Taliban claim killing of top female Afghan officer

After scattering in the wake of the 2001 offensive by a U.S.-led coalition, the Islamic militants have regrouped over the past two years. Attacks on women, girls' schools and organizations working for women's advancement have become increasingly common.

On Sunday, in an attack claimed by the Taliban, two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed the police officer, Malalai Kakar, as she prepared to leave for work in the southern city of Kandahar. The police in the city said she had died instantly from gunshot wounds to her head. Her 18-year-old son, driving her car, was seriously wounded.

Kakar, who was in her mid-40s with six children, was an iconic figure among women's groups in Afghanistan and abroad. She was one of the leading totems for the wider freedoms gained by women when the Taliban, with their repressive policies toward women, were ousted from power by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001.

Kakar, with the rank of captain, was head of Kandahar's department of crimes against women, leading about 10 female officers, and spent her working life tackling theft, domestic violence and murder. She joined the city's police force in 1982, following in the footsteps of her father and brothers, but was forced out after the Taliban captured Kandahar in the mid-1990s and banned all women from working.

She was the first female police officer in the country to return to work after the Taliban were ousted. Her commitment was particularly notable for the fact that it took place in Kandahar, which became the headquarters for the Taliban soon after the movement was formed in the early 1990s.

Kakar's killing prompted a wave of tributes. President Hamid Karzai, on a trip to the United States, issued a statement calling the attack "an act of cowardice" committed by "enemies of peace and welfare and reconstruction of Afghanistan."

The Interior Ministry in Kabul, responsible for the country's 80,000-member police force, about 700 of them women, called Kakar "a brave hero among women and loyal to her profession," and said she had been "cowardly martyred."

The police commander in Kandahar, General Matiullah Qati, said Kakar had continued working despite repeated death threats. "She took a big risk by continuing to work in the current serious situation, and her death will undoubtedly have a negative impact on other women who may have wanted to join the police but now may not dare to," he said.

The European Union's mission in Kabul said: "Any murder of a police officer is to be condemned, but the killing of a female officer whose service was not only to her country, but to Afghan women, to whom Kakar served as an example, is particularly abhorrent."

Kakar is not the first female official of prominence in Kandahar to be killed. Two years ago, the head of the province's women's affairs department was killed in a similar attack. In June, a female police officer was shot and killed by gunmen in the western province of Herat.

Abdul Waheed Wafa and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

By John F. Burns
Monday, September 29, 2008