 Hello everyone, welcome to, this is actually Tim Wharton's, but tonight for today is Roya's Journey to Journalism and Engagement, sort of two journeys, Paul's Journey and Roya's Journey. My name is Alan Thompson. I teach journalism here at Carleton and run something called the Center for Media and Transitional Societies, which does a lot of things. It primarily sends some of our students to the developing world on journalism internships, but we also hold events like this one. So I'll briefly introduce our two speakers, but I know you're here to listen to them and not to me. Paul Watson, who is probably known to most of you, is a Toronto Star journalist, reporter, conflict reporter, work correspondence. Paul's a career journalist, a career sort of dreamer, idealist. We knew each other at the start when Paul was basically demonstrating to the star that we could cover Africa by using his holidays to go there. And that they would buy the stories from, and they finally had the good sense to open an active bureau and send Paul as the Toronto Star's first Africa refugee. And he did a lot of fantastic work. One candidate, I think, still only pulled surprise for a Canadian journalist or a famous photograph that he took in Somalia in 1993 and went on to all kinds of great things, left the star for a while, went to the Los Angeles Times, covered many other parts of the world, got fired. That's another story. He recently returned to the Toronto Star, where he's created one of the most unique Euro-assignments, I think, in the world, of covering the Canadian North and covering Afghanistan and Syria and other places in between. So he's really a remarkable Canadian journalistic voice, and I get a sense, at that point in his career, where he's kind of decided, now I know some other things I want to do with my journalism, I'm tired of the old conventional notion of what a journalist is supposed to do, and so I'm going to do it this way. And we kind of doubted it, the journalism of engagement, and I'll let Paul talk about that. And I don't know a lot about Roya, and I'm counting on Paul and Roya to properly introduce us to her story, because these two stories intersect. What I know is what Paul's written, how they met in Afghanistan, how Roya had great aspirations to become a politician, which sort of surprised Paul when he first met a couple of years ago, that was her career ambition. And in the end, this kind of remarkable relationship evolved for a journalist and a subject. Roya started off being a subject on the interviews and the story that the star had imagined, and ends up becoming a very different relationship than one where Paul is very personally involved in helping Roya come to Canada and study and move on with whatever the next stage of her life is going to be. So it's really a unique journey that both of them are on, so it's fantastic that they can be here and they can hear from both of you. It's a very informal sort of setting. That's why we have you sitting down rather than at the podium. So I know you've got pictures to sort of guide us through it, so why don't I just turn this over to Paul initially and then the two of you will figure out what we're going to do with the rest of you. And at some point, when you're tired of talking, we do have a microphone and we'll invite people to come and pose questions to either Roya or Paul. Thank you. Before I get into the start of the story, I remind myself and everyone in the audience whenever we speak to people that this started as me and Roya and her family and it's grown almost by the day into a much larger family. There are members of that family here tonight, Sarah and her family who were the first people in Ottawa to take Roya in. At a time which you'll hear in more detail was an incredibly difficult time. She had just come literally from the grave of her father in Kandahar to a country she knew nothing about, into a freedom she didn't completely understand and they kept her going through some very tough times. The headmaster of Ashbury, Tim Matthews is here, the school nurse to Inuna. These are all people and they number into the, I think into the thousands. At this point, people who are part of a family, so I welcome you all to that family too. Like any family, we laugh together, we cry together, we sometimes argue but we all share the same goal and that is to keep Roya rising because you'll reach this conclusion yourself if you haven't already. She has more potential than any young woman I've ever met and we want to make sure that the simple accident of fate that she was born in a place called Kandahar in a troubled country called Afghanistan doesn't keep her from realizing her potential. And if I get ulterior eyed, I'm old and getting weepy, but forgive me. Roya's journey starts in Kandahar and although after Canadian combat forces left, it's largely fallen out of the Canadian news both television and print, I can tell you that the Taliban have not gone away. They are as probably as strong as ever even though the Canadian forces and then the American troops that took over the areas the Canadians vacated have done a good job of trying to clear out their leadership. They're still there in large numbers. They effectively have the city of Kandahar surrounded. They control large parts of the countryside. There was just an attack on Afghan National Army forces yesterday, I think it was, in the far north of the country, in places where people wouldn't normally expect to find the Taliban. So the future of Afghanistan when the last American combat troops leave next year is not a bright one and Roya's brother has joined us from Afghanistan and I hope he doesn't mind me saying, he's a surgeon in a government hospital who works on a very small salary and every day has to deal with the casualties of this conflict and he has gone through more than I can imagine and I've seen a lot. He himself was attacked by the Taliban just a month ago. So this is a country that's on the brink of a very difficult period all over again. It hasn't escaped war in 34 years and it looks like it's just going to get worse. Sorry, thank you. I promised I wouldn't do that. Here I was watching my own slideshow. I can't even remember the year it was. I think it was when I was still working for the Los Angeles Times, so it was probably 2009 or early 2010 through a very difficult operation negotiated with the Taliban leadership of sort of a portion of the leadership in Pakistan to meet them in Ghazni province which is a very strategic place close to Kabul from which they continue to launch attacks to see if they would allow me to visit them and they said, well you're free to visit us but we can't guarantee your security between Kabul and Ghazni province where we are and there's all sorts of other people who claim to be Taliban there who would easily kidnap you and you've probably heard stories of other journalists going through the same thing. Eventually they said okay, we'll work something out and they got me in there for one day and I can tell you these are not people living in caves. I met the Taliban first in 1996 when they were mostly illiterate people who'd come from madrasas or Quranic schools in Pakistan and they had some popular support but not much. The people that I met in this group, they covered their faces for security reasons but they're a much younger group, they're a much more world savvy group in this house where they finally took me way out in the countryside and we're driving along roads that are controlled by American helicopters and all sorts of things and they're communicating on handheld radios. They had Al Jazeera on satellite TV in the next room. They do more about that day's news than I did. This is a sophisticated bunch of people who think they have won the war already and they have an agenda which although this group, I don't know how representative they are of the broader leadership their agenda is still against people like Roy. Young women who think, as her father did, that women should be equal to men. This is the 21st century. These are young men who watch Al Jazeera TV but they still think Roy shouldn't go to school. Sound moving? Thanks. The point of what I'm about to read you is just so that you understand, as a journalist this drives me up the wall and Alan mentioned that I've reached a point in my career. I don't have to go to places like Syria anymore and I don't really know or Afghanistan for that matter. The company would rather I didn't because they have to spend a lot of money on insurance and there's no better way to ruin an editor's day than for her to find out you're dead and she has to figure out how to get your body home. So they would rather we just sort of ignored it. But when I got letters like this, this was after the Taliban visit and I'm a fine officer, I'm sure, named Major Randy Schmelling, the PM team chief in Ghazni province, an American officer. He