Hello everyone and welcome back to Enter the Ether, the podcast all about the, I can't even say upcoming, the third person MOBA, a very old clash of souls, very ambitious game. I'm your host the Mangus, joining me as always is my friend co-host and just all around swell guy, Jelly Knees. Thanks Mangus. How you doing man? Doing great. I really enjoyed the community corner you guys put on the first, even though I was late. Yeah, Mangus. I saw you, I saw you come in, right as we started the Q&A section, you're like, I'm here. Mangus, you literally missed most of it. I missed all the things, I missed the everything. It's okay, I can re-watch it. No, you're not there, you're square and that means it's not okay.  Yes, absolutely. Nobody reads my announcements, nobody watches my community corners man, what am I gonna do? Man, I had forgotten all about it, I was knee deep in Super Auto Pets I believe. Perfect, you're excused this time, this time. Thank you, thank you. So a lot, a lot was announced during that community corner, including another, are you guys calling this a stress test or is it just a free weekend? We're just calling it an open weekend, I think stress test is gonna be used several times because that's what we've done already, but we kind of have done that and that is definitely part of the open weekend, but it's more of a just an open weekend than anything. So no restrictions, no keys, just if you want to come play Aetherial January 21st through the 22nd. Yeah, so it'll be the 21st, 22nd and 23rd. Oh okay, right on, so we get three days of Aetherial this time, very nice. Yeah, Mangus can't complain anymore saying he wants more Aetherial. Oh, I will complain, I will. So yeah, great opportunity, if you guys have been looking to play this game, I know a lot of people had to work the last weekend, hopefully they don't have to work this weekend. I know we announced it in the first person in chat, literally the first one that spoke after we said something about it goes, I have exams that weekend, it was like great, thank you. The cephalon, something, yeah, poor guy, poor girl, whatever they are, yeah, I feel bad for them. Oh well, at least they can't have exams all three days. I agree, you know what, just bail out of school, play Aetherial instead, there you go, problem solved. So that was probably the biggest announcement that came out of the community corner is open weekend. But you guys also talked about an upcoming myth in their kit, I was about to say the hero. And yeah, it's Axial, Malia's brother, another reaper class, the assassins of Aetherial sort of.  He's going to be the first true hardcore assassin in the game. And it's going to be really cool to see how that shakes up everything then they're in as well. Right. We're going to go through his abilities and talk about him here, but the one that I want to just immediately talk about his right mouse button, which is your risk reward ability. So what this does, it converts all of your damage to magical damage that deals percent health damage, but you can't cast during this. Now, is this just a straight up? It says that you can you can change this over after six seconds, right? So yeah, so you're going to press the button, the ability, it'll have a duration of some kind. We said 10 seconds is what we're looking at right now, but that'll be balanceable. Of course, it'll have the 10 second duration. And for the first five of that, you will be locked in. Once you press the button, you're locked in, you can't do anything. Then after that initial five, you can cancel it early if you want to go back to your abilities or you can wait out the rest of that five seconds and get the full use of those empowered basic attacks that are now magical power instead of physical power. Okay. Right on. Switch like no more abilities, but you're going to hit a lot harder for a while, you know? Yeah. So it is and it's not at the same time. That's it. I mean, 10 seconds is a pretty long time for an ability to last. That's true. And but locking you in for that first five is that is the downside of if you didn't use your abilities, you then can't. That includes your ultimate too. That's not just basic abilities. When you're pressed this, you're effectively silenced, but you can still basic attack. And so that's the really, the big caveat to it. And one of the abilities you're going to want to use, and we're kind of, I'm kind of working backwards through these, but on his R, which is not his ultimate, his R is just usually a movement ability in ethereal. And this one is also in a movement ability, but it also makes you go invisible and invisible assassin. It's like we just talked about on the end of the ether invisibility mangoes. Oh man.  So it is still a dash, but after which you gain that visibility and you deal bonus, bonus magic damage on the next basic ability, basic attack or ability in a concrete. So can the ability crit too? If the ability can crit normally, then yes, but the basic is the main one that's there. So yeah, this is his movement ability. Like you said, it's also going to be how he's able to get around unseen more often than not.  So this is really trying to emphasize that go in burst down damage. And then if you succeed, giving you an option to get out. If you fail, you're kind of a sitting duck for a couple of seconds there. Yeah, I really like that portion of it. It's kind of like in fault. You've got, I think it's called bloodlust saber or something like that. But it just gives you a short dash, but it resets whenever you get a kill. So it's just nice to have a blink that resets on kill.  So a few questions. I'm sure people already asked and I'm sure you guys have already given the answers, but I'm going to do it anyway. When you're invisible, if you get hit while you're invisible, does that bring you out of invisibility or is it just you attacking and and in using abilities that cancels your ability? For right now, that is the idea is that when you're hit while you're invisible is that it will likely reveal you in some way, whether that be temporarily or you're just permanent, that that is knocking you out of invisibility, we haven't quite decided. But so it but that's something that we feel has to be looked at constantly once he's first implemented in the game, because he is our first invisibility in the game, it's going to be very crucial that we get it right because it could very easily become Kalari and Fault when she first came out. Yeah, in that she heard visibility was oppressive because she was the only character that could do it, partly because people didn't ward, but that's but being the only character that could do it and having not enough downsides to it for Kalari herself then made it more oppressive to the enemy. And that's something we have to constantly look at and iterate on depending on how it's feeling and working and all that good stuff. And just in other games that I've played that have that mechanic where if you hit somebody that's invisible, it reveals them. It's just very rewarding to be able to predict where you think they are throw like an ability or a basic attack out that way and then reveal them. That that's very rewarding on your end.  How do you say it, Jaleen? Axial. So it's not for an exile, but you did it before once you called it. And I can't unhear it. And now every time I see his name, this is what I think about is you call them sexial once and that in my brain. But if you take the S off of that, Axial, there you go. I've also called him Abman McSixpack. That'll stick or not. We're just going to give everybody nicknames. Nobody's going to be who they are anymore. We've already got C foam Jesus.  And her brother is eye candy for those who prefer men. Absolutely. What a beautiful family there. Yeah, seriously, we're going to look at their parents. They're going to be the most gorgeous people too. It's going to be like, what the heck is this nonsense? I guarantee they're not.  You know, perfect. Let's get a let's put like make that like part of the lure.  Their parents were the ugly ducklings of their tribe. And then Axial and Malaya were born. That's why they were outcast. They came from a tribe of ugly people. There you go. So they were considered ugly. But I love it. I love it.  And just do it that way. All right, so let's I'm not going to get into his ultimate yet. So let's let's move to another one here, though. His passive. Well, as for true sight, it wants you dealt enough damage to somebody. Yeah. Is this like a damaged threshold in a certain period of time? Or yeah, it'll probably be just as an example. This isn't going to be the exact numbers. If you deal 500 damage in three seconds, you gain true sight on them, right? And so it's just X number by X time and then true sight for a duration. Right. And as Schifter was saying, that makes Axial sexy, a counter to himself. In a world where mirror matchups exist, absolutely. If they have if you're an Axial and you can burst down theirs and then tries to use shadow slip, you then have true sight of him. And he's revealed to you and your team, which is going to be huge. And also combos well with Dante, because a lot of people can get out of that vision radius with if if Axial has true sight on them, they're not going to be able to. So if he deals a significant amount of damage and they get away, Dante can follow up with the with the base cannon. Yeah, absolutely down. And that's one of the hardest parts is people can get away but then not having vision on that makes it impossible for Dante to hit. He's got to take a guess at where they are. Yeah. Whereas this, like you said, it's the perfect way to combo that up together. Cool stuff. And then let's see his Q. This just seems like a forward facing point point of cast AOE. Yes, he stabs right out and then scissors his blades out or something like that. Yep, that's exactly it. So he'll stab straight forward if he hits somebody in that, that's great.   So if they get hit with the initial stab, they're technically taking two instances of damage from that one ability. Right on. And then his E, which I think is really interesting and really cool.  So this is usually an emote for people as you start. They start spinning their swords. It's an actual ability for sex use that he can. Perry, and I mean, this is going to have like, I love all the outplay capabilities of ethereal, and this is going to have so much outplay involved in it. Like, especially I can imagine a Dante hitting his right click and boosting all those shots. There you go.  