Britain's Akram Khan's dance of creative destruction

PARIS: A year ago, Akram Khan was told his dance career was over. Now, with the Olympics ceremony under his belt, two films on the boil and three shows on tour, Britain's best-known choreographer could hardly be busier if he tried.

The 38-year-old ball of energy is in Paris this month with his most personal work to date, DESH, a full-length solo exploring his family roots in Bangladesh, through his signature fusion of contemporary dance with north Indian Kathak.

Khan's schedule for the coming months sounds like a plate-spinning act, but when he ripped his Achilles tendon during a rehearsal last January, doctors feared he would never dance again.

"It was very traumatic," he told AFP, "Ballet dancers don't come back after an Achilles tendon rupture. It's very rarely possible."

Shows were cancelled, plans cut short as Khan -- unable to walk for two months -- headed into a "humiliating" round of surgery and physiotherapy.

"I'm a dancer, so it's ego you know, somebody's telling you how to do a simple walk. I wanted to shoot them!"

"But from that it went into running, jogging, then jumping, then a little bit of confidence comes back.

"And then suddenly you're in the Olympics!" joked Khan, who choreographed and performed in a segment of the August opening ceremony.

In his solo DESH, a chameleonic Khan gives life to a dense cast of characters as the action shifts, dreamlike, from his south London birthplace to the grimy, noisy streets of Bangladesh over 80 visually-sumptuous minutes.

While he has recovered mobility, Khan has yet to get his full strength back, and had to make changes to perform the show, on world tour after premiering in London to rapturous reviews last year.

"You find other ways, and that was very valuable," he said, "I'm stronger in other ways."

Right now Khan is preparing a duet with the Flamenco dancer Izrael Galvan, in between touring with two more of his shows -- Gnosis and Sacred Monsters.

Come May he will premiere a creation called iTMOi inspired by Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" in the French city of Grenoble, before taking that show on the road as well.

Recent sideline projects have included teaming up with the artist Anish Kapoor to shoot a spoof "Gangnam Style" video in support of Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei.

As if that wasn't enough, he is choreographing a film called "Desert Dancer", based on the true story of a young Iranian man persecuted for his love of dance, and is hoping to direct a film based on DESH.

In terms of juggling projects, Khan says he is busier than ever before. And in March he will become a father for the first time, when his Japanese dancer wife gives birth to a baby girl.

The story of Khan's injury and recovery loops back to an earlier one of how, as a little boy, he liked to break things to see what was inside.

"I was destructive as a child, I was fascinated to see things broken and put back together again," he told AFP, "I was very physical, I couldn't keep my hands still."

That was how Khan's mother started teaching her three-year-old son the folk dance Kathak, today the backbone of his art. To tire him out, like others might send a child to kick a ball around the yard.

Formal lessons followed aged seven, but it was long a battle of wills with a mother determined to share -- "impose", he jokes -- her culture with him.

"It was traumatic," said Khan, who talks with disarming candour, and wry humour, of his upbringing, "My mother used to bribe me, with toys, each performance I would get a little matchbox car."

While he jokes about his strong-willed mother, Khan is clear the "challenging relationship" in his life is with his father, bent on rooting out the Westerner in his son and making a true Bengali of him.

"DESH is very much about my father," he says of the piece, which opens with a scene showing him burying his father before pounding violently at the earth, as if to root out the story of their shared past.

Like a grown-up version of the creative destruction he displayed as a child.

Co-created with the poet Karthika Nair, the visual designer Tim Yip and the composer Jocelyn Pook, the work has a political dimension too, reflecting his sense that "everything is political" in Bangladesh, starting with the drinking water polluted by Western waste dumping.

"This is my story. It's part true, part lie," he says, "It needed to be epic, because it was very personal."

But for now, Khan jokes, he is done digging for his family roots: "I think I need to move on -- I need to get a life!"

-AFP/fl

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Senate approves Netflix-backed amendment to video privacy law

Ready to share your Netflix viewing on Facebook?

(Credit:
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The U.S. Senate has approved legislation to amend a 1988 law that would make it easier for people to share their video-viewing habits online should the Netflix-backed bill win President Obama's signature.

The Senate approved revisions this evening to the Video Privacy Protection Act to allow video rental companies to obtain consent from customers in order to share information about their viewing preferences on social networks. The 24-year-old law was enacted after a newspaper printed the video rental history of Judge Robert H. Bork during his Supreme Court nomination hearings.