says, these fighters in quotation marks you joyfully embedded with are bent on killing not just as many Americans as they can but any person who dares breathe a word against them, fair enough. I don't argue with that. We revered understood taken seriously or given a legitimate platform from which to preach their murderous doctrine. That's a military officer who says we don't need to try to understand the enemy. Any of you who are old enough or have read the histories of the Vietnam War will hear that one like a ghost from a dark past. We need to understand the enemy. And part of what I like about Roya and her family is that despite the risks that they take, and this is day in and day out, it's not something that disappears and comes and goes, it is constant, they still love their country and they still think that all Afghans have to get together and sort this out. That's a flickering flame to use that tired cliche. If we can keep it alive in Roya and in her brother and in other members of her family, it can spread. And there's hope for that country. And that's what to me Roya's story is about. You may, if you can advance it, I'll point. Can you go to the next one? The life that Roya will tell you in more detail, the life of children in Afghanistan, despite the many hundreds of billions of dollars that we've spent there is horrifyingly sad. You'll hear soon that Roya was a teacher herself. We spent a lot of time and money trying to build up the school system in Afghanistan and we read in the newspaper that X number of dollars have been spent on schools and training teachers and we think that means something that we understand but really what it means is that there are buildings and some of them are still schools, a lot of them aren't. They're either bases for the military or the Taliban have blown them up. The people who are teaching in large cases are students themselves. People who just graduated, who then turn around and stand at the front of a class and teach because there's no other teacher there. When it came time for me to make a choice, do you help someone like Roya or you don't? The first thing that was in my mind was that we sent troops over to Afghanistan to accomplish a mission. And that mission as I understood it was to support the people who were fighting for the similar values that we are. Equality, democracy, a more liberal view of the world, a more modern view of the world. And when I had to decide do I act or don't I, the first question I came to was if I don't act then what was this all for? The number of Canadians who died in Afghanistan, I have to jump ahead here. Here we go. 158 dead. Four Canadians, civilians killed. One of them was a journalist from, you know, people in the audience will remember a name. It escapes me. That's right. You know, hate me for forgetting it. You know, these are all people who died for something. Senators will always tell you no story is worth dying for, nonsense. If no story is worth dying for then what the hell are we there trying to do? Those people didn't die for nothing. And in order to keep what they died for, that hope alive, we help people like Roya because the real answer in my mind is to empower Afghans to solve this problem. The number of weapons in Afghanistan is overwhelming even if you started, you know, midway through this last 10 years of conflict, you know, after the 2001 intervention, had stopped there, there'd be too many guns. But what we have managed to do is pour massive amounts of weapons into a country which has no stability at all, which gives me the fear that if things start to collapse again as troops would draw in 2014, it could well be worse than it was when we arrived in 2001. There's better weapons, better training, people are going to be better at killing each other is the sad reality. I don't guarantee that that's going to happen, but it's a very high possibility. A girl shall lead. That's how I knew this young woman. When I first met her in the Afghan-Canadian Community Centre in Kandahar, I went there in late 2010 because an editor had an idea and the idea was go find a young Afghan woman who we can follow for as many years as we possibly can until she's 60 if we can and tell the unfolding story of Afghanistan's future through the eyes of that young woman. For better or worse, no matter what happens, she'll be our focus and that's how we'll follow the story. And for someone who has difficulty, you know, getting people far away, Canadian readers to care about and to see and understand and to feel a place so remote and so alien to most of us. I thought that's an excellent idea. People will really relate and come to know this one person. But how do you find that one person? I work with the people we call the business fixers, their local interpreters who know things that we don't and I said to them, I need to find a young Afghan woman, where do I go to find someone whose family will allow a foreign male to talk to her at regular intervals, someone who is intelligent and ambitious and he said, well, why don't you go to the Afghan Canadian Community Center? I'd never heard of it before. It turns out it's funded by Ottawa area residents. There may be people in this room. I met one in fact who showed me a photograph of himself at the Afghan Canadian Center just a couple of years ago. It's a link that we had to Kandahar that I never knew of until I went there. I met the director of the school and I explained what I needed to do. He said, I've just a girl for you. Come back tomorrow. The next morning I came back and there was Roya with her mother. That by the way is the director of the school on his headphones. They do a lot of distance learning. Roya can tell you about this over Skype with teachers in Canada. Roya had a Canadian teacher before I ever met her who I think you still communicate with her? Yeah. We just communicate by Skype. So it was different programs that they were running as I did civics and it was East School which I really appreciate. I get my first hand from East School that I finished civics. Civics. Think about that. Roya knows more about the parliamentary system than I do because she studied Canadian civics over Skype from a dusty little room in Canada. I will say this many times and forgive me for it but just think of the power of people still in that room today by the way who are giving up and yet the world will give up on Afghanistan I fear. It did once and then we got 2001 and I fear that it's going to do it again and God knows what will happen 10 years hence. That again is the brave director who has defined innumerable death threats to keep the school open. Can you click it again for me? When I first met Roya at the school I was quickly going through the standard interview and asked her the obvious question what do you want to do when you finish school and I expected her to say to be a teacher or a nurse maybe a doctor sort of the traditional pardon me, female answers but she said I want to be a politician and I thought the interpreter had translated him properly and I said could you get her to say that again please and she said I want to be a politician and her mother was sitting there and I said ask her mother does she know what Roya wants to be? I make light of this but forgive me Roya politicians get killed all the time in Afghanistan there is no more dangerous undertaking in the country of Afghanistan than being a politician and I asked her mother is that a dangerous thing to want your daughter or to allow your daughter to be and she said I know to her it was like not news to me and she told the story of Roya and her father and how when Roya was yay high her father came home he was a police officer from a young age and he married Roy's mother at age 13 by the way and treated her I believe you told me correct me if I'm wrong he told your mother you must finish school before you have children tell them how revolutionary that idea was so the idea was like it's really hard in Afghanistan circumstance to let your a person you got married to let them go to school again so it was really fortunate that my father allowed my mom to finish the school she was responsible for the home and children and everything but I'm really happy that my mother got to finish the school however she got married correct my memory if I'm wrong but they told me the story that when Roya was yay high her father came home and put his police cap on the you know like a coffee table or a table in the sitting room pulled over and picked it up and put it on her head tell the story yeah so it was like I really interested while my father was getting home like as as usual child that when they say to your parents they were like okay I have to go run and when I was seeing my father that's coming with a hat and I was really excited to see the uniform and the hat that he had on and I suddenly go and just hug and grab the the hat that my father and put on my head