Afghanistan will be welcoming their first female pilot since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Capt. Niloofar Rahmani, 23, was only eighteen years old when the Afghan military sent word they were looking for a female pilot recruit.
Rahmani earned her wings in July of 2012 where her flight of a C-208 cargo plane made her the first female pilot in Afghanistan in over a decade. She also holds the title of the nation's first female fixed-wing aviator.
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, writes UTSanDiego.
Her father's warnings proved to be correct, as Taliban have repeatedly threatened to kill her and her family. Extended family have accused her of shaming their family and men in her flight squadron weren’t exactly the most hospitable either, she recalls.
Last month, Rahmani visited Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego where she got to fly with the Blue Angels and meet other female pilots. She also visited the White House and met the first lady and was honored with the U.S Secretary of State's International Women of Courage Award.
"When I'm flying a mission with passengers, I'm not worried about myself," Rhmani said. "I care more about making sure they are safe." Photo: AFCENT.AF.MIL
“If you don’t fight for your rights, they will never give them to you," she said during her visit. “I do the same things my colleagues do. Why do I have to be treated differently?”
"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. After volunteering for every shift she could, she rose to be a flight commander.
The views the men in her school had about women changed as she impressed them and issued orders to the ones 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.” “My goal was to open or to break the very strong walls in front of the females in my country. . .
Rahmani loves being in the air, away from things that trouble her back on the ground.
“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.”
Her brother was followed out of his university and threatened by people who oppose his sister's service and her family has been forced to move several times. Capt. Niloofar Rahmani’s career as spokeswoman for her fellow women in Afghanistan has only begun.
“You can’t just see yourself as a woman, but as a human and believe in yourself," she told WTKR . "It was not easy finishing flight school, it was very hard, but someone had to accept the risk so that other women can do what they dream."