Ms. Aziza works in the Gender and Family Response Unit of District 10, a section that exists at least nominally in every police department in Afghanistan to deal with domestic violence.

But many women are not allowed to leave the house except with a male relative, and often that relative is either the person who was beating her or someone in the family allied with him. And even if a battered woman is able to get away, there is a profound shame associated with talking about such matters to someone outside the family — even other women.

The result is that 12 years later, there are still relatively few cases for the units.

Of the 13 policewomen in the 318-member force in District 10, most are searchers. One, Feriba, stood in the trailer’s small entry, looking out at the scrawny shrubs in the yard. Her salary supports a disabled husband and six children. “Do you think we want to do this?” she asked.

“I would do anything else,” she said, answering her own question.

Ms. Aziza nonetheless believes that District 10 is better than most. Both the former Interior minister, Umar Daudzai, and the new one, Nur al-Haq Ulumi, have tried to push commanders to find jobs more suitable for women.

“They listen to women more here,” Ms. Aziza said. “In the past year, at least they gave us a separate toilet. Maybe they received much pressure from the world community and that has created pressure to take care of the women,” she said early in 2014, when there were still substantial numbers of American and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

“But I am worried,” she said. “After 2014, what should we do?”

A Woman in Command

Zarif Shaan Naibi is that rare figure among Afghan policewomen: a success story. The first female warden of Kabul’s women’s prison, she stands out among the overwhelmingly male command structure of the Interior Ministry.

Her realm is a barren patch of ground on the northeast side of Kabul with the three-story prison at its center. Six days a week Ms. Naibi goes to her office in a building next to the prison, and after attending meetings and signing paperwork, she wades into the prison itself.