So the the important thing for that is that at the current moment, it is designated to only parry melee basic attacks. Oh, really? Yes. That's something that we're going to have to look at because that could be that could be useless or it could be super good, right? And it'd be plenty. So that's the current iteration of that ability. But I would love for it to block range projectiles as well. Just make it a basic attack counter versus. I think it should be abilities are effective. I think it should. I agree with you. I think I would love to see that change, but it's going to be depending on the rest of his kit. You may not need that much to be that strong. So it's going to be it's a point of balance for sure. And this does deal damage if you catch somebody in the area. Yeah. I believe so. I don't know with 100 percent certainty, but I do believe so. Yeah, that's that's what you said during the community corner. If that's what was said, then yes. Yeah, I think this is just so cool. This is going to be. Yeah, OK, I'm looking at the image now. Flurries his swords in front of him dealing physical damage for a few seconds. Happy Jesus. Yes, I am a happy Jesus. And you from Jesus. Speaking of Acheron. Oh, no, I'm just kidding. So his ultimate ability. And this is kind of ties into what we were just talking about before the minions was implementing. Archtypes correctly. And I like what you've done with his ultimate. So you can he can. So if you don't know anything about Axial, he's got like a demon or something inside of him. He's kind of two people and his ultimate two is one. He throws shade out, which is like the evil or side of him. And the shade, if it hits somebody, it enters their body and they get stunned. And then you can teleport to shade and deal damage to them. And if it kills, if they're below a certain threshold, it executes them and it resets the cooldown of two is one. So I think this is done really well in that you actually skifter was talking about this during the community corner. You actually have to expose yourself to the damage in order to make this happen. You have to hit a skill shot in order to make this happen. So this isn't going to be an easy thing to pull off. And with Grog Mark coming with his range, C.C. You know, it's going to be very obvious where he's going to be teleported to. You might be able to just shut him down right then and there. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a good a team that's watching for Excel to come in. If they see that shade hit one of their allies, then they just have to basically hold their C.C. And just wait, like, do it. I dare you to go in on that, please. Like, yeah, every Excel player is going to be the stereotypical, like my mind's telling me no. You're going to want to do it. You're going to want to want to press that button so bad. Especially if it's hard to hit and you actually hit it, like you can't just waste that. You can't just waste that shade out there, stunning people. But at least they can't. They can't be the one that sons you if you hit them with shade because they're going to be stunned themselves. So I think this is done really, really well. It is going to be super fun to play. Like, I think you the nail in the head saying like his outplay potential and like the moves he can make against people is huge. And it's seeing good Exiles and bad Exiles. You're going to know the difference. Like you're going to be able to see very clearly, which is which. Yeah, I can definitely see him throwing shade out on somebody, but then attacking someone else. And while everybody's focused on that shade target, thinking he's going to teleport over there, he's just. Killing somebody over here, you know, and he just never teleports. Yeah. And depending on the duration, you could also do you throw shade out on someone. Shadow slip to somebody else towards somebody else. Drop your burst damage. Then when their whole team turns to jump on you on that other person, then you activate shade and pop over to the new guy. Pop your right click and then just melee basic. This guy is like it's the potential for combos is huge. Yeah, he's going to be cool. He's going to be very cool to play.  So you got to watch the shade coming from on top of rocks and stuff. Oh, that's going to be cool. Dude, the the potential of an in this character that can climb rocks like that is really interesting by itself. And and that's part of the huge balance that's going to have to be done on it is there's going to be there's going to be some unforeseen interaction. I guarantee it. Yeah. I mean, there was already playing against somebody who was on Malaya and they were just running along the rocks, trolling our team and like jumping from rock to rock and nobody could hit them. And it was like, God dang it. Yeah, if they're invisible to forget about it. No, because it'll feel better because you can't see them doing it. Jumping rocks or rock above you. That's true. They're not rubbing it in my face as much that I can't can't do anything to them. Yeah, I'm really excited about this hero or myth. I'm really excited about sex. You'll didn't think I would be.    Because I mean, we'd say that the the the initial seven are kind of basic, but they're not they're really not that basic when it comes down to them. There's there's some basic style abilities, but there's always like a unique twist there. Yeah, they're fairly simple to pick up. I think is the basicness of them. Yeah. Is that once you understand how like once you use the ability once or twice, you go, OK, that's how it works. And it's easy to go from there, right? Whereas something like someone like XL has way more combos on top of that, that it's not just as easy as using the ability once and understanding. There's a lot of nuance that you're going to have to understand for each of his abilities and using them effectively. Right. Yeah, it's going to be cool. Um, I think that's about all I had for a sexy older, unless you had anything else. I think that's it. I'm just really excited to get him in the game as soon as possible and get him into everybody's hands. Yeah. Unless they're against me, in which case, you're not allowed to pick XL. I need you to pick anybody else. So what happens if he throws shade at Malaya and she pops a bubble because that's not really CC. Yeah, it wouldn't be considered CC. So she she likely the normal effect would likely happen. Oh, hmm. That's crazy. That'd be a thing. I like I said, there's going to be so many interactions like that where it's going to be interesting to see how it works. It's like if Grognark throws a rock at him as he's mid-dash, what's going to happen there? What takes priority? What like all these things being able to figure out what they all do and all that good stuff. Yeah. I'll tell you what I want to see. Here's what I want to see. I want to see him throw his shade into somebody. Then Iran grabs and throws him off the edge and then he tries to teleport them to.  It's going to happen. You know it is. Yep. That or he's going to nail it as soon as they back and he'll end up in their fountain. Yep. You see you see Kalari do that all the time. Yes. Oh, man. Good times. And something else you guys talked about. And it was weird because I felt like you were reading my mind as I was watching it. The stuff that you guys were saying, you're talking about the results of the of the poll you guys did at the end. You had like a was a 94 percent approval. Or like did people have fun? Yeah. Yeah. Which if that was on steam, that would be overwhelmingly positive as steam reviews. So I was really happy to to see that because I know I know a lot of people had a lot of fun, but there were some people that just it wasn't for them. Like they just couldn't get the hang of it and and they just moved along. So I'm really happy to see that so many people actually did enjoy it. And the and then. But only 57 percent feel that the game is ready for release. And this is kind of where you guys were reading my mind. As soon as I saw that, I was thinking, well, 94 percent had fun, but not everybody's, but still not everybody thinks it's ready for release. That means they know there's problems with it, but they still had fun with it, which I think is a huge, huge positive, even more than the 94 percent approval. Like the people having fun with the game. I think that's an even bigger deal that people understand that the game isn't even near it's in state goal of being, you know, perfection yet, but they still think it's really fun to play. And that's a good sign. Absolutely. And that's and I said it on the live stream as well, is it's really cool for us as well to have people be honest about that, that it's not just a I thought the game was fun. So yeah, it's ready to go. Yeah. Right. Like it's actually that they're they're analyzing even deeper and saying, like, no, it's got its issues. I don't feel like it's ready for that next phase yet. But like you said, despite all of that still having fun, which is huge. That's that is for us seeing that is a really, really good thing. And it's encouraging for us to. Right. Yeah, I'm actually surprised that there was 50 percent felt that the game is ready for or 57 percent felt that the game is ready for release. I think that kind of surprised me. I think if we were talking 15, 20 years ago, a game in this state would be ready for release. But any more, you've got to you can't release a game with so many bugs and stuff. Hmm. I want to spell break released in a pretty incomplete state, but that was a paid early access sort of thing. I don't know. It's hard to tell, man. I think with the as long as the game's fun, it'll be fine, I think. And that's it's a constant balancing act, right? Of figuring out what the because perfect is the enemy of good. Right. So if you spend all your time trying to make the game perfect, it'll never come out. Right. And to an extent, we've already seen that. With the last. Yeah, with the last four years is has definitely been the concept of perfect as the enemy of good, right? And it caused further delays and further issues and all these things that had to be changed. And so getting the game into people's hands, even in a in a just good or fun state, right, is super important because it gives everybody the concept of where things are at. It's not just no, it's no longer taking the devs word for it. Of like, you know what? It's not ready yet, right? Like because that to an extent always feels bad when a dev tells you the game's not ready, that you've been wanting to play for so long. That's that's hard to hear. Yeah. But this is people were able to go in, have fun, but also still agree that it's not ready yet. So that's a cool, a cool metric to see from our community. That that that was the response. And I think this next. Open weekend, as we're calling it, will give you even better feedback. So I think a lot of people, the stress test. You know, people were there was a lot of people in the fence about a theory that didn't know whether they wanted to like it or not. And then after the stress test, after, you know, people were streaming it during the test, people in releasing videos after the test.  You actually can break parts of the environment. You like people are kind of getting back on board with the theory. And another open weekend like this will get. I think you'll probably have a lot more people this time around than the last, even though you already had a substantial amount, the last stress test. Yeah. And that's that's the hope where it is to get as many people as possible in there, touching the game, getting a feel for how it works and being able to leave the feedback then thereafter, because we'll do another survey after this open weekend in a similar instance to we did this one. Awesome. Yeah, I can't wait for it. Can't wait for it. I want more people to play. Oh, I know what I know. Question slash suggestion I had about sexual. Can you guys. License the rights to I wear my sunglasses at night for his for his thing. There we go. Yes, I'll get right on that. May I just think it would be perfect for him? I don't know why he doesn't wear sunglasses. You just got to have them on his head. We'll we'll get our summer bash XEL skin and you'll have the sunglasses on his head. Yes. Oh, that's perfect. I love it. Oh.  