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God bless our mothers and sisters. Real heroins
Among the other police officers, she stands out. No short back and sides; no hobnail boots; no belted combats. Instead – nail polish, three–inch heels, aviator sunglasses. And hijab. Police Officer Pari Gul is stationed at a checkpoint on a key route into Kabul, Afghanistan. Her job is to stop and search women in cars that look suspicious. Aged 28, she has a husband and three young children. More than a few members of her family think that she is out of her mind: every time she stands at the checkpoint, she is facing death on so many fronts.
The face of the Afghan National Police (ANP) is changing. More and more women are being recruited to take on the fight against insurgents when Nato forces withdraw in December this year. Their brief is to do the jobs that men can't – in the segregated, strictly religious world of Afghanistan, women can be searched only by women. The Taliban has exploited this in a string of attacks in which men have dressed as women to conceal weapons or to gain entry. One of the worst was on June 22 2012, when 18 people were killed at a hotel at Qargha Lake, a popular tourist resort near Kabul. The Taliban militants emerged from a minivan with machine guns and suicide vests hidden under blue burkas. Not that women are blameless. On September 18 2012 a British woman and eight other civilians were killed by a female suicide bomber near Kabul International Airport.
Five days a week Pari Gul stands at the police checkpoint, amid the din and the fumes, scrutinising the battered Toyota taxis, armour–plated Humvees and Ladas from bygone Soviet days as they barrel past. So far she has found nothing more than pistols and drugs.
'This road is not safe,' she says, speaking through Saman Basir, my translator, a 28–year–old business studies graduate from Kabul University. 'And this checkpoint is one of the most dangerous in Kabul,' she adds. Running from the capital to the city of Jalalabad, 100 miles to the east, the Kabul end of the Jalalabad Road, as it is known, is notorious for terrorist attacks because it is in a neighbourhood of Nato bases and foreign construction companies. (The International Security Assistance Force base at Camp Phoenix is about three miles away; the American military base at Bagram is about 20 miles away.)
At the end of December Pari Gul was a mile from a Taliban car bomb that exploded near Camp Phoenix, killing three Nato soldiers. When we meet, in September, she tells me of other deaths here in the past year: in July a Taliban suicide bomber set off a truck bomb outside a foreign firm that supplied Nato, killing seven people; in December a suicide car bomber hit an American security company, killing two. Not long ago, she says, the Taliban fired at her from the hotel opposite. Being a policewoman edges Pari Gul ever closer to death. The day before we meet, Lt Bibi Negarah (known as Lt Negar), the most senior woman police ofcer in the conservative province of Helmand, died after being shot in the neck by a gunman on a motorbike while walking near the police headquarters in the capital, Lashkar Gah. Her predecessor, Islam Bibi, had been killed on her way to work two months earlier in what the Taliban would characterise as a campaign against working women, especially those in prominent positions. Lt Col Malalai Kakar, Kandahar's deputy commander of police, Afghanistan's highest ranking female police officer and a mother of six, was assassinated by the Taliban as she drove to work on September 28 2008.
And after my visit other policewomen would be killed. Masooma (like many Afghans she used only one name), an officer in Zaranj, Nimruz Province, is now dead. She was shot and killed by gunmen on a motorbike on December 5. Rabia, an officer in southern Helmand, is now dead. She was abducted and killed by Pakistani militants on February 8, while on holiday visiting family in Quetta.
'There are dangers and threats in this job,' Col Jamila Bayaaz, the recently appointed head of Police District 1 in Kabul, a busy shopping area, has admitted. Bayaaz, 50, a mother of five, agrees that the situation for policewomen in Afghanistan – is scary. But she also believes that they are essential. 'This is a chance not just for me, but for the women of Afghanistan,' she has said.
Aren't you afraid that you might be next? I ask Pari Gul. 'I know that my life is not safe and that I am in danger, but I will never step backwards,' she tells me. 'I have to protect my homeland, protect my brothers and sisters.'
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The face of the Afghan National Police (ANP) is changing. More and more women are being recruited to take on the fight against insurgents when Nato forces withdraw in December this year. Their brief is to do the jobs that men can't – in the segregated, strictly religious world of Afghanistan, women can be searched only by women. The Taliban has exploited this in a string of attacks in which men have dressed as women to conceal weapons or to gain entry. One of the worst was on June 22 2012, when 18 people were killed at a hotel at Qargha Lake, a popular tourist resort near Kabul. The Taliban militants emerged from a minivan with machine guns and suicide vests hidden under blue burkas. Not that women are blameless. On September 18 2012 a British woman and eight other civilians were killed by a female suicide bomber near Kabul International Airport.
Five days a week Pari Gul stands at the police checkpoint, amid the din and the fumes, scrutinising the battered Toyota taxis, armour–plated Humvees and Ladas from bygone Soviet days as they barrel past. So far she has found nothing more than pistols and drugs.
'This road is not safe,' she says, speaking through Saman Basir, my translator, a 28–year–old business studies graduate from Kabul University. 'And this checkpoint is one of the most dangerous in Kabul,' she adds. Running from the capital to the city of Jalalabad, 100 miles to the east, the Kabul end of the Jalalabad Road, as it is known, is notorious for terrorist attacks because it is in a neighbourhood of Nato bases and foreign construction companies. (The International Security Assistance Force base at Camp Phoenix is about three miles away; the American military base at Bagram is about 20 miles away.)
At the end of December Pari Gul was a mile from a Taliban car bomb that exploded near Camp Phoenix, killing three Nato soldiers. When we meet, in September, she tells me of other deaths here in the past year: in July a Taliban suicide bomber set off a truck bomb outside a foreign firm that supplied Nato, killing seven people; in December a suicide car bomber hit an American security company, killing two. Not long ago, she says, the Taliban fired at her from the hotel opposite. Being a policewoman edges Pari Gul ever closer to death. The day before we meet, Lt Bibi Negarah (known as Lt Negar), the most senior woman police ofcer in the conservative province of Helmand, died after being shot in the neck by a gunman on a motorbike while walking near the police headquarters in the capital, Lashkar Gah. Her predecessor, Islam Bibi, had been killed on her way to work two months earlier in what the Taliban would characterise as a campaign against working women, especially those in prominent positions. Lt Col Malalai Kakar, Kandahar's deputy commander of police, Afghanistan's highest ranking female police officer and a mother of six, was assassinated by the Taliban as she drove to work on September 28 2008.
And after my visit other policewomen would be killed. Masooma (like many Afghans she used only one name), an officer in Zaranj, Nimruz Province, is now dead. She was shot and killed by gunmen on a motorbike on December 5. Rabia, an officer in southern Helmand, is now dead. She was abducted and killed by Pakistani militants on February 8, while on holiday visiting family in Quetta.
'There are dangers and threats in this job,' Col Jamila Bayaaz, the recently appointed head of Police District 1 in Kabul, a busy shopping area, has admitted. Bayaaz, 50, a mother of five, agrees that the situation for policewomen in Afghanistan – is scary. But she also believes that they are essential. 'This is a chance not just for me, but for the women of Afghanistan,' she has said.
Aren't you afraid that you might be next? I ask Pari Gul. 'I know that my life is not safe and that I am in danger, but I will never step backwards,' she tells me. 'I have to protect my homeland, protect my brothers and sisters.'
Read more:
