By Lalage Snow, Daily Telegraph
For the first time since the dark days of the Taliban, 29 women have been recruited to serve in the Afghan army.
It was Haniffa Rezai's mother, a policewoman, who encouraged her to join the Afghan National Army (ANA) instead of going to university, but the seed had been planted many years earlier. 'When the Taliban were in power we lived in Iran and our neighbour was in the Iranian army,' Rezai says. 'His guards would salute him when he came home and I used to copy them. It made me want to learn how to march. One day, I will be the one who is saluted, just like him.'
In a country notorious for the suppression of women, Rezai, 20, is a pioneer. She is one of the first 29 women who are undergoing specialist officer training in the ANA. After a swearing-in ceremony in May the girls began 20 weeks of training in the military basics – uniforms, drill, formation, weapons (although they will not be carrying firearms on a daily basis), first aid and physical training – as well as a specialist trade, either finance or logistics. They are taught by a team of female Afghan instructors under close observation from 10 female American soldiers from 95th Division Institutional Training.
Once qualified, they will work in combat support units alongside male soldiers. Although many of the women hope, eventually, to be deployed on the front line, their initial roles will be office-based. They will be assigned key duties in the running of military bases, particulary relation to equipment procurement and supply.
With billions of dollars being provided by the Obama administration, Afghanistan's army is set to double in numbers from 134,000 to 270,000 over the next two years, enabling the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to withdraw by 2014. Although women have served in the Afghan army in the past this is the first time that officer training has been available to them – part of a plan to make the number of female soldiers 10 per cent of the total.
'After years of Taliban rule, it is great that we can recruit women again. We need more women to join,' Col Abdul Rahim, the commander of the ANA's Officer Training Brigade in Kabul, explains. 'We need women to relieve men of certain administrative jobs, and we eventually hope that they will be able to become nurses and drivers. Also, it is important to show the advancement of Afghanistan to the rest of the world.'
In February, as part of a recruitment campaign, a television advertisement invited women aged between 19 and 35 with at least nine years of education (common in the larger cities) to join up. Only about 100 applied and, of these, 45 met the criteria (35 began training and six dropped out in the early stages). Suria Salay, 19, was one of them. 'When I saw the ad on television I was so excited,' she says. 'I was thinking about going to university to become a lawyer or a journalist, but this is a much better opportunity for me – I get to learn things here that I wouldn't learn anywhere else. The situation for young women in Afghanistan is still bad – some families are open-minded but many just keep their daughters at home until they are old enough to marry.'
Laila Ibrahimi saw the ad, too, but it was her husband, himself an officer in the ANA, who encouraged her to apply. 'I always wanted to be strong and serve the country,' she says. Now 31, she was married at 18 and has had three children, but she is pragmatic about their arrangements: 'My husband's first wife looks after them.'
Habiba Sayed, 28, who is married with four children, says, 'I was thinking about joining the police force but then I saw the ad. It is a totally new idea. I had to come and see what it was like.' Sayed has a strong personal reason for joining up. 'Three years ago, my 15-year-old cousin was playing with some friends in the street. I don't know why, but the Taliban killed them all. Their bodies were so mutilated that he could be identified only by a scar on his hand. Putting an end to such brutality is why I wanted to join the army. It is something in my heart.'
The women are based in the Female Officer Cadet School at the ANA's Command and Staff College, a military base on the outskirts of Kabul. Their section of the base – two buildings containing classrooms and an accommodation block – is accessed by securely locked metal doors with the words no male visitors allowed written on them in English and Dari. The recruits spend every minute behind these doors, apart from meal times in the base's main 'chow house' – though they are kept in their own area, away from the men. They are allowed home at weekends (most live too far away to make the journey).
The cadets' training began with an eight-week general introduction, an opportunity to learn the military mindset, which was a shock to the system for many of them. 'At first it was hard,' Capt Jannis Lullen, one of the American mentors, says. 'It was inevitable, with this being the first group, that they'd have no concept of army discipline. At the start, some of them would fall asleep in class or talk to each other, or refuse to do their homework. But we are halfway through now and they have responded well. They are eager to learn and want to improve themselves.'
