Picture (c) Anastasia Taylor-Lind

“How old am I? Give a guess!” She may be a general in the Afghan Army, its most senior woman and its only female paratrooper, but Mohammadzai Kahtool is not going to tell me her age. Handsome, with black hair and a uniform weighted with honours, she sits behind a heavy wooden desk, surrounded by bright artificial flowers and photographs of her famous exploits.

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.”

Pictures by Anastasia Taylor-Lind

Musuna, 27, has just given birth to quads by caesarian section. All will live, although two of the tiny babies are still in incubators. Mauna’s family is poor and travelled a long way from their remote village in Ghazni so that she could deliver safely at Kabul’s Cure Hospital. Her ornately tattooed aunt who wears traditional dress, looks strangely out of place in the modern ward.

Musuna is not strong; she is anaemic and needed a blood transfusion the previous evening. How will she cope, I asked midwife trainer Victoria Parsa? She shrugs: “I don’t know. She already has three children, but only one boy – she will want another.”

To date 120 British servicemen and women have been killed in Afghanistan; many more have been wounded. Each death is personal and a stark reminder of what dangers are faced by those battling the Taliban and striving to bring stability to the country.

But other lost lives go unremarked and unreported; the lives of Afghan women and girls. They die for a number of unforgiveable reasons ranging from murder to neglect. The country’s maternal mortality rate is the highest in the world. A woman dies of pregnancy-related causes every 27 minutes. Few use contraception and childbirth represents a bigger threat to life than bullets, air-strikes or suicide bombings.

One of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which the Department for International Development (DFID) supports, is to reduce this maternal mortality 75 per cent by 2015. It won’t happen, but things are getting better.

The Afghan Ministry of Public Health, in partnership with Cure Hospital, has taken steps to standardise the training of staff midwives throughout its 34 provinces. Fewer babies die each year, there are more clinics and more women receive ante-natal care. Organisations like Afghanaid use education of boys and girls to help break the cultural cycle of poverty, child marriage and female repression.

In distant Helmand province, at Bost Hospital, a program is underway to train female midwives who will take their skills back to their villages and save lives. We visit it with 32-year-old Royal Navy Lt Rebecca Parnell who is on her second tour of duty in Afghanistan, based at Lashkar Gash.

She explains how the British presence is related to fighting on two fronts; the battlefield encounters with insurgents that are widely reported – and the painstaking community outreach work that is not. Through contact with women’s’ groups, the Afghan police, drug rehabilitation clinics – and hospital’s like Bost – teams of Provincial Reconstruction Team staff advise on issues ranging from justice to women’s health.

“Women are more forward looking than men,” explains Rebecca. “They see the importance of creating a better future for their children. They acknowledge that they need ISAF support and see us as a less patriarchal society.”

At Bost we meet the hospital’s director, Dr Enaytullah Gafar, an articulate and dedicated man. He says: “This hospital is for men and women, with 150 beds for all kinds of patients. There are 10-15 for emergency obstetric cases. In this province we have a shortage of female doctors and midwives; when the 24 midwives in training complete their 18-month course and graduate it will solve a small part of the problem.”

There are 48 clinics in Helmand, of varying capability. “All complicated cases come here” says Dr Enaytullah, “and also to two district hospitals, in Garmsir and Goreshk. One was damaged and had to close for a while but has started up again. After surgery patients go back to their own homes or areas to convalesce.”

The reality is that until stability is restored to Helmand, and there is freedom of movement, travel for patients and staff alike is fraught with danger.

Some of the women on the Bost midwife training course travel hundreds of kilometres to attend. “We select students who are married,” says Dr Eyanatullah. “It is important for stability. There is a dormitory for them here and their husbands can come to visit at weekends. There is also a nursery because many of these students have young children who no-one else can look after. But the main problem is security; it is has a big impact on delivery of healthcare. Some of these women come from very dangerous areas.”

The hunger for peace, security and education is immense and nowhere more evident than among Helmand’s women. Gentle, gracious, playful, hospitable and as generous with their time as their possessions, they illustrate more compellingly than any political argument why stability is important. Each has a personal story of tragedy, hope, ambition or sorrow. All realise that Afghanistan’s children and young people hold the keys to its future.

In the midwifery students classroom the modestly dressed women sit in a horseshoe arrangement around a flip chart. Their teacher, Bibi Shahan, and her colleagues use drawings to illustrate foetal positioning – simple, but effective. What they learn, and take back to their villages, will save lives.

At first the women are bashful, reluctant to talk about their lives or be identified, but they are delighted that someone is taking an interest in them. Gradually curiosity overcomes reluctance and they start to tell their stories.

Nasaneen, at 15, is the youngest student. A shy but curious girl she has recently married a provincial councillor in Helmand who has another wife and eight children. Other classmates are older with considerably more life experience than Nasaneen; some have been refugees, others are pregnant or have children of their own, many have lost loved ones over the years of fighting and instability.

