Photo Gallery Cops for Kabul
These four young women look harmless enough, but they will soon be carrying deadly weapons. They are students in a three-year program at the police academy in Kabul. Latifa (right), 21, is currently learning armed house-to-house fighting techniques. The young women would like to help rebuild Afghanistan.
They can also be tough: Here they are preparing to "storm" the Tactical Training Center. The two-story building, sponsored by the German police mission in Afghanistan, serves as a training site for dealing with serious police situations.
Safe on all sides: The students learn how to storm buildings and how to be tactically smart in their movements.
A scene that could be out of the thriller movie: Here the women at the police academy are practicing the arrest of a drug dealer in a hotel room. The suspect is ...
... Latifa. The police students "arrest" one another during drills. Latifa says she wants to be a policewomen to help restore law and order in her country.
The trainees dream of a modern Afghanistan, in which women are on an equal footing with men. Wearing the headscarf is not a problem, says Latifa. But she says she and the other female trainees would never wear a burka. In other parts of the country ...
... as shown here in the province of Takhar, the floor-length garment is still very common. The burka is seeing a renaissance in areas where the Taliban has gained the upper hand. Even male construction workers wear button-down shirts and long pants. The women must also content with old fashion thinking at the academy, where woman are often pigeonhold into outmoded general roles ...
... there are only 10 women at the academy, but about 1,600 men. Even after full training at the academy, female police often land behind desks after graduation and don't often do hands-on work on the streets.
Police work remains primarily a man's job in Afghanistan. Even human rights activist Lal Gul is skeptical. "The state lacks legitimacy," he says, "and women don't exactly reinforce acceptance of the police." He says he supports the government training female police officers but worries about sending them to more traditional provinces.
For example, in the province of Takhar in northeastern Afghanistan, far away from Kabul, tribal rule often carries more weight than laws and policemen. Gul asks: "How will village elders in Helmand or Nangahar react when they send them a female police officer? They will think that the government has gone crazy."
But none of that seems to bother Latifa and her female classmates. They believe in an Afghanistan where women can also build good careers as police. They continue to learn to storm buildings and fire guns -- even if they may not need these skills at first.
