Meena Keshwar Kamal was born on February 27, 1956 in Kabul. At the age of 21, while she was studying at Kabul University, she founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. RAWA (@realrawaofficial) as it came to be known, was created to promote education and equality for women in Afghanistan. At the time, the Democratic Republic, a communist government, ruled Afghanistan but Meena felt the changes they were making weren’t significant enough. She began to mobilize against the government, organizing meetings across the country to organize opposition. In 1981, she founded Payam-e-Zan (Women’s Message) a bilingual magazine published in both Urdu and Pashto, that focused on women’s rights with socialist leanings. That same year, she traveled to France to represent the Afghan resistance at the French Socialist Party Congress. When she entered the hall and waved the victory sign, the crowd cheered as the Soviet Delegation staged a walk out. Eventually, Meena moved to Quetta, Pakistan, bringing RAWA and its opposition to the government with her. On February 4, 1987, just three months after the assassination of her husband, another Afghan revolutionary, Meena was assassinated by unknown assailants. Claims dispute that the Afghan secret police, the Mujahideen or the Afghan Intelligence Service were behind the attack. Despite her short life, Meena’s legacy lives on in Afghanistan. In 2006, she was named one of 60 Asian Heroes by Time Magazine, who wrote that she “had already planted the seeds of an Afghan women’s rights movement based on the power of knowledge”