Yeah, and literally that's what you need to do. Board shorts and then give him like maybe even give him the suntan lines on his cheeks and a pair of sunglasses on his head. And he's he's done. There you go. Boom. There you go. Easiest skin creation ever. Oh, people would love it. Give him some pole needles instead of swords. Yes. Yes, please. I would love that.  Well, Dan, I think that's about all I had to cover for this week. A lot of fun stuff, though. I think, I mean, if you want to go over the other two questions that we went on that had graphs for, do you want to just leave those? I mean, you guys already covered it in the community corner. If you if you want to cover it here, we can we certainly can. That's up to you. Doesn't bother me, man. All right. So, I mean, I'll have that link. And wait, is this going on my channel this week? OK, all right, I'll have it linked in the description below the the community link to the community corner so you guys can watch it for yourself. They had a pretty extensive Q&A. So there's a lot of you might have some find out some interesting information via that if you if you want to take a look. But I think that's going to be it for this week. Jelly, you got anything to plug? Just my Twitch stream per usual twitch.tv slash jelly knees. We do a marvelous Monday at eight o'clock mountain time every Monday night. And yeah, it's always a good time. What about you, man, you just got to remember, I got to send an alarm or something because I forgot last time. This guy, dude, I know the worst stunt. Hit me up. He's like, where are you? Where are you at? All right, man. Yeah. Oh, happy new year, by the way. Yeah, happy new year, everyone. Yeah, we kind of forgot. Whoops. Anyway, that's that's going to be awesome. I hope everybody comes out and that's going to wrap it up. But I hope you I hope everybody comes out on the was the 22nd, 21st, 1st, 2nd and 23rd. Yeah. And finally, join us as we enter the ether. Again, into the ether again.


So we've really delighted to have a distinguished panel today. Appearing on the short video that we're about to show is Judge Marzia Bazal, who was sworn in as a judge in Afghanistan in 1995, just before the Taliban came to power and eliminated the possibility of women working. She was the founder of the Afghan Women Judges Association, which was subsequently banned by the Afghan Supreme Court in 2007. So she will appear in the video. Then we also have Dr. Sally Kitch, who is the director of the Institute for Humanities Research, professor of women and gender studies, distinguishes a sustainability scientist at Arizona State. She specializes in feminist theory, epistemology, the intellectual history of gender and racial ideology, and a great number of other things. She's written many books. We also have Mr. Jamil Afghani, who is the founder of Newell Educational Center, which became the Newell Educational and Capacity Development Organization in 2009. And it's now serves 15 provinces, more than 1,000 imams. The organization overall works to promote the rights of women and girls working with families to support the acceptance of girls' schooling. And we're also here to celebrate the book that Dr. Kitch has written, which also celebrates the work of some of the panelists today. So we'll show the short video. It's about three minutes. And then we're going to open it up to the panel. After the September 11 attacks, Dr. Sally Kitch, a professor at Arizona State University, felt as though she needed to do something to help in spite of all of the tragedy. Sally quickly realized that most Americans do not understand leadership positions, or something that Afghan women can aspire to, or that female leaders even exist there. Most of what had been portrayed in the media after the 9-11 attacks were Berka Kladd, Silent Women. After a lifetime of work in the field of women's studies, she turned her attention to a group of women whose voice needed to be heard, women leaders, and Afghanistan. Sally listened to the voices of many Afghan women leaders, changing the way women participate in Afghanistan society. Sally wrote a book collecting their experiences and recommendations on what the future of Afghanistan could look like. Two women activists in particular, Jamila Afghani and Marzia Bazal, taught Sally that leadership is an important part of women's lives in Afghanistan, whether in their villages, families, or in the public arena. While the number of women leaders needs to increase, there are women like Jamila and Marzia who lead through their work in women's education, protection, and activism. Recently, Jamila, founder of the Noor Educational Center in Western Kabul, sat down with Ambassador Volcker, executive director of the McCain Institute, to give some insights to the challenges she faces as a women leader in Afghanistan. We start our work from electricity, and now we are working on the issue of domestic violence, child marriage, and other issues. So it is because of the need of our society that the need of society is very vast, the challenges are very vast. Also features in Sally's book is Marzia, founder and director of Afghanistan Progressive Law Organization, who could not join the interview, but wanted to share some of her thoughts on the state of women leaders in Afghanistan. It is not easy to be a woman leader in a country which 70 or 75% of the people are electric, and they cannot differentiate right and wrong. To be a woman leader in Afghanistan, it is a huge challenge. This challenge can come from the political part, it comes from the cultural aspects, it comes from the public also. Marzia also gave insights to the future of Afghanistan, including her concerns about the security of her country. The future of Afghanistan, there is no doubt that Afghanistan political and economical situation is getting worse day by day, and Afghanistan situation is currently a fragile and uncertain as well as weak. Especially the situation got worse while the international community left Afghanistan, the international forces left Afghanistan in 2014. And now Afghanistan is a village that they can call it, that is targeted by different insurgents, such as Taliban, and also the expansion of the power. To learn more about the stories of Jamila and Marzia and the future of Afghan women leaders, read Contested Terrain by Dr. Sally Kitch. Dr. Kitch? OK. Thank you all for being here. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with you about the work that we've done together. But producing the book pales a bit in comparison with the kind of work that Jamila and Marzia have done in Afghanistan, which we want to hear more about. You heard on the video that I changed direction in my research as a result of the US engagement with Afghanistan after 9-11. And one of the catalysts for that change was hearing the Bush administration explain that this fight was about the rights and dignity of women as well as a fight against terrorists. And I thought I really want to know a little bit more about how this engagement is working for the rights and dignity of Afghan women when it struck me. And I was not very well informed about the geopolitics of Afghanistan at the time that bombing did not seem like the best thing to do for women. And so I was curious to know whether there had been any consultation with Afghan women. And if so, with which Afghan women? And who was representing them in the politics of US engagement? And it turned out that I don't think very many people were listening to Afghan women. And so a colleague of mine at Ohio State, where I was at the time, and I decided that what we could do was listen to Afghan women. And so we invited nine of them to come to Ohio State in 2005. It took till 2005 to get it all together. And we spent five days listening to them. And as far as we knew at the time, we were the first Americans to bring that many Afghan women leaders to the US to be heard. And so the results of that conference were pretty profound. And certainly transformed a lot of the ways that I thought about the situation. Among the women who came were Jamila and Marzia. And although everyone there was extremely impressive, the work that these two had been doing, Marzia threw law and her total dedication to legal education of ordinary Afghans. So they know what their rights are under the law. And Jamila's work through education, which is her watch word, and she does education in a number of extremely creative ways. I thought these two had their finger on the pulse of what was going to change Afghan culture and what was going to be the biggest help for Afghan women. So I got lucky enough for them to agree that we could stay in touch. And we did so via email until we met again. We decided in 2009 we would meet again, not in Afghanistan, because they didn't want to be seen with me there. It was too dangerous for them and probably too dangerous for me. But we would meet in Istanbul, which I hoped would be an easier trip for them. And we spent five days there. And during that time, they asked me if I would write about them and about their perspectives and about their ideas about Afghan women. And I agreed quite readily. But I also realized that I wanted to write about them, their lives, their experience. Because how they got to be who they are is a very important part of what it takes to be a woman leader in Afghanistan. And the book recounts all of that and also talks about the other leaders whom we met in Ohio. So after 2010, I began writing the book. And I realized I had challenges beyond just my own education, which I'd already been engaged in, been working since 2001 really, to immerse myself in Afghan culture in Islam. I studied American history and American and British relationships with Afghanistan, worked from a number of different angles to try to be more informed. And I wanted to both present their lives and contextualize their lives for a Western audience. Because that was the audience they most wanted to reach. But at the same time, I had to deal with my own interaction with them, with who I could be in this book. How could I be a respectful listener and representative of their lives and work? And how could I not do what I understood from my historical work was fairly typical of colonialist societies, which is regard myself as having the best and most perfect life and that everyone else would surely like to have the same life if only they had the opportunity. And to shed any vestige of that imperialist background and to truly open myself up to this relationship with them and to understanding the world from their perspectives was an enormous challenge and one that I strived to do in the book. And at the same time, I didn't want the book to be one of the beneath the burqa sagas that were popular for a while. There was one on every bookstore shelf about interviews with women who live with the veil and how terrible it is and all of that. It wasn't going to be in that genre. So before I could even write, I had to figure out these kinds of roles. And this is what I've attempted to do in the book. There are a number of key points that I'd like to share with you that I try to present in the book. One is to understand what