CHAPTER 7
INVISIBLE
The most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe… which ordains all men sovereigns [and] all women subjects, carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every home of the nation.
—SUSAN B. ANTHONY
ZABUL PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN, JUNE 2011—The Afghan provincial assistant walked into the governor’s office carrying a silver tray overflowing with appetizers: small plates of breads, dates, and nuts as well as bowls of fruit and yogurt. Maria Rodriguez was waiting for the first of several Sunday morning meetings with the provincial governor to begin. She watched as the assistant maneuvered around the velvet sofa she sat on to serve the men in the room first.
The ornate carvings at the tray’s center peeked out between the round bottoms of a teapot and delicate glass cups. And the pleasant smell of bread baking in a small factory up the road wafted into the room, mixing with the musty smells of Afghanistan that Rodriguez had gradually grown to accept.
The assistant’s uniform made an almost imperceptible swishing sound as he sped by.
Between the wooden floors layered with plush rugs and the thick golden curtains flanking the large windows behind the provincial governor’s desk, the office looked more like a banquet hall than a place for the heads of US and Afghan military units to hash out strategies in a war zone. But Rodriguez saw, through the room’s vast windows, the reminders of conflict. Outside, directly in front of the concrete building, sat the opening of a sandbag-and-barbed-wire fence that encircled the entire military compound. Along the dusty roads between the fence and the building American and Afghan military vehicles sped past, kicking dirt onto a maze of muddy sidewalks.
Rodriguez was anxious to talk about the treatment and progress of the Afghan women who were hired to serve as police officers. She had heard rumors that there were six to twelve Afghan women being kept somewhere on the compound—not working and not being well looked after either—and she intended to find out where they were and what they needed. But she knew better than to push her commanding officer to jump into business conversation right away. She also knew that it would have been considered a cultural affront for her, the only woman in the room, to speak before the men. When the compound commander, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Thacker, introduced her to the governor, the politician declined to shake her hand; instead, he raised his head, nodded to acknowledge her existence, and then looked past her to his Afghan National Army soldiers and the colonel. Rodriguez kept her hands tucked behind her back and turned toward Thacker, allowing the insult from the governor to pass.
The major had worked hard to become an officer, and she didn’t get there by being the meek woman in the background. Her dedication to the military had meant personal sacrifice—time away from her children, who were always on her mind. Long hours and frequent deployments led, in part, to two divorces by the time she hit the ground in Afghanistan. She resented the fact that she was expected to accept the absences and moves and late nights that both of her husbands (also soldiers, the first an aviation warrant officer and the second an infantry staff sargeant) brought to the relationship. Pressure for men to be as understanding of the schedules of military wives wasn’t nearly as high.
As the provost marshall (the military equivalent of a police chief) for the 1st Stryker Brigade, Rodriguez was in charge of one of the most powerful military police units in the Middle East. She wasn’t accustomed to holding her tongue—or condoning overtly sexist treatment. Every moment she had to do that in Afghanistan was a strain.
Progress for women in Afghanistan, Rodriguez had grown to understand, often meant setting ego aside, swallowing pride, and making compromises.
Of the dozens of FET units serving in Afghanistan from all over the world, women in the American military units frequently had the hardest time adjusting. In addition to the lack of logistical and strategic support from the military, which women from other countries didn’t struggle with to the same degree, the approach from Afghan male soldiers who worked with American women sometimes included sexual harassment and intimidation. At least one American woman had become a target. And one Afghan man became an example of the lengths this latest provincial governor would go to in order to build trust with the American military.
About a week after Rodriguez arrived at FOB Lagman in Zabul she was able to piece together parts of the story.