Bork died yesterday at age 85, a day after the U.S. House of Representatives approved the legislation.

A Netflix representative applauded the Senate's approval and promised to introduce new products should the president sign the bill.

"We are pleased the Senate has moved quickly to modernize the VPPA, giving consumers more freedom to share with friends when they want," Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said in a statement. "After the president signs the bill, we will introduce social features for our U.S. members in 2013."

Users outside of the United States have the option to link their Netflix accounts with Facebook, allowing them frictionless sharing of their video viewing preferences with other member of their online social network.

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Senate GOP proposes much smaller Sandy aid package

WASHINGTONSenate Republicans on Wednesday proposed a $24 billion emergency aid package for Superstorm Sandy victims, less than half of what Democrats hope to pass by Christmas.

The GOP alternative bill would provide more than enough money to pay for immediate recovery efforts through the spring.

Republicans complain that the $60.4 billion Democratic bill being debated in the Senate is larded with money for projects unrelated to damage from the late October storm, which battered the Atlantic coastline from North Carolina to Maine.

The Republican version does not include $13 billion Democrats want for projects to protect against future storms, including fortification of mass transit systems in the Northeast and protecting vulnerable seaside areas by building jetties against storm surges.

49 Photos

Sandy's devastation on Staten Island

Republicans said however worthy such projects may be, they are not urgently needed and should be considered by Congress in the usual appropriations process next year, not through emergency spending.

"We want to take care of urgent needs now," said Indiana Sen. Dan Coats, ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, who put forward the bill. "We can look at other needs down the road when we have more time to look at them."

The GOP bill also scraps spending from the Democratic bill that is not directly related to Sandy damages, such as the $150 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for declared fisheries disasters in 2012 that could go to New England states, Alaska, New York and Mississippi.

The aid will help states rebuild public infrastructure like roads and tunnels and help thousands of people displaced from their homes. Sandy was the most costly natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and one of the worst storms ever in the Northeast.

More than $2 billion in federal funds has been spent on relief efforts so far for 11 states and the District of Columbia. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund still has about $4.8 billion, and officials have said that is enough to pay for recovery efforts into early spring.

Earlier this month, Govs. Chris Christie, R-N.J., Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., and Dannel Malloy, D-Conn., argued in an op-ed that "in times of crisis no region, state or single American should have to stand alone or be left to fend for themselves," pointing to the "hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses damaged or destroyed, thousands still left homeless or displaced, tens of billions of dollars in economic loss" as evidence that "It's time for Congress to stand with us."

The governors, while recognizing that "our nation faces significant fiscal challenges," strive to separate the disaster-relief needs of their region from the ongoing "fiscal cliff" negotiations consuming Capitol Hill, arguing that Congress must "not allow this much-needed aid to fall in to the ideological divide."

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Obama Invokes Newtown on 'Cliff' Deal

Invoking the somber aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today appealed to congressional Republicans to embrace a standing "fair deal" on taxes and spending that would avert the fiscal cliff in 13 days.

"If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important," Obama said at a midday news conference.

"I would like to think that members of that [Republican] caucus would say to themselves, 'You know what? We disagree with the president on a whole bunch of things,'" he said. "'But right now what the country needs is for us to compromise.'"

House Speaker John Boehner's response: "Get serious."

Boehner announced at a 52-second news conference that the House will vote Thursday to approve a "plan B" to a broad White House deal -- and authorize simply extending current tax rates for people earning less than $1 million a year and little more.

"Then, the president will have a decision to make," the Ohio Republican said. "He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he could be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history."

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Unless Congress acts by Dec. 31, every American will face higher income tax rates and government programs will get hit with deep automatic cuts starting in 2013.

Obama and Boehner have been inching closer to a deal on tax hikes and spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. But they have not yet had a breakthrough on a deal.

Obama's latest plan would raise $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years, largely through higher tax rates on incomes above $400,000. He also proposes roughly $930 billion in spending cuts, including new limits on entitlement spending, such as slower annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.

Boehner has agreed to $1 trillion in new tax revenue, with a tax rate hike for households earning over $1 million. He is seeking more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, with significant changes to Medicare and Social Security.

The president said today that he remains "optimistic" about reaching a broad compromise by Christmas because both sides are "pretty close," a sentiment that has been publicly shared by Boehner.

But the speaker's backup plan has, at least temporarily, stymied talks, with no reported contact between the sides since Monday.

"The speaker should return to the negotiating table with the president because if he does I firmly believe we can have an agreement before Christmas," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a White House ally.