and my mom was like what are you doing at least let him come inside home and just go and grab the hat and put in your head I can't wait until he was coming home and I can put the hat on my head and this is the most important part of the story this is Roya's father by the way they told me about how this is in the soviet period I think long before foreign troops got there certainly in 2001 that he had the attitude that his daughters were equal to his sons and that he used to come home and after work at night would take the girls and the boys on the floor and teach them all how to read he wanted to make sure that his daughters were literate these are revolutionary ideas among most afghans today let alone when Roya was this high and what struck me as they told me these stories was that no foreigner told him to think this way he thought that way because he thought that was the right way to think and you know the there's only so much people from outside of any country can do it's sort of like a family if we want to talk about problems if it's the oil sands or kebek or whatever it is we can have that argument among ourselves but don't let the Europeans bring it up how dare they same is true to me for Afghanistan I can have difficulties with the way women are treated and all those sorts of things but I hate to say it it's just not a lot of my business but if there are afghans who disagree with the way women are treated and want to fix that I want to help those afghans solve that problem because that's going to be a long term solution if we try to force a solution from outside by killing people or building schools or doing whatever we're doing without sufficient support inside I don't see it working Roya's father had started that fight long before any foreigners got there to pick it up I got an email from the school director one day I don't remember when it was but it was some weeks after what I'm about to describe it said very briefly have you heard Roya's father is dead and I thought what happened was it an illness was he killed I didn't know so I emailed Roya and I said we got on the phone somehow on Skype and Roya you'll hear more of is a very articulate intelligent person I couldn't understand a word she was saying and I kept trying to understand and I said Roya this is not working let me get the fixer to call you and he'll write down everything and then email it to me he then told me the story if you don't mind Roya the story of how your father was killed do you mind I'll tell it it's very brief the commander in district one in Kandahar city he's a career police officer and he led from the front a lot of bad things was said about the police in Afghanistan this was a brave man who led from the front he was on a mission to arrest a notorious Taliban commander who was moving around the city and organizing IED improvised explosive device squads and he was a nasty character and as long as he was out there they weren't going to solve the IEDs and kidnappings and other things in the city he had they had intelligence on where they thought this guy was Kandahar is an old city the older parts of it narrow streets that wind warren like and Roya recalled to me that she had phoned her father the morning it was a night time operation and the sun was rising and she said when are you coming home breakfast is ready and he said I'll be right there there's just one more place we have to check they thought that this guy had gotten away and some people stopped them and said why don't you check that compound down on alleyway and so they went there it was an ambush Taliban commander was there with a couple of his men they hit them with hand grenades as they walked into the compound and opened fire and Roya's father was struck and then his men killed the Taliban commander and they both effectively died on the spot this was not just a fall this was a man who had made Roya the strong person that she is so when he was gone it was clear that she had completely lost at that moment the strength that she had she was distraught, she didn't know how she was going to finish school she didn't know how she was going to do anything you will tell them I hope what was your situation after your father died yeah so I would like to say that I was 16 when I first met Mr. Paul my dreams was in Afghanistan circumstance that I would like to be a politician it was a totally different situation for a women to be in this age and go out for what she dreams for so it was really difficult before that my father was alive I had the opportunity to get education and change life for Afghans Afghans have this strength and this power to stand for their rights they want peace they want really peace their points of life is like to have peace but the problem they have this education standard they don't have such facilities for the young generation to go and get this peace to have education and well trained people to lead the country so it was one of my dreams to be a big change for Afghans and Afghan women and Afghan society before I had the strength and power because my father was alive the person who was going to give me all these opportunities and can the hard situation and these hard circumstances so after my father passed away it was really difficult for me I was stuck at home and I don't know what to do, where to go and how can I achieve this dream and can the hard situation so I got trades and my family got the trades because I can't continue anymore what I want for like 6-5 months I was at home and I can't go out of the home and finally that Ehsan Al-Ahsan at the Canadian Community Center contacted Mr. Paul and said that you know the person that you wrote the story and you want to follow for the future like stuck at home and you can't go and get complete hard education so finally I received an email and call which is connection in Kandahar's lot really well so the Kandahar call I didn't get what the main point is so I directly emailed and then I got the email received and the process starts this process helps me to be here and start to go toward my dreams and achieve what I want to be now here's where we get into the title of tonight's session talk meeting the the first decision as a journalist was do I do anything and you know I learned on this very campus that God it must be 30 years ago to this day journalists don't get involved we're not part of the story and you're supposed to be the objective observer and let the experts the charity workers and the NGOs and the professionals deal with the solutions you just observe and I thought well if I just sit here and observe and write a story about it nothing's going to happen and if I walk away from Roya at this point I'm abandoning what her father believed in and what Canada invested so much into what Roya believes in and I can I can try to keep that alive or I can walk away from it so I thought if memory serves it was a Sunday and I've never ever you know I'm the sword who says you know sorry you got a problem I can't really help you I'm just not the charitable type but something moved me from Roya's father's spirit I'm not a religious person but I honestly believe something forced me to do to make the decision I made and I'm certain it was a Sunday because I was shocked at how quickly the email that I wrote got an answer I quickly googled I thought okay she's got to come to Canada and we've got to get her into a school but she can't live with me because I travel all the time that just isn't going to work so I have to get into a boarding school so I literally googled Canada boarding school and I knew she had to learn English to get her English skills up in order to succeed in the Canadian school so I literally googled Canada boarding school in English and sure enough a list came up for people who were shopping for schools in Canada foreign students and I took the top five that sounded good and only one replied and it was on a Sunday and it was the then admissions director of Ashborough College, a guy named Kevin Farrell and you know is he here tonight? No to the day I die I will wonder what moved that guy to answer my email but he did and he said I gave him some links to some stories and he said I've read them and I can't make any guarantees I'm just the admissions director but I'll do everything I can to make this happen I'm going to get started and stick with me and he moved mountains he made it happen and when that was really the hardest part it was easy for me to say let's do something it was hard for somebody to make it happen he made it happen and then when he got there the headmaster of Ashbury the teachers at Ashbury they all could have said in the first month or two, Roy will tell you herself it was difficult she was traumatized she had culture shock she had problems with English language all of those things were piling on all at once she was worried mostly about her family she was up all night long trying to