To reach the General, who is based at Kabul’s Ministry of Defence, several check points and searches have to be navigated. Unlike our own MoD, Afghanistan’s counterpart is like a military camp where armed male soldiers are seen everywhere. One hovers in the background bringing us tea – and later food that General Khatol will eat alone in her office. Curtains are drawn creating an atmosphere of intimacy and gloom, at odds with the bright sunlight and heat outside.
It is hard to imagine this veteran of more than 500 official parachute jumps – and injuries that include a broken neck – ever wearing a burqa or submitting to the restrictions of the Taliban era, but she did. In fact she is fatalistic about many things; brothers killed and a husband dying before their only child, a son, was 40 days old. When I sympathise she shrugs: “Don’t be sorry. It’s OK. This is a temporary life. And it was a long time ago.”
Her own childhood was untypical for a girl in any Islamic country; one in which sport and martial arts featured prominently – she has black belts in Judo, Tae Kwondo, Karate. Unusually, too, she was encouraged by a father and uncle who told her she was “very brave” and should do whatever she was capable of doing. Academically she shone; at Kabul’s Ariana School, then the capital’s Jamal Mena University where she studied law before joining the Army.
“It was always my ambition to join the Army; at that time Afghanistan was a democracy, Najibullah was President – a good , honest man. There were more ladies in training school then, but I always came top,” she adds matter-of-factly. “ Now it’s hard for people in Afghanistan to see a woman the Army.”
“It wasn’t so difficult for a woman to succeed once, but when the Taliban period started they said women couldn’t work so I had to sit at home doing things like tailoring.”
The image of this intrepid woman making ends meet by sewing is hard to come to terms with. “I had a baby and I looked after children,” she explains. “I taught ladies, girls and little boys at home, I wrote and I made drawings.” Again that fatalism: “The most important gift that Allah gives humans is life – he gave us a brain. We should use it, live life to the full and be brave.”
Imprisoned physically at home, her active mind was free. She could no longer jump out of aircraft but during her darkest days she revisited the memory of that exhilarating freedom – and what she could no longer do, she drew picture of and wrote about.
While the General takes a phone call our interpreter, Darwish, points out a hand-written Scroll of Army Discipline on the wall; exquisitely executed, it reveals that calligraphy is another of her talents. “This work, it is very difficult” he whispers. “She has a great skill.”
Returning to our conversation General Khatool explains that although times were hard under the Taliban she never left Kabul to take refuge in Iranian or Pakistani refugee camps like so many other Afghans. “I love my country. I stayed here; I said ‘I’ll die if necessary, but I will stay in my country’.”
She’s been back in uniform for around eight years and although women occupy other senior roles General Khatool is now the only female commando. “There are others who want to be, but there is no capability to train them” she says, touching the cherished parachute emblem like a talisman.
Strangely for a senior military officer she has no English but speaks Urdu, Dari and some Russian as well as her native Pashtu. To have achieved her rank and sustained it is a staggering achievement for an Afghan woman – parachute jumps notwithstanding. The 500 training drops she is credited with are augmented by many hundreds more for sporting and public display purposes; jumping from fixed wing aircraft or Russian M8 and M17 helicopters into tight drop zones.
During the freedom festivities held to celebrate signing of the country’s new constitution she was the only female member of the six ‘Afghan Heroes’ parachute display team that jumped, Koran and flags in hand, into Kabul City Stadium. Pictures of this event join other fading snapshots on her office wall and, between translations, her attention strays to the looped slideshow of other nostalgic moments that flickers across her computer screen.
Undoubtedly she is a heroine and national icon, yet in a curious way she is also isolated; the only one of her kind. This is something reflected in her frequent sorties into the past; perhaps the only safe place for someone who repeatedly insists that she won’t answer any political questions?
Not long after our visit the country’s most senior policewoman, Lieutenant Colonel Malalai Kokar, was shot dead by Taleban gunmen in Kandahar as her teenage son prepared to drive her to work. Like Mohammadzai Khatool she had been the subject of many media reports and was famous throughout Afghanistan for her bravery. The mother of six carried a weapon and had survived several assassination attempts.
