It’s relatively easy to be brave when you’re the only one at risk. It’s easy to be bold and to fight when you only have to worry about yourself. But when your actions threaten the health and safety of the people you hold most dear—your family, the people you would do anything for—being brave and continuing on is not easy, and you might have to reckon whether the risk is worth it. Being brave or courageous or strong may no longer be part of the equation.
These were the questions I had to contend with as I saw my brother lying in the hospital bed with a bloody arm and leg and my mother nearby so overcome with fear and concern she was emotionally exhausted.
I couldn’t do anything but turn to my Baba Jan and tell him I couldn’t keep my promise. I couldn’t keep flying and serving in the air force if this was going to keep happening to our family. And it would, I knew it would, and eventually someone could die—because of me. I could not be responsible for destroying our family.
But my father said, “No, you must stay strong, and you cannot quit. No one knew any of this was going to happen.” We all believed what the military and our leaders told us, that Afghanistan was changing, that women could go to school, become professionals, join the military, and become pilots. “If you quit now, our enemies will win,” he said. I couldn’t give them an excuse to call me, or any woman, weak. As for our family, none of this would break us apart. We were strong and we would stay strong.
My father’s words bolstered me, and I believed him to the depths of my soul, but I still wrestled with how my career was affecting the people I cared about most.
* * *
Resuming my normal duties at the squadron, I settled into flying missions throughout the country, bringing supplies to the combat forces, transporting personnel to the front and back to Kabul, and doing medevac flights.
On my second day back, I was to fly to Mazar-e-Sharif out west. When I exited the squadron building to go to the flight line, however, I saw a man dressed in a white shalwar kameez and a woman wearing a burka running toward me and calling my name. I stopped. When they reached me, they took a moment to catch their breath.
Finally, the man said, “Captain, my son has recovered. My son is Sergeant Mohammad, and he has his life back. He lost one eye, but you saved him. He wanted us to find you and thank you for what you did for him. He is our only son.”
They went on to explain that although Sergeant Mohammad never saw me, he’d heard my voice and knew a female pilot had flown the airplane, and that she had refused to take off without him. From there, he’d figured out who I was and sent his parents to thank me. His parents then offered me a beautiful red scarf as a gift.
I told his parents I’d simply done my job. It was the doctors who saved him and returned his eyesight. I also told them their son was very brave and that it must not have been easy to go through what he did. I thanked them for finding me, and I was grateful their son had recovered.
As they left, the father said Sergeant Mohammad and they would be forever grateful to me. Given everything that had happened in the past few days, I needed to hear this.
38
Everything Crumbles
What I’m about to tell you illustrates the horror women face every moment of their lives in Afghanistan.
On March 19, 2015, I completed a long mission to Kandahar and back, and my father picked me up late from the base. He normally took side roads to avoid traffic, and it usually worked, but the drive between our apartment and base was now over an hour, and that was on a good day. We’d vacated my father’s friend’s house a short while ago—Ahmad said we must leave because our troubles were putting his family at risk—and we’d moved to another rental across the city.
But on this particular commute home, we found ourselves snarled in traffic with no cars moving at all. I was in the back seat wearing my burka so no one would recognize me, but it was still unnerving sitting in gridlock. My father didn’t want to get out to see what was going on, because he feared what might happen if he left me alone in the car.
As time wore on, however, we started hearing angry chanting and saw hundreds of people—mostly men—flocking to whatever was happening up ahead. I was getting nervous, and I could tell my Baba Jan was as well, but there was nothing we could do. We sat there and waited until traffic started to move again, which happened soon after sundown.
When we got home that night, we found out what had occurred and why that part of the city had come to a standstill. The story was all over the local news, and rumors were already shooting around the city like bolts of lightning. The story would hit the international stage soon: an angry mob of Afghan men had beaten, mutilated, and burned to death an Afghan woman. Her name was Farkhunda Malikzada, and she was twenty-seven years old.
Farkhunda was a religious studies student and an observant Muslim, but on this day she was arguing with a mullah near the Shah-Do Shamshira Mosque in downtown Kabul. The mullah accused Farkhunda of burning the Koran, which was later proved false, but at the time it didn’t matter. She’d been accused by a religious figure, and everyone nearby had heard the mullah make the accusation.
Within minutes, hundreds of men—young, old, poor, middle-class, urban, traditional—rushed to the scene. They surrounded her, began calling to her, and hitting her. They started with their hands and fists, but some picked up boards, sticks, and pipes to hit her. Farkhunda couldn’t get away, because the mob had packed in and there was nowhere to go. She was caged by a mass of enraged men shouting she was a blasphemer and she’d disgraced Islam.
The crowd grew, and other rumors began to circulate, including that she worked for the Americans, was an infidel, and was a prostitute. She was an agent sent to undermine Afghanistan and Islam.