communicate with her family to make sure they were not injured etc all of those things were piling on but none of the staff at Ashbury gave up on her and they got her through a very tough period and then she started to get traction and just wait until you hear how much traction she's got if she doesn't lead Afghanistan she'll probably lead Canada this was Roy in when did you come here again? I can't even remember the dates anymore it was July 15 that's when your father died June 15 January of 2011 and 11 2012 you see it sounds like a decade ago January of 2012 so that's just over a year ago hard to believe just over a year ago that's Roy with her mother and her sister at her father's grave in Kandahar I can't believe it's just over a year ago this is Roy just over a year ago at the airport in Kandahar it's hard for probably all of us to understand this her family had to trust me in a way you can't imagine and I'm not a Muslim being a foreigner they know very little about me I arrived with the editor of the Toronto Star Michael Cook who can be a frightening person but they trusted us to take care of their Roy and there is no more sacred trust to give your child to a stranger and say protect her don't let her keep her whole and they trusted us to do that and as the family grew more people took on that responsibility and just take a look on this I think he's a policeman back there just take a look on his face he's disgusted by the fact that Roy is leaving the country I don't even think he knew that I was with Roy he was just disgusted that a young woman in the airport that's how bad it is when we were in the airport you know you can Roy translated some of this for me but maybe you could tell the story better in this very lounge when it was obvious that Roy was with us we were sort of sitting Michael and I across from her in the seats a police officer who patrolled the airport who I had met oddly enough earlier on a previous trip because my phone was dead and the flight I thought it was catching wasn't flying that day and he gave me a lift to the gate and this guy saw me with Roy I came up not in a friendly manner at all and said friend what are you doing here and I said I'm a journalist don't you remember and he said yeah but why are you with her and I explained that she was going to school in Canada so what did he say to you it was really hard for her to believe that I'm leaving a country with two foreign men and this age while I was young and he was like how can you leave the country with two foreign men there's lots of rules I can't blame him because he grew up in the same kind of situation and he knows the situation there and it was really hard for him to see an Afghan girl like to go with two foreign men to travel for education and he never believed that I will go for education and I explained that I'm going I'm leaving Kandahar but one day you will see like I will come with lots of proud for Afghans it doesn't mean I'm leaving a country as someone to go and just leave the country it can be a great future like for all our Afghans he never trusted me by saying this he thought maybe something wrong that why I'm leaving with these two foreign men it was really difficult time because I had a conversation with this police officer for two hours like after I left and he was like how your family allow you how you gonna leave country without like in this age and all this stuff so I explained at the end while I was like what's his problem like I have to figure out like how to find a way and it was a big shame that a foreign journalist come like to bring something different in Afghanistan and they will get shot or cause or something I was really afraid of that and I just ask them you guys stay away I can deal with him he is our own afghan I can deal with the way he is then I figured out that he came from really hard circumstance you know he is a police officer that have responsibility of a family that his family was back home in Kabul and he was working for all this family it was really hard for him and he told me that suddenly he was really intelligent when perfect speaking and he was speaking really good English and as well Pashto Inderi like really great afghan police officer and I was like he was like I was afraid that how can you leave how your family allowed and I was like I explained all the situation at the end I figured out that he have his own pain that he lost father the same way and he don't have a good job to support the family and all this troubles and I had some friends I said you know you can you just can give me like your email address or something I can exchange contact I can find a job for you I had a friend an organization suddenly I called to her and I said would you like a person to work with you and they said yes but well you work but you can't work and you're leaving I was like no I'm not going to work now I'm leaving and just I just say a friend of mine just control the situation and to make him cool down and everything is alright that I can leave the airport I just change the contact and then he just okay at the end when I was leaving he was like just do you want me to transfer your luggage I said thank you so much um you know she the way why it tells it it's not as scary as it was at the moment I was as this was going on I was whispering to Michael you know if he tries to stop us because he had said you're not getting on the airport you're not going to leave this airport and I said to Michael you know what are we going to do you know if we get to the doorway and he grabs her then we've got to stay with it we've got to grab her back or something that was going to happen meanwhile Roy is massaging this guy and figuring out what he needed sorry metaphorically I can't understand that do you see the problems I caused I was like I never did it so you know the short end of the story the short part of the story she knew more of what she was doing than I did at that moment I knew that we had done the right thing Roy is not just someone who dreams of being a politician she's born to be a politician she knows how to work people and get things done not massage them necessarily but how to get things done you know this this is Roy on the flight to Dubai and then in Dubai just remember a few frames before that she was in the dust in a burqa at her father's grave site and literally hours later she's in Dubai duty free you can imagine the culture shock I remember being next to Roy on the airplane and it was so they got a great entertainment system and there were movies and I thought there's got to be a movie in there that's not dangerous to watch and Mary Poppins was there and I showed Roy to get the whole thing down to Mary Poppins and she said no she didn't want to watch it didn't want to watch any television well I think now you watch television I always do but it was a hard situation that I can't focus on television I had enough I would travel to focus on some May I recommend Mary Poppins if you haven't seen it there's Roy at Pearson airport and just so you know that it's not just men in Kandahar who thought something was weird about all this when we finally got to the immigration counter I stepped forward with Roy and Michael and I introduced myself and I told the immigration officer that I was escorting this young woman to school at Ashbury College in Ottawa and he looked at me and said why do you need an escort and he thought this doesn't sound right and then he typed into the computer and he started reading aloud from the text I guess they put a file in there and he was skeptical skeptical skeptical and then he got to the part of on Roy's father and he read it and his whole demeanor changed and it was like welcome to Canada so when people hear the whole thing I think people get it what this is all about it's not just about one person although it's largely about one person it's about a greater idea and as a journalist when you because we can get into this and the questions I hope by colleagues for getting involved in this and it's easier to walk away nobody would have faulted me for just saying my life is not my business and it would have been simpler because now I'm part of something I can't control and shouldn't control but it keeps me awake at night wondering what might go wrong and all the things a parent worries about all of those are good things but they're sometimes painful and that any parent will tell you it's easier not to have kids but you're glad in the end that you did it would have been easier just to say no but I'm glad I didn't because to watch Roy grow to where she is today just over a year later what I thought she was capable of is just a tiny bit of what she's capable of and ten years from now maybe we could all get together and celebrate where she is then this is Roy getting off the train on her way to Ashbury you know we we didn't choose this but there she was in front of the poster Valdan