In Kabul’s Ministry of Defence, where the male soldiers all carry guns, General Khatool doesn’t even waer a sidearm. She shakes her head when I ask about protection. “I have been threatened,” she admits, but is disinclined to meet gun with gun. In a classic ‘bring it on!’ situation she describes rounding on a would-be attacker with bare arms. Whether brave, foolhardy or stoical it is hard to judge; she is, after all, a formidable martial arts practitioner.
The tough soldier and the fiercely protective mother are different sides of the same coin; when her sister’s husband disappeared leaving her with three children, General Khatool took them in.
She had her own memories of being left alone with no husband and understood the difficulties.
In the dim, artificial light of this over-furnished room we see a proud, intelligent woman treading a diplomatic tightrope. “Educated people are proud of me, but men from poor uneducated backgrounds find it hard to take orders from a woman. During the mujahadeen era men with large beards watched me leap from aircraft in disbelief muttering, ‘She’s magic – or maybe she’s really a man. How could a woman jump from an aircraft’!
“During President Najubullah’s time there were lots of women in the Army, perhaps 10 per cent? Now, I don’t know, much fewer – but whoever has ambition can join and there are many opportunities.”
I explain that in the UK women are not eligible to join the Parachute Regiment or the ‘teeth arms’. “No, really?” she says.”I think we are very lucky then that all positions are open to women! Commandos are the ‘first’, the elite, in every country. I am a very lucky woman in Afghanistan, because I am a general and a commando! ”
Yet there is a paradox here: She confirms that in the Afghan Army men and women undergo similar basic weapons training, military skills and fitness but when we stray into the area of frontline involvement it’s a different story. Even General Khatool with her considerable athletic skills and commando pedigree, has never been deployed operationally.
“I have never been involved in fighting; am a peacekeeper, a sportswoman. I pray that everyone will have peace and health. God gave us the gift of life; it is sweet and sour – beautiful, if only people would understand. Time is golden and we should seize every minute of it, because we will all die.”
Mohammadzai Khatool is a complex women and I’m aware that communication through an interpreter inevitably blunts the nuances of our respective languages. She struggles to convey things that she feels passionate about; between us we navigate the semantic labyrinths of operational security, gender and politics. One minute gentle, wistful and confiding – the next strident, and authoritative, she is a woman conscious of just how many forces are at play in this interview.
We take a break while our cups are refreshed. Suddenly there is a commotion outside the window; shrieking and raised voices. With surprising speed General Khatool and the soldier serving our tea rush out of the room, closing the door behind them. We are told to stay put.
After some moments a sheepish trio of women are women are brought in.
Earlier in the day Latifa, Basira and Fawzia had professionally frisked us and searched our bags for weapons. Then we were potential assassins; now we are the General’s guests. There is reluctance to explain the cause of the ‘incident’ but Darwish perseveres. The security post has indeed been breached it seems; not by terrorists posing as western media . . . but by a mouse.
I am urged not to make much of this incident but as the three female soldiers prepare to return to their post Latifa makes the universal ’hands apart’ gesture to indicate the size of the rodent. “She is saying ‘I think perhaps it was a rat’ ” Darwish translates.
Sitting informally on the settee with me as our time comes to a close General Kahtool becomes more philosophical: “Most countries see Afghanistan only as a really dark place, somewhere where there is no education, and life is very hard; but we have Afghan braveness, our hearts are big. We really want our country to go forward and we will fight for that. We have patience.”
So should Afghan women look to an Army career?
“My message to Afghan women is this; to be a good mother first, look after your babies and children while they are growing up because they are the future. Secondly Afghanistan must be rebuilt. Women should not forsake the house, but when they go out they should show men what they can do. It’s not about whether a woman wears a burqa, but whether she has courage.
“Our people need to join together; they should build factories to provide work and rebuild our country, but in the right way. In most other countries what is life about? A mother brings children into this world with hope, she looks after them, cares for them – but in Afghanistan life is nothing. Someone just walks outside and there are suicide bombers.”
Picking up on this recurring theme of instability and fear of movement I try one more ‘political’ question before we part and ask if she feels NATO/ISAF troops are making a positive contribution to her vision of a better Afghanistan. General Kahtool smiles and I am told politely: “She cannot answer this question.”