“Family Response Units: A police response to family violence in Afghanistan”

Paper presented by

Suhaila Fanoos

District 9, Kabul
Afghan National Police

at the

International Islamic Police Women’s  Conference

held

October 21 to 25, 2007-11-26

at the

Serena Hotel, Kabul, Afghanistan

The Family Response Unit:A police response to the problem of family violence

Paper presented at the International Islamic Police Women’s Conference, Kabul Afghanistan, October 21-25, 2007

During the reign of the Taliban, women throughout Afghanistan were considered to be inferior to men and subservient to the male. They, in effect, were thought of and treated as property by the Afghan male population. It’s a reality that women were the principal targets of the mindset of the Taliban regime.

It cannot be denied that since the fall of the Taliban, the status of the Afghan woman has improved. Unfortunately, some constraints on women are still in place and commitment to women’s empowerment has yet to become a reality. In many cases, the women’s status remains virtually unchanged from the Taliban’s oppressive control. However, that is not to say that hope for positive change has been abandoned.
Women are now involved in the political process by participating in elections and, in some cases, holding responsible positions in the Afghan government. They are also holding jobs and supporting families in what were once considered total male dominant field. One of these being the police services.

It is true that at the very onset, the women who were hired as policewomen throughout Afghanistan were assigned menial tasks such as filing paperwork, making and serving tea, and other non-police related work. Searching female suspects was perhaps the closest that these policewomen got to doing actual police work.
In June 2005, the first Family Response Unit was formed in Kabul. With the aid of DynCorp mentors and others, policewomen were trained and began their work in the District 10 police station.

With this office in place, these trained policewomen now had visible platform to provide perform legitimate police services to those in need. Whereas, before the establishment of the FRU, the few women who traveled to the police station to present their grievances and complaints were turned away, ridiculed, and /or ignored, they now had a haven where professional policewomen would listen to them and help them with their problems ranging from requests for divorces to physical assaults and worse.
The Afghan women in this area could now feel safer and more confident that their grievances would be taken seriously and they would receive help in solving their problems while being assured of their confidentiality. In this way, these pioneering policewomen were empowering these victims. That is to say that these victims now had a grater sense of confidence and self-esteem. That is to say that theses victims now had a greater sense of confidence and self-esteem. That alone has made this project a success.  And just as important, the FRU served, and has been serving, as a model for professionalism for the Afghan policewomen.

At the onset of the FRU program, it appeared, and rightly so, that the main thrust of the FRU’s work was to safeguard the rights of the Afghan woman. Since then, however, the scope of the responsibility of these units has expanded to include the family in totality. In this role, the FRU has not neglected the woman but more so has placed more emphasis on her by focusing on the family. As in many other societies, the role of the woman in the average Afghan household is that of the matriarch. The family revolves around her.

By expanding the responsibilities of the FRU to focus their attention on the Afghan family unit and dealing with any criminal (and in some cases, civil) actions that might threaten this unit, the policewomen from the FRUs are still largely concerned with the welfare of the Afghan woman. There are, however, cases where the male of males in the family unit are the true victims. In such cases, these policewomen will treat all cases fair-minded and determine what the best course of action to be taken to ensure that the sanctity of the family is not destroyed or harmed in any way.

Since the inception of the first Family Response Unit in 2005, this program has been extended to 12 units in five different regions (Kabul, Kondoz, Mazar-E-Sharif, Jalalabad, and Herat) in Afghanistan. Although these units are presently found in only five different regions, one of the goals is to have representation of the FRU throughout all regions of the country. There is already the organizational structure in the Ministry to do this.  As stated before, although the Taliban has been overthrown, their insidious influence still remains in the abusive manner that many Afghan women are still treated. The Family Response Unit has a mandate to provide the victim with choices whereas before, there were none, other than to suffer or in the worst cases, commit suicide.

In some cases, the FRU has conducted mediation with affected families or family members in order to correct an ongoing situation. (These cases are ones that do not involve the breaching of a criminal law but may get the family or become criminal in nature. These cases require the ANP policewomen to exercise patient, understanding, and neutrality in dealing with the family in order to empower them to hopefully solve their own problems.

Presently there are approximately 20 policewomen assigned to the 12 units in the affected 5 regions. There are presently nine DynCorp Afghan Police Program mentors throughout these regions assisting these women with their police experience and skills and providing them with logistical support whenever possible. The long range goal is to have representation in all of the regions in the country and provide DynCorp mentors to these units.