Tsukishi who you'll know is the CEO released from house arrest democratic leader of Burma you know some of you will know her story but she won a democratic election and the military didn't like that and put her under house arrest and she suffered terribly and finally was released under international pressure but still isn't the leader of the country she won an election a democratic woman who knows that she can't defeat the military and she could lead an uprising maybe with people in the streets but that would only get a lot of people killed she has chosen for pragmatic reasons to just be a member of parliament and hope that she can change the system that way and this is a conversation Roy and I were having this afternoon you know how how do you change the system do you help and lead people into the streets if it's going to be a violent uprising or do you try to change it within the system do you try to change minds and these are all things that you know that that Roy is going to decide for herself and others other country men women will decide for themselves how do they fix what's wrong with Afghanistan and I for one am going to be fascinated to watch and unfold that's then and now you know because just a quick pitch because there's a charitable element to this Ashbury has been generous beyond belief in allowing Roy to go there without paying school fees living in the residence without paying fees for that it's extraordinarily expensive but we ask when we can people to donate to support other living expenses other related expenses and if you're interested just send me an email at that address we'll leave it up I hope and I'll tell you how to do that thank you for your attention and I took too much of Roy's time now it's yours first of all I would like to thank Mr. Professor Thomas for having me here and inviting me here and I would like to thank all the audience for coming and for this great opportunity that all Canadians joined me in this journey so that's all Mr. Paul mentioned as you're all aware of how we met and how we got here so as I told before that it was one of my dreams to be a politician in Afghanistan circumstance but the circumstance and situation changed while I lost my father so I get to Canada after like 2012 2012 while I left to Canada so it was the first experience being in a white land which I thought now I'm reading given so I thought Canada is also the same as there's no dream no colour because first when I came it was all white about the snow and now that I'm reading the given I'm saying maybe Canada was the same that there was no colour and no no pain but probably it's a lot of we can get sunshine and grass and everything so that's all right it's fine with me now not one year before so now that I get to I really appreciate Ashbury that I have now the opportunities to study here so no one predict the situation how like going to be like 10 years later that I can see a dream like to be a politician and run back my country and help my country that have like lots of pain on it and many people come and go and see the situation no one had the idea to change Afghanistan and do something that stands for what an Afghan want like it's true that all people help us through all but we need some educated standard and we need basic that we can run like we can have Afghanistan as a better place which is our new generation with good education facilities and trained world people that have good leaders for Afghanistan just not by saying that I'm a leader and I want to run a country it doesn't make like change we have to stand and say I'm ready for every sacrifice to do for my country to make change for Afghanistan to make change for those people who lost all their members of family just not me it's pain for me that I lost my father but same time for those people who lost like they're all family and I really like I can't say how to say but I really can understand Canadians too that they lost the troops and forces in Afghanistan animations they lost like legs, hands which is really hard to send from a safe place someone to a country which is no it's always going because they have a good humanity and they can help and they are seeing the world that it should be seen like they want Afghanistan to stand back so now that I can see the situation not back home is really good to move on for any reaction and stand for but I can see like maybe we will have Afghanistan 10 years later as a country that a women and men can stand for any men and women to get education to work together and say yes we are overworked we want just peaceful Afghanistan but same as other countries that countries Germany I read about World War 1 and World War 2 which is really surprising but I would my history teacher is here if I'm wrong I need you to correct me but you know that I'm not good with this so I read about that like about Germany and everywhere so it's over the war but Afghanistan work place still why it's not coming to the mind of those people who spend billions of dollars and there is no change in Afghanistan even we don't like have a school that our children can go and get this usually we have some but I don't say that we don't and the situation is really hard like my parents can be tough can be so nice that I'm here but they can let their children to go and get education some because of the situation and security they can't leave their children to go and get education and the meanwhile my parents always allow me you know it was like a demonstration demonstration got to violence and we had school burn I got injured a little bit slightly on my arm but the next day I asked my father that can I stay home and my father was like you know your time does not burn you can go you can write with your hand which is which we Afghans need that which we really need that to our parents let us to go and see the society we have to we are Afghans we are the basic like as Mr. Paul said like we are not allowing European to like come and be involved in a like foreign countries decision what they are making for their country and how they will run their country so Afghans are the same we want to run our country by our own and what we need to run our country by our own and what we need to have is educated people that can understand the situation that have knowledge and skills just not graduate 12 and going to parliament it's not gonna work it's again the same situation as we had before 10 50 years before so we still hopefully we will get there and the journey we will see through like I really appreciate that all can help and especially I would like to take this opportunity to thanks Toronto Star and especially Mr. Paul and Michael Cook and all Canadians that join me in this journey and we will see what will happen the next 10 years hopefully when they will have speech and say yeah Afghanistan is not anymore war country and there is no violence anymore and we can see Afghanistan as a future not just not as a war land we don't want anymore war lots we need pain we can put our guns down as I had a picture for women stranded with our school nurse that I choose to say oh not anymore weapon I don't want to take weapon in my hand to fight for Afghans I have only pain to fight for my Afghans and all Afghans love that pain and hopefully we will get by this pain the way we want and Afghanistan will be a successful country thank you I'm going to show you how it's done you come up here there's a microphone you can introduce yourself if you wish or just pose a question so while people make their decisions about doing so why don't I just quickly ask each of you a question I'd like to know how this relationship has changed you so for Paul you know is the journalism of engagement like dual citizenship we're having two passports you go to Afghanistan and do it this way but then you go to Syria and Aleppo is it a different kind of journalism are you going to switch back and forth or is this like now the way you're going to do it and Roya when you go back how do you see yourself as a different person what kind of person is going to go back to Afghanistan how might you see yourself being different from the person who came here you're excited I shall quickly demonstrate the value of a Carlton University journalism school education one of the things I remember clearest about our lectures was the point correct me if I got this one wrong that as journalism developed from the period of yellow journalism when there was a period of crusading and journalists had a point of view and that model worked as journalism became as more advertisers came into newspapers they were worried about that sort of activist crusading journalism because they might turn off a portion of their potential customers the so-called objective journalism developed so that we could make advertisers feel comfortable and have pretty well anyone with any point of view finding a way into our news coverage so when you know