Discipline is something all the cadets now seem to enjoy, Habiba Sayed says. 'We like being taught how to be on time, to respect each other and work together as a team. It is an American thing and a bit alien to Afghan culture, where rules are always bent. But it is helping us to become stronger physically and mentally and to understand the importance of following orders. It gives us self-esteem.'
The women are now in the second (12-week) phase of their training. Waking at 4.30am to pray, they clean their barracks before going to breakfast. At 8am their first class of the day begins: computers and English. Although some of the girls already speak English – learnt at school and from films and music – military vocabulary is another world. Key words are written on the whiteboard: echelon, locker, barracks, convoy.
At 10am they are divided into their respective trades, finance and logistics. Classes continue after lunch and prayers until 4pm, when there is the most popular class of the day, PT.
'Most of the girls hadn't done any physical exercise in their lives,' 1st Sgt Kristian Norton, another American mentor, recalls. 'They had never felt their blood pumping and so thought they were having a heart attack. They'd cry out, "I'm dying!" and burst into tears. Now they just love doing sport.'
'Sport helps us to be physically strong, like men,' Mori Sherifzada, 19, says. 'I love doing press-ups,' Zahra Bayat, also 19, adds. 'When I go home at weekends my friends ask me to teach them all the new exercises I've learnt.' Bayat joined up at the suggestion of her brother. 'He is in the army and whenever he came home I would put his uniform on and march around the house.'
After PT they clean the barracks, do homework, have an evening meal and then have free time until lights out at 9pm. Around camp the cadets wear their uniforms: green combats, boots and a black scarf to cover their hair. The women say they like army dress. 'We are doing a man's job and so it is only right that we wear the same as them,' Bayat says. 'My mother cut my hair short like a boy's when I joined and it looks so much better with the uniform. At home I now wear my PT kit [an army-issue tracksuit], which my family find strange as I used to wear more feminine clothes and softer colours. But it's what I like wearing now.'
There is a palpable sense of excitement and pride among the recruits, even though their country remains a dangerous place, not least for military personnel. Meanwhile, the road to female emancipation continues to be a rocky one. The situation for women in Afghanistan has improved markedly since the Taliban were toppled from power in 2001, and the recently adopted Afghan constitution states that the 'citizens of Afghanistan – whether a man or woman – have equal rights and duties before the law'. Women have been allowed back to work, are no longer required by law to wear the full burka and have been appointed into prominent government positions. But change is a slow process. In many rural areas the suppression of females continues, with many unable to participate in public life, forced into marriages and denied education. Fear of the Taliban remains.
Maryam Youssefy, 19, says, 'The last time I went home to Ghazni [in eastern Afghanistan] I was so scared that the Taliban would somehow find out that I am in the military and kill me that I wore the burka again, just so I could be anonymous.'
Almost all of the cadets keep their jobs a secret from anyone outside immediate family and close female friends. There is the obvious threat from the Taliban and insurgent groups that target anyone working for ISAF, but many others in Afghanistan are not ready to accept the idea of women as soldiers. Sayed says, 'My male relations think it is shameful that I am here, but I always try to do the opposite of what they tell me.'
Col Rahim acknowledges the risks involved. 'The recruits may come from open-minded families but some of their male relations think they have brought dishonour on the family by being independent and mixing with men.'
Zahra Bayat is a case in point: 'When I decided to join the army, my immediate family were pleased for me but my uncle, who is a mullah, thinks I have shamed the family. He told me that if he sees me in the street he will kill me.'
Is she scared? 'No, not now I am a soldier. I won't let people like my uncle destroy girls' lives any more. This is what I am fighting for.'
Photo Credit: Lalage Snow
ANA and ANP plan together for Op Omid Sey
ANP officer searches for roadside bombs as his commander watches on, with the support of ISAF troops
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