BAGHDAD — Iraqi police officials have dropped plans to disarm policewomen and give their guns to male officers after an outcry from critics, who said the move was a sign of religious zealots' rising influence in Iraq.
Despite the turnabout, which police confirmed Thursday, the U.S. military general who introduced women into the police force said they remained hindered in their attempts to practice real policing skills.
"Even with the revocation order, we will have to watch very closely the actions taken in regards to the remaining female Iraqi police," said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, adding that there "are numerous ways" to drive women from the force.
That was confirmed by Hanan Jaafer, a policewoman in the Shiite holy city of Najaf who guards the revered shrine of Imam Ali.
Jaafer said none of the roughly two dozen female officers posted at the shrine had guns or uniforms, even though they searched women and children entering the complex and faced threats from the increased use of female suicide bombers. Their male counterparts are armed, Jaafer said.
She said she stopped a woman from entering the shrine last year with explosives that she apparently had swallowed and that had caused her abdomen to swell. Her young son was holding a remote control to detonate them.
"We noticed she had an oddly shaped body," said Jaafer, who attended the police academy in Baghdad and began her work with the Ministry of Interior, which oversees police, about 18 months ago. "I was warned to check her extra carefully. She felt very hard. We handed her to police and they took her away. They did not even say thank you or praise us with a letter afterward."
The ministry's latest decision was made as quietly as the original order to seize the weapons. The ministry announced neither, but critics complained after The Times obtained documents outlining the seizure order and reported on it.
Maysoon Damluji, a female member of parliament, raised the issue with national lawmakers in December, prompting the parliament's Complaints Committee to seek an explanation.
In a brief response dated Jan. 17, a ministry official said that the order had been "reconsidered" and that the ministry "decided to return all the pistols" to policewomen. A ministry spokesman, Col. Saddoun Abulollah, said that few policewomen had abided by the order in the first place but that all who did had their weapons returned to them. He described their number as "a handful" of the roughly 1,000 women who have qualified as policewomen since U.S. forces introduced female recruitment efforts in late 2003.
