KARACHI,PK: Twenty-four-year-old Sumra Niazi had always dreamed of seeing the world, but not as an undercover air commando trained to kill with her bare hands.
Three months ago she was selected for training as one of Pakistan’s first female sky marshals.
So the woman from Pakistan’s central Punjab province discarded her traditional garb for the first time and put on combat fatigues for a gruelling 10-week training course.
“It was thrilling when I first wore the commando uniform and heavy military boots . . . it was simply not possible in the area where I came from,” Ms. Niazi said in an interview at a training camp in the southern port city of Karachi.
Ms. Niazi, who joined Pakistan’s Airport Security Force a year ago, will soon be assigned the task of guarding flights of national flag carrier Pakistan International Airlines.
She is among eight other Pakistani women and 50 men, aged between 22 and 27 years, who recently completed the unarmed combat course.
“It was amazing for me to experience such training, especially the martial arts,” Ms. Niazi said. “Believe me, I learned how to kill any terrorist or hijacker. I will be lethal,” she said after giving an opponent a tough time in a 15-minute kickboxing bout.
Her chief trainer, Major Syed Hamid Raza, the Pakistan army’s unarmed-combat instructor, said the women were the first to be trained as air marshals and will be deployed at airports and flights “in the next few weeks.”
Islamic Pakistan is a male-dominated society in which discrimination against women is common. While women were not barred from becoming air marshals in the past, the eight in the group were the first to apply for the job, Mr. Raza said.
Dressed, like other air marshals, in street clothes, they would prove an unexpected and formidable opponent for any terrorist, he said.
Mr. Raza, the only foreign-trained unarmed-combat instructor in Pakistan, said the female cadets had shown themselves to be equal to their male colleagues; both had mastered kicking, punching, snatching weapons, use of firearms and martial arts.
“We gave them [the women] an equally tough time to bring them to the required standard . . . there was no compromise on the quality of training,” he said.
The biggest challenge for the instructors was Pakistan’s cultural bar on men touching women.
“Because of cultural limitations, we taught them martial arts and other combat techniques through demonstrations,” Mr. Raza said.
During the rigorous training lasting more than 16 hours a day, nine men and only one woman dropped out.
Pakistani airlines have carried armed guards since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, when hijacked commercial airliners crashed into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
