First female Afghan air force pilot seeks asylum in US amid ‘death threats’

Things are not changing for the better in Afghanistan, says Captain Niloofar Rahmani

Afghan air force’s first female pilot, Captain Niloofar Rahmani has sought asylum in the United States, newly surfaced reports claimed.

Afghan news agency, Khaama Press reported on Friday that Rahmani expressed her intention to remain in the US following a 15-month long training period in Texas.



“Things are not changing” for the better in Afghanistan, Rahmani told The New York Times. “Things are getting worse and worse.” She told her American trainers that she still wants to be a military pilot but not under her country’s flag.

The pilot has already filed a petition seeking asylum in the US, where she hopes to join the air force.

PHOTO: XINHUA

The news comes following reports that Rahmani had been receiving death threats. She was only 18-year-old when the Afghan Air Force announced to recruit pilots. Despite many threats from the Taliban and even members of her own extended family, at 23 she became the first female fixed-wing Air Force aviator in Afghanistan’s history and also the first female pilot in the Afghan military since the demise of the Taliban in 2001.



In recognition of her services, she was honoured with the US Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award, along with nine other inspirational women across the world at a ceremony last year. “Rahmani is as committed to encouraging other young women to follow in her footsteps now as she was as an 18-year-old dreaming of flight school,” US First Lady Michelle Obama had said of her at the ceremony.

Rahmani enlisted in the Afghan Air Force Officer Training Programme in 2010 and graduated as a Second Lieutenant in July 2012. She flew her first solo flight in a Cessna 182 and decided she wanted to fly even larger aircraft. She attended advanced flight school and began flying the C-208 military cargo aircraft.

Even though women are traditionally banned from transporting dead or wounded soldiers, Captain Rahmani defied the orders when she discovered injured soldiers during a mission. She then flew the injured men to a hospital and reported her actions to her superiors who chose not to impose sanctions on her.

This article originally appeared on Hindustan Times.