that brief history you know that this sacred principle of so-called journalistic objectivity is not written in stone anywhere it was something that developed perhaps primarily for financial reasons here we are today if you haven't heard this on the news two days ago the Toronto Star once it's going to lay off at least 55 people maybe 60 after so many years of layoffs that's a huge number of people they want to cut $6.5 million out of their their payroll very very quick the people they're getting rid of are copy editors people who lay off pages they're basically rapidly reducing the newsroom to just reporting staff and a few dumb editors to make the place look realistic but people who do the hard work of copy editing and finding mistakes and those sorts of things that's going to be contracted out now a lot of because of the financial problems and they're severe for newspapers across the English around the world primarily people are asking is the solution technology do we just have to tweet more or do we update our Facebook pages more is the solution this or that when I ask that question I believe that what is old is new again the Toronto Star throughout all of its history has had a very proud tradition of crusading for certain things crusaded for the poor when Toronto had street children thousands living in the street they would write about how this was wrong and un-Christian and all those sorts of things so it's not so unusual for Toronto Star reported to do what I did but I think and you can tell me if I'm wrong I think the public craves this sort of thing because they are tired of being told about problems without being offered a solution and because of partly because of that because of the internet as a technological revolution but because they can go to other non-mainstream websites and get involved and try to solve the problems that they know about they're going in droves and what I tell my colleagues and you know understand there are numerous people who think that my attitude is wrong that it's dangerous and that if we blow up objectivity that we'll lose all sorts of credibility that we can discuss what I say to them is no you're absolutely wrong our so-called objectivity A is unrealistic we're human beings we have a point of view and the public gave up on that a long time ago now Alvin asked the key question you cannot be an activist journalist 24 hours a day I don't know everything I'm not God but when there's a moment like this between right and wrong I think the public accepts that I will make a choice and say I think this is the right thing if you want to come with me, come with me so the pages won't be filled all the time with subjective you know I know what I'm talking about I'm right journalism but I think there should be more of it I think the public wants it and I think it will draw more readers back to us so second turn is mine if I will go back the situation and I got opportunity to go back to my country I will be not the totally different person I'm Afghan and I'm proud who I am and what makes me proud that I have now like the opportunity to get education and the opportunity that I have today I can provide this opportunity for even at least 10 other people who need this opportunity to get education and we all like we need to have someone to have a high skill and run this country and probably I'm not going to say that I will be especially prime minister when I get there but at least I can change some minds for them and I can say what's right, what's wrong and if we get these people together and they can understand what the sentiment says, why we are behind why Afghans are behind why everyone is saying every news is writing Afghans every day, 20 Afghans did because we don't have our own Afghan community it's like everyone is running us we need this Afghan community if I will go back first of all I will get lots of women to come together and say yes we have our voice we are not silent, we never can give up if we didn't if Afghans didn't give up in this 34 years of war they will never give up I'm sure about that and if I will if I get opportunity that it's not looking to me like to kill me in a one month probably I will do the change that I promise to everyone and my family and all Afghans that I promise that I'm going to Canada but I will be back with lots of things and I will have at least a little change for society can I quickly say Roy reminded me of something important I found myself for this journalists have taken the burqa, the full full length veil and turned it into a symbol of oppression of women and not through any attention I don't think that has come to suggest that Afghan women are weak and timid and oppressed you can see that's not the case here but I assure you if you go into any Afghan home talk to any Afghan man they will tell you Afghan women are not timid run sure I would like to explain that like burqa first of all we are Muslim we do hijab but burqa is not our weakness it's just the culture that left for Afghans we have hijab we are Muslim we do hijab like the scarf and no hair showing probably with the scarf but we don't have burqa burqa is just left from the culture for us it's not the main basic of Islam that things and it's not our our weakness it's our strength because situation back home in Afghanistan it's not safe if I will walk two days the same time I walk like now here I can get shot everything is possible to happen because of the second instance situation back home women are supposed to work but if you see we should not see their burqa and their how they are the way of style it doesn't make sense like to see to judge them from their wearing their burqa judge them from their mind go and ask any Afghan female or male that's well educated that's belong to a family not just to go ask someone in the street they have the ability to be a good people in the future people judge us as we are wearing burqa it's not the same if I wear a suit I'm a best person that I can do everything no if I want people should not judge me by my burqa people should judge me by my power and by what I have the ability it's just that through this 24 years that's left that we have to wear a burqa just because of safety in the situation the facilities that we don't have it there we are wearing burqa but see judge people what they have inside don't judge people what you can see in afghans thank you I just want to ask one good question and then sort of a longer question first of all the Afghan Canadian community center do you either of you have a sense of what its future is right now because my understanding probably from what Paul's written before is that CEDA was cutting funding for it and it was kind of in a struggle to figure out how it was going to replace that funding but in the second question I had was Roy I was really curious to know since you've been here and talked to Canadians how do you think Canadians really having had soldiers there for 10 years and lots of also you know the conditions of human rights focus on it do you think Canadians really still have in general have an understanding of Afghanistan and what when you talk to them about it have an understanding of what it's like there and what would you really like people to know what would you like to have people know that they don't know right now thank you I would like to say that we really appreciate all Afghans the loss of soldiers and as I said before that it's really hard for my Afghan that I lost my father for my own country that's a really big pain but think that you send your child or your husband your father to a country from a country which is safe and sending for debt it's like for sure you know maybe he will come back maybe he will never come back but I would like to say Canadians should understand that Afghans really appreciate that and the situation that Canadians go through for Afghanistan it is really hard it is really hard to have your child or your father or your husband send and never get back to come the understanding they should understand that in which circumstance they are leaving in Afghanistan which missions they are doing with our soldiers which is a really really really difficult situation and Afghans really appreciate that but nothing we can do for that we are sorry because we are losing like in a day 120 140 people which is for Afghans it's really hard for a country that like 120 people everyone have a sorrow and pain in their home we feel that pain with Canadians too we can understand them how hard it is to send someone from your home and never get back I would like to all Canadians know and feel the pain of those parents, those mothers that lost their child for Afghanistan and feeling really sorry for that I want to tell a very quick story which I hope will show you how much of a failure journalism is generally in a country as complicated as Afghanistan you know we I and all of my colleagues I think do