Meena Keshwar Kamal

Meena was born to an educated Kabuli Pashtun family. In 1977, when she was a student at Kabul University, she founded Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an organization formed to promote equality and education for women that continues to "give voice to the deprived and silenced women of Afghanistan". Kamal felt that there was no vast changes of women's deprivation in Afghanistan. In 1979 she campaigned against the government, and organized meetings in schools to mobilize support against it, and in 1981, she launched a bilingual feminist magazine, Payam-e-Zan (Women's Message). She also founded Watan Schools to aid refugee children and their mothers, offering both hospitalization and the teaching of practical skills. At the end of 1981, by invitation of the French Government, Meena represented the Afghan resistance movement at the French Socialist Party Congress. The Soviet delegation at the Congress, headed by Boris Ponamaryev, left the hall as participants cheered when Meena started waving a victory sign. She would eventually move and base her RAWA organization in Quetta, Pakistan, in opposition to the Afghan Marxist government.

Kamal was married, in 1976, to Afghanistan Liberation Organization leader Faiz Ahmad, who was murdered in Peshawar, Pakistan, by agents of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on 12 November 1986. Meena was murdered less than 3 months afterwards. They had three children, whose whereabouts are unknown.

Kamal was assassinated in Quetta, Pakistan on 4 February 1987. Reports vary as to who the assassins were, but are believed to have been agents of the Afghan Intelligence Service KHAD, the Afghan secret police. In May 2002, two men were hanged in Pakistan after being convicted of Kamal's murder.