The women gave a news conference but asked that no one take pictures showing their faces, and one speaker’s office requested that no one print her name. It’s a lot of secrecy for a press event, but it’s a dangerous time to be a powerful woman in Afghanistan.
Police Major Colonel Sediqa Rasekh and other high-profile women spoke on Thursday at the event to highlight the continuing threat of violence against females in Afghanistan eight years since the hardline Taliban regime was ousted.
Taliban assassins gunned down a senior policewoman in southern Afghanistan in September, and female government officials regularly report receiving threats to their safety from the hardline Islamists.
PHOTO: AFP
A photo in a newspaper can make a woman a target.
“At some point we can become the target of an enemy attack, whether it is shooting, or spraying acid, kidnapping or anything. If they don’t have pictures of us, they will not be able to pick us out,” said Rasekh, who gave express permission for her name to appear in print after her office requested anonymity.
Rasekh said the Taliban have re-emerged as a threat in several parts of Afghanistan.
“The danger has increased significantly,” she said.
When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, they ordered women to stay home and tend to their families. Girls were banned from schools and women could only leave the house wearing a burqa covering their body and accompanied by a male family member.
The Afghan government and Western donors have made a major push to increase opportunities for women in recent years, but those females who buck tradition to join the government or the military or just speak out about women’s rights put their lives on the line.
“If a woman doing that is taken by the Taliban, of course her head will be taken off,” said Massouda Jalal, whose Jalal Foundation works for women’s rights in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, Jalal agreed to speak publicly and allowed her photograph to be taken.
“My philosophy is that you are born, and one day you will be dying. So why not die while being an ideal for others?” she said.
The September assassination of the policewoman in Kandahar followed the 2006 killing of a women’s affairs official in the same province. The Taliban claimed responsibility in both attacks.
Women who take prominent positions have to take extreme security measures. Marya Bashir, the country’s only provincial female chief prosecutor, has an armored car and six bodyguards provided by the US. She said she feels much more in danger than she did when she was appointed about two and a half years ago when she had a more standard setup — an unarmored vehicle and three policemen as bodyguards.
“From the time that I was appointed to now, the situation has completely changed. Every day is getting worse” with death threats and attacks, she said.
About a year ago, an explosion outside Bashir’s house injured two of her bodyguards.
“My children cannot go to school because I have got this position,” Bashir said.
She has kept them home for the past 18 months out of fear they will be attacked.
Women’s activists say the Taliban target girls’ schools as part of a campaign to show that programs supported by the West are failing.
There are signs of hope. Central Bamiyan Province, one of the country’s more peaceful regions, has a female governor. And a few women in parliament regularly appear on television campaigning for women’s rights, despite threats.
Rasekh said many of Afghanistan’s female police officers see their uniforms as a public statement against the type of passive protection offered by a burqa. A woman under one of the flowing blue robes is rendered anonymous, even her eyes hidden by a fabric mesh.
“The uniform itself is a sign of courage for women. It shows that we are not afraid,” Rasekh said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not