Bid to evacuate woman judges
INSIDE her dining room in Washington on Saturday, Vanessa Ruiz, a senior judge in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, logged onto a Zoom call with judges from around the world, all worried about the fate of their judicial counterparts in Afghanistan.
The Afghan female judges had sentenced Taliban and Islamic StateKhorasan fighters to prison. Now that the Taliban has taken over, they are facing death threats.
With access to the Kabul airport mostly sealed off on Saturday, several of the Afghan judges texted farewell messages to friends.
“If there is no help from you, I will just have to do ... whatever life brings for me,” said one of the messages, sent by a judge who had tried multiple times with her three children to get through the crowds at Kabul airport and whose identity was withheld for her safety. “I have to go home and let the Taliban come and get me.”
Ruiz and the other judges – part of the non-profit International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ) – burned with frustration. The group has been trying for more than two weeks to evacuate the 250 Afghan female judges they consider to be symbols of what 20 years of war in Afghanistan was meant to accomplish: rule of law, an independent judiciary and full participation of women in society.
But with the US and other Nato alliance countries rushing to meet today’s deadline to evacuate their own citizens and Afghans who worked for their governments, the country’s judges and prosecutors have mostly been forgotten, advocacy groups say.
“They embraced it,” said Ruiz, of the female judges’ often dangerous role in their now-fallen government. “Now we’re just going to leave them there? When we know that they’re really in mortal danger? My God.”
Since Thursday’s suicide bombing in Kabul killed 13 US troops and at least 170 others, evacuations have slowed to about 6800 on Friday compared to 21 000 a day before the attack, US officials said Saturday.
Ruiz and other IAWJ members have
tried to pull government levers to help their Afghan colleagues – many of whom they trained in the effort to curb corruption in Afghanistan and westernise the country’s legal system.
Their 24-hour-a-day operation has had some success.
Working mostly with European governments, the group has helped nearly 20 Afghan female judges plus their families get to safety, arranging for visas and seats on planes through government officials.
US officials have not been helpful in their effort, the IAWJ group said.
Patricia Whalen, who worked as a family court magistrate in Vermont and an international criminal court judge in Sarajevo before retiring, said she felt a lack of early interest in the judges’ cause from the US and several Nato alliance governments.
“It shouldn’t be up to us to get the
women judges out of Afghanistan,” she said on the Zoom call. “We have essentially been left alone.”
The Biden administration has said it is working to evacuate as many at-risk Afghans as possible, including judges.
The judges have felt in constant danger since the Taliban reclaimed power earlier this month.
The group’s fighters have opened the country’s prisons and jails – freeing some of those who were convicted of murder, drug trafficking and spousal abuse and sentenced by the female judges. Some of the ex-prisoners, as well as members of the Taliban, have sought out the judges, ransacking their homes, said the IAWJ judges, citing conversations with their Afghan colleagues.
Many of the judges have been hiding, mostly in Kabul, moving from
house to house, advocates said. Since two of their colleagues were assassinated in January, the danger has become exponentially worse.
They’ve been communicating with their colleagues abroad through secured smartphone apps, asking how and when they and their families can get on a plane, the IAWJ group said.
Those able to get seats had to navigate the various Taliban checkpoints outside the airport, hoping their names – listed on airplane manifests that the guards carried – wouldn’t be recognised.
They’ve navigated through tear gas and the sound of Taliban guards firing their rifles into the air while keeping in contact with IAWJ handlers monitoring their movements through the jostling crowds with GPS trackers.
“We are in a very bad situation,” one Afghan judge told her handler on August 18, while she and several other judges tried to spot an Eastern European soldier meant to escort them to safety, according to a transcript of the conversation provided by the group. “Lots of people pushing and the Taliban are hitting us.”
“Can you wait somewhere safer?” the IAWJ handler asked.
“We can go back to the parking [lot] if we do not miss the flight,” the Afghan judge replied.
Those judges and their families made it on to a plane.
But many others have been unable to get past the crowds, the group said.
None of the Afghan judges that the IAWJ group knows about were close enough to the explosion to be harmed. The group received warnings about a pending attack from government contacts in Kabul and alerted the female judges to get away.
One high-ranking Afghan judge, who later made it on to a plane, said she was near the bombing site that day, but left before the attack because her 12-year-old daughter became ill from the tear gas.
“We are so happy that we went home that day,” the judge said through an interpreter. The judge spoke on the condition of anonymity because she still feared for her safety.
On Saturday, the IAWJ group’s Zoom call focused on protecting those still in the country. The group were getting over the heartbreak of two more failed rescue attempts that occurred a day earlier, just before the Taliban mostly sealed off the airport’s entrances.
They discussed ways to get at least some of their colleagues out after US and Nato troops were to leave Afghanistan today. But none of the options were firm. They suggested asking the Afghan judges to wipe their phones and limit communication with anyone outside the country, in case the Taliban or the Islamic State-khorasan tapped their phones.
“It’s a crazy situation,” Ruiz said. “We’re helping them, but their ties to us put them at risk.”