One of Afghanistan’s top female police officers is on the run in Kabul after failing to get on an evacuation flight out of the country.
Gulafroz Ebtekar, believed to be 34, inspired thousands of women to join the police after she became deputy head of criminal investigations.
As a top Interior Ministry official, she had notable media presence and was seen as a high-profile role model under the toppled Western-backed government.
But now she is fighting for her life after being brutally beaten by the Taliban at the gates of Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul, where she spent days desperately trying to flee.
She told Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolet: ‘I spent five nights at the gates of Kabul airport without water or bread, in a rain of bullets and surrounded by the Taliban.
‘I witnessed the death of children and women.
‘I sent messages to the embassies of many countries to save myself and my family, but all to no avail.’
After being turned away from the airport, Ebtekar went home to be told by her mother that the Taliban had come for her while she was out.
She moved to the first of three flats she has used to try and stay out of the hands of the militants.
When she tried to escape to the airport again, the Taliban guards beat her with ‘weapons and stones’.
‘All their words were accompanied by blows,’ she said.
‘When I was hit again, I could not get up, I could not say a word.
‘The Taliban acted like this: first they hit, then allowed you to move.
‘You take one or two steps, and pay for it.
‘They beat me with fists, boots, weapons and even stones.’
With the soldiers still on her trail and no more flights leaving the country, she has little hope about her chances of survival.
‘I have nothing to fear, I have nothing left anyway,’ she said.
As well as the violence from the Taliban, she says her faith in humanity was crushed by her treatment from troops guarding the airport.
The policewoman told how in the Kabul chaos she found US soldiers and believed they were helping her to fly abroad with her boyfriend and family members.
She was asked where she wanted to go and told them: ‘It doesn’t matter, to a safe country where there is a chance we may survive’.
‘They looked at me and answered quite impudently: “Okay”.’ she said.
‘And they asked one soldier to show us the way.
‘I thought they would escort us to a plane or provide security.’
But instead the soldier escorted her to a crowded street where there was a terrorist attack, she said.
Ebtekar claims that when she protested, the soldier raised his weapon and said: ‘Get out of here.’
‘At that moment, I didn’t want to live anymore,’ she said.
‘I realised that there was nothing human left in people, but it was not safe to stay in Afghanistan.’
Ebtekar, who studied for a masters degree at a top police academy in Russia, said the Moscow embassy also declined to help as she did not have a Russian passport or residency.
She said she had dreamed of changing life in Afghanistan and believes she went some way towards doing that before the devastating surge of the Taliban.
‘The situation changed in one day,’ she said.
Her former female colleagues in the police have asked her ‘what’s going to happen to us’ but she has no answers.
‘I spoke on television, spoke out on social networks, fought against extremism, terrorism, advocated for the rights of women and children and believed in the best for our country,’ she said.
‘But my former life is gone. I cannot say what’s next, how I can live and work.’
Although the Taliban have insisted women will have rights under the new regime, Ebtekar does not believe them, having witnessed and experienced their violence first hand.
‘When the Taliban came to Kabul 20 years ago, they made the same promises as now for two months.
‘And then they created their own state, their own courts, beat and killed people. For me, this is the most dangerous group of terrorists.’
She added: ‘I was the first woman in Afghanistan to graduate from a police academy with a master’s degree and hold such a high position.
‘After me, about 4,000 Afghan women entered police universities. I’m not afraid to speak openly, because I have nothing left.
‘The state of Afghanistan no longer exists, there is no freedom. All the time I fought to maintain a normal life in the country.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
from News – Metro https://ift.tt/3mRSauA
0 Comments