Footsteps in a Marked House: The Complex Role of Women in Pakistan’s Police Force
Photo courtesy of Nazish Brohi. Four policewomen look on in silence as the senior superintendent of police (SSP), who arranged the meeting, finishes telling me about his responsibilities, workload, and efforts to get more women recruited into the force. I’m not sure how to ask him to leave his own office to give us some privacy. As refreshments are served, he asks if we need help pouring tea from the thermos since its lever tends to get stuck. Rita, one of the women police officers I have just been introduced to, smiles a little. “I can defuse a time bomb, sir.” He grins, nods, and leaves.
The women are in a special police corps, the elite commandos formed in response to the terrorism that swept across Pakistan following US-led attacks of the allied forces in Afghanistan after 9/11. They are part of the police force of Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa (KP), a province that shares a porous mountainous border with Afghanistan and bore the brunt of subsequent, deadly terror attacks.
The policewomen want to know if the interview will be published in Dawn, a Pakistani national newspaper for which I occasionally write. I tell them it is for Guernica, a US-based online magazine. “The Americans? Well, in that case you’ll want to know how many Taliban we have killed, won’t you?” asks Bibi Nazia. I shake my head, brushing the question off, though now I’m curious and want to ask. Instead I pose an equally cringe-inducing query: “All these women in the police, what do they think of the Taliban?”
They refuse the stock responses. “What’s there to think? They attack the state. We are the state. We attack back,” says Nazia. “We will prevail; it’s a matter of how soon. They cannot outlive the state.” Rita muses for a few seconds and adds, “Although maybe we should thank them first. We women were inducted into the police force because of these militants. When they slipped on the burqa, we strapped on the holster.”
The three other policewomen grin and nod in agreement. In 2007, law-enforcement agencies caught an extremist militant leader, a man, trying to escape a mosque raid wearing a burqa, and presented him to television crews in that attire. The Laal Masjid (Red Mosque) incident has become a defining moment in Pakistan’s recent history, triggering events that necessitated the induction of women into the police.
The mosque was known for historic links with militants, played a key role during the Afghan jihad of the 1980s, and, until the time of the raid, maintained direct ties with Al Qaeda. In 2007, its clerics and students of its
