BAGHDAD — A few days after one of Iraq's first female soldiers returned from basic training, she heard that her commander was locked in a battle with insurgents on Baghdad's volatile Haifa Street. Despite the objections of male comrades, she and another female soldier strapped on armor and automatic rifles and joined the fight.
"We said, 'We're going to help our commander like you are,' " said the soldier, who asked not to be identified for fear she would lose her job.
She spent the next two hours holed up under a bridge, she said, fending off gunfire and mortar rounds, watching colleagues get shot and thinking of one word, "cemetery." Four soldiers were killed.
After the smoke cleared, the commander stopped to thank her.
Since that 2004 clash, the soldier has battled increased sectarian violence, religious restrictions and sexism to become one of a few female commanders in the Iraqi army, watching recruits to her company of 80 female soldiers come and go. Mostly go.
Despite efforts by U.S. forces to recruit and train women for jobs in the Iraqi security forces, just over 1,000 have been trained, many have quit and those who remain say they are struggling for acceptance.
"We're in our posts because the Americans are here," the army commander said. "Once they leave, we will all be out."
The U.S. military has pushed since 2003 to have more women recruited and trained, arguing that female officers can search and gather intelligence from other women and serve as neutral peacekeepers, U.S. commanders say.
The female army officer interviewed said that when she first started, American female soldiers would often visit her command post to offer advice.
"I was always asking how things were for them. I was always wishing our laws would match theirs," she said.
Those confidants also helped her prevent male Iraqi commanders from eliminating her company.
"My reply would always be: 'This is an American project, you can't dismantle it,' " she said.
Afghan experience
Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said experience in Afghanistan shows that female recruits can gather intelligence males seldom can obtain.
"What the American commanders have told me is they pick up such important intelligence. They are able to go and talk with the women who they [the commanders] would never otherwise see," Coleman said.
