Shukria Barakzai is a member of Parliament in Afghanistan. She grew up in a pre-Taliban Afghanistan playing hockey, volleyball, and enjoying a perfectly ordinary childhood. When the Taliban came to power, many of the elite of Afghanistan migrated, but Shukria and her family stayed back. In 1999 she was flogged on the streets by the Taliban for going to the hospital without a male escort. Instead of succumbing, she decided to fight back. She created a web of underground schools and a medical centre for women in the area. She describes the Afghanistan Parliament as a house of lords: drug lords, crime lords, and war lords. This interview demonstrates why she is feared by the NATO and the Taliban. She is joined in conversation by historian William Dalrymple and Christopher Dickey, the Paris bureau chief of Newsweek. Both their works preshadow the strands of democracy that are to be followed in this conversation.