The aim of RAHA, a young organisation of independent writers from all over the world, is to promote reading and writing between nations and bring peace, while fighting for freedom of reading, writing and speech. I had mentioned some of our goals in replies to your International Secretary and the Chair of International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee. I hope they would be able to perceive the points I made.

Now I want to discuss with you RAHA's projects inside and outside Afghanistan. RAHA is a Persian word, which loosely translated means 'free', 'freedom', 'independent' or 'independence'. We formed RAHA more than two years ago at the time of censorship and suffocation by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the authoritarian regime in Iran. We work on a shoe-string budget, and aim to publish and propagate independent writers' opinions and literature. After living in exile for a long period, we now plan to build a global home for independent writers inside Afghanistan. We have two plans — to provide cultural infrastructure to the Afghans, and for those in other nations.

Afghanistan is a multicultural country and historically has a mix of Iranian, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Mongolian and Arabic cultures. Present-time exiles and vagrancy bring Afghans a potpourri of new cultures that they have been assimilated into the present post-Taliban Afghanistan. We are proud of and give importance to Afghanistan's compound culture. Our first plan is to change the nature of the present generation of literature in Afghanistan and help the transitional progress of classical thinking and literature. How can we help make literature and speech there progress? It needs our subtlety as Afghan writers didn't create a new literature when it was required to, and unfortunately have been dependent on ego-thinking literature.

Where are our new writers to create a new literature and a new thinking space? I ask you, What would you do in such a situation? I have a strict programme for the younger generation to educate new literature and thinking. Our children in exile have a protest anthem that has used to be played together. I deconstructed that protest anthem. This anthem and lots of signs between our new generation writers prove that we have stopped to think like the past generation and the hope that the new world-class Afghan literature would rise. Changing this perception is a gift from RAHA writers to Afghan and world literature.