An Afghan guard had been kicked out of the provincial governor’s service and dismissed from the military for sexually harassing an American military female. The details were unclear, but Rodriguez did know that the woman had been seen talking to the man alone—something that American women were instructed not to do—and walking with the man, who was married, from the provincial governor’s office to other places on the base, including the cafeteria. These are moves the woman likely thought were safe and that she had probably done with American military men on bases all over the world; however, the Afghan officer read her actions as less than innocent. After his requests for dates were rejected, he became aggressive. He started cornering her in the building where she worked, demanding to know why she had rejected his advances. She threatened to report him to the provincial governor, but her threats simply fueled his aggression. He found her walking home alone one night from the provincial governor’s office. From what Rodriguez understands, the man pushed the woman against a wall late at night in an unlit area of the compound, pinned her shoulders back so she couldn’t move, and began to force himself on her. The woman managed to break free and run. She reported the assault to her commander, who spoke to the provincial governor. The man was immediately dismissed.
Rodriguez was happy to learn that the provincial governor’s approach to dealing with Afghan men started from a place of respect for American women. Although he didn’t think of women as equal, he always followed through on his zero-tolerance policy for actions deemed offensive by the American military—even offenses that, culturally, Afghan men didn’t necessarily acknowledge or understand.
But the biggest lesson Rodriguez learned from the experiences of an American woman she had never met was how, as a female officer, to navigate the world of Afghan male diplomacy. That skill would be an essential part of proving that Afghan female police—who their male colleagues frequently wrote off—were a vital tool in pushing the Taliban and other insurgents out of the country. To some Afghan men, friendliness, beyond what was deemed by their society as professional, could be seen as an overture, and confidence was viewed a threat, Rodriguez said. Part of negotiating as a woman among Afghan men was learning how to blend into the background with just the right amount of energy: participate enough not to be forgotten; be harmless enough not to be met with aggression. The tactic of being the mute woman who spoke through American men—though often hard for Rodriguez—opened the doors of progress.
She used those tactics during that first meeting with Zabul’s provincial governor.
As Rodriguez walked into the building that Sunday she removed the cap of her uniform and placed it in the right pocket of her cargo pants. She hurriedly fished for the headscarf from her left pocket so she could cover her jet-black hair, which was neatly pulled back in a sleek bun, comfortably sitting above her uniform’s collar. The scarf was modest, monochromatic, acceptable. The week before, she scrambled to replace the bright-colored, jeweled scarf she had originally bought when she first landed at the Kandahar Airfield. She knew that in the country she would need to wear a headscarf and thought the ornate scarf was pretty. But a few days later an Afghan she had met on the base gently pulled her aside and told her just the opposite. The jewels on the end of the scarf were considered flashy, not something a proper Afghan woman would wear.
When she walked into the governor’s office she saw a large wooden desk flanked by plush, high-backed chairs. Following Thacker, Rodriguez walked by four large sofas in order to sit on the first one, close to the governor’s desk. To her left was the colonel and, across from her, officers of the Afghan National Army, men whose missions were, in part, wrapped up in solving educational and tactical problems among their soldiers—problems the American military had resolved decades ago. And they were hoping that men like Thacker could help them fix the multitude of roadblocks preventing their soldiers from pushing out the Taliban.
Despite the surge of US troops in 2010, there had been little to no progress in building Afghan security forces that could have helped stabilize local governments in provinces like Zabul in Southern Afghanistan, one of the most economically, politically, and socially challenged sections of the country. That year the Taliban killed three candidates who were running for Parliament. “Everyone affiliated with this election is our target,” said a Taliban spokesman, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. “Candidates, security forces, campaigners, election workers, voters are all our targets.” Political leaders in many villages in Southern Afghanistan rarely made public appearances and left key positions in local governments unfilled. In other areas throughout the country the only faces of government were those of the Afghan military, which was struggling to train and educate its soldiers. Where a woman like Rodriguez fit into fixing those problems, the provincial governor hadn’t even considered.
The morning of that first meeting Thacker sat down in the first open spot on the sofa to the provincial governor’s right. To the governor’s left were two of his assistants. Rodriguez slowly lowered herself onto the sofa beside Thacker. But almost immediately a third provincial assistant motioned for her to stand. He whispered something to her in broken English that she didn’t completely understand, escorted her to the far end of the last sofa in the room, and motioned for her to sit. Although his English may not have been completely clear, the universal language of segregation and isolation certainly was. As the only woman in the meeting, Rodriguez was relegated to the most subservient, distanced spot in the room. She was seated so far from the provincial governor, his assistants, and the rest of the meeting’s officers that she was prevented from easily communicating with any of them, including Thacker.
