Breaking new ground
First female Iraqi commandos work with special forces
Sunday, June 15, 2008 10:29 AM PDT
Johna Strickland
Argus Observer
Ontario - Think about your morning commute.
It requires little thought. You just do it, driving the same route to work every day. Odds are, you won’t die. No one shoots at you. Nor will your life be in danger should the neighbors discover where you work.
For 20 women in Iraq, this doesn’t happen. They risk death every day just traveling to work.
They are Iraq’s first female commandos working with special forces in Baghdad.
“They were brave enough to ride an hour to work on a bus because they don’t want the neighbors to find out,” Grant Borge, a Department of Defense contractor who trained these women for two months, said. “They’re sneaking out of their villages to work to feed their kids.”
Recruited to search female prisoners, these women — mostly widows with children — stepped out of their culture merely in seeking employment. For many, joining the commando unit was a first job.
“They’ll take the job to feed their children,” Borge, a former Ontario resident, said. “I told them, you are the very first pioneers for all these women to come.”
In selecting a job with Iraqi’s security forces that pays $500 a month, double what a doctor earns, they became potential targets for violence.
“They are going to kill you. They’ll come in your house, tie your hands behind your back and brutally chop your head off,” Borge said.
During the bus ride home, if the women spoke a few words of the English Borge taught them, they would be killed, he said, with few consequences.
“Over there in Iraq, women are nothing,” Borge said. “Kill your wife, you get two days in jail. Kill your daughter, that’s no time.”
Despite the danger, they came to work, defying a culture where women don’t work and have no contact with men.
“The first day I met these ladies, they wouldn’t shake my hand,” Borge said.
The women varied in age from 20 to late 40s, Borge said, and wore burqas to work each day. One young woman wore jeans with her loose blouse and headscarf. Another eventually decided to wear the blue camouflage uniform issued to Iraqi security forces. She changed into it when she arrived at work, then switched back to a burqa for the bus ride home.
They each came with a different, but similar, story. The widow who wore the uniform had been married to Saddam Hussein’s personal photographer. One woman who had divorced her husband — a difficult feat in Iraqi culture — spoke fluent Russian and German and had four children. Another had lived through a gunshot wound to her chest inflicted by her police officer husband. She had no legal recourse against him.
The majority had escaped arranged marriages, often to a much older cousin, at their husband’s deaths. They lived with their parents in a multi-family household, Borge said.
“They don’t socialize, they don’t ever leave the house, ever,” he said, adding these women have no friends.
Borge said he and his fellow teachers once sent a camera home with one of the women commandos to photograph her life. She brought back pictures of herself roller-skating on the roof listening to Michael Jackson, alone.
For their training, Borge worked through an interpreter to instruct them in searching procedures, how to control a suspect, weapons, conversational English and other areas.
“We teach them about human rights, about how not violate them,” he said. “They talk really close to each other, and we have to teach them distance for safety.”
Learning to handle a weapon built their confidence, Borge said. Especially when he told them they were better than the male recruits. There would never be a competition between the male and female commandos, though, Borge said. The men wouldn’t allow it.
“They (the women commandos) would’ve smoked them,” Borge said. “I was so proud of them.”
For one ground fighting exercise, Borge invited a female soldier from U.S. forces to train with his commandos. The women greeted her with awe, having never met another woman working in the military.
“It was like the president of the United States coming for a visit,” Borge said.
Later, Borge arranged a field trip to an American base for the commandos to meet more women in the military.
“I took them to the chow hall,” he said. “They’d never seen endless food.”
The women loaded their purses and pockets with food.
“They’re takin’ it home to their kids,” Borge said.
Punctuality was also a part of their training. The first day everyone showed up at least an hour after class should have started, Borge said. If a man arrived late for work, the Iraqis threw him in jail, but women were held to a different standard.
“We don’t count on them because they’re women,” Borge said, explaining how the Iraqis viewed it.
In another double standard, teaching an Iraqi woman how to drive is forbidden, the Iraqi generals told Borge. He did it anyway, knowing that “teaching a woman to drive is like teaching a black person to read during slavery,” he said. Borge told the generals he was training them in ambulance work, then let the women drive the ambulance through a course.
The next insult came when the Iraqi government confiscated the women’s guns.
Borge asked the U.S. Army to help out. They declined to get involved, so Borge went before the Iraqi generals.
“These women have lost their husbands, and they need to feed their kids,” he told them. “If you don’t give these women back their guns, I’ll leave Iraq tomorrow and won’t respect you anymore.”
The interpreter didn’t want to deliver the message, but Borge pushed him. Additionally, a petition signed by each of the 20 women was sent to the minister of the interior. Like the signers of the American Declaration of Independence, each woman could have died for her signature. The minister returned the guns. Borge said he believes the document his trainees signed was the first women’s rights document in Iraq.
“This was a battle won by paper,” he said. “I hate to say it but the women aren’t as shady as the men. Like that paper, you wouldn’t get 20 men to sign that because that would be going against their jam. It would be hard to get 20 of them to sign something. They would be sticking their necks out if they had terrorist alliances.”
Going against his jam — slang for a terrorist organization — by showing formal allegiance to the Iraqi security forces could get a recruit killed, Borge said. Many of the male commandos came to training with alliances to terrorist groups. Women are less likely to have these affiliations.
After training, Iraq’s first female commandos were given clerical jobs with two exceptions. One was allowed to work as a trainer. Another became an interpreter to an American general earning $1,500 a month. The others, armed with no computer skills, were assigned desks and sent to search female prisoners when they were brought to the base, Borge said. Some may work the streets of Baghdad, blending with the public.
“They would not be suspicious, and the men are not going to harass them,” he said.
It was frustrating, Borge said, for the commandos “to realize they wouldn’t be able to go on missions and kick in doors.” But the women who may feed a whole household with their paychecks, hope their lives will change once again.
“It’s a dream for them to be thinking they could move up, to be officers,” Borge said.
It is a beginning, a “ground floor” for more women, he said. One commando Borge trained told him she hopes her daughter will be a commando, too.
“Their kids are gonna get to eat. Their kids are gonna have clothes,” Borge said.
The final day, each woman honored Borge for what he had helped her attain.
“They shook my hand, which was the biggest honor,” he said.
