Breaking the Silence: My Struggle for Equality and Human Rights in Afghanistan

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The impassioned memoir of Afghanistan’s Sima Samar: 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 one: justice and full human rights for all the citizens of her country.

SIMA SAMAR is a doctor for the poor, an educator of the marginalized and a human rights defender. She established and nurtured the Shuhada Organization that operated more than 100 schools and dozens of hospitals and clinics. Samar served in the Interim Administration of Afghanistan and established the first-ever Ministry of Women’s Affairs. From 2002-2019, she chaired the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, a commitment that has put her own life at great risk. Having served as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in Sudan from 2005-2009 she was appointed in 2019 as a member of both the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement and the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation. She is currently a visiting scholar at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

SALLY ARMSTRONG is an award-winning author, journalist, and human rights activist. She is the author of four bestselling books: Ascent of Women, The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor, Veiled Threat, and Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots. Armstrong was the first journalist to bring the story of the women of Afghanistan to the world. She has also covered stories in conflict zones from Bosnia and Somalia to Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, Jordan, and Israel. She is a four-time winner of the Amnesty International Canada media award, the recipient of eleven honorary doctorate degrees, and an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2019, she delivered the CBC Massey Lectures, Power Shift: The Longest Revolution.