women's rights mean in the context of Afghanistan. That took a while. Jamila and Marzi were very helpful to me. I learned that the way that many Western feminists and people who support women's rights think about women's rights is that it's an individual matter. It's a way of allowing a woman to identify for herself who she is and what she's going to do and not be meshed in other obligations that keep her from self-actualization. That was a big word in feminism for a while here. And I learned very much how those rights in Afghanistan are conceived of very differently. And that is in the context of families and communities, in the context of the roles that these women believe they should be playing in their families and communities. And I think this has big implications for the way Westerners interact and try to promote women's causes in Afghanistan. Because it may be that some organizations, at least those that we've talked about, come to Afghanistan thinking, oh, well, we have to elevate the woman. We have to have programs that are only for women. Whereas sometimes those programs have caused backlash that's worked against women's advancement. So instead of creating the context within which women's civil and religious and familiar rights could be lived, these women are sometimes plucked out of their environments in some of the programs. And that's part of the reason that these programs don't work. I also wanted to understand the historical engagement of the West with Afghanistan and specifically with Afghan women's rights. Since those are what we were claiming was part of what we were fighting for by going into Afghanistan. And what I learned was that there has been a repeated pattern of engagement with women's rights and that women's rights are not necessarily only about women and women's rights. That they are symbolic of other things, other changes that various communities and various men in power, in particular, resist, such as, for example, land redistribution. And there have been some programs from various governments over the years that have said, well, land needs to be redistributed in a different way.  So women's going to school gets associated with the land reform. And so in order to fight the land reform, the fight might be about women going to school. And that this pattern is something that I think is extremely important to understand as people outside of Afghanistan try to work for its development. I also learned that women leaders in particular, and the two that I've worked with, but also other women leaders, have expressed the importance of international engagement in Afghanistan. And I think a lot of Americans through the regular media that we have thought, oh, the Afghans cannot wait until we get out of there. And I think there are a lot of Afghans who feel that way. But among these women leaders, they've been nervous about the absence of the foreigners. And I'm not sure that our current government is engaging with that difficulty as we are starting this pullout. I also learned that female activism is not a new or a Western idea being imposed on Afghanistan. That there is a tradition within Afghan families and villages of women, especially elder women, of exerting influence over the activities of men and the activities and values of their sons and husbands and villages. And there has also been what we might call a women's movement in Afghanistan for decades. When we invaded Afghanistan in 2001, there were many organizations operating on the ground at that moment, run by women, who were being very effective, even under Taliban rule. Marzia, for example, was running a school for boys and girls, 300 students in a neighbor's home. And she was actually caught by the Taliban one day. And I tell the story in the book of how she engaged with the Taliban who walked in to the school and asked her, what are you doing? And she had the right answer. And eventually, he turned around and walked away. These organizations were among the most trusted organizations in the country during the Civil War and the Taliban period. And yet, the US government did not engage with any of those organizations, did not try to empower them further in their effort to work for women's rights and dignity. And it struck me then and still does as a waste of our efforts not to engage with leaders who had proven themselves to be able to work in a way that respects the sensitivities of the culture that works from within the Islamic framework and is still able to be effective in promoting, for example, girls' education, but many other things as well. So those are some of the things that I learned that I didn't know before in engaging with these two women over the years. I also learned the mistakes that international donors and governments had made in the country. Among them is the belief, which I think still exists from some of the interviews that we've been having this week, that things having to do with women are things that are cultural and are taboo for others to engage with. And both of these women point out that, yes, you can say these things are cultural, but they can still be engaged with. Custom should not prevail over principle. And just because something is customary does not mean that it's right and definitely does not mean that it's Islamic. Although many of these practices are engaged in with the name of Islam attached to it. One of the most brilliant things that I think Jamila has done in her life that she almost never tells anybody is that she learned Arabic. When her family was in exile in Pakistan during the Civil War, she not only educated herself or got herself an education over her family's objections in a way that I recount in the book, but she also learned Arabic. And her primary motivation for learning Arabic was so that she could actually talk to people about what the Quran said. When they were telling her it said X, she could say, well, no, actually it says Y, Z, Q, and T. And that became a very powerful weapon which she uses today in her work. And she encounters very few others who have the same level of understanding. And I think being able to understanding that these things can be engaged from these sorts of knowledge frameworks is very important. And I hope she'll tell us some stories about how she's used that. So I give a list of suggestions for how our governments and our NGO organizations can engage more productively with Afghanistan, but I'll only mention one right now. And that is that all of our aid should be tied to women's rights programs. That we shouldn't give money in a country like Afghanistan unless some portion of it, and not one-tenth of it, but maybe half of it, is engaged with programs that will benefit women and that the women of Afghanistan believe will benefit women. And if we did only that one thing, I think we would be in much better shape than we are today. So with that, I'd like to turn the mic over to Jamila to hear what she wants to say. Well, it's very great honor and pleasure to be among you today. And almost everything was mentioned by Professor Sallikage. I'm very thankful to her that she made our voices to be heard, not only in the book, but also through this trip that I'm physically here in USA and Washington, D.C., and we will go to New York for some other meetings. The reason that we were very interested to have a product like the constant train, the book she has written on our life and on our experience, we were noticing that big sum of money is coming in Afghanistan and the people of United States and many other countries, they are paying their taxes to support Afghan women. But what was on the ground, it was a little bit, a little bit or more, it was different because the project more was going to to male partners or maybe to male organization to have project for women. And due to corruption and some other issues, most of the project was not going for the benefits of women. And from the other side, the projects for women were a very short time project. And Afghan women who were facing decades of war and instability, they need stable and continuous support. The activity that I started, it was literacy, the literacy program we started with a group of 2,000 women and today we have reached 250,000 women. And the activity we started with 25 imams and Kabul for promotion of women's rights. Today we are working with 6,000 imams in 22 provinces. We are also working on the issue of child marriage, sexual harassment and we are also working on the advocacy issues on elimination of violence against women. And all of these activity that I'm doing in the past almost 15 years, it has mostly have been based on the very local and simple methodologies. And I assure you that projects with hundreds, thousands of dollars could have not that much benefit that even our project with small community mobilization and engagement of people, engagement of youths and women to the process made the project very successful. When you're engaging women and youths in the process, they feel ownership because when their voices are heard, their needs will become up and they will be looking forward to solve their needs and they will be active agents in their society to work for themselves and for their children. So through this methodology, we have done some of the activities for a country like Afghanistan, it is so small, but hopefully with these small candles, we will be in position to make a lighter Afghanistan in future. Great, thank you very much. Quick question for the room. Has anybody ever seen an interview with Mrs. Kazai or a photograph of her?  No, I'm talking about Mrs. Kazai. Okay, well, I think that's the fact that sort of speaks for itself. So, you know, Mrs. Ghani has made a point of being out in public and Mrs. Abdullah was on the campaign trail with Dr. Abdullah. And so what does that mean, if anything? Well, unfortunately, always our leadership could not do the things which were very much needed. Wife of President Kazai was a female doctor. She is a gynecologist and she was a very active woman. When she got married to Mr. Kazai, so she became a housewife. And most of the time when we were inviting her to attend some of the occasions and sharing our problems with her, but we couldn't get to her. And of course, wife of Mr. Abdullah Abdullah is having some health issues. I think that's why she's not that much active, but still she up to some extent taking part. And of course, the position and status of Mrs. Laura Ghani is very different. She is well educated. She is coming from the life background staying in the United States. And she is very cooperative up to the moment what we are saying and what we are, they are so low-ganzara. As you know, the National Unity Government has its own complications. Still they are fighting on many issues between themselves. How many women are there in the cabinet? We have four women. What are their jobs? They are occupying different ministries such as Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Women Affairs, Ministry of Norcotics and Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. And what's the percentage of women in Afghan Parliament now? What's the percentage of women? 