our hardest to try to to get to know and understand and sort it out but you know just read any history of Afghanistan and any foreigner will tell you the same thing as military commanders are leaving now with all the intelligence gathering operations and everything else that they have they will admit to you that they the more they know the less they understand it's an incredibly complicated place about two days before Kabul fell to the you know to the northern alliance forces in 2001 after the U.S. sent in special forces to support them with bombing to drive the Taliban out about two days before they took Kabul I was in the mountains overlooking the you know to a distance overlooking the city and we'd gone up there for two or three days in a row and had sort of befriended a northern alliance commander and the final time I went up there on this day he was you know the first time we went up there they were firing with anti-aircraft guns leveled horizontal to the ground and firing anti-aircraft guns down the road at Taliban fighters not far away and this time when we went up the Taliban were advancing up the road not an anger but they had come over to the northern alliance side and the commander was riding along on horseback with another man beside him on horseback and I was running along with my little tape recorder trying to get one breath of air and he was they were headed off to Kabul to join the advancing forces about to take the city and I was asking the obvious questions but commander to you know just yesterday you were firing anti-aircraft guns leveled to the ground at these people what happened and he stopped just long enough to tell me this he said I have known this man the Taliban local Taliban commander since I was a boy he was my brother's best friend and he used to come to my house and I would when I was younger would play at their feet he said I have been communicating secretly by letter with him for years and he was just waiting for the right moment to come over and you know that story just runs over and over in my head to this day if we had known just that one fact of Afghan society that enemies are brothers and that alliances shift with the winds and people are always calculating which way is this going where do my interests lie and that it's a very complicated game of chess and that what we see as enemies you know the same letter from the major we don't need to understand these people well yes we do need to understand them because maybe you don't have to kill them maybe you could just do a deal with somebody and they'll come over and then other people will come over and before you know what the war is over if we understood them what I learned at that moment was if we had you know maybe it just served a few suitcases full of cash maybe the twin towers would still be standing and maybe Osama bin Laden would have been a footnote in history but we ignored Afghanistan and didn't try to understand it and as a journalist I feel guilty of that because you know what we do is based on stereotypes the burqa is the biggest stereotype running it's a great challenge to try to understand complex places and get past the sort of sports metaphor of war the sad fact is that TV networks like war newspapers like it to a lesser extent but they also like it because it's easy to cover it's good versus bad black versus white, good versus evil and it doesn't take a lot of thought to cover it to cover things so that they don't get to a war to cover the diplomacy and the intricate negotiations and the understandings that can avert war that's impossibly difficult and journalism does a terrible job of it the African Canadian Community Centre the Americans stepped in ironically enough to fund the African Canadian Community Centre when CEDA pulled its money out but private Canadians continued to contribute through the Canadian International Learning Foundation which is an Ottawa based charity so it's still the African Canadian Community Centre part of it with largely funded by American tax dollars but also good Canadian donations we have this space until about 9 o'clock and then we have to turn it back into a Tim Martin so could I just see I think a few people want to ask questions so why don't you approach the mic so that I know you want to ask questions and we may just hear your questions and then turn it over to you guys to go from there so why don't we sort of answer the questions and then we can carry on from there my first question is directed to Paul so do you feel your role as a journalist has changed since covering the story because you chose to get involved and my next question is to Roya and it's when you're a politician what's the first thing you want to do for your country second is corruption which is going over all Afghanistan third, the right of speech which I learned from my history teacher he's here but I know before and the right of speech that every human have freedom to talk about like now we can't we don't have this right to talk we have like people who have power they can just do what they want our poor educated that spend all their lives to study they can't get to the stage where they want to serve the country it's all about corruption what makes country to increase and don't have development that is what it is corruption and no equality of men and women we have in our office hundreds of men but no women which I was the life example when I was I did some crazy works so like 15, 16 when I followed life and 3 months I thought I know some English my tutor is here so I thought I know some English and I applied for a job which is an organization with thousand men and a girl that's only 16 and going to job every day which is really pretty dangerous and my parents were like it's enough that you're going to teach people don't know anything but at least you know something to teach but don't do it it's so dangerous but I realized if I don't step out no women will get this power and say that I can do it why if a man can go and have like they have the same brain they have eating the same way they are going out why I can do that so I step in and I just go to the office for an interview and they are like first their question was how old are you I was like yeah I'm 16 but I want to get a job that's not a big deal see if I have the ability to get this job or not or maybe there will be a male that can get my position I was like no I don't want to do it as you saw the picture with the high only like I was covered I worked all the day I was admin assistant which my math is not good but anyway I was doing filing so not a huge job but it was fine for the time so I got step in and I was like after interview I was coming every day and there's two highs and looking staring in a computer don't look to men's no not at all just look to your screen of computer and do your work till I get to lunch and lunchtime I have to all the men should go and eat together I was alone in a spare room that I can open the cover and eat so why a man can eat in a public and a women should be covered all the time that even can have a glass of water till they get to a spare room what makes the men different from us what ability they have that we don't have it let's think about it like and I hear people have voice we don't have voice there if I understand and say probably they're thinking you are crazy but I am not I don't think so maybe a little bit crazy that's fine so it's the big change for afghan women and afghan communities to have equal rights and they can do it thank you we have three more people quickly get your questions it seems that things aren't going to get all that much easier for women in afghanistan in the next few years the taliban will come back in a resurgent way so I'm just wondering for you do you have any other than your father do you sort of look up to any women in afghanistan somebody like Madalai Joya for example is she like an example for you maybe somewhere you go from hope yes this is a great question but the only inspiration women that was I read about but I never met it she passed away it was Malala Maywendi who was the time that we are going to lose the war and all our men were died some men that left probably injured so she woke up and said stand up and say we can do it let's go for it after that the women come out the injured men stand up and say if our women can do that we can do that so here is the point that I'm saying equality and equality and equality we got a stone and stick our all women run and fight the enemy and that was a great inspiration for me to read about just for those who don't know that's during the british period the occupation she was a Pashtun woman wasn't she she was a Pashtun woman it's like the Joan of Arc of Afghanistan the battles being lost they were being massacred and she stood up and said get back out there and fight a woman led so this is not an unusual thing Afghan men should be reminded of that