Schumer said Obama and Boehner are "not that far apart" in the negotiations.

"If they were to come to an agreement by Friday, they could write this stuff over the Christmas break and then we'd have to come back before the New Year and pass it," Schumer said.

Obama said he is "open to conversations" and planned to reach out to congressional leaders over the next few days to try to nudge Republicans to accept a "fair deal."

"At some point, there's got to be, I think, a recognition on the part of my Republican friends that -- you know, take the deal," he told reporters.

"They keep on finding ways to say no, as opposed to finding ways to say yes," Obama added. "At some point, you know, they've got take me out of it and think about their voters and think about what's best for the country."

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State Department security chief leaves post over Benghazi

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday its security chief had resigned from his post and three other officials had been relieved of their duties following a scathing official inquiry into the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Eric Boswell has resigned effective immediately as assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a terse statement. A second official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Boswell had not left the department entirely and remained a career official.

Nuland said that Boswell, and the three other officials, had all been put on administrative leave "pending further action."

An official panel that investigated the incident concluded that the Benghazi mission was completely unprepared to deal with the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

The unclassified version of the report, which was released on Tuesday, cited "leadership and management" deficiencies, poor coordination among officials and "real confusion" in Washington and in the field over who had the authority to make decisions on policy and security concerns.

"The ARB identified the performance of four officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau of (Near Eastern) Affairs," Nuland said in her statement, referring to the panel known as an Accountability Review Board.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted Boswell's decision to resign effective immediately, the spokeswoman said.

Earlier, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Boswell, one of his deputies, Charlene Lamb, and a third unnamed official has been asked to resign. The Associated Press first reported that three officials had resigned.

PANEL STOPS SHORT OF BLAMING CLINTON

The Benghazi incident appeared likely to tarnish Clinton's four-year tenure as secretary of state but the report did not fault her specifically and the officials who led the review stopped short of blaming her.

"We did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks," retired Admiral Michael Mullen, one of the leaders of the inquiry, told reporters on Wednesday.

The panel's chair, retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, said it had determined that responsibility for security shortcomings in Benghazi belonged at levels lower than Clinton's office.

"We fixed (responsibility) at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look for where the decision-making in fact takes place, where - if you like - the rubber hits the road," Pickering said after closed-door meetings with congressional committees.

The panel's report and the comments by its two lead authors suggested that Clinton, who accepted responsibility for the incident in a television interview about a month after the Benghazi attack, would not be held personally culpable.

Pickering and Mullen spoke to the media after briefing members of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed doors on classified elements of their report.

Clinton had been expected to appear at an open hearing on Benghazi on Thursday, but is recuperating after suffering a concussion, dehydration and a stomach bug last week. She will instead be represented by her two top deputies.

Clinton, who intends to step down in January, said in a letter accompanying the review that she would adopt all of its recommendations, which include stepping up security staffing and requesting more money to fortify U.S. facilities.

The National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which is expected to go to Congress for final approval this week, includes a measure directing the Pentagon to increase the Marine Corps presence at diplomatic facilities by up to 1,000 Marines.

Some Capitol Hill Republicans who had criticized the Obama administration's handling of the Benghazi attacks said they were impressed by the report.

"It was very thorough," said Senator Johnny Isakson. Senator John Barrasso said: "It was very, very critical of major failures at the State Department at very high levels." Both spoke after the closed-door briefing.

Others, however, took a harsher line and called for Clinton to testify as soon as she is able.

"The report makes clear the massive failure of the State Department at all levels, including senior leadership, to take action to protect our government employees abroad," Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Senator Bob Corker, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the new Congress is seated early next year, said Clinton should testify about Benghazi before her replacement is confirmed by the Senate.

Republicans have focused much of their firepower on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who appeared on TV talk shows after the attack and suggested it was the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated attack.

The report concluded that there was no such protest.

Rice, widely seen as President Barack Obama's top pick to succeed Clinton, withdrew her name from consideration last week.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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Big-spender ex-PM to be Japan's finance chief: report

TOKYO: A former Japanese prime minister known as a big spender in his political and personal life, will likely become the country's next finance minister and deputy premier, a report said on Thursday.

The leading Nikkei business daily said incoming Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will tap 72-year-old Taro Aso as finance chief and his own deputy, in a new government set to be formed next week.

Aso's past spending habits are in line with those of Abe, whose conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) swept to victory in national elections on Sunday, pledging to boost the nation's ailing economy.

