In the birthplace of the Taliban movement, defying Afghan convention and family advice, mothers Magola and Faranaze decided to take up arms.
In the southern province of Kandahar, they are among a handful women who have swapped their full Islamic veils, known as burqas, for life in uniform as members of Afghanistan’s under-strength police force.
“My parents don’t like me to work for the police but I am happy to serve my country,” Magola said, proudly wearing her blue uniform at the camp where she has been trained by US-led NATO forces.
PHOTO: AFP
Magola and Faranaze are not their real names. Afghanistan is a country where strict Islamic beliefs and conservative convention prohibit most women from working.
Out of 1,000 police recruits in Kandahar, only 20 were women.
Widowed during the 1996-2001 Taliban regime, Magola confided that she needed her police salary to feed her family.
She has 12 children and six are still dependent on her.
Like most Kandahari women, female officers wear burqas off-duty. But at work, wearing scarves or hoods with their uniforms, women perform essential roles in areas that remain off limits to men.
Female officers are responsible for knocking on doors, and ushering women away from homes before police swoop in for operations against suspects.
“When the police are searching a compound, they can’t go first. We have to knock on doors, explain why we are here, take the women aside so they can go inside,” Faranaze said.
“Once I went to a compound, we were looking for a pistol. The man had asked the woman to hide it. I went to her and said: ‘I am going to slap you if you don’t tell me where it is.’ She had put it in a cooking pot,” Faranaze said.
However, they also encounter considerable risks in the war-torn country, where police are regularly targeted by insurgents.
In Kandahar, “the Taliban assassinate people, there are one or two murders every day,” Magola said.
NATO forces are focused on training more police as part of one of their most ambitious counter-insurgency operations in the nine-year Afghan war.
Operations to beat back the Taliban in Kandahar, heartland of a bitter insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government, are due to escalate in coming months as thousands more troops deploy.
Afghan police and security forces are frequently on the front line. Three bombers attacked a police training center in Kandahar this week, damaging the outer wall of the compound before they were killed.
Among several other women on the force, one survived a bombing at their headquarters in downtown Kandahar city. Another tells of having been followed several times in the street recently.
Besides the risks to their lives, Magola and Faranaze face disapproval from families who object that they work or simply fear for their safety.
“One of my brothers works at Saraposa prison. He told me to stop working for the police. I shook his hand and told him I would work with him hand in hand until I die,” Faranaze said.
Under the Taliban regime, “it was very hard, the Taliban didn’t like women to leave the house. They were beating women with sticks,” she said.
“We want God to take them away from the province. But without God’s will we won’t be able to do anything,” Faranaze said.
For Magola, however, there can be no question of the Islamist insurgents returning to power.
“Every day I feel like I am going to die,” she said.
“But I don’t want to die until I kill a Taliban,” she said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in