Dutch police asks Cabinet to evacuate Afghan policewomen

In a letter to parliament, the Dutch police called on the caretaker cabinet to commit itself to the evacuation of Afghan police women. "We cannot betray their trust in us now," the police wrote, NU.nl reports. "It is our moral duty to get them to safety as quickly as possible."

Between 2007 and 2016, Dutch police officers provided training to their Afghan colleagues as part of the EUPOL mission. This included training 4 thousand Afghan policewomen, including 700 who worked in teams dealing with human rights. And it is these women the Dutch police are concerned about in particular.

"Now that the Taliban have taken power in Afghanistan, these policewomen are in serious danger," they wrote. "Their situation is very close to the hearts of the Dutch police officers who participated in the mission."

The police pointed out that the Taliban gained access to all Afghan police officers' personal data, including biometric data and home addresses. This put the policewomen - the role of whom the Netherlands supported "with great commitment" in the past years - in an "extremely worrisome position", the letter writers said.

They asked parliament to designate Afghan policewomen as a "systematically persecuted group", so that they are eligible for evacuation along with human rights activists and journalists, among others, based on the passed motion from D66 parliamentarian Salima Belhaj.