Aso, a fourth-generation politician who became Japan's prime minister in 2008, served as foreign minister during Abe's 2006-2007 stint in Japan's top political job.

As prime minister, Aso launched a series of economic stimulus packages worth hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up Japan's long-struggling economy.

But his time as premier ended in less than a year as the long-ruling LDP lost a historic election to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in 2009, while Aso's own missteps dented his popularity.

The scion of a wealthy family, he faced criticism for regular outings to luxurious hotel bars and mispronouncing commonly-used Chinese characters that make up part of the Japanese writing system.

Just a week before before his party lost to the DPJ, and as the economy sputtered, Aso was quoted as saying that "if you don't have money, you'd better not get married", dealing another blow to his profile.

In 2006, while he was foreign minister, a New York Times editorial branded Aso "Japan's offensive minister" for praising aspects of his country's colonial history in Asia, a particularly sore point in China and on the Korean peninsula.

His previous spending policies, however, were similar to those pledged by Abe -- to turn on the fiscal taps.

Abe has said he will pressure the Bank of Japan into more aggressive easing to power the world's third-largest economy, which may have slipped into recession in the third quarter.

A senior LDP official said on Wednesday that the incoming government would launch a spending package worth about 10 trillion yen ($118 billion) aimed at injecting life into the nation's limp economy.

- AFP/al

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Australian university to issue 11,000 iPads next year

Tablets have been eating away at the PC's position as the connected device of choice, and now slates are taking their place in the classrooms of an Australian university.

The University of Western Sydney said in a statement that it plans to distribute 11,000 iPads next year to every new student and member of the faculty "to support learning and teaching innovations across the curriculum and in informal learning environments."

"With digital technology revolutionizing how we connect and interact with the world, university study should be no different," professor Kerri-Lee Krause, the university's pro vice-chancellor, told The Australian.

Education was a key market for Apple more than two decades ago, and it returned to its roots earlier this year with the introduction of its iBooks Author software -- free software that lets authors design digital versions of textbooks and other interactive titles for the
iPad. It was launched in conjunction with the company's push to get textbook authors to create and distribute digital edition.

The iPad initiative is part of a curriculum overhaul at UWS that will stress "flexible study options" and "a blended learning model," The Australian reports. Traditional lectures will be augmented by a more interactive learning approach, Krause said.

"Mobile technologies will be a key part of this strategy," she said. "We want to support our academic staff to make the most of iPads and custom-designed apps in class so that, even in the largest lecture theater, students have access to just-for-me, just-in-time interactive learning experiences."

While not the first to give Apple's slates to students in an apparently revolutionary shift in lesson presentation, WSU might be the largest single institution to issue an iPad to each incoming student and faculty member. Earlier this year, the San Diego Unified School District announced it would purchase 26,000 iPads to be used by the district's more than 130,000 students.

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Texas school district encourages armed teachers for protection

HARROLD, Texas -- There's at least one school that welcome firearms to class.

It believes nothing makes a school safer than teachers who are armed,

The Harrold Independent School District is one building with 103 students. It's 20 minutes away from the nearest sheriff's station. Superintendent David Thweatt created what he calls a "guardian plan" after the attack at Virginia Tech.

"These people that go in and do these horrible acts, they're evil. But they're not that crazy -- they always know where they are going to get resistance," Thweatt said.

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Teachers and administrators here carry concealed handguns. They won't say how many faculty members are armed. They get extra training, but the district would not give us details.

Some people are horrified when he starts talking about putting guns in schools with children, but Thweatt said it's important to be safe.

"Sure, but it's a pretty horrific thing that happened the other day." Thweatt said. "And quite a few people are not horrified. Quite a few people we have in our district, since we have a high-transfer district, people bring their students to us for that protection."

Texas law allows concealed weapons in schools with a district's permission. Harrold was the first district to do it. A similar proposal was vetoed by Michigan's governor Tuesday.

Thweatt says allowing the firearms into the school will dissuade anyone who wants to hurt the kids.

"That's the bottom line," he said.

Since the shootings in Connecticut, Superintendent Thweatt has gotten calls from districts around the state and as far away as Missouri from school administrators asking whether they might be able to implement similar plans.

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Newtown Settles In for Prayerful, Somber Christmas

Residents of Sandy Hook, Conn., gather every year under an enormous tree in the middle of town to sing carols and light the tree. The tree is lit this year, too, but the scene beneath it is starkly different.

