Women Who Took On the Taliban -- and Lost

It was another murder among so many in the bloody conflict in Afghanistan -- a senior police officer gunned down by the Taliban. But the death of Malalai Kakar this week has removed a brave and dedicated champion of oppressed women; it has raised the fears of other women in public life that they too have, in effect, been sentenced to death.

Of five prominent women interviewed three years ago by The Independent for an article on post-Taliban female emancipation, three, including Ms. Kakar, are dead and a fourth has had to flee after narrowly escaping assassination in an ambush in which her husband was killed.

Religious fundamentalists are waging a ruthless campaign to eliminate women who have taken up high-profile jobs. Parliamentarians, schoolteachers, civil servants, security officials and women journalists have been selected for attacks by the jihadists. Countless others have been maimed and murdered in villages where the vengeful Taliban have returned to impose the old order.

In the case of Malalai Kakar, the most prominent policewoman in Afghanistan, an additional "crime" which sealed her fate was that she was a determined and effective campaigner for women's rights. Commander Kakar, 40, knew her work made her a Taliban target. She led a unit of 10 policewomen specialising in domestic violence cases. She was uncompromising with suspected abusers, men who in the past had relied on male police officers to turn a blind eye.

"I've been accused of being rough with husbands who beat up their wives" she said. "But I'm angry, we try to apply the law in the right way and the constitution is supposed to protect women's rights."

Kakar liked to cook breakfast for her husband and six children before going to work, she told me. She would spend a long time saying her farewell because, she said, she could never be sure what would happen. Her 15-year-old son was with her when she was killed last weekend. She carried a pistol under the burqa she wore to work, so as not to be recognized, before changing into uniform. But she had no chance to defend herself, or him, against the two motorcycle assassins.

Like Kakar, Shaima Rezayee was one of those who believed in a brave new world for Afghan women. After five years of burqa-wearing under Taliban rule, the bubbly 24-year-old presented a popular music show called Hop on the independent channel Tolo TV and helped run schemes to promote women in the media. When I asked for her help in preparing the article, however, she was already pessimistic. "Things are not getting better," she cautioned. "We made some gains, but there are a lot of people who want to take it all back. They are not even the Taliban, they are here in Kabul."

She was having her own problems, the station was being condemned for allowing her, a female in Western clothes and make-up to talk freely to men on the program. Eventually she was dismissed after pressure from conservative clerics of the National Ulema Council who accused Tolo of "broadcasting music, naked dance and foreign films". In particular, they picked out Shaima's programme for criticism. There was no support from the police who declared that they may not be able to protect her.

Shaima was angry. "The bad days are coming back, we'll have to go into exile again," she said. Soon afterwards rumors began to appear that she had been killed. Tolo offered to broadcast an interview. "But they wanted to do it on radio, not TV," she laughed. "The religious people might get offended even if they saw me for five minutes."

Shaima was gunned down at her home near Kabul's diplomatic quarters. Her killers, said the police, appeared to have been people she had known as they did not have to force their way into the house.

Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, is the scene of particular brutality towards women. "It is much worse down there than it is for us here [in Kabul], you must go down there," Shaima had said previously. One woman who worked tirelessly for women in Kandahar was Safia Amajan, 65, who stayed behind during the dark days of Taliban rule to teach girls in lessons held in secret. After the U.S.-led invasion of 2001, she volunteered to work for the new government with great success, opening schools and workshops where at least 1,000 women learned to make and sell their goods at the market.