TALIBAN TAKE KABUL
How will Canada respond?
When she joined the Afghan National Army as an officer cadet in 2011 during an internationally backed campaign to recruit more female soldiers, Kubra Behroz, 33, was unapologetic and proud.
“I don't want to be owned by anyone. I want to stand on my own two feet,” she said of her decision, considered by many in the conservative country to be controversial. “I love my country and we are the next generation of Afghans taking a step into the modern world.”
Now, however, as the Taliban cement their sweeping victories across the country by seizing Kabul, she is afraid.
“I went to work this morning and there were no police or soldiers at any of the usual checkpoints and no one in the office so I came home,” Behroz, who has two children, said. “The streets were full of people trying to get home to their families. No one knows what to do.”
She described seeing owners of local beauty parlours painting over their windows, and staff in music shops destroying equipment and boarding up their doors before an expected Taliban takeover of the capital.
For Behroz, the danger is heightened. “I am afraid I will be kidnapped, imprisoned and raped for being a soldier. I am afraid for my future and for my family,” she said.
Her Pashtun colleagues have also warned Behroz and her female co-workers — somewhat tauntingly — of the danger they are in. “They say the Taliban will cut off our heads if they find us,” she said.
Her fears are well founded. Behroz's brother, also a soldier, was wounded in the fighting in Ghazni province last week and told her that two women were beheaded for having been police officers four years ago.
There are also unconfirmed reports circulating on social media of Taliban soldiers raping women and young girls in the name of marriage.
Under a practice known as zina, in Afghanistan if a girl is raped she is usually forced to marry her rapist, or else face ostracism from her wider family and community for her “shameful” behaviour.
Behroz said she has been harassed ever since she became a soldier. In 2014, while away at work, her home was ransacked. In recent weeks the threats and anonymous phone calls have increased. “They speak in Pashto and then Dari and tell me they know how to find me,” she said.