A lofty goal

Opinion: March 19, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By HABIBORRAHMAN IBRAHIMI

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

KABUL, Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s interior ministry hopes to recruit as many as 5,000 women to serve as police officers. That’s a lofty goal in this highly traditional society where only 700 out of 97,700 officers currently are women.

Nor will women be performing the same security tasks as their male colleagues. Instead, police officials hope to utilize them mainly to search burka-clad females, or men disguised as women, who sometimes conceal guns or bombs under their all-encompassing garments.

The deputy interior minister, Gen. Munir Mangal, said having more women on the force will improve security.

“We face problems while searching and operating in houses and some other suspicious places, because the people do not let male police enter their houses and search women,” he said. “People are always asking us to use female officers to search their houses.”

Screeners

Female officers will work as screeners at jails, airports and checkpoints around Kabul, he said.

Col. Shafiqa Quraishi, the head of the gender department in the interior ministry, acknowledged that recruiting women in a society which frowns upon allowing women to work outside the home won’t be easy. She said the ministry is asking provincial councils, tribal elders, religious scholars and influential local individuals to help change local attitudes and encourage women to consider a job in law enforcement.

Ibrahimi is a reporter in Afghanistan who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.