In the first minutes, a few police officers tried to keep the mob off her, but they were overwhelmed and pushed aside. There’s a video that shows a police officer trying to drag Farkhunda up onto a roof to help her escape. She was still walking at this point, but before she could break free she lost her balance and fell back into the mass of men. Other police officers seemed all too willing to let the mob batter the young woman.
By this time, Farkhunda was bloody, broken, and dazed. She fell to the ground, and men took turns hitting her with sticks and rocks. They were kicking her and stomping on her face and limbs. The mob dragged her into the street and ran over her with a car. Next, they tied her to the back of the same car and dragged her a short distance down the road, but the car didn’t get very far given how large the mob was.
By now, traffic was backed up for miles, and we were trapped in it. I had no idea what was going on, but I could hear the mob. The yelling, which was angry and vicious, sent chills down my spine.
The car dragging Farkhunda stopped, but the mob kept beating her. More kicking and bludgeoning. Someone yelled they should throw her in the river. The Kabul River is rarely full, but at that time of year it’s essentially a dry, stony riverbed that runs through the city, roughly thirty yards across, and with a wall dropping down and lining the edges. The mob tossed Farkhunda’s body from the road over the side and down onto the rocks.
Farkhunda was probably dead at this point, but the mob began stoning her. They started with small, hand-sized rocks but moved up to large chunks of rock and concrete requiring two hands to lift. They raised the blocks of jagged rock over their heads and dropped them on her.
Then it was time to burn her, to completely destroy and disgrace this woman who had offended Islam, who had dared to argue with a mullah, who had burned a Koran, and who, in absolute truth and fact, was an agent for the Americans, scheming to subvert and undermine all Muslims and to corrupt Afghanistan’s faithful.
They tried to light her clothes on fire, but the fabric was soaked with her blood and the flames kept going out. Enraged, men started removing some of their own clothing—scarves and vests—which they ignited and threw on Farkhunda’s body. Someone eventually poured gasoline on her seared and bloody remains, and her body finally burned.
The crowd dispersed.
For the next few days, numerous mullahs and imams endorsed her murder, stating she had deserved death for her crimes. Others celebrated the perpetrators of the lynching as defenders of Islam and the Koran. Some of the police and local politicians applauded her murder as well. But it was determined Farkhunda had committed no crime; she hadn’t burned a Koran, and she wasn’t an agent of the Americans. In fact, she was a good Muslim and an Islamic scholar and teacher.
Other religious leaders now spoke out to condemn her murder, and in the coming days, thousands of women marched in Kabul in protest, demanding the perpetrators be brought to justice. Arrests were made and men put on trial. Four men received death sentences, and others received up to sixteen years in prison, but many of these verdicts were reduced during secret hearings after the trials.
Although there was local and international outcry over Farkhunda’s murder, and the event exposed the plight of women in Afghanistan and the broader region, this was not the first lynching of an innocent woman, nor will it be the last. Nor is it the only way women are violated, brutalized, and murdered in my homeland. Domestic violence is rampant and considered normal. It’s deemed acceptable and just.
This is Afghanistan. This is my homeland . . . the one I swore to defend and protect.
* * *
The graphic images of Farkhunda’s murder on the television shocked me. Killings like this were commonplace and done in public under the Taliban, but I believed we had changed. It had been almost fifteen years since the American-led invasion forced the Taliban from power, and things should have been different.
Seeing the angry faces of those men in the mob—like wild animals in a feeding frenzy—I feared nothing had changed. Kabul is the most developed, modern, and liberal city in Afghanistan, yet this happened in broad daylight.
Part of me was furious that so many people allowed it to happen. And I was angry the ones who should have stopped it—the police—didn’t. Part of me also regretted not helping Farkhunda. I know it’s foolish to think that. I had no idea what was happening, even though I was little more than a mile away, and had I ventured into the mob I most likely would have met a similar fate. But I still felt I should have done something.
Mixed with all my feelings of anger and revulsion was a deep fear. Farkhunda and I were about the same age, which resonated with me. They’d accused her of offending Islam and being an agent for the Americans, which was false, but people still believed it. Even after she’d been publicly declared innocent and falsely accused, many people still thought she’d offended Islam. Someone could easily accuse me of something similar (some people already had in the threats I’d received), and there was ample evidence to support such a claim. If that happened, I could be next.
Farkhunda was an innocent woman falsely accused by a mullah, then brutally murdered by a wild mob. I, on the other hand, was already a target for the Taliban and countless others who thought I was betraying Islam and Afghanistan. There’d already been two assassination attempts against my brother, and strangers often showed up looking for me at the base or lurked around our house. It would have been easy for someone to incite a similar situation if they found out who I was and where I lived. And what would they do to my family?
Looking back on my life in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I realize there are many times I could have died—where I probably should have died: when my family first fled to Pakistan while I was a newborn, when we returned to Afghanistan under the Taliban, in flight school, and most recently with all the personal threats against my life. I could have easily been caught up in the mob that day if they had recognized my father or our car—we both would have been killed. I believe I am a strong person and have persevered through immense adversity and overcome countless obstacles, but Farkhunda’s murder terrified me, both for my own personal safety and that of my family.
