Region | Iraq
Iraq finds new way to fight female suicide bombers
First batch of full-time policewomen is set to graduate after training course that puts them through the same grind as their male colleagues
- AP
- Published: 22:59 September 12, 2008
- Female police trainees practise marksmanship near Karbala, 80km southwest of Baghdad.
- Image Credit: Reuters
Udaim, Iraq: The widow was nervous the first time she shot a loaded Kalashnikov rifle at the dusty Iraqi police academy north of Baghdad. But she was smiling after she fired 160 rounds at a black-and-white target.
"I felt like the practice was real - like I was part of the war - and I was protecting my country from terrorists," said Wafa Najah Abdullah. Her attire too was rare for an Iraqi woman, a blue shirt and black trousers that go for the police uniform.
The 30-year-old recruit and the 20 other women training at the academy are a critical part of the US and Iraqi response to the latest Al Qaida tactic in Iraq: female suicide bombers.
Weapons training
But the academy, the only one of its kind in Iraq, is taking that response one step further. For one month, the women stay and train at the academy in the volatile Diyala pro-vince with 680 male colleagues.
Unlike many other security programmes for women, where they come only during the day and where classes are confined mostly to search methods, this academy offers women the same lessons as men, including weapons training.
Women have been serving as auxiliary members of Iraqi security forces in markets and during pilgrimages, but these recruits will be full-time policewomen once they graduate this week. They also will receive an official police certification from the Ministry of Interior.
There is still some resistance to women police officers in Diyala, one of the most violent pockets in Iraq. Some men believe the job is too dangerous. Others object to women leaving their families for a month to live at the academy.
Diyala police major Raied Khalaf was dismissive: women officers would end up being "soft and easy targets for abduction and murder", he said.
But as the frequency of female suicide bombers increases, the need to include women in the police forces seems to be surmounting the odds.
Iraqi men are reluctant to search women and risk breaking social taboos, and Al Qaida exploits this by having them conceal explosives in long, flowing robes.
The number of attacks by female bombers in Iraq has tripled from eight in 2007 to more than two dozen so far this year, according to US military officials.
Diyala has been particularly vulnerable. Women have carried out 12 suicide attacks this year in the strategic and ethnically diverse province northeast of Baghdad that was a former Al Qaida stronghold.
"We have many Iraqi police chiefs who say they need female IPs [Iraqi police] not just for suicide bombers but for women smuggling items into critical security areas," said Capt. David Castillo, 27, of the 728th Military Police Battalion, who oversees the academy, which currently is run by the US military and Iraqi police.
During their month at the academy, the women learn how to tame riots, set up checkpoints and search for weapons.
When not in the field, they get courses in first aid and policing ethics.
The recruits are told to place sectarian perspectives and politics aside and put their country first. The women recruits say it will be up to their individual stations on whether they can carry weapons, but many hope they can.
Some are widows whose husbands were killed by insurgents.
Others have disabled husbands and relatives who can't work after being wounded in violence since the 2003 US-led invasion. All need steady paycheques to support their children.
Abdullah's husband was kidnapped in 2006 in Diyala. She never saw his body but was later told he was killed. "I must support my daughter, because I don't have anyone to take care of us," she says.
Separate tents
The women recruits' two tents, complete with bunk beds and air conditioners, are separated from the men. They have their own bathrooms and female US soldiers guard their area. Some train in boots and others wear sneakers.
About 25 more women are set to attend the academy's next session before the US military turns the centre over to Iraqi control in November.
Though they spend most of their day training, they also have fun at the academy, holding impromptu singing and dance parties in their large tents or outside under the shade during breaks. But they are serious when it comes to their future jobs as policewomen.
"We have joined the police so that we can defend our country, Iraq. And we've joined because we see so many female suicide bombers sneaking through checkpoints without being searched. We come to help our colleagues, policemen," said Asraa Juma Yaseen, a 28-year-old mother of five.
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