequent tours (in 2009 and 2022) and renamed the Massoud Alley in Paris “Meena Alley” in her honour in 2023.