But even with the public outcry against Farkhunda’s murder and the condemnation by the politicians and a few religious leaders, I no longer believed Afghanistan was on the path of change. The hatred of outsiders, the trauma from decades of war and oppression, the humiliation by foreign powers, and the ingrained paternalism that seemed to be in Afghanistan’s DNA—it all ran too deep.
Change wouldn’t happen in a few years. It wouldn’t happen in a decade. Change in Afghanistan was going to take a generation, perhaps multiple generations, and there would be many more tragedies along the way.
What could I do besides fly?
39
Opportunity
Although Farkhunda’s murder had shaken the city and me, I reported to work and continued flying missions. I had a responsibility to continue serving my country, even if my view of it had been shattered.
Something inside me had changed, and in those first few days after the mob murdered Farkhunda, I couldn’t look at my colleagues the same way. Some of them I couldn’t look at at all, wondering if they had been in the mob.
A few days later, my friend Molly Montgomery invited me to the US embassy to talk. She asked me how things were since Farkhunda’s murder, and I shared with her everything I’d been feeling, the anger as well as the fear. This touched her more than our previous talks, I assume, because she said she would be meeting with Afghanistan’s First Lady, Rula Ghani, in the coming days. She planned to mention me to her. Given the target I’d become, she believed I deserved protection and felt there was no time to waste.
I hoped I might hear from Rula Ghani or someone else from the president’s office, but I kept my expectations muted. I was right to. No one ever contacted me, and Molly believed they disregarded the request.
I continued flying missions.
* * *
One of our squadron advisors, Colonel Craig, came to my office the following month and said the US ambassador had talked to the NATO commander, and US Army general John F. Campbell wanted to meet with me. Colonel Craig escorted me to the American advisor compound on the far side of the base, and from there I flew in a Black Hawk helicopter to the NATO compound opposite the American embassy. (The Kabul airfield and the NATO compound were a few miles apart, but the threat from ambushes and IEDs was real, and if there was traffic, the short drive might take more than an hour.)
Captain Jeffrey Rosenberry, a senior advisor with NATO, was waiting for me at the helipad, and he escorted me to the general’s office. Naturally, I was nervous to be meeting one of the senior NATO commanders for all of Afghanistan, but General Campbell had a warm and friendly manner, and he quickly put me at ease. He wanted to hear my story, so I told him.
He applauded me for everything I’d accomplished, but he also realized I was at severe risk. Given some of the things he said, I think he was surprised I hadn’t been killed already. He quickly identified the greatest threat I currently faced—my commute to and from the base—and directed his staff to provide me with an armored sedan. Although this was a grand gesture and I was immensely grateful, it was fraught with problems.
It was a new vehicle and looked like the other armored cars driven around the city by US personnel and senior Afghan officials. Parked near our house, it stuck out and drew unwanted attention to my family. Also, since it was a NATO-provided vehicle, it needed license plates from the Ministry of Interior. But the ministry never provided the plates, which I suspect was intentional. We couldn’t use the car in the city.
As much as I appreciated the generosity, I ended up giving the vehicle back to the Americans. I couldn’t use it, and letting it sit parked near our apartment would only bring unwanted scrutiny.
By this point, I’d given up on getting outside help. Those who wanted to help me and my family—Margherita Stancati, Molly Montgomery, the American advisors, Major Abdulrahman, and a few of the other pilots—were either unable to help, were not in a position to help, or were prevented from helping due to some complication. Those who could help—my command, the police, the air force—chose not to. Consequently, all I could do was rely on myself.
* * *
I continued performing my duties in the squadron, but some days I didn’t make it to work. Our family car—not the armored one—periodically broke down, and it was my only means of transportation. Other times, something suspicious would happen, and in consultation with my father or brother, we would decide it was too risky for me to go outside even if I wore a burka. Still other times, an attack or ambush in the city would block our route.
Then, in August 2015, I was faced with perhaps one of the most difficult choices I’d ever had to make, and it ended up changing my life forever.
One morning in the squadron building, the American advisors came in and announced five Afghan pilots would be selected to attend C-130 flight training in the United States. I was one of the five chosen, although General Zafar did everything he could to oppose it, including refusing to sign my orders. He wanted five men to go, not me. But since the American advisors had the final say, I was on the list if I chose to be.
The first thing I did was call Molly Montgomery and Margherita Stancati. Both of these women had become close friends and trusted confidants, and I wanted to hear their views on the matter. Although I knew it was a great opportunity—once in a lifetime—I was wrestling with what to do about my family. The training would take place in the States, and I would be gone for more than a year and a half. After everything I’d put them through and all the support they’d given me, I would feel guilty and selfish if I left.
Both Molly and Margherita didn’t view it that way. They made the case that if I left the country, the threat to my family might diminish. They both thought I should go to the training, and strongly encouraged me to do so.
Open Skies Page 23