The Afghan Woman: From Burqa To Beret

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When a woman wearing a blue burqa showed up near the Kabul airport three days after the Taliban fled the capital last November, no one gave her a second glance. But heads turned when she marched up to the Northern Alliance soldiers guarding air force headquarters and demanded to be let in. "Go home, Auntie," said the guards, shooing her away. "Get out, go home." The petite woman didn't budge. "I am not your aunt!" she shouted, tearing off her burqa and tossing it to the ground. "I train soldiers. I am Khatol!" Hearing that name, the guards apologized and, too flustered even to salute, opened the gates. Khatol Muhammadzai is the highest-ranking woman in Afghanistan's air force and the country's first and only female parachutist. That day, after more than five long years of forced retirement, Khatol had come back to work.

Widowed 17 years ago, when her only child was still an infant, Khatol (women in her tribe prefer to use only their first name) was among those hardest hit by the Taliban's ban on women's employment. Although she is better educated than most Afghan women--as few as 5.6% are literate--Khatol's options under the fundamentalist regime became as narrow as those for many of Kabul's 30,000-plus other war widows. The Taliban's restrictions on its female population were infamously harsh: girls could not attend school; and women, except for some doctors and nurses, were prohibited from working. The mullahs further isolated women by forcing them to cover themselves head to toe in burqas and forbidding them to leave home without a male relative. Now Khatol has traded the burqa for her old camouflage uniform.

Restored to her job as director of physical training for the air force, the energetic Khatol, who is in her early 40s ("A lady doesn't tell her age," she says), has to make sure soldiers stay in shape. But after 22 years of war, things are in such disarray that the force simply is not equipped for the usual drills. Some soldiers don't have shoes to wear. Government coffers are nearly empty, and salaries have not been paid for months. In early July Khatol spent the better part of her days hounding officials in the Defense Ministry to provide her men with clothing and basic sports gear. "We don't even have a real net for volleyball," she says, watching a group of officers hit a ball in preparation for a match against the International Security Assistance Force.

Khatol's male colleagues are pleased to have her back. "We are proud of her," says Masood, 40, an air force officer and volleyball-team member. "It doesn't matter if she is a man or a woman. She is a champion of Afghanistan." Says Abdul Rahim, a gray-bearded brigadier who has known her for 10 years: "During the Taliban time, I was worried about her. I couldn't even go to her house and ask how she is. They'd kill me." These days, it is possible for a colonel to drop by and chat and even fan Khatol affectionately when she complains of the heat.