As the Taliban settles into power in Afghanistan after nearly twenty years out, a very likely target of the returning rulers is the first woman ever to serve as a police chief in that troubled country.
Seven years after Colonel Jamila Bayaz was appointed as police chief of Kabul’s District One, sources tell Newsmax that the high-profile "law lady" is shortly expected to be stripped of her rank, uniform, and gun by the new Taliban government.
Bayaz, 50, spent 32 years as an investigator and counter-narcotics agent before her promotion in 2014 to be "top cop" of one in ten districts in the capital city. Her district, according to Global News, "houses the presidential palace, numerous ministries, the central bank, and the main money and gold markets."
The focus on Bayaz and her uncertain future comes as the Taliban, having initially promised to respect women after twenty years of their attaining greater standing in society, now appears to be returning to its old policy of oppressing women that typified its years in power from 1996-2001.
In those years, the Taliban forced women to cover their faces, banned them from working or attending school, or even leaving their homes without being accompanied by a male relative.
On Friday morning, the Taliban announced that women would be banned from reporting the news on television.
At the time she became police chief in 2014, Bayaz investigated a number of cases in which prominent women were attacked. These included two of her fellow police officers who were killed in the south of Afghanistan and an Indian author living in East Pakistan who was killed after writing a book about life under the Taliban rule (which became a hit Bollywood film).
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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