Parween Naswiri’s story is typical. She tells me: “My dad died in mosque explosion. He was an engineer and a good man. I miss him so much. He encouraged me. Now I don’t know what will happen to us.”

Aged 29 she speaks good English and is already qualified as a teacher. She enrolled on the midwife training course to learn about maternal health, but her real ambition is to be a doctor. As we speak I realise I have already met her sister Yasmine, 22, translating for the British Justice Advisor at Lashkar Gah Women’s Centre. Their youngest sister Muzda, 18, is a founder member of the newly formed Women’s Justice Group. The sisters ache for life opportunities that are never going to materialise until the conflict in Helmand is resolved.

Zainab, 20, grew up in exile. Her family lived in Iran for 25 years and returned only after the election of President Kharzai. She has been married for five months. She says: “Life here is very hard. My mother is here, but my dad is in Kabul – it is too far away; we are so sad. Please help us. We’re so afraid. We hate this fighting. Our teacher says we will all find work here in our province. I hope so.”

Shaheen is 30, the wife of a finance officer in Lashkar Gah and pregnant with her first child. She has been on the course for four months. She wants a boy. Sharin is from Pakistan; she wants to talk to me but has no English and our interpreter (who was born at Bost Hospital ) is tied up elsewhere. Hand signals and smiles say “thank you for coming here.”

Lunchtime provides an opportunity to socialise and ask questions – largely to do with husbands and numbers of children. Our armed bodyguards lurk at a discreet distance while we join the students for their mid-day meal of kofta in spicy gravy, beans in delicious tomato sauce, pitta, yoghourt, cucumber and fiery chillies that make our eyes water – and the ladies laugh! It is laid out on an oilcloth in a room adjacent to the classroom.

The children join us; little Bilal, a beautiful child with learning difficulties, is curious about the newcomers. It’s easy to forget that danger lurks everywhere in Helmand. We have come to Bost with heavy security. Rebecca, who routinely deals with requests for aid, confesses that she has never had the opportunity to dine cross-legged on the floor of an Afghan home. When the students hear this they heap more food on her plate and prepare a ‘doggy bag’ for her as we rise to leave.

The women’s day starts at 8am and finishes at 4pm. After class those who board are reunited with their children. Those from Lashkar Gah are collected by family members to walk or be driven home. All wear burqas. “I don’t feel safe on the streets,” says Parween.

Bost is an oasis of hope in a troubled area; the wider issues of maternal care in Afghanistan need addressing centrally by rigorous training and robust enforcement of protocols that cut through cultural taboos.

Ironically one of the places that advice on planned parenthood can be easily accessed is in jail. Zaraf Shan is a career policewoman, mother of six and the senior female officer at Kabul’s new Women’s Prison. At 42 she is slim, attractive and well groomed. Zaraf is responsible for 15 staff managing security, patrolling, looking after administrative issues and “ways to make things better”. Four doctors are attached to the prison and the women have access to advice on birth control, female health, STDs and hygiene training.

But in the remote provinces it’s a very different story life is cheap for women. Afghanistan is a land of savage beauty, its unforgiving terrain scarred by decades of conflict. In spite of the fragile democracy that was established by parliamentary elections in September 2005, it is still male dominated.

In some areas, girls as young as eight are married to men old enough to be their grandfathers, forced to give birth before their immature bodies are ready. Many husbands would let their pregnant wives die rather than allow them be treated by a male doctor.
.

Legislation has formally addressed the issues; but education, investment and major cultural changes are needed to give it teeth.

Limitations on mobility and negative perceptions of female behaviour will only change through the advocacy of men who can link it to the well-being of their children, sisters, wives and mothers.

The former Medical Director of the Cure International Hospital, Dr Jacqui Hill, recalls the case of a
36-year-old mother of three, nine months pregnant with twins. “ She’d had no ante-natal care and the day before admission had gone to a doctor with headache and abdominal pain. No one had examined her properly or picked up on the fact that she was suffering from pre-eclampsia.

“During the night this poor woman had a seizure. By the time she reached us she was unconscious and both babies were dead. The duty team did everything they could for her but it was too late and she died too. Cases like these are all too frequent due to lack of knowledge, both of patients and of medical staff. This is why the training of the Afghan medical staff is SO important. ”

And it’s a story with several sub-texts. Simplistically maternal care is about provision of services – midwives, doctors, clinics, hospitals, medication, and equipment. But even at this level there are ‘issues’ – like the cheap (but adulterated) pharmaceutical products that flood the market; the clinics that open, only to close later due to intimidation or lack of funding.

A ‘Cure’ graduate describing his short secondment to Ghor province, in a district called Lal Sar-e-Gangal, said: “The population is around 360,000. In the morning when you go to the hospital the number of donkeys and horses outside the hospital gives you estimation how many patients are expecting you to see. These animals are the only effective transportation in mountainous areas, but still some patients don’t get to the hospital in time to get treatment. During my 12 day stay there, two out of three patients with acute appendicitis already had ruptured appendix when they got to the hospital. Others never got there.”