25% of women are in the Parliament. What's the percentage of women in the US Congress? Less than what we have on the summer. But they're mandated to have the 25% so, yeah. And we fought for that in very early days when there was work on constitution was going, we women activists, we pushed that. And it was great achievement for us to set beside the Mojahedin leaders and the new government and lots of other actors that we put on them with support of international community. We made them to agree on 25%. I thought you said something very interesting, Dr. Ketch, about women's rights. About women's rights, there's a lot of poll on this. Women's rights being sort of a stalking horse for other issues as well. And I mean, I can't remember my Afghan history in great detail, but was it King Amanullah who his family, the females members of his family were not wearing the veil. And that caused a huge, and he wanted, that was a leading indicator of westernization that he wanted to bring in. That caused a lot of problems to him, right? Didn't work for him, eventually. I mean, how did it end for him? Badly, he was run out of town on a rail, actually, but his wife, he had gone on a European tour, 1927, I think it was, and when he came and he'd been hailed as a great modernizer, sort of like Ataturk, he was in that sort of mode. But when he got home, he had some very unhappy people. And by 1928, he was in exile. He had four wives, I think I have got this right, he had four wives, he dismissed three of them or something and just stuck with the one and then she took off the veil in public. But again, okay, that was hard for people to take in and of itself, but it was part of a much larger modernization, so-called modernization scheme that had already had the hackles up and to realize that a central government in Afghanistan has always been a tentative thing, a tenuous thing, and Karzai found it out and we watched him sort of disintegrate a little bit because the powers in the provinces are pretty strong and they wanna keep what they have and so there's always gonna be a battle between the two. So everybody's seen the pictures of 1970s Kabul and women wearing mini skirts and the like and clearly it was much more liberal than neighboring Pakistan in a sense, women. So I mean, what happened? How did that change? What's the history there? How real was that? Was it just located in Kabul? Outside in the countryside it was very different and always has been, always will be or how does that all play out? Before coming to this question, I would like to mention that always in our history, women has used as a political tool and women has remained as a strong political tool. Different government by different strategies have used this power. So you mentioned about the King Aman Allah and the reason that Karzai was not that much in position to take a strong whole stand for the position of women, although in international conferences and he ratified the Convention of Sida without any argument and other issues. But when the statement of Shura Yoloma came up about women to have mahram with them and mahram, a male company member of family, so he never said anything. When the issue of Yivav Lok came on the parliament and parliamentarian said this is a law against Sharia, like the elimination of violence against women. Which President Karzai signed it on 2009 by himself and it was implemented on different level on our legal system. But when parliamentarian came and reject and said, so there was no sort of communication coming back from the government. And also about the Shia family law, which is very, like for us, it is very difficult situation, but he supported the stand beside the Shia community and said I'm supporting what you are saying for your women. What was the law? It was almost in 2011. So. What did the law say? It is a personal, as you know Afghanistan is made up of different tribes and community. We have Shia and Sunni and Shia community decided to have their own personal law based on their jurisdiction school of thought, which is a little bit different from Sunni, a little bit not much more different from Sunni. So, and they had some of like issues which might be in big clash with the women's right issues. So the reason that today, possibly, that today we see that peace talks are going on, recently we had peace talk in Qatar. And it's going to, it's in China and Iran is also working on that to have a meeting there. And in the beginning, like, there was no representation of women when the communication was going inside Kabul and also sometime high peace council, when we contacted them, they were saying if we bring women agenda on the table, maybe Taliban goes back. They cannot come on the table. Had the Taliban ever said what their attitude to women working or being educated will be in the future of Afghanistan? Through the current position of Taliban in Qatar, like three women attended the conference and we did not hear anything, any rejection from their side. There was no opposition from their side. And they are saying that women can go for education but within limitation of Sharia. What does that mean? Well, it depends on different interpretation and everybody, we cannot say that this and that. So these are the things, these are the challenges that still our government and our people are facing. So it looks like the Taliban have shifted their position on women education a little bit? Whatever I can see as an Afghan living inside Afghanistan that this is the war of power. Now everybody wants to have a little bit power in the government system. So in order to have a little bit power you have to compromise a bit. They haven't shifted at all. They haven't shifted at all but they have shown some green light. But our tension is that if the government with ratification of international convention with all the laws inside country is not honest but how we can trust other parties. What do you and President Obama's plan to reduce American troops to effectively zero on December 31st, 2016? I believe it's an immature decision. A mature decision? An immature decision. Immature. Immature decision. Because like you have invested a lot in Afghanistan and like the foundations are built but going back, leaving everything and even we are in middle of it. Of course yes, of course yes. And besides that we don't have strong central government so far. So Hillary Clinton is going to be the democratic nominee unless there's some huge upset. Shouldn't she put in her running platform that we should extend our presence past 2016 for this issue? Yeah, of course. Amongst others? Of course, yes. Do you think that might happen? I mean, any? I don't know if she's even thinking about Afghanistan. She's meeting with people in cafes and upstate New York. She made a big issue of it when she was Secretary of State? She did. She did. And she went to Afghanistan and women heard her and they had a lot of hope from her. Janet Napolitano, there were different politicians who went and but they became very disappointed at the outcome. Well, so presumably now you're on a book tour, right? So are you going to, I mean this is something, a concrete step that you could sort of in terms of preserving what women's rights have. I mean, obviously that's the situation on the Taliban. If we say that was zero, it's not perfect now, but things have definitely had advances been made, right? Yes, things are better than they would have been without organizations like Jamilis. And there are also things that foreign donors have done, not only the United States, but Sweden and Germany. There are all kinds of governments active there in effective ways, Canada. And these are important, as Jamilis likes to say. These are foundations. But now we need to build on those foundations. And the building means not bringing in more Canadians and Germans and Swedes and Americans, but working with effective local organizations to implement these important. Is the National Solidarity Program sort of a model for that? I don't know. What do you think? Well, yeah, it was one of the very good and successful project, which was implemented in Afghanistan and it's still it is going on. But I... Describe what it is. Oh, okay. Actually, we start to work on community mobilization through different mechanism and through development, community sure us and this community consoles was from women side and from men side and in some of the part of Afghanistan we had combined male and female sure us. And it was taking different projects, small project and it was divided between every 300 family they had to come together and design a project for their community and do some activity. And the leadership of each sure was turned out within every six months by election of their own representative by their own choice. So it was very successful project and it's also going on. The other issue that I would like to mention that nowadays in security is getting very bad condition in Afghanistan. Where do you live? I live in Kabul, very confined and main city. Yeah, and how do you assess the security situation there right now? Because every time I was lost everywhere, just yesterday in the morning when I was talking with my daughter, she was crying and she was saying I don't want any gift, I want my mama. And I said why you're crying? She said it was big explosion, I was sleeping. And whatever in media you can see that is not representing 10% of the reality on the ground. Meaning? Meaning government might be more afraid than before. They are much more protective for their own gains. But in reality, people are suffering. You might have in the media that Northern provinces of Afghanistan which was much more peaceful in the past decade. Now they are in a very bad condition Do you think the Taliban will take kundus? According to local saying it has already taken. I was sharing with Dr. Sehli we are working in 22 provinces and we have village and province some team leaders. And now it's very difficult to get to them even for two, three days we are calling and we cannot get. After two, three days then sometime they are calling and saying that the fighting is going on that's why all the signals are cut off. So that's not, they are not able to be connected. I'm going to mispronounce the name but the woman who is lynched in Kabul, Fasconida. Farhonda. Was that a turning point or was this just an indicator of just this is how Afghan society is? It is both. Yeah. It is very serious and very shocking and very bad part of our history that a woman who was physically, apparently, much more religious with her chadar and with her clothing she's killed with such a human behavior of a group of youths in Kabul city which we consider that they are very moderate and they are open minded. This is a big alert for us that the issue of women are very sensitive like in Afghanistan men are doing lots of bad things. Nobody is talking about that but if a woman just by gossip somebody says that she has done this nobody goes to see whether that is reality or not and they are starting to killing her and with that mission. How would you assess the government's reaction? The government took very symbolic and very urgent action to close the mouth of international community and women activists in Afghanistan. The real criminals are out of the clutches of rule of law. They are even living in the house of some of the high political leaders but those who are secondary perpetrator now they are going to be killed and they are going to be hanged and the position they took with the police they gave the punishment of one year for them. For God's sake, I think first of all police should be responsible for all these. Yeah, the police to buy, right? That's the issue, the police did nothing when she was being- Police was there and even police said that we also become under emotional slogans of people and we were also joining the same. What does that say about Afghan society in general? They are more complicated than before. It's Afghanistan, it's complicated. And it gives alert to international community that be very, very conscious and be careful in future when you're doing some activities in Afghanistan. Yeah, well let's open it up to anybody in the audience who has a question if you could raise your hand, wait for the microphone and identify yourself and we'll start with this gentleman right here. Hi, my name is Taub Malikzad. I'm from Voice of America. I have a quick question. Throughout your time in Afghanistan, have you seen, since 2001 let's say, have you seen any change in the violence against women because now you're involved in like 22 provinces and you're involved with imams? Have you seen any decrease, increase, or is it the same? And also here we have been talking about the rights of women outside, like what they can do. What's happening with the Taliban, the husband? I mean, there is violence against women but there are these stories, like horrific stories of husbands cutting their wives' nose, beating them up. What is the government and what are the families doing to prevent that?  