By PNS News Agency Kabul, Afghanistan
Capt. Niloofar Rahmani was 18 years old when she heard a news announcement saying the Afghan Air Force wanted to recruit its first female pilots.
Her father had dreamed of flying in the military as a young man. He became Rahmani’s strongest champion when she set out to join the all-male cadre, but he also warned his daughter that many difficulties lay ahead. “Go for it, but you must be strong,” Rahmani recalled him saying.
When Rahmani earned her wings in July 2012 and qualified to fly the C-208 cargo plane, she became the first female pilot to serve in the Afghan military since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. She is also the first female fixed-wing Air Force aviator in the nation’s history, following the flight path of two female helicopter pilots during the Soviet era.
Rahmani shared those milestone memories during a visit to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station on Monday. She also talked about the challenges of being a pioneer.
Distant relatives accused her of shaming their entire family. Men in her flight squadron were openly hostile, despite support from her commander. Taliban sympathizers have repeatedly threatened to kill Rahmani as well as her parents and siblings.
Yet Rahmani, now 23, has refused to quit. “If you don’t fight for your rights, they will never give them to you,” she said during the Monday visit. “I do the same things my colleagues do. Why do I have to be treated differently?”
Even a conservative society such as hers, where women were forbidden during the Taliban era from attending school or working outside the home, needs women to work for the good of the nation, Rahmani said.
“We need females to be a doctor, to be in each part of society. And we need female pilots too,” she said.
For her leadership at great personal risk, Rahmani was among 10 women honored this month with the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award.
After a stop at the White House and praise from first lady Michelle Obama, Rahmani traveled to Miramar to meet commanders and female pilots. Other events scheduled as part of her five-day visit, coordinated by the San Diego Diplomacy Council, include a fighter jet ride with the Navy’s Blue Angels and lunch with the CEO of Girl Scouts San Diego.
On her final stop, Rahmani and the other State Department honorees will participate in the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Rahmani studied English for six months so she could understand her U.S. instructor pilots, then trained for a year and a half at Shindand Air Base in the Herat province of Afghanistan.
To celebrate Rahmani’s first solo flight, American women dunked her in the pool — according to tradition. A photo of the event spread on social media, drawing accusations that she was being baptized into another religion or touched by foreign men.
The harassment continued after Rahmani took her first assignment. Her fellow aviators, many of them as old as her father and grandfathers, treated her as if she were a publicity stunt.
“It was hard for me to be around people that didn’t want me there. They were searching for a reason for me to be disappointed and just leave,” she said.
Rahmani couldn’t prove them wrong with words. “The only way was flight hours,” she said. She volunteered for every shift she could and quickly qualified as flight commander.
After that, she was the one issuing orders to the men who doubted her. “It was a day I felt so proud,” she said. “If they see a female, in their mind they see a weak person. But the idea they had about me, it’s changed now.”
On Monday, the female Marine pilots who met Rahmani could relate to being in a predominantly male profession. More than 30 years after the first women joined the Marine air wing as pilots, less than 1 percent of the service’s aviators are female — 194 out of 5,557, according to the 2015 Marine Corps almanac.
Lt. Col. Erin Benjamin, a 40-year-old Cobra attack helicopter pilot by training, told Rahmani: “Keep it up. We still face some of the same stuff you do. Not the threats, but … I’ve been in the Marine Corps 18 years. I was going to get out and my mentor said no, you have to stay in for the women behind you.”
Rahmani’s critics followed her brother out of his university and threatened to shoot him. She fought back her fears and carried on, she told the female Marines, in hopes of becoming an instructor pilot to bring in the next generation of female pilots. She also plans to fly the larger C-130 plane someday.
“My goal was to open or to break the very strong walls in front of the females in my country. … They think the females have to be in the house, doing the housework,” Rahmani said.
Inside a C-130 cockpit on the Miramar flight line, Rahmani and Marine Capt. K.C. Koepp, 26, of Vienna, Va., swapped war stories about near mishaps flying cargo planes. Like the time Rahmani’s single engine died about 20 minutes from base. “We just made it back to the runway,” she said, as the two women sighed in relief.
On the way out, Koepp gave Rahmani a big hug goodbye. “Good luck out there. You’re doing great things. Teach all those boys how to fly!” the American pilot said.
Rahmani can push the fears out of her mind only when she is in the cockpit.
“The time when I am most calm and just focused on one thing is when I am in the air,” she said. “I think of the creator and see what God created, all for humans. … I see how big it is.”
The love of flying unites Rahmani with all aviators, male or female, American and Afghan, the Miramar commanders told her.
Maj. Gen. Michael Rocco, commanding general of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing headquartered in San Diego, told Rahmani that his first flight was on his honeymoon. His second was during flight training in Pensacola, Fla.
The view up there was everything he had dreamed of since he was a boy, said Rocco, now a Cobra AH-1 attack helicopter pilot.
Rahmani will always have the international fellowship of aviators, Col. John Farnam, commanding officer of Miramar, told her. “You can all get together and talk with your hands … it really is a global community,” said the F/A-18 Hornet fighter pilot.
Rahmani expects the threats to continue, but she feels buoyed by the support of her immediate family, the inspiration of the female aviators she met at Miramar and the State Department recognition.
“I have the support of people all over the world. They know what I am fighting for. This award is for all the females in my community,” she said.
The job itself is also its own reward, despite the difficulties. Rahmani remembered flying to Camp Bastion in the particularly violent Helmand province, where severely wounded soldiers and remains of the dead needed to be transported to Kabul.
As a female pilot, she was forbidden from transporting casualties. “They think the females have a very small heart. They will cry … and crash the plane,” she explained.
Rahmani defied the rule, then explained why to her commanding general. “This is my job. I was not that hard of a person to let them die there,” she told the Afghan general. “That was the first time in my life I felt I did something good. As a human, I was helping people, saving them. … I saved someone’s life.”
AKSHAT JAIN