Crossing cultural frontiers in Iraq

How can your family allow you to work in a job like this?" "You are shameful."
"Women were created for being in the house."

Each day, the name-calling and barbs begin almost as soon as Shinaa Rasul slings her AK-47 rifle over her shoulder and steps out of her barracks to the snowy valley that separates Iraq from Iran.

Rasul and 53 others are part of an Iraqi Border Patrol unit stationed on the 920-mile Iranian frontier. And as the patrol's first all-female outfit, they have become a spectacle for the thousands of people who cross between the two countries each day.

When people spot the patrols, with their neat brown uniforms and firearms, Rasul said, they typically have one of two reactions: "They are either upset or afraid." Under the rule of former president Saddam Hussain, Iraq was a largely secular state, and women - particularly in urban areas - were free of many of the constraints placed on them in other Muslim countries.

Accorded the same opportunities as men in education and professions, many women rose to positions of prominence. But post-war Iraq's leadership vacuum has been filled principally by religious leaders, many of whom advocate a system of governance more in line with Islam than Saddam's Baathist state was.

Women's support centres

Before departing Iraq, the US-led occupation authority hopes to ensure the rights of women are protected and appreciated by Iraqis. The US is spending millions of dollars and a great deal of effort to create women's support centres, women's entrepreneurship groups, women's job training programmes and women's cultural and political seminars. The Border Patrol initiative is arguably the most visible of those projects.

"We are crossing a lot of cultural boundaries," acknowledged Staff Sergeant David Spence-Sales, who serves with the US Army's 101st Airborne Division and helped train the female officers.

Such efforts have been applauded by many Iraqis, who point out that women make up about 60 per cent of the population. Some groups have pressed the occupation authority to do even more, pointing out that only three of the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council are women and that none serve on the committee drafting the country's constitution.

But others, especially Iraq's powerful religious leaders, say the occupation authority's policy toward women is an example of how the US is trying to impose its own values on a culture it doesn't understand or appreciate.

In Najaf, a city that is holy to Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, a US-appointed female judge was forced to step down after some clerics protested, saying that the Holy Quran does not allow women to hold such jobs. And in Baghdad, some men passed out leaflets that called for the exclusion of women from local councils, which occupation officials have held up as a model of diversity.

"The occupation forces do not understand that they cannot impose western culture over Islamic societies," said Haider Nasrawy, spokesman for Hussein Sadr, a prominent Shiite cleric.

In the beginning, at least, the women's Border Patrol unit was about practicality, not politics. Because of religious and cultural taboos on touching between men and women who aren't married or closely related, an all-male Border Patrol could not search women.

US Army Major General David Petraeus, whose 101st Airborne is responsible for northern Iraq, called for women to join the new Iraqi security forces that the occupation authority was trying to create. He said he was worried that terrorists would use women to ferry equipment and messages back and forth.

Several dozen responded. There were teachers, clerical workers and housewives as well as some former Kurdish guerrillas, known as "pesh merga".

Reconsider decision

Nida Mohammed, 52, said her cousins begged her to reconsider her decision to join. "In general, our relatives didn't like the idea of us doing this job," said Mohammed, a grandmother of four. One of her colleagues, Asti Abdulla, 36, said she got a phone call from someone who said, "If you go to this job, we'll cut off your legs."

Elite solders from the 101st Airborne were put in charge of training. At first they worried that the women would be too timid and weak. Sergeants Jacob Dixson and Louis Gitlin said they were surprised to find that women did better than men in simulated missions. "They would always find the bombs fast and search fast," Dixson said. Added Gitlin, "The women had something to prove, so they took everything more seriously."

The Bashma border crossing station is two hours away, on a winding mountain road, from Sulaymaniyah, the closest major city.

Between Bashma and other checkpoints lie miles of rugged terrain, full of land mines but shot through with secret paths developed over the centuries by smugglers.

The women in the Border Patrol range in age from 17 to 54. They include young waifs with chips of polish still on their fingernails and bulky, tough ones with wizened faces who carry several pistols and knives in addition to the AK-47s they are issued.

Some joined for the money - a decent $120 to $140 a month. Others such as Rasul, 21, a thin brunette who wears her curly hair in a ponytail that makes her look even younger, joined because she had been left an orphan as a teenager. Aftaw Mohammed Salih, 54, decided to join because the former government threw her 13-year-old son in jail, alleging that her husband opposed Saddam.

For the most part, the women's male counterparts say they are enthusiastic about having them there. They say the women are proficient in their jobs and that the border has become calmer since they arrived.

But the Border Patrol is far from integrated. There are female commanders for women and male commanders for men, but while the male commanders sometimes give orders to women, the female commanders are never put in charge of men.

And the women grumble that they aren't on the regular rotation for patrols and are only called on as needed.

Happiest day

The happiest day for the women was September 16. That was the day the women's unit believes it caught its first terrorist.

They had been searching four women when one began to protest that she was offended that someone was touching her head. She had long, thick black hair wrapped in a white scarf. That made Ronak Ali, 25, curious, and she unfurled the scarf and inspected the woman's hair.

It was matted to her head with tiny pins, and when Ali slipped the pins out, she found a 4-by-6-inch note, written in black ink. It talked about bombings at several mosques on the Iraq-Iran border and was dated 1995. But Ali knew better.

The mosques had been the target of attacks a few months before. She suspected it was a message from one terrorist cell to another.

The women took the suspects into custody and handed them over to the US military.

Whenever she is down, Rasul says, she tries to remember this victory and what a passerby - a woman, a stranger - told her a few weeks after she started working on the border: "You are doing a great job. Women are half of society, and you should be proud to be serving your country."