There's a Taliban in the house. What do you do with that? Thanks for your very good question. You know the chain of violence in a society is not because of one element or other element. It is a chain of history that comes from generation to generation. And in Afghanistan, in a society of patriarchal and tribal system with customary and traditionalism has made the situation very difficult for women. Of course, there is big sum of reduction. When you hear in the media, it means that is level of awareness has raised up. Now the cases does not kept underground. We take out the cases. When you hear in the media, it means that there is better level of awareness. Now people follow with the issues domestically they have. I can give you example of a man who was attending one of the sermon in the mosque that we were working. And when Imam was talking about women's right from Islamic perspective, the old man start crying and came to the Imam and told him that why you were not telling all these before? I never allowed my daughters to go to school. My sister in law died. I did not allow her to visit a male doctor. I first really married my children, my daughters and now they are suffering everyday problems. And I thought that time it is part of my manhood. It's part of my religious responsibility towards my female member of family. And now you are saying it was all sin and I am going to die. How I will answer my God? And of course the Imam says we have to start from the point we come to know that it was wrong. And believe me that man has become the most active advocate in Hogyani village, which is one of the very tribal, very difficult. This man is knocking doors of each and every door of the village to send their daughters to school. He has five sons and every son has two, three daughters and he's sending all of them to school. If there is the issue of vaccination or any campaign, like he's the first person there to help and support other women. And this way he wants to compensate the wrongs he have committed. And from the other side he is benefiting a larger number of people in the community. So we have such a beautiful examples. It means that there is a reduction. But in some of the provinces still we have very huge problem, such as northern provinces of Afghanistan because of the child marriage and the issue of poverty economically, people are in a very bad condition and now the civil war or the fighting is going on. So all these are making the situation very worse that people are selling their daughters in early ages by the name of marriage. So we are struggling and positive change cannot be happen in one day or two day or one generation, two generation. If a history of violence in many, many generations and our blood has come in order to reduce that, it will take time. If not that much, at least half of it, at least quarter of it. This is a difficult question, but to what extent is the treatment of women, the treatment of women that we saw under the Taliban essentially Pashtun culture. And to what extent is Tajik or Uzbek or Hazara kind of culture more accommodating to women and having a role outside the home? Yeah. Actually different tribes and different the tenacity group have their own culture. When you go to the house of Pashtun, you will find very good family environment. Within the relationship of husband and wife, but there are some other actors around like mother-in-law, father-in-law that they want to, they have their upper-handedness over the daughter-in-law. And usually according to the custom, son has to be obedient to his father and mother and to elder brother or elder sister. In Uzbek community and Hazara community, most of the issues are coming up majorly because of two issue. One is poverty. The other issue is they are very confined cultural practices. For example, like in Hazara community, if a girl becomes 16 or 17 years old and she is not married until 17 years old. So, they will say, no one marry her. She is left no one marry her. So, because of this competition, even very young boys are getting married. And the other issue around marriage in Hazara community, it's because of having huge amount of marriage money to be exchanged within the families. So, families are trying, 10 people are working in a family to collect some money to do the marriage. So, as much quickly they are getting rid of this burden so they are happy to do it. And that's why they are doing. And mostly the young brides, they are not aware of the family relationship, health issues and other, most of the time conflict comes up of that. And in Uzbek community, up to third category, they are much better. You can say they are much better. They are very confined in their own community. Their marriages, everything becomes very confined in their own tribe. And they don't have that much issues. Or if there is any issue, it is very much suppressed. It does not come up. So, is there a community within Afghanistan that treats women better in general? Well, up to second extent, due to our awareness and the activity we are doing, especially we are mobilizing imams to talk about that and from Islamic perspective to talk about that. So, up to some extent it is improving. But at the same time, larger volume of other actors are working in Afghanistan that all these women right issues are coming from western community. And who is pushing that agenda? So, of course there are some opposition groups inside our community. And one thing I should mention that sometimes our, the women activists, lack of coordination, lack of cooperation and lack of understanding between themselves. It's also one of the element creating such a signals for the people. I will give you an example when the issue of Eve of Law come up. So, it was really shocking because it was the greatest achievement of us in the past one decade. And one of the network, by the name of Afghan Women Network, they organized a round table on a very famous TV channel which is to law and they brought two, three women activists with two imams to discuss about the issue of Eve of Law. And this three two women activists, they had very limited knowledge of Islam. They could not continue discussion after one minute with imam. And remaining nine minutes were spent on the discussion of the imams.  And that's why the Kabul University youths came on the street, they started march and said that it's an Islamic, we do not accept and some other actors come on. You mentioned totally TV, obviously there's been an explosion of media in Afghanistan, there are dozens of TV stations, dozens of radio stations. Has that been basically a good thing for women's rights? Well, I don't know. Yeah, it is sometimes good but it's also sometimes bad because the TV companies still, they do not have that capacity to produce something by their selves. Usually they are copying Indian, Turkey and other cultures. And sometimes instead of decreasing problem, they are increasing. Hi, I'm Kim Weichel, I'm CEO of a women's peace building organization. And I'm wondering if there are ways that we as NGO leaders can be supportive of Afghan women, the organizations you've mentioned, especially with the imminent US pull out, whether it's through the McCain Institute, whether it's directly with organizations initiatives you've mentioned. I think that is the only way a lift out. When international community, international forces are going to leave Afghanistan, we trust on our sisters. We trust on our friends outside Afghanistan. I'm very hopeful that they should not leave us alone. Already we have got some experience and through your professional support, we can be in a better position to continue our cause. And of course it should be done and I think it's the only solution. Elizabeth. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Weingarten, I work here at New America. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the progress of the National Action Plan. I know the plan is to launch it soon, but how much of a difference do you think it's actually going to make? I know that there are a lot of questions around implementation, but what's your sense of it? Yeah, actually you might know better that the initial National Action Plan which was launched, and we have almost completed the period of five years, but there is no report back of that. What is it? National Action Plan is a strategy, a national strategy that they have different components inside and they have some indicators that they have to reach after five years to that goal and objectives. What percentage of females are in school now? According to the reports of Ministry of Education, it is almost two, three million, but due to insecurity it might be a little bit less. Under the Taliban it was what? Under the Taliban it was very few, it was 100, 500 something. Coming back to your question, and the issue of National Plan that currently it has worked lots of international community, different organizations, different government institution has worked and developed the plan. So the big challenge is the stability of the new cabinet because for the past six months we had not the cabinet. Now we have the cabinet, but there is issue with deputies. And every minister has to have four deputies. The previous deputies they are stuck in their position because of the past relationship and new deputies are coming due to the new. So now we are in such a process of conflict and Ashraf Ghani has given them time duration of 40 days, which is almost a month's past. And hopefully with next 10 days or at least one, two months they come to conclusion. So there will be two things important. That National Plan of Action for each and every country is very important and especially for Afghanistan. And there should be a follow up mechanism from the previous one in order to have better lesson learned for the upcoming