The Taliban was notoriously brutal in purging female police officers when it overthrew the elected government of Afghanistan in August 2021.
On Tuesday, the Islamist extremist government debuted the first hundred female graduates of its police academy, parading a line of women wrapped from head to toe in black cloth holding truncheons and riot shields.
Taliban officials said roughly 1,000 recruits had been selected from various provinces for riot police duties, about 100 of them female. The burqa-clad female police said they were ready to deploy against unauthorized demonstrations within 24 hours.
“My request to the former policewomen is to re-join their job and serve their country and people. There is no pressure or threat,” one of the Taliban’s female officers said.
The Taliban has committed an endless string of human rights abuses against women since the takeover, such as denying them access to education, locking them out of government employment, and forbidding them to protest. Women who dared to speak out against Taliban rule have been detained without due process and tortured.
Women have been sold as brides by their families and sometimes kidnapped by Taliban militants without their family’s consent. The deposed civilian government had established a ministry of women’s affairs; the Taliban replaced it with a “ministry of virtue and vice,” whose ministrations often involve throwing women in jail.
Taliban militants were absolutely savage toward female police officers who worked for the deposed civilian government. Policewomen were mercilessly hunted down, forcing many to go into hiding. In September 2021, a pregnant policewoman was gunned down in front of her family.
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