by Chris Hughes, Daily Mirror 24/11/2011
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/11/24/the-afghan-policewomen-doing-the-most-dangerous-job-in-the-world-115875-23583801/#ixzz1eckoRnU3
Two Taliban said they'd kill me for being a police woman.. We moved that day but our landlord was beheaded
Aziza Tajika (Pic: Daily Mirror)
HER beat is one of the most dangerous in the world – suicide bombings and fierce firefights with the Taliban a daily hazard.
But it takes a lot to scare Aziza Tajika. The 23-year-old Afghan is already living under a death sentence just for choosing to be a police officer.
Cradling her AK47, Aziza admits she knew the risks, having married an Afghan cop when she was 13.
But she only really became aware of the full horror when her landlord was beheaded simply for renting a room to her family.
Today, the mother-of- two – who is wearing sunglasses to disguise her identity – smiles nervously as if embarrassed by the chilling story she has to tell.
Aziza says: “Two Taliban stopped me in the street and said they know I am a police officer and they will kill me. There was nobody in the street so I screamed and screamed. I threw stones at them and went home and told my husband.
“We moved house that very day. The Taliban came to our old house at night. They killed the landlord quietly and when the four guests woke in the morning they found his body downstairs. He was on the floor.
“He had been beheaded because he had given us a home.”
She shrugs, then adds: “That will not stop me being a police officer, but I worry they will kill my children.
“My husband and I have nobody to look after them when we are at work.
“This is a difficult job but I want to help Afghanistan.”
Born in Herat, the country’s third largest city, Aziza is one of just 24 policewomen in Helmand among 7,300 male officers. That means just 0.32% are women – compared with 31.5% in England and Wales. Yet female cops are essential as only they can search other women for suicide bombs.
The Taliban has sent hundreds of female suicide bombers on to the streets of Afghanistan, knowing that male officers will not search them.
But it means the women who sign up to the Afghan Uniformed Police are targets for Taliban violence.
Zakia Kaker
Corporal Zakia Kaker was visited by the Taliban. They battered her with rifle butts and left her for dead for refusing to stop being in the AUP.
The 40-year-old mum-of-three spent two months in hospital recovering. Several years later she still bears the scars of that vicious attack. We catch up with her at Helmand’s police HQ, just off Lashkar Gah’s dusty highway.
With tears in her eyes Zakia recalls: “They smashed me in the head with rifles. One hit me above the eye until I was unconscious. If I have to I will have no problem killing them.”
Sadly, her story is not unique. Two months ago mum-of-six Corporal Qandi Ghul, 35, was knocked out by a bomb which killed 25 and injured 18. She still has nightmares about the body parts and screaming injured. Qandi says: “There was a huge bang – then I woke up. I hate myself some times because I survived.
“I remember what I saw that day and it makes me sleep badly. But, of course, I helped the injured and picked up bits from the bodies.”
Jamilla Haqboot
Violence is never far away in this war-torn country. Recently two cops died and a dozen were injured in a bomb blast just 300 metres away from the Lashkar Gah police HQ.
In the past six months 100 male Afghan officers have died in Helmand – 35 were killed in just two weeks.
Working throughout the province, our MoD Police have been teaching Afghan officers how to investigate and deal with crimes. Police here can earn £90 a month when the average wage for a man in Afghanistan is £20 a month.
There are no figures available for a woman’s average wage. However the Taliban diktat that women only work in the home is slowly being eroded.
Soldiers on patrol in Lashkar Gar
The continued steady progress of training officers in the AUP will enable British combat troops to safely leave Helmand by 2015, as promised.
Our soldiers have been in Afghanistan since the 9/11 attacks and 8,500 of our troops are still here – most of them in Helmand Province.
But local security forces are gradually taking over. In Lashkar Gah they police the streets and in the economic hub of Gereshk they will take over responsibility in a few months’ time. At Lashkar Gah HQ, MoD Police Constable Mel Hooper, 29, is mentoring women in police work. Since our visit she has returned to the UK, her job handed to a fellow Brit.
Mel, 29, says: “There is progress here but not in the way we would see it.
“These women are incredibly brave and I have had great satisfaction mentoring them.
“The laws of Helmand can be harsh and policing has to be adapted. A runaway woman can be a fugitive who has caused offence by leaving her husband, but she is also someone who needs looking after. A woman running away from home might be given a cell as refuge but she might be detained as well. Things are different here.”
In the capital of Kabul, male and female senior officers alike are trained at the Police Staff College.
Here officers from all 34 of Afghanistan’s provinces learn leadership and communications skills from British police. There are 117,000 Afghan police – just 1,200 are women.
At the Police Staff College mum-of-four Lieutenant Lasifa Jahan tells us she lost her officer husband Miragha four months ago. Lasifa, 30, says: “He was blown up by the Taliban when he was driving his vehicle outside Kabul.
“This devastated us, his whole family. But I will not give up this job. After he was killed they brought his body to our house and I saw him for the last time.
“My oldest son is 16 and he had to give up his schooling to work with a local carpenter as we needed the money.
“But I want to serve Afghanistan. Women are needed to serve as police officers so they are just as important as men. We must beat the Taliban.”
Major Zakia Noori, 37, heads a Criminal Investigations Division office looking into “sensitive crimes” including the rape of children. She knows of 150 rapists who have been jailed for up to 15 years – many of them for forcing sex on young boys.
Zakia says: “Young girls and boys sometimes hang themselves. It is my job to investigate whether it was suicide, or were they killed. When we examine their bodies we find some of them have been abused. We have found the boys hanging from trees – it is desperately sad.
“A woman can get access to information from the woman of the house better than a male police officer.”
Officer Jamilla Haqboot, 24, lost her friend, a fellow officer, just weeks ago.
She says: “I offered him my gun and he refused it. He was going to investigate an attack and was killed by the Taliban.
“For my friend I will catch the Taliban. Or kill them.”
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