one. Other questions? This lady here. Hi, my name is Carly Fabrian. I'm from the Public International Law and Policy Group. And my question is sort of about your writing process and storytelling process. As I've been writing on counterterrorism and gender, I've been struggling to kind of find my role in the story and to highlight stories like your own. So I'm wondering if you could elaborate a little more on how that process went and how you kind of overcame those struggles. Well, I talked a little bit about sort of the context within which I was writing and understanding the mistakes that I could make in terms of myself. But there was another complication as well. And that was that my relationship with them transformed over time. So the book covers approximately, not in terms of live time, but in terms of the lives of these women from about 2002 to 2014. And during that time, I decided that the way I had to understand myself was that at first I was a witness that when I met them in Ohio and I was listening to them, I could only look from the outside in like a store window. Then as I got to know them and as we became correspondents and then we met again, I saw that I was going to become a narrator and an interpreter of their lives. And so I had to sort of transform the way I thought about that part of the book. And then as time went by and as their situations became way more complex, I became kind of a participant in their lives. And so I felt that I had to be aware of these changing roles in terms of the way that I set the tone of what it was I was writing. But it was also very dedicated to presenting their stories in their own words. So I made a distinction between the time that I was talking and the time that they were talking. Every interview that we had, I recorded and they were all transcribed. So I was always talking through their words. And at the end of each chapter, I have a section that I call Reflections. So I kind of keep myself out of the narrative except for my interactions, like I asked them this or they told me this. But I was doing a lot of comparisons in my mind. I was very interested in the things. For example, there are two chapters in the book about marriage, both their feelings about Afghan women marriage practices in general and their own marriages because when I first met them, they weren't married, which made them very unusual Afghan women to be hovering around the age of 30 and beyond and not be married. And so that made them, that marriage had to be a topic that we talked about. And I started thinking about the kinds of marriages that they entered into and the way I had thought about marriage and my own marriage and the way I thought about my selection of my partner. And I thought, these aren't as maybe not as different as I thought they were. So I wanted to think about how the concept of arranged marriage, which certainly fits their situation to an extent, they being the exceptions to a rule, which is so arranged that the girl may not even know who she's marrying until the day of the wedding. And our idea that we are choosing partners totally freely. When in fact, we're choosing our partners based on religion sometimes and social class and educational level and maybe even geographical location. So there are things that circumscribe what we think of as our free choice, which I think actually work in all areas of our lives, but in the case of marriage, I think we feel strongly that we married for love and that's it when there is a lot else going on. So I just tried to keep that separate in as I was going through and framing how I was going to approach the book. Does that speak to your question? Oh, good. This gentleman and then this lady. Thank you. My name is Michael Albin. I'm an independent researcher. I'm very curious about the issue of Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. That was a terrific opportunity for progress and attention on the situation of women in Afghanistan. And I'm curious about how exactly disappointment resulted from her tenure as secretary of state. And now that we have a woman as director of USAID, I wonder if the tone of aid will be a little different going forward. It's quite a leading question because it presumes that there is disappointment. Yeah. Well, I think maybe it comes from what I said earlier, which is Hillary Clinton was in Afghanistan several times and Janet Napolitano and so on. And in the end result, they didn't see a whole lot coming from it. And I sound like I'm bashing Hillary Clinton, which I don't mean to do, but I think that there were limitations on what any cabinet member would have been able to achieve on behalf of the US government in those kinds of situations. And I think that cabinet members don't always have the backing of the president that they think they do. So they may say something in an audience like Hillary Clinton said in 2010, something like, we will never allow women's rights to be compromised. We'll make sure no US program compromises. Well, that was probably a little grandiose that it might not be possible for anybody to actually ensure that that kind of thing would happen. What strikes me, and I wanna hear Jamila's view of this, what strikes me is that people like that are operating on a level, you know, 30,000 feet above what's actually happening on the ground. And they may never have the opportunity to understand deeply what the situation is. They have to represent their government. They have to say certain things. And they may mean them quite sincerely, but their capacity to translate that hovering kind of observation into actual programs on the ground, my guess is it's pretty limited. So what do you think? Almost the same. Yeah. Yeah. Kate Howard, thank you for visiting, we appreciate it. I wanted to ask you how you find the Civil Society framework, the legal framework for operating for the various organizations, and particularly your organization. I know that a new association law was passed in fall of 2014. The NGO law has, there's been efforts to write and change a new NGO law, working with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Economy. And I wondered if you could speak just how, how engaged the women's groups are, or your group is in affecting a more permissive or just a workable framework or how you find the current framework. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. To be honest, I'm very pleased that friends have such a good knowledge about Afghanistan, very current knowledge about Afghanistan. That's the lighting for me, that people are still interested in Afghanistan. We have a ministry by the name of Ministry of Economy that usually NGOs have to have get registration there. And networks and social activity, if they are working under a framework, they have to get registration with Ministry of Justice. Currently, lots of national and international organizations that working in Afghanistan gets their registration from Ministry of Economy. And Ministry of Economy is also working on the issue of tax, and we are also responsible to give them each six months' report. Of course, we are registered, even my organization was registered in 2002. When Karzai was doing his internal session, it was not, he was not selected as a president, he was just acting at that time. There we had Ministry of Planning and we were registered there. And after the changes in 2004, they announced that there should be a re-registration with Ministry of Economy and we did this in 2004. Currently, we NGOs see that there are some complications with the code of conduct, with NGO laws, and it creates big sum of problem for us. I can give you one example. For example, when we are registered with Ministry of Economy, I have to work with Imams, I have to work with women. Then I have to get registration with Ministry of Religious Affairs, with Ministry of Women Affairs. I have to provide each six months' report to Ministry of Economy, to Ministry of Religious Affairs, then to Ministry of Women Affairs. And new encounter terrorism law and banking system, like it has complicated the situation. More you have to make big sum of documents and even sometime the work of a local NGO becomes too much, like we are project based on organization and we don't have a specific person to work on documentation and reporting to this department, that department. So we are also part of this collaboration of civil society, that we are working to at least make a little bit reliable policies and articles and the code of conduct. Unfortunately, before I told, that still we are not in place with deep tears and hates and it will take time. Charmin and this lady. Hello, my name is Nadia. I'm a broadcast journalism student from Norfolk State University and I'm interning with VOA. First of all, thank you ma'am for telling her story and thank you for allowing her to tell your story. My question is for the younger women activists, how would you like your story to be told in order that we get information about what's going on with women around the world? So how would you like, how would you want us to tell your story? For my own people or for international community? For the international community. So let's say if I wanted to do a piece on women activists, how would you like for us to tell your story so that we're more informed on how to get the information out? Yeah, so we were very limited in that part so far because unfortunately due to lots of problem in Afghanistan, voices of every women is not heard. Like only a special group of women have access to media, to government, to different policy makers and only their voices have been heard so far. And also it is limited. They are not giving a good value to the voices of women. That's why we requested Professor Ketch, a good friend of us, that she with her scholarly knowledge and experience should write our story. And I appreciate her work, the way she developed the book and now we are doing this book tour. This is the way that we are telling our stories to you. Maybe as an example or maybe as a case study for those women who are coming to a bigger platform of feminism and women activism. But is there any here? And that will be our last question because we're running out of time. My name is Eleanor Bakrak. I have worked for USAID in Afghanistan from a few years back. And I know that USAID is now working on a large program for women. One of my good friends is involved with it. I don't know whether you have plans to meet with USAID but I'd be happy to give you his information after the program. I think your views would be very helpful. We met with him yesterday. That's great. It was great, it was wonderful. Yeah, I know Promote is one of the historical support of United State of America for our women. We yesterday had a meeting with USAID and we shared that it's something very positive and we are very happy for that. Only we are a little bit concerned on the best utilization of that money because we cannot see such an opportunity again in the near future. So that's why when it talks of leadership of women, empowerment of, economic empowerment of women, it should be best utilized. And that's why we are trying to be involved around, we had meeting with Tetra Tech and USAID and hopefully to continue. Well, thank you for this really brilliant presentation. We wanna thank you, Dr. Kitsch and Mrs. Afghani.


