Since that Islamist Taliban in Afghanistan are back in power, live former policewomen in constant fear and threat. This is what the human rights organization writes Human Rights Watch in a report. Women described how they received threatening calls or how Islamists violently searched their houses.
The women surveyed also reported increasing violence in their families because relatives were against their work as police officers.
Only a few women are still in service
According to Human Rights Watch, under the Taliban, female police officers are only deployed in a few areas, such as at checkpoints or in women’s prisons. Many of the former civil servants fled to other parts of the country or neighboring countries. Only a small proportion were accepted into Western countries that promoted and financed the recruitment and training of Afghan policewomen after 2002.
Abuse ignored
Human Rights Watch also reports systematic sexual violence against female police officers during the previous, Western-backed government. “Afghan policewomen have been betrayed in two ways, first by the former Afghan government, which allowed serious sexual abuse of them to continue unchecked, and then by countries that ignored this abuse and were unwilling to resettle women seeking protection or give them asylum ,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.