LEAVING AFGHANISTAN ‘IT'S A BETTER PLACE'

AUSTRALIAN ARMY COLONEL AMANDA FIELDING REFLECTS ON THE HIGHS AND DISTURBING LOWS IN THE WAR-TORN LAND, AND HER HOPES FOR THE COUNTRY’S FUTURE

- Michael Crooks

During her second deployment to Afghanistan in 2015, Colonel Amanda Fielding visited a police outpost in the northern province of Kunduz. The Australian Army officer was part of a NATO-led Resolute Support Mission, providing training and assistance to Afghanistan’s security forces in the ongoing war with insurgents, and on this day she was meeting with senior members of the Afghan police force.

“We were in this tent and they brought in a young female constable – her eyes were hollow and sad,” recalls Fielding. “She told me her story about working there – she was a lone woman police officer and the men of the post had been consistently raping her. I had to bite my cheeks to stop myself from crying. And she’s looking at me like, ‘Can you help me?’”

She could. Working with Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs, Fielding changed the policy on how Afghan women were employed within the force, ensuring that any woman posted to a region was always accompanied by other women, preferably a senior female officer. “These are the types of atrocities occurring in this country,” says Fielding, who was born and raised in Tasmania. “And this is why we were there, trying to make it a safer place.”