I was head of recruitment for women in the Afghan National Police for years, until 2021, when the Taliban returned to power. Building up the Afghan police force and recruiting women was supposed to be one of the great achievements after 2001.
But I knew that the police were keeping a terrible secret.
I was supervising about 35 female policewomen, and I know for a fact that all of them had been pressured to have sex with male police officers in exchange for getting their jobs, or for promotions. All were subjected to daily sexual harassment in their own police stations. Some had been molested, and some had been raped. I escaped only because I had been an outspoken women’s rights activist and the men were leery of me.
Back then, countries like the U.S. and Germany were trying hard to get more women into the Afghan police force, for an important reason. Violence against women was a longstanding problem in Afghanistan, much of it happening inside families. In such cases, women were usually unwilling to discuss this situation with outsiders, and especially not with men.
So for the first time, women police were available, so that women could make their complaints and be heard by a woman. It made a difference.
Along with changes in the law, for the first time, there was real progress in investigating and prosecuting cases of violence against women. Many donors supported training programs to recruit policewomen — the original hope was that eventually, the force would have 15,000 women who could begin to change things by providing justice for survivors of gender-based violence.
But the numbers never got that high. At the time, most ordinary Afghans had real concerns about the police, who would often ask for bribes. There was a real stigma for women who worked there — people considered them to be morally “loose.” And when people began to realize what women in the police were facing from their male colleagues, it became even harder to convince women to join.
We tried to change things. When women complained to me, I would try to protect them. But I can assure you that the head of police in the district used to hide harassment cases; he never let any of these cases go to the justice system. Those who were supposed to investigate these cases were corrupt. They were together in this and knew how to protect each other.
Often the women were afraid to make complaints because just by making a statement, they themselves would be tainted. People would say they asked for it. Their husbands might divorce them, and they would lose custody of their children. So they put up with it.
This is so often the way for women battling abuse everywhere.
Why am I telling this story now? Because many of the women I worked with are in hiding from the Taliban. The U.S., United Kingdom, Germany and other countries basically abandoned them when the Taliban took power. Some have faced terrible threats from the Taliban and from their families, too, because some of them never wanted these women to work for the police.
So many have left home and have tried to hide the fact they were in the police. Many are destitute. Some have managed to leave the country but now they are trapped in limbo — they can’t get to the countries that once promoted all the recruitment and training. They can’t get to the U.S. They are stuck. Many describe the terrible fear they live with, and the depression and hopelessness they feel.
I myself barely escaped. I managed to get a visa to Brazil. I stayed there for nine months trying to get my family out, but then Brazil stopped giving visas to Afghans. So I made my way to the Darien Gap and eventually to the U.S. When I crossed into the U.S. I applied for asylum, and they granted me refugee status.
But it shouldn’t have to be this way. The U.S. had supported all these programs to train and hire women in the Afghan police. It should now support those seeking asylum and prioritize these women for refugee resettlement. It should ensure that female police seeking U.S. protection, whether remaining in Afghanistan or temporarily in third countries, should be eligible for resettlement just like other vulnerable categories.
The U.S. owes us that much.
Hanaa Rahimi is a pseudonym for the author, a former Afghan National Police recruiter who is now living in the U.S. and must remain anonymous for her safety and that of her family still in Afghanistan.