The tree looms over hundreds of teddy bears and toys, but they are for children who will never receive them. The ornaments are adorned with names and jarringly recent birth dates.

Wreaths with pine cones and white ribbons hang near the tree, one each for a life lost. A small statue of an angel child sleeps among a sea of candles.

A steady flow of well-wishers, young and old, tearfully comes to cry, pray, light candles, leave gifts and share hugs and stories.

CLICK HERE for complete coverage of the massacre at Sandy Hook.

The Christmas season is a normally joyful time for this tight-knit village, but in the wake of a shooting rampage, holiday decorations have given way this year to memorial signs. And instead of cars with Christmas trees on top, there are media vans with satellites.

Connie Koch has lived in Newtown for nine years. She lives directly behind Sandy Hook Elementary School, where Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 children and six adults before turning the gun on himself. Earlier that Friday morning, he had also killed his mother at home.

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Koch said the shocked town, which includes the Village of Sandy Hook, is experiencing a notably different Christmas this year.

"It's more somber, much more time spent in prayer for our victims' families and our friends that have lost loved ones," she said as she stood near the base of the tree.

CLICK HERE for a tribute to the shooting victims.

Her family has been touched by the tragedy is multiple ways.

"My daughter, she lost her child that she babysat for for six years," she said, holding back tears. "And for her friend who lost her mother. And for my dear friend who lost one of her friends in the school, one of the aides.

"It's hard. And there will be much prayer on Christmas morning for these people, for our community."

Koch said her community always rallies in the face of tragedy, but the term "hits close to home" resonates this time more than ever before. She says the only way to make it through is one day at a time.

"It's all you can do, one hour at a time," Koch said. "For me, I don't even want to wake up in the morning because I don't want to have to face it again. You feel like it's still just a dream and with the funerals starting, it's becoming more real. It's becoming more final."

Another Newtown parent, Adam Zuckerman, stood by the makeshift memorial with a roll of red heart stickers with the words, "In Our" above a drawing of the Sandy Hook Elementary School welcome sign. He was selling the stickers to collect money for a Sandy Hook victims' fund.

"It's a lot," he said of the events of the past few days. "We don't know how it's going to affect our community, but I feel very strongly that I needed to do something to keep it positive, to keep this community positive."

Zuckerman's 20-year-old stepdaughter came home from college for winter break the night before the shooting. As a high school student, she worked in one of the town's popular toy stores.

"She knew a lot of the kids," he said of his daughter. "Their parents brought them in over the years. We have other friends who have lost family here and good friends who are dear friends with the principal of the school. … It's pretty rough."

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Insight: Once a symbol of new Afghanistan, can policewomen survive?

KABUL (Reuters) - Shortly after Friba joined the Afghan National Police, she gave herself the nickname "dragon" and vowed to bring law and order to her tormented homeland.

Five years later, she is tired of rebuffing the sexual advances of male colleagues, worries the budget for the female force will shrink and fears the government will abandon them.

Women in the police force were held up as a showcase for Afghan-Western efforts to promote rights in the new Afghanistan, born from the optimism that swept the country after the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

Images of gun-wielding Afghan policewomen have been broadcast across the globe, even inspiring a television program popular with young Afghan women.

But going from the burqa to the olive green uniform has not been easy.

In Reuters interviews with 12 policewomen in districts across the Afghan capital, complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination and bitter frustration were prevalent.

President Hamid Karzai's goal is for 5,000 women to join the Afghan National Police (ANP) by the end of 2014, when most foreign troops will leave the country.

But government neglect, poor recruitment and a lack of interest on the part of authorities and the male-dominated society mean there are only 1,850 female police officers on the beat, or about 1.25 percent of the entire force.

And it looks to get worse.

Friba, who asked that her second name not be used, says it all when she runs a manicured finger across her throat: "Once foreigners leave we won't even be able to go to the market. We'll be back in burqas. The Taliban are coming back and we all know it."

Conditions for women in Afghanistan have improved significantly since the Taliban were ousted. Women have won back basic rights in voting, education and work since Taliban rule, when they were not allowed out of their homes without a male escort and could be publicly stoned to death for adultery.

But problems persist in the deeply conservative Muslim society scarred by decades of conflict. The United Nations said this month that despite progress, there was a dramatic under reporting of cases of violence against women.

Some female lawmakers and rights groups blame Karzai's government for a waning interest in women's rights as it seeks peace talks with the Taliban, accusations his administration deny.