After she settled into her far corner of the room, she watched the Afghan provincial assistant walk past her to serve the men—the governor, then Thacker, and then members of the Afghan military—first. He carefully handed each a delicate glass cup filled with tea, steam swirling just above the rim. She heard her translator deliver in English the customary small talk that began most business meetings in Afghanistan. The chitchat could last for thirty minutes or more, a practice that regularly tested Rodriguez’s patience—a by-product of her fast-paced New York upbringing that sometimes made the much slower environment of Afghanistan hard for her to take. Finally, the assistant who had painstakingly walked around her minutes earlier returned with a cup of tea in hand.
As the men began to talk, Rodriguez pulled out her notebook. The pristine white paper waiting to be filled reminded her of the notebooks she used as a Catholic schoolgirl learning to write cursive. She warmed up her wrist, just as she remembered the nuns instructing, by drawing consecutive circles for several seconds on the first sheet of paper in the notebook. She flipped to the second page and started at the top of the alphabet: “A, a, a, A. b, B, B, b. c, c, C, C…” Once in a while her ears perked up when she heard one of the Afghan military officers bring up an issue that she thought her FET could address. The curves and links of her meticulous doodles were interspersed with the much straighter lines of hastily written notes: “Illiteracy rates high among Afghan military men,” she wrote. She looked up at the Afghan officer and listened attentively as her translator made clear that more than 50 percent of men within Afghan military units couldn’t read. “FET units could host literacy sessions. Teach men to read,” she added to her notes. She flipped to the next page and jotted down a message for Thacker. “When are we going to talk about the FETs? Can you ask the governor about the Afghan policewomen on the compound? Where are they? What do they need?” She ripped the page from her notebook, folded it, and, while crouching, slowly walked over to Thacker. She handed him the note and moved quickly back to her designated, distanced spot. Though frustrating, Thacker was her only means of communicating, and notes were the only way she could convey her thoughts.
Thacker glanced down at the message, refolded it, and placed it in his pocket. He turned slightly to make eye contact with Rodriguez and slowly shook his head. Rodriguez sat further back on the sofa. She would get no more information.
She looked up at a chandelier that hung high above her head, its crystals catching her eye. The ornate governor’s office sat in stark contrast to the office one floor above—one that at that point was still a mystery to Rodriguez. But the isolation felt by the women inside each was very much the same.
THE SECOND-FLOOR OFFICE was empty save for a battered, metal desk and a few simple wooden chairs. As the morning meetings kicked off downstairs, the routine on the second floor was much slower, the actions of its occupants much more tentative. In that space an Afghan female police officer known as Bibi was in charge.
Bibi stared at the paperwork that sat on the metal desk’s modest surface through the small holes in her dark burqa. With her right hand, which was also covered, she reached for a pen; with her left she flipped through empty time schedules, occasionally writing down a woman’s name, with nothing else to place beside it. The thought of her daughter’s face—round, innocent, topped with wild, curly black hair—made her smile, and then brought tears to her eyes. Bibi thought of her daughter frequently, along with the other child she left behind to become a police officer in Zabul Province. Members of the Taliban had beheaded two of her brothers, and she thought that joining the police force would give her life order. But the nightmare of Taliban activity followed her. The terrorists threatened her life because she was an officer; they called in bomb scares and made assassination attempts. Every woman in the room had a similar story. But looking down at that paperwork every day was a reminder that she and the rest of her team were isolated from her fellow police officers. They rarely heard from the police chief and had no police-related duties. Their days were spent hidden away in this small room. Their sacrifices had, up to that point, been for nothing. She was powerless.