Today, just as it happens every day, many thousands of people throughout the world will be setting off on journeys in the hope of being able to forge safe and meaningful lives in the new country. Some will be carrying passports containing visas issued by the country to which they are heading. These people will most likely be able to choose many aspects of this new phase. Their new job or vocation, the city in which they tend to live, the mode of travel they'll take and the timing and the length of their journey. They should be considered the luckier ones, and more likely than not, they will be citizens of developed countries. But today, just as it happens every day, many others will be setting off on journeys they know will be long and dangerous, so much so that they may allow themselves the realisation that they may be abused, they may be exploited, or they may even die en route. These people will most likely be facing considerable uncertainty about the journey ahead. Many will not have visas in their passports, and some will not have passports or travel documents. They know in general terms how to get from various places along the way, but many things will remain unclear. These are not the luckier ones, and more likely than not, they will be from developing countries and fragile states, some having had their lives upended by civil conflict, persecution or other forms of disaster. I've read out these comments that are from the chapter, they're the introduction to the chapter, slightly abridged, maybe a bit shorter, but it's just to make, when we are talking about statistics, when we are talking about research, when we're talking about governance, we always need to keep in mind the people that we are serving, the people that we are seeking to assist, and sometimes we can forget about that. So that's one of the reasons why we brought this chapter into the World Migration Report, to remind ourselves what people are facing when they are contemplating migration, especially unsafe, irregular migration.


The atmosphere is a gaseous envelope that covers the Earth. The atmosphere extends from the Earth up to 1,000 nautical miles. Without the atmosphere there would be no life on Earth. The atmosphere provides protection from harmful ultraviolet or UV rays, cosmic rays and meteorites. The atmosphere also protects the Earth from extreme temperature variations. It supports animal and plant life through its gaseous content and provides rain to grow crops. The envelope of air that surrounds the Earth varies in pressure and temperature throughout its entire height. There are four distinct divisions of the atmosphere. Each has its own special characteristics that separate it from the others. The first division is the troposphere. The troposphere ranges from sea level to 30,000 feet at the north and south pole to 50,000 feet at the equator. The egg shape is due to the cooling and heating of the Earth's surface. The main characteristics of the troposphere are declining temperature with altitude and water vapor which produces weather. This is where the majority of aviation activity takes place. The tropopause is a small region of temperature stability that forms the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere and is not considered a major division. The next division is the stratosphere. It extends from the tropopause up to 50 miles. The stratosphere has a relatively constant temperature, little water vapor or turbulence and contains the jet streams. The next level up is the ionosphere. It ranges from 50 miles to 600 miles. It gets its name from the ionized gas within this layer. The ionosphere provides protection from ultraviolet rays. The 50 mile high mark is known as the Van Karmens line. Above this line aircraft controls become ineffective and thrust must be used for directional control. The final major division of the atmosphere is the exosphere. It extends from 600 to 1,000 miles. Past 1,000 miles we are officially in space. As we ascend in the exosphere we gradually approach the vacuum of space. There is so little pressure and density that gaseous molecules rarely collide. An artificial environment to sustain life is required. The atmosphere is a mixture of gases. It is composed primarily of nitrogen and oxygen along with trace gases. Nitrogen and the trace gases are inert gases which play no major role in human physiology. For this discussion we will ignore the trace gases and consider nitrogen as 80 percent and oxygen as 20 percent. A key point to remember is that as we ascend to altitude the percentage of nitrogen and oxygen remain constant. If the functional percentage remains constant why do pilots, skydivers and mountain climbers have trouble at altitude? There is a drop in atmospheric pressure. The gaseous atmosphere surrounding the earth is affected by the gravitational pull of the earth. Atmospheric pressure is defined as the combined weight of all atmospheric gases creating a force at any given point on the surface of the earth. In 1924 the US Weather Bureau and the Bureau of Standards set forth a group of values to measure atmospheric pressure. The true weight of the atmosphere at sea level on a standard day is 14.7 pounds per square inch. This standard atmospheric pressure can also be expressed in several different forms depending on the method of measurement. If measured in millimeters of mercury the standard pressure at sea level is 760 millimeters of mercury. This is the height in millimeters that a column of mercury will rise in a vacuum tube when subjected to the weight of the atmosphere. When measured in inches of mercury the sea level standard is 29.92. This is the height in inches that a column of mercury will rise in a vacuum tube when subjected to the weight of the atmosphere. This measurement is what is used in our aircraft to measure our flying altitude. As we ascend from sea level the atmospheric pressure will drop. As the atmospheric pressure drops the air becomes less dense. Let's review the laws that explain the effects of reduced barometric pressure and how it affects the human body at altitude. Boyle's law states that a volume of gas is inversely proportional to the pressure exerted on the gas with temperature remaining constant. As a high altitude balloon is taken to altitude the pressure drops so the gas within the balloon expands. If this gas is not vented overboard the structure will rupture. This happens to humans going to altitude and we have ways to equalize this trapped gas. Trapped gas will be discussed later. Henry's law reads when the pressure over a liquid is decreased the gas in the liquid will also decrease. The nitrogen in the body is in gaseous form. If a person goes to altitude where the pressure decreases there is the possibility that this nitrogen will come out of body fluids and tissues and form bubbles. The physiological disorders of decompression sickness and evolved gas disorders will be discussed later. Dalton's law tells us that the total pressure of a mixture of gas is equal to the sum of the partial pressure of each gas in the mixture. As we ascend to altitude the total atmospheric pressure will decrease because the partial pressure of the individual gases decreases. Remember the percentage of oxygen at altitude does not change but the partial pressure does. This decrease means less usable oxygen which causes hypoxia. Hypoxia will be discussed in the later section. Graham's law states that a gas will diffuse from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. This law explains the transfer of gases mainly oxygen and carbon dioxide between the atmosphere lungs, lungs blood and blood body cells. Another way to classify divisions of the atmosphere is from the point of view of the physiological effects on the human body. There are three major physiological zones. The physiological efficient zone ranges from sea level to 10,000 feet. Currently the body is adapted to operate in this region but because we have the ability in an aircraft to ascend and descend rapidly and this is the area of the atmosphere where the greatest amount of pressure change occurs, trapped gas problems, for example, ears, sinus and GI tract, can occur. In addition, shortness of breath, dizziness, headaches and fatigue will occur if a person is exposed too long in the upper region of this zone. The physiological deficient zone ranges from 10,000 feet to 50,000 feet. The majority of flying takes place in this zone. In adequate oxygen, atmospheric pressure and cold temperatures do not allow for normal physiological functions in this zone. The space equivalent zone extends from 50,000 feet to space. This environment is very hostile to humans. An artificial environment produced by a full space suit or a sealed spacecraft is required. Both of these provide their own gases and pressure. Above the Armstrong line at 63,000 feet is where body fluids boil. We will wrap up this lesson with a short review. The atmosphere is a gaseous envelope that supports and protects all life on Earth. The atmosphere has four distinct divisions, troposphere, stratosphere, ionosphere and exosphere. The atmosphere has decreasing pressure with increasing altitude. All gases act in accordance with the physical gas laws. There are three distinct physiological zones, physiological efficient zone, physiological deficient zone and space equivalent zone.