Former Government's Female Police Officials Live in Hiding After Taliban Threats: HRW

The organisation said that the policewomen of the former government are in hiding after they received threats from the Taliban.

The report, titled "Dual Betrayal: Past and Present Abuses of Afghan Policewomen," said that the former government's female officials were threatened by Taliban officials.

According to the report, the Taliban's threats have also increased the risks to these women from their families, who were opposed to their presence in the ranks of the police forces since the beginning.

Human Rights Watch said that the threats have also caused many former female police officers to live in hiding in Afghanistan for fear of being identified.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 24 women from the former government's police forces for this report. Ten of these women were interviewed in person, with nine people remotely in five provinces of Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch also heard the accounts of five women who are now in the United States, Sweden, Italy, Iran, and Pakistan.

According to the report, female police members of the former Afghan government receive threatening phone calls from the Taliban and are asked to go to the group's offices for interrogation.

The women have also received warnings of uncertain consequences for working with the former government's police forces.

Human Rights Watch has said that several female officials of the former government have been killed by relatives who believed that these women had “demeaned the reputation" of their families. According to the report, the Taliban did not conduct a credible investigation into the deaths of these women.

The interviewees also said that the Taliban violently raided their homes for searches, attacked the men of the family, and destroyed the property.

Human Rights Watch said in its report that female police officers were also subjected to "sexual harassment and rape" by their male colleagues during their tenure in the previous government.

The report added that the previous government officials were never held accountable for their actions towards female police officers.

According to the report, a number of female police officers of the former government said that they were repeatedly subjected to "sexual harassment, rape and other forms of sexual violence" during their work.

They also said that they were pressured by superiors to "have sex in exchange for promotion or to avoid being fired".

Human Rights Watch said that since at least 2013, cases of abuse of female police officers under the previous government have been known among countries that support these forces.

In its report, Human Rights Watch wrote that many female members of the former government have fled to neighbouring countries such as Iran or Pakistan or are trying to obtain asylum in some other countries.

The women said that they were suffering from the long-term psychological effects of abuse they had experienced in the past but had not been able to receive adequate psychological support.

The report said that the female police officials of the former Afghan government were "betrayed" in two ways: first, by the previous Afghan government, which allowed serious sexual abuses against them to continue unaddressed, and second, by countries that ignored these abuses and also denied asylum or resettlement to female police officers.

Countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan, as well as the European Union, which supported the training and employment of these women, must now prioritise their asylum and resettlement applications, Human Rights Watch said.

Meanwhile, sources told Afghanistan International that Western countries have rejected the asylum applications of many female police officials of the former government because they are "military". These women are currently living in a state of uncertainty in third countries such as Pakistan.

Human Rights Watch also called on the Taliban to stop harassing female police officers of the former Afghan government and launch credible investigations into the matter.

The former government's female police officials lost their jobs after the Taliban takeover and are now facing economic challenges to find alternative income, the organisation said.

According to the report, the Taliban government has called a small number of these women to work to inspect women at the group's checkpoints as well as guard female prisoners.

"The governments that funded the training and employment of women in the Afghan police force should also put pressure on the Taliban to end all abuses against women and girls," said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.