The other women, also fully covered, found busywork wiping the room’s bare white walls. They scrubbed the floors with the same multipurpose mixture, and the smell of cleanser permeated the small space. They dusted the chairs and rearranged small lamps that, aside from the fluorescent ceiling light, brought the only bit of brightness into the otherwise gray space, with its cold, stone floors and thick, iron bars outside of its only window. Heavy black curtains blocked the gaze of any men or women who may happen by and be tempted to look up and wonder about the plight of the women inside. Those Afghan female officers who hadn’t run from the grips of the Taliban had run from equally dangerous male family members who threatened to kill them if they joined the police force.
Yet these women still fled their homes, and each found a way into the heart of Zabul Province’s capital of Qalat City.
AFTER THEIR SECOND MEETING Rodriguez closely followed Thacker out of Provincial Governor Mohammad Ashraf Naseri’s office. As they exited the building she quickly rummaged through her right-side cargo pants pocket for her uniform cap. She removed her headscarf and asked again about talking to the provincial governor about the Afghan women hidden somewhere on the base. Is that something, she asked, that could come up during the next meeting?
Thacker began walking along the dirt path that led from the governor’s office building to his. Rodriguez kept in step, and he listened again as the major emphasized the importance of working with members of the Afghan female police. They need to be prepared to take over after the FETs leave, she said. They need to continue searching female suspects. They would be economically empowered. And once the police unit was successful, other women may hear about it, leave their villages, and join the force. The more the Afghan female police force expanded, she continued, the better position they would be in to take on insurgents.
Thacker stopped walking just before he reached the gate surrounding his office building. He turned to Rodriguez and told her the most important lesson that she would learn during her entire stay in Afghanistan: without patience in this country, there are no victories. Things move slowly, he explained. For every one thing that you want, Rodriguez remembered him saying, “I’ve been trying for years to accomplish three more.” He punched the keypad to get through the gate. He paused on his way in, turned to look at her, and asked, “Okay, exactly what do you want?”
“Just a meeting with the women. Just an initial meeting.”
“I’ll try to bring it up the next time.”
During Rodriguez’s third meeting with the political and security force leaders she knew exactly what to do. She followed Thacker through the double doors of the first-floor office. She sat on the far end of the last sofa in the room. As the men settled in, hot tea, breads, and cheeses were passed around to all, and she reached into her right cargo pocket, pulled out her notebook, and began the waiting game. A, a, a. B, B, B, b. C, C, c, c. She interspersed her doodles with notes: marksmanship skills were poor; leadership training was needed.
She wondered when her turn would come.
Thacker sat on the sofa beside the governor, crossed his right leg over his left, and sat his hands in his lap. He nodded as he listened to Naseri speak, waiting for a pause in the conversation. After about an hour he found an opening. The colonel glanced at Rodriguez and then turned back to the governor. “We understand that there are women on the base,” Thacker said, “who are members of the new female team of the Afghan police. Are they working? Rodriguez would like to meet them. There may be an opportunity for training,” Thacker explained, “and ultimately for improving the Afghan National Police.”
The governor stared at Rodriguez for several seconds. She returned his gaze. He nodded toward one of his guards and motioned for him to take the major upstairs.
Rodriguez and her translator followed the third assistant.
He was a tall, slender man who walked with a smooth stride as he climbed toward the second floor. At the top, near the end of the hallway, was a narrow door with scratches and indents. The provincial assistant pulled out his baton and used it to knock. Rodriguez looked down and noticed the dull-colored knob. It started to slowly turn; the major looked up.
The escort moved aside, signaling for Rodriguez to enter. But she did not. Instead, she paused and looked directly at Bibi, whose head was peeking out from the other side. She had opened the door only a few inches. It took a minute or two for Rodriguez to distinguish between the burqa and the darkness of the dimly lit room. As Bibi’s figure became clear to Rodriguez, the first thing the major noticed was a set of intense brown eyes. She saw in them a fear and hesitation that told her to approach gingerly.
The soldier smiled to say hello and slowly walked into the room, closing the battered wooden door behind her.