Outspoken: My Fight for Freedom and Human Rights in Afghanistan

• Author: Sima Samar and Sally Armstrong
• Genre: Biography/Memoirs
• Publication Date: February 27, 2024
• Publisher: Random House Canada

Thank you to libro.fm for providing me with an ALC of this audiobook. I am offering my honest opinion voluntarily.

The impassioned memoir of Afghanistan’s Sima medical doctor, public official, founder of schools and hospitals, thorn in the side of the Taliban, nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, and lifelong advocate for girls and women.

“I have three strikes against me. I’m a woman, I speak out for women, and I’m Hazara, the most persecuted ethnic group in Afghanistan.”

Dr. Sima Samar has been fighting for equality and justice for most of her life. Born into a polygamous family, she learned early that girls had inferior status, and she had to agree to an arranged marriage if she wanted to go to university. By the time she was in medical school, she had a son, Ali, and had become a revolutionary. After her husband was disappeared by the pro-Russian regime, she escaped. With her son and medical degree, she took off into the rural areas—by horseback, by donkey, even on foot—to treat people who had never had medical help before.

Sima Samar’s wide-ranging experiences both in her home country and on the world stage have given her inside access to the dishonesty, the collusion, the corruption, the self-serving leaders, and the hijacking of religion. And as a former Vice President, she knows all the players in this chess game called Afghanistan. With stories that are at times poignant, at times terrifying, inspiring as well as disheartening, Sima provides an unparalleled view of Afghanistan’s past and its present. 

Despite being in grave personal danger for many years, she has worked tirelessly for the dream she is convinced is an achievable justice and full human rights for all the citizens of her country.

Like most people, I watched horrified as the United States pulled all of their troops out of Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to take control of the government. Since then, I’ve followed news reports and seen unthinkable news out of Afghanistan about the Taliban’s rules that have ensured that the Afghan people suffer, most notably the women. However, I have to admit that I don’t know much about Afghanistan, and I wanted to change that. I started with this book, which was a perfect introduction, and plan to explore a bit more about Afghanistan and the wars that have decimated the country in the last half century.

The audiobook is narrated by Wajma Soroor, and she does a wonderful job of making both Afghanistan and Dr. Sima Samar’s story leap off the page, ensuring that readers can easily visualize the setting and events described, no matter how unfamiliar they are with the Afghan people and society. I’m not familiar with the sound of Pashto, Dari, or any of the other languages spoken in Afghanistan, but I’m glad I was able to read the audiobook version, where I could hear the proper pronunciation for all of the Afghan terms in the book. 

There is an easy, almost conversational tone to her story, and she starts her tale at the beginning by sharing her early memories and experiences. Growing up as a young girl in Afghanistan, she quickly learned a lot of difficult truths, starting with how devalued women and girls have been in Afghanistan, and how the Hazara ethnic group is the most persecuted in Afghanistan. If you’ve read The Kite Runner, you may recall that Hassan is Hazara.

Growing up as a Hazara woman in Afghanistan wasn’t easy, and Samar was allowed some freedoms that other women didn’t get—primarily, the ability to complete schooling and even attend medical school, although in order to do that, she had to agree to an arranged marriage. I was speechless when she talked about growing up in a house that didn’t have running water, something difficult for me to imagine experiencing in the second half of the 20th century. It really highlights the differences between the world that I grew up in and the world the author grew up in.

I was really inspired by the work that Samar does on behalf of women, especially those trapped under the thumb of the Taliban. As a female doctor, Samar found herself uniquely positioned to offer care to women, although she also spent time treating people in rural Afghanistan who had no ability to access medical care. However, her influence wasn’t limited to individual patients and their interactions with her. Instead, Samar rose to high levels in the Afghan government when the Taliban wasn’t in charge, and even worked with the UN to help women, back before the UN had become fully corrupted.

However, the aspect of the story that was by far the most intriguing to me was her view of the Taliban, and how it reflects world events today. One of the things that is repeated multiple times in the memoir was along the lines of how a country and a people are expected to make peace with a terrorist group? The Taliban is undoubtedly an Islamist terror group. Make no mistake, the word Islamist was a deliberate choice to describe Muslim fundamentalism, and to differentiate it from the overall less extremist faction of the religion. But with Islamists, extremism is the norm and not the exception; it seems to spawn terrorism that affects everyone around them. And Samar relates her experiences over the course of her life, where the popularity and power of the Taliban has waxed and waned multiple times. 

If you’ve watched the news pertaining to Afghanistan today, and specifically the laws and behavior towards the women trapped there with no resources or supports to escape, you’re as concerned as I am. You may also recall the Taliban’s promises to world leaders and organizations that they would not pass excessively restrictive laws about women. Appeased, the world sat back and ignored the slow stripping of human rights that were protected during American occupation away from women in the handful of years of Taliban (re-)rule. Since the publication of this book, the women in Afghanistan are no longer allowed to speak in public, be in view of a window inside their own home, and now to get any type of medical training. Women are not allowed to be examined by a male doctor, so this most recent spate of laws all but ensures that women are erased from public spaces, and ultimately, could lead to the widespread inability for women to obtain any type of healthcare at all in the future.

Can you tell that this is the kind of book that inspired me to do some more research about the subject? I was aware of some of the major events and issues, but this book made them so much more relatable by sharing them through the lens of a woman who has lost and fought for and regained her rights, and had to live as a refugee and now in exile, and is familiar with the various factors that have influenced and impacted government and human rights in her country. Additionally, in her quest for justice, she has founded a network of hospitals, clinics, and schools, and devoted her energy towards improving the lives of women and girls in other regions as well. It’s hard not to admire a woman who has spent her life working to improve life for the most disenfranchised women, and who never gives up, no matter how many challenges are placed in her path.

This is the kind of story that needs to be heard—it shares not only the pain and struggle that women and girls are facing in Afghanistan, but also delves into the multiple factors that have contributed to the creation of the current situation and that need to be addressed to preserve human rights that have been critically eroded in Afghanistan. It also can serve as a cautionary tale to those that think it is possible to appease an Islamist group and not have it come back to bite you. It has happened too many times with the Taliban, ISIS, Al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Boko Haram, and all of the other Islamist extremist groups that act against the welfare of humanity and aim to establish a global caliphate. This is the kind of book that needs to be read widely.

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