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Afghan women gun for drug lords
TO NEIGHBOURS, Sheima looks like a kindergarten teacher. The diminutive 26-year-old Afghan sets off from her mud-brick house in west Kabul each morning in a headscarf, long shirt and baggy pants. She even tucks textbooks under her arm to keep up the illusion. But Sheima's job is far from elementary. She is part of a new counter-narcotics force fighting on the front line of Afghanistan's war on drugs. Once she has made her way through the dusty chaos of Kabul's streets, she swaps her traditional garb for khaki fatigues, combat boots, dark sunglasses and an AK-47 Kalashnikov. "I have to live a double life," said Sheima, who — unusually for an Afghan woman — wears her hair short and chews gum. "Only my immediate family know what I do. I haven't even told my other relatives because the heroin traders have spies everywhere. If they found out, they'd probably kill me."Sheima and her 150-strong outfit are based at a multi- million-dollar facility in the foothills of the Hindu Kush. The perimeter is protected by blast-proof concrete barricades, topped with razor wire. Here, among rows of prefabricated buildings, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is training and funding an Afghan force to engage the country's giant opium industry in battle. The base is run by stony-faced American instructors, their blood types clearly marked on their boots. A bald, stocky Texan barks orders at recruits shooting live ammunition at paper targets. Most recruits to the National Interdiction Unit (NIU) are battle-hardened Pashtun men from disbanded mujaheddin groups. Dressed in body armour, they dwarf the handful of women within their ranks. The sex ratio is roughly 10 to one. But Sheima insists that she and her female counterparts are a match for the best of them. "Before I came here, I had never fired a gun before and it was hard," she admitted, strapping on her helmet for a live-fire exercise. "But we Afghan women can fight too! I have been trained in martial arts and combat. I can shoot just as well as any man." These are no empty boasts. Sheima and another policewoman recently proved themselves when their unit raided a suspected drug smuggler's home near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Shortly after being dropped by helicopter, they were ambushed. The DEA officer leading the raid ordered a retreat. To his astonishment, they refused to leave his side. "Afghans don't always follow the chain of command," he said in a Southern drawl tinged with a hint of exasperation. "But there's no doubting their bravery." Sheima was born as her family fled the invading Soviet army and spent her first 12 years in a refugee camp in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier province. When the mujaheddin captured Kabul from the communists in 1992 her family returned to the city, and Sheima witnessed the horror of civil war. Then came the Taliban, forcing her into a burqa and preventing her from going to school. "I used to pray to Allah that Afghanistan would have freedom," she said. "Sometimes, secretly, at a friend's house, we watched American cop movies on video and I would dream of bringing justice to my country." Her chance came soon after the Taliban were ousted following the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The government of President Hamid Karzai brought with it a liberalism, and women were recruited into the police force for the first time. Sheima was at the head of the queue. "At first it was only a desk job and I was very bored," she said. "Every day, I said to myself, this is not police work." It was only when the NIU started recruiting women that she found her calling. Without women in their ranks, the drug-busting force would be severely handicapped. Afghan culture forbids a man from shaking the hand of a woman he does not know, let alone giving her a body search. Sheima and her female colleagues can move freely inside women's quarters. They can also make arrests and conduct interrogations. "Last month we found a woman carrying two kilos of heroin under her burqa," said Sheima. "Without us, she would have got away." But Sheima is under no illusions about the monumental battle facing the NIU. Its committed but tiny force is ranged against a multi-billion-dollar criminal industry. Last year farmers with no alternative cash crop produced a record poppy harvest, 50 tons of which ended up in Europe. The drugs trade now accounts for up to 60% of Afghanistan's economy. A cable sent from the US embassy in Kabul to Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and leaked last week, chastised Britain, which leads the attack on Afghanistan's drug industry, for making slow progress in eradicating poppy cultivation. But Major-General Sayed Kamal Sadaat, the head of the NIU, is convinced that American policy is at the root of the problem. "The US military is giving support to the warlords helping them fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and it is these people who run the drug business," he said. Sheima and her fellow officers are also frustrated by widespread corruption within the Afghan criminal justice system. But none of this has dampened her crusading spirit. She believes fervently that drugs are anti-Islamic and that Afghanistan will never achieve stability until the industry is wiped out. Nevertheless, she does not take the dangers of her occupation lightly. Even her fellow officers do not know her home address. When, after work, she changes back into her civilian clothes, she checks to make sure nobody is following her. Within her family, however, she faces a battle of a different nature. Her parents want her to agree to an arranged marriage. But Sheima knows that no Afghan man will allow her to continue the job she cherishes. Settling down to watch her favourite Indian cop show, she said half-jokingly: "I lived under the Taliban, so I know what it is to be robbed of your dreams." Posted by: Bulldog 2005-05-29 |
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