Why WE MUST WIN in the Stan: Afghan policewomen doing the most dangerous job in the world

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.”

Kids And Their Toys In Afghanistan

For the last two months, 12,000 NATO troops, and 7,000 Afghan soldiers and police, have been swarming all over Kandahar province, systematically taking down Taliban bases, safe houses, headquarters and bomb workshops. This culminated on the recent air-land assault on the Horn of Panjwai (a hilly, and heavily fortified Taliban base area, 30 kilometers long and 10 kilometers at its widest, shaped like a rhino horn). The Taliban have controlled this rural area for four years, but now admit they have been forced to abandon it. However, the Taliban also say they were return from their Pakistan sanctuaries when the foreign troops leave.
The successful offensive relied on several factors.

Intelligence was the biggest reason. The additional UAVs, intel aircraft and intelligence analysts reaching Afghanistan in the last year have made their mark. Much more is known about the enemy, and the foe can be monitored 24/7 when necessary. The Taliban were surprised at the speed and accuracy of the attacks, and how follow up raids, based on just captured information, were carried out. This was all possible because of good intelligence, that was constantly updated. All these operations were also carried out with little or no publicity. The troops, and the smart munitions, were just suddenly there. Few protracted firefights. Just a lot of initial noise, and then a systematic clean up.

Cell phones are very common throughout Kandahar province. While more tips are coming in from disgruntled Afghans (who are getting tired of the Taliban, even if they are the home team), the Taliban are also very reliant on them. Now the Taliban are well aware of the fact that the Americans can tap into cell phone networks, but too many Taliban use them freely anyway. Smart phones are particularly popular, and newly recruited Taliban will often blow their first month's pay on one, and then do all sorts of stuff with their new toy, providing American intel analysts with lots of useful information. This drives the Taliban leaders nuts, but you know how it is with kids and their toys.

Precision weapons are being used more often, even with the more restrictive ROE (Rules of Engagement). The better intel about Taliban hideouts made it more possible to hit targets that did not have local civilians rounded up as human shields. With NATO troops on the move a lot, more Taliban were flushed out into the open. Thus, last month, warplanes made 700 attacks with smart bombs, missiles or cannon fire (more than twice as many as were made in September 2009). Add to that hundred of attack helicopter and UAV attacks, and you have some three dozen attacks a day (and these were often at night). In addition, the American soldiers and marines fired hundreds of GPS guided rockets and 155mm artillery shells. These were particularly unnerving for the Taliban, because they came without any warning. You can often spot a warplane or UAV up in the sky, and head for cover. But the guided 227mm rockets just hit, within a few meters of the aiming point, and could take down an entire compound.

Air mobility allowed assault troops to bypass roads well covered with mines and roadside bombs. The Taliban planned on these roads to slow down approaching troops so that a proper getaway could be organized. Not so when the helicopters came in at night, sometimes after a few smart bombs or guided rockets had hit.

Defeat of the IED (Improvised Explosive Device, the bombs and mines) has deprived the Taliban of their main weapon. Last month, 1,320 IEDs were encountered by NATO and Afghan forces. Most were destroyed, disarmed or simply marked and avoided. Less than 14 percent of them went off, killing 24 foreign troops. It was a repeat of what happened in Iraq, with American troops neutralizing enemy IED tactics faster than those tactics could be modified and improved.

Kandahar has a population of 950,000, about half of it in the city of Kandahar. It's the homeland of the most important Taliban leaders, and many of their early followers. It's second to adjacent Helmand province in opium and heroin production. These two province produce most of the world's heroin.

The Taliban didn't just get hammered in Kandahar, but all across southern Afghanistan, and in those areas of the north where there has been some Taliban activity. A lot of this anti-Taliban activity has actually been aimed at the drug operations the Taliban guard. The heroin gangs have had a bad year, what with a fungus that wiped out half the opium crop, and more attacks on labs (that turn opium into heroin) and caches of drugs and smuggling operations in general. No wonder the Taliban are trying to negotiate a peace deal.

Charlie Wilson R.I.P.

My first meeting with Charlie was like a cloak and dagger movie, in the mid 80's in Lufkin, Texas. And I last talk to him in 2007 at a reunion BBQ in Lufkin after the movie came out.

Charlie was a unique individual, a legend, his contributions to the safety and security of our nation will never be completely known.

Regardless of what anyone may think about his personal life, he was a TRUE American patriot .

What he did for the mujahedin was nothing short of amazing.

His efforts to free the Afghan people -- portrayed in the movie Charlie Wilson's War -- don't overstate or dramatize a thing.

He was all that.

God speed, Charlie.

You served your country well.

Goodbye old friend, you will be missed.