frequently they have to remind them but they think they don't hear so I have to whisper to you know we got the country for you don't we? my question is for Paul as I'm standing up here I'm hearing you answer my question a little bit already I've heard you speak about before about development journalism I've also tonight heard you speak about activist journalism I wanted to ask you about the role of the media in peace building if you can talk a little bit about that you started to answer when you were talking about the role of the media in peace building how should it look you know I'm going to focus in because we're time is short and also because I believe very passionately about this you know I don't want to sound like a conspiracy not but here it goes there are forces that work in the world that get very little attention there are people with journals who know about them you know when I was speaking earlier about the situation in Syria the CIA meets openly with opposition forces in a place called Gaziantab in southern Turkey there's only one five star hotel there so you can see them coming and going and when there happen to be a lot of American and Syrians having breakfast in a five star hotel in Turkey it doesn't take a genius to figure out somethings up and you just go to the ballroom and there they are with the maps out and they're having meetings if the CIA is there then the massage is there if the massage is there then the Saudi intelligence is there there are foreign intelligence agencies pulling levers in Syria and people are dying they're trying to save lives but they're also making the situation complicated and what I dream of is the day when journalists can get that story out so that we in democracies can say hold on a second here is that such a smart idea backing this faction over that and that sort of journalist rather than the unfortunately a school got bombed today that's important and it's important to get people to care and people generally care when children suffer but the more important journalism is the investigative journalism that will tell you all of the dirty things that are being done in our name that are leading to large numbers of people getting killed and it's very complicated and I don't know how we get there but the web is certainly better at this than mainstream newspapers are if you're interested in that sort of thing you can find it the difficulty is figuring out who the conspiracy nuts are and who the well informed people are but if the New York Times the credible media institutions in the world really went hard after that stuff I think we'd all be a lot better off this question is for Paul I was just wondering what are your thoughts on all the dozens and dozens of forum bureaus that have shut down over the past decade or so having spent most of my career in living in forum bureaus I'm of two minds about this because I can tell you quite honestly that you get into a rut when you live in one place you can get lazy and things that you just say well that's not new that's not new because you live there you see the stuff all the time but the reporter who gets off the plane sees it all fresh so that's one bad part of living in one place and covering a region all the time you quickly can get stale the good part is the obvious part you have better sources you have much deeper understanding of it the simple answer is newspapers and this isn't just Canadian newspapers this is newspapers the world over just can't afford that kind of stuff anymore you know the when I started out as a forum correspondent when I got fired by the LA Times I was building them for international school for my son because I couldn't buy my son in a local school in New Delhi because they have no windows and the teachers don't show up so I have to put him in an international school and they charge huge amounts of money much more than Ashbury does in some countries where we had forum correspondence they had to sign I forget what it's called but it's like a thousand dollar a hundred thousand dollar guaranteed that they're going to be enrolled for four years and you're going to get your hundred thousand dollars and if I leave early because of earthquake or disaster or something we'll still give you the hundred thousand dollars the expenses add up very quickly very rapidly given to the millions of dollars and that just isn't possible anymore nobody can play that game anymore so the question to me now is how do you try to do it well under the restraints that we have the only answer I have for that is to try to have sort of tears of expertise it's like the Leafs the Leafs will never win the Stanley Cup again until they rebuild their farm system the Toronto Star is an example has a rather weak forum correspondent farm system because no one can aspire to a full time position in it anymore so when I learned how to be a war correspondent there are certain things that you have to learn there are instincts that you develop you'd start to get a you don't want to sound invincible because I'm not but you start to get a sixth sense about what road looks safe and which one doesn't and you only learn those things by getting out there and risking taking small steps of risk to bigger steps of risk and we don't have that farm system in Canada anymore so to me the big question is how do you start giving people a chance to learn those things because the other element of this is insurance the Toronto Star to send meat to Syria for a week they don't tell me how much they spend but I can feel the pain in their voice it's a large sum of money so newspapers broadcast more and more tend to either just take the free stuff of YouTube you know the New York Times is a fascinating and valuable thing on their website called watching watching the war in Syria it's just somebody who monitors YouTube and tries to make sense of it that's great it's a nice little niche but it's not going to save the world the unfortunate trend is that freelancers who don't have insurance and several of them are either dead or in captivity we don't know in Syria as we speak they're taking a much greater burden than they ever have profit making corporations are making money off the backs of uninsured risk taking freelancers and you know thank god for them but there has to be a better way to as I say develop a farm system give people some protection some backing as something other than a freelancer with his neck way out on the line I just want to invite both of you I just wanted to say anything briefly in closing before we end this evening I'm encouraged by the number of seats that were full tonight I tend to worry that people are shutting off you know I'm a tax fare I've got a kid, I've got a mortgage I live in Vancouver imagine the pain that I suffer I have all the problems that everyone else has but I still care about the world and I fear that more as people have more things to worry about in their personal lives they have fewer reasons to care about the world and it gives me great strength to see that there are for every one of you you represent many hundreds more as a journalist I feel compelled to find a way to help you care more about it and to give you a way to change it so I'm really surprised and I'm really happy to have everyone here hopefully you enjoyed and not get bored thank you so much for coming hopefully you will see again and as Mr. Paul said I don't expect how many people are there all seats are full and they're back people it's really making me happy thank you so much both of you for coming here you both come a long way metaphorically and geographically keeping us on your journey although I think you're already there but I guess journeys continue even when you're already here believe me this has gone a long way to go I want to remind people Paul's email star emails are easy to remember it's pwatson at thestar.ca so if you want to follow up if you want to get involved want to continue being involved join the family I want to remind you not in this space but in another space on campus in a couple of weeks and Paul was instrumental in helping with this as well we have a journalist from Syria who's going to be in Canada Yasser El-Haji with Paul Matt who works there who's going to come and share with us about how do you do journalism in Syria these days and we hope he's going to talk about some of those skeletons in those dark closets so watch for more information about that thanks everyone for coming thank you Tim Horton for letting us use your space and thanks to all the students who helped to turn this into a theater for this event and we do record these events now in Carleton there's an on the record team I think that's what you're called OTR on the record they're there and we'll pop this up on YouTube so just check the school journalism website and then to be able to go back and look at this again and share it with other people so thank you again very much