Word: khatol
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...force headquarters and demanded to be let in. "Go home, Auntie," said the guards, shooing her away. "Get out, go home." The petite woman didn't budge. "I am not your aunt!" she shouted, tearing off her burqa and tossing it to the ground. "I train soldiers. I am Khatol!" Hearing that name, the guards apologized and, too flustered even to salute, opened the gates. Khatol Muhammadzai is the highest-ranking woman in Afghanistan's air force and the country's first and only female parachutist. That day, after more than five long years of forced retirement, Khatol had come...
Widowed 17 years ago, when her only child was still an infant, Khatol (women in her tribe prefer to use only their first name) was among those hardest hit by the Taliban's ban on women's employment. Although she is better educated than most Afghan women--as few as 5.6% are literate--Khatol's options under the fundamentalist regime became as narrow as those for many of Kabul's 30,000-plus other war widows. The Taliban's restrictions on its female population were infamously harsh: girls could not attend school; and women, except for some doctors and nurses...