Codenamed Kaftar — “the Pigeon” — the veteran Afghan commander pulls a Kalashnikov from the folds of a coat and loads a round as our vehicle nears the valley’s last village.

“I have a problem with some of the people here — old enemies,” Kaftar says quietly, huddled in the back seat cradling the assault rifle.

But the vehicle passes through the narrow muddy streets without incident, and Kaftar hails a traveller and passes him the Kalashnikov. “Take my rifle back up the valley to my sons in the house,” the man is told. “We need all the weapons we have.”

Blood feud and gun law: familiar syndromes in Afghanistan’s remote valleys where families can battle for generations over zar, zan, zamin — money, women, land. But Kaftar’s case is unique. A killer of many men, and the former commander of a 1,200-strong column of Mujahidin, Kaftar is a woman.

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The legend of Kaftar had long persisted, with tales reaching Kabul of a woman based in a remote valley in the country’s northern Baghlan province who fought against the Soviet Union and then the Taleban.

It was not until April this year, as a UN programme to disarm Afghanistan’s child soldiers was put into effect, that the rumours were confirmed. UN officials returned to the capital saying they had discovered Kaftar, living in the Darisujan valley with an entourage of Mujahidin, including children and female bodyguards.

Denuded of her command by a subsequent demilitarisation programme, she now lives on her own except for her horse, her guns and her sons. She is haunted by memories of a lifetime’s fighting, embroiled in blood feuds and troubled by an abstract concept of peace.

“We Mujahidin have not been given our rights,” she complains, her face framed by thick braids beneath an open scarf. “We fought for so long but this Karzai Government has given us nothing.”

Kaftar, whose real name is Bibi Aisha, is unable to read or write and puts her age at between 50 and 55. Her ascent to military command was made possible by violent tribal infighting and the power of her father Haji Dawlat.

The eldest of ten children by the second of Dawlat’s seven wives, Kaftar was his favourite. She was carrying a gun by the age of 14, defending her home against rival families, and had killed her first man long before the Soviet invasion of 1979.

“I can’t remember how many I have killed since,” she says. “I remember getting my first Russian though. It was early in the occupation and he was a commando. He was close. A young man. I shot him. Later at the Battle of Kelagai we were killing so many we just threw their bodies in the river.”

She married a businessman named Shad Muhammad, the same year she took up arms. He bankrolled her gunslinging family. They later divorced.

Her seven sons, two of whom were killed on operations under her command, became the mainstay of her power after her father died in 1981. Of the 1,200 fighters Kaftar led, mounted on a horse and dressed in US-style combats, 400 were family members including two step sisters who were her bodyguards. “But I never had a problem giving orders to men,” she insists. “My father was head of a powerful tribe.”

The death of two of her boys along with one of her brothers, slain in combat with the Taleban, appears not to trouble her. It was the death of her commander, the iconic Ahmad Shah Masood, assassinated by a suicide bomber in September 2001, that now shadows her days.

“Oh, Masood!” she sighs. “I smiled as I buried my sons, because they died in the way of God fighting a jihad, and I was proud of them. But Masood was my leader and was murdered. It was the saddest day of my life.”

As the chill of an autumn afternoon settles around her home, she kills a chicken for her foreign guests, even though it is Ramadan and she cannot eat until sunset. Her reputation for cruelty seems unfounded.

But after we leave her cousin Abdul Ghaffur, a former Mujahid whose legs were blown off by a mine on the last day of the war, speaks. “You saw the blood of the chicken in the yard,” he says. “But you didn’t see the blood in the stables.

“Two of Kaftar’s sons cut the throat of a 20-year-old man from another family there three weeks ago on her orders. There have been killings in this valley as long as anyone can remember, and there will be killings for a long time to come. And Kaftar’s family are always involved. Don’t mistake her. Tough, yes. But very cruel.”

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