Oh yeah, he knew how to party too!

Wishing the best to Barbra...
**************

Former U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, a hard-partying Democrat who played a key role in the United States' covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, has died. He was 76.

Yana Ogletree, the director of media relations at the Memorial Health System of East Texas, says Charlie was at a meeting Wednesday morning in Lufkin with his friend Buddy Temple.

The former congressman started to have trouble breathing. Temple then drove Wilson to the hospital and flagged down an ambulance while en route. The ambulance then drove Wilson to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 12:16 p.m. CT.

Ogletree says the cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest.

Charles Nesbitt Wilson was born June 1, 1933, in Trinity.

He attended Sam Houston State University in Huntsville before earning his bachelor's degree from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1956.

Wilson served as a Naval lieutenant between 1956-60, then entered politics by volunteering for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign.

He served in the Texas House and then in the Texas Senate before being elected to the U.S. House in 1972. "Charlie was perfect as a congressman, perfect as a state representative, perfect as a state senator.

He was a perfect reflection of the people he represented. If there was anything wrong with Charlie, I never did know what it was," said Charles Schnabel Jr., who served for seven years as Wilson's chief of staff in Washington and worked with Wilson when he served in the Texas Senate.

Schnabel said he had just been with Wilson a few weeks ago for the dedication of the Charlie Wilson chair for Pakistan studies at the University of Texas at Austin, a $1 million endowment.

He said Wilson had been doing "very good. Charlie, known as the “Liberal from Lufkin,” represented the 2nd District from 1972 to 1996. He became known as “Goodtime Charlie” because of his lifestyle, but was known locally for helping bring a Veterans Administration clinic to Lufkin and helping establish the Big Thicket National Preserve.

“Charlie loved this nation and had deep respect and gratitude for the men and women who defended her; he was a force for Veterans his entire career. Throughout his life, this was evident in his thoughts, words, and deeds,” said Dr. Anthony Zollo, director of the VA outpatient clinic that bears Wilson's name.

“The VA is a richer organization because of Mr. Wilson. He will be deeply missed.” Charlie, was considered both a progressive and a defense hawk.

While his efforts to arm the mujahedeen in the 1980s were a success -- spurring a victory that helped speed the downfall of the Soviet Union -- he was unable to keep the money flowing after the Soviets left.

Afghanistan plunged into chaos, creating an opening eventually filled by the Taliban, which harbored Al Qaeda terrorists "That caused an enormous amount of real bitterness in Afghanistan and it was probably the catalyst for Taliban movement," Wilson said in a 2001 interview.

The Soviets spent a decade battling the determined and generously financed mujahedeen before pulling the Red Army from Afghanistan in 1989 After the Sept. 11 attacks -- carried out by Al Qaeda terrorists trained in Afghanistan -- the U.S. ended up invading the country it had once helped liberate.

"People like me didn't fulfill our responsibilities once the war was over," Charlie said in a September 2001 interview with The Associated Press.

"We allowed this vacuum to occur in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which enraged a lot of people. That was as much my fault as it was a lot of others."

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he knew Charlie when he was at the CIA and that the congressman "was working tirelessly on behalf of the Afghan resistance fighting the Soviets."

"As the world now knows, his efforts and exploits helped repel an invader, liberate a people, and bring the Cold War to a close. After the Soviets left, Charlie kept fighting for the Afghan people and warned against abandoning that traumatized country to its fate -- a warning we should have heeded then, and should remember today," Gates said in a written statement.

Mike Vickers, who as a CIA agent in 1984 played a key role in the clandestine effort to arm the Afghan rebels, said Wilson played a part in the Soviet Union's collapse, which happened just two years after its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Mike, now assistant secretary of defense for special operations, praised Wilson as a "great American patriot who played a pivotal role in a world-changing event — the defeat of the Red Army in Afghanistan, which led to the collapse of Communism and the Soviet Empire."

After leaving Congress, Wilson lobbied for a number of years before returning to Texas.

As member of the House Appropriations Committee, Charlie's help fund Afghanistan's resistance to the Soviet Union was chronicled in the movie Charlie Wilson's War.

Actor Tom Hanks portrayed Wilson in the 2007 movie about the congressman's efforts to aide the Afghani mujahedeen during their war against the Soviet Union.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas called Wilson "a lifetime public servant with a fiery passion for the people of East Texas, our men and women in uniform, our veterans and our freedoms."

"I have had the great privilege to work alongside him on several issues of importance to our veterans in Texas, and I will miss his leadership and dedication," he said.

Charlie is survived by his wife, Barbara, whom he married in 1999, and a sister.





Charlie Wilson arrives with his wife
Barbara at the world premiere of
Charlie Wilson's War in 2007