"We have largely failed in our campaign to create a female police force," said a senior Afghan security official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.

"Mullahs are against it, and the women are seen as not up to the job," he added, referring to Muslim preachers.

Almost a third of the members of the female force work in Kabul, performing duties such as conducting security checks on women at the airport and checking biometric data.

"CONSTANTLY HARASSED"

Friba sat in a city police station room decorated with posters of policemen clutching weapons to talk to Reuters.

"I am the dragon and I can defend myself, but most of the girls are constantly harassed," she said.

"Just yesterday my colleague put his hands on one of the girl's breasts. She was embarrassed and giggled while he squeezed them. Then she turned to us and burst into tears."

On the other side of Kabul, detective Lailoma, who also asked that her family name not be used, said several policewomen under her command had been raped by their male colleagues.

Dyed russet hair poking out from her black hijab, part of the female ANP uniform, Lailoma wrung her hands as she complained about male colleagues: "They want it to be like the time of the Taliban. They tell us every day we are bad women and should not be allowed to work here."

Male colleagues also taunt the women, she added, often preventing them from entering the kitchen, meaning they miss out on lunch.

On several occasions, male colleagues interrupted Reuters interviews in what the policewomen said were attempts to intimidate them into silence.

One male officer entered the room without knocking three times to retrieve pencils; another spent 20 minutes dusting off his hat, only to put it back on a shelf. The women switched subjects when the men came in.

Rana, a 31-year-old, heavy-set policewoman with curly hair, said policewomen were expected to perform sexual favors: "We're expected to do them to just stay in the force."

The raping of policewomen by their male counterparts "definitely takes place", said Colonel Sayed Omar Saboor, deputy director for gender and human rights at the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police.

"These men are largely illiterate and see the women as immoral."

Insecurity, opposition to women working out of the home and sexism deter many women from signing up, said Saboor.

But impoverished widows sometimes have no choice. A starting salary is about 10,500 afghanis a month ($210).

DIFFICULT

The Interior Ministry and foreign organizations responsible for training the women police - NATO, the European Union and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) - say recruitment poses the main challenge to the force.

"It is just difficult. There is no real history of women in the police force, there is no precedent, even having an open space for women in employment is a challenge," UNDP Associate Administrator Rebeca Grynspan told Reuters.

A recruitment campaign of television adverts and posters has not produced the desired effect in a country where there are huge social and religious divides between the rural and urban populations. Even fewer join the national army, where some 350 women serve amongst 190,000.

"Much of the male leadership don't want to have anything to do with women in the ANP. Commanders want them out of their units," Saboor said, adding that having 2,500 female police officers could be realistic by end-2014.

Of those who join, few have prospects for promotion. They often find themselves in police stations without proper facilities for women, such as toilets or changing rooms which are vital for the many who hide the fact that they work from their families.

The sprawling Interior Ministry has only recently started work on installing toilets for women. "Ten years of this war have passed, and we're only now building them a toilet," Saboor said with a wry laugh.

For First Lieutenant Naderah Keshmiri, whose humble yet stern approach helps her pursue cases of violence against women, life as a policewoman means being undervalued.

"My male subordinates quickly became generals. But not me. Where's my promotion?" she asked in a UNDP-backed Family Response Unit, which she heads.

The UNDP has set up 33 of the units countrywide, which help increase female visibility in the ANP, with plans to more than double them by 2015.

A Western female police trainer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said policewomen are almost always passed over for promotion by their male commanders.

U.S. lawmakers are hoping to amend a defense bill by year-end to protect the rights of Afghan women during the security transition. They want to reduce physical and cultural barriers to women joining the security forces.

Ethnicity also plays a role: 55 percent of women in the ANP are ethnic Tajik, Afghanistan's second-largest ethnic group. Recruiting from the largest and most conservative ethnic group, the Pashtuns, is difficult.

The Taliban draw most of their support from the Pashtuns, who dominate the south of the country. Pashtun women make up only 15 percent of the force.

Hazaras, a largely Shi'ite minority who suffered enormous losses at the hands of the Taliban, are overrepresented amongst the women, making up 24 percent, according to figures from NATO's training mission in Afghanistan.

But many of the policewomen are wondering whether their force can survive.

Lowering her voice, Friba whispered: "As soon as the foreigners leave, they'll reduce our salaries. This will not happen to the men. Or perhaps they'll kick us out entirely."

(Editing by Michael Georgy and Robert Birsel)

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