Another story you won't see on network TV:
Iraq: Female Police Officers Challenge Themselves And SocietyIraqi women are slowly making inroads into the country's public life. Several women serve as ministers or as minor officials in the interim government. Others, however, are choosing more unconventional occupations such as serving in the country’s security services. Female police officers say they not only want to serve their country but to challenge themselves and Iraqi society.
Twenty-four-year-old Hajear and her sister Sarah, 26, are police officers in Iraq. They say they want to serve as role models for other Iraqi women who are used to working modestly in the home.
Hajear and Sarah arrived at the Al-Khadra police station in northern Baghdad just five days ago, after finishing a two-month training course. They wear blue Iraqi police uniforms and carry guns. Their faces are not covered, but they do wear Muslim head scarves. The sisters constantly smile and laugh. They are two of some 300 women serving on the Baghdad police force...
"My family encouraged me to be a police officer and to be an example of an Iraqi woman as a policewoman,” Hajear says. “They are afraid when I leave home and come back, but I was trained how to protect myself. I am not afraid."...
Sarah says she is ready to challenge a society run by men, to prove that women are equals.
"Women had pressure on them, and [men] would never let [a woman] serve in the police. Now, we have [female government] ministers. With God's help, we are police officers. Maybe in the future, I will be president," Sarah says.
Women are almost invisible on the streets of the capital Baghdad. The men say this is because of security concerns, that they are trying to protect them. Many women dispute this, however, saying men in Iraq have always been inclined to keep their wives and sisters locked up at home.
All shopkeepers in Baghdad are men or boys. Men sell newspapers. Men sell tea. Men drive cars. Men argue about politics in the cafes. Men preach the sermons in the mosques. Men fight and kill. Men are kidnappers and men are being kidnapped.
Hajear says Iraq needs "female brains to make the country really different." She says the Americans in Iraq pushed the idea that women should be allowed to serve as police officers.
"They trained us, they provided with psychological support," Hajear says. "So here we are, to break the old customs of our society and old beliefs that women are not good enough for public jobs.”
"We want to break this rule,” Hajear says. “We want to prove to them that we are like men, that women are the same as men. Before [the war], women were ignored, but maybe now the time has come when we can break this rule and prove the opposite."
Hajear says she hopes the next generation of Iraqis will be different.
"We know that in the U.S. Army, women can become generals. We would also like to be as they are," she says. "Now, we live without freedom, but we hope we will have it."
Senior Lieutenant Farid Khalil of the Al-Khadra police station says the concept of female police officers represents a big challenge to Iraqi society. He says the sisters are "damned brave to join the police in a society where people throw black paint at advertisements picturing females."
Perhaps the left can explain to this young woman that she would have a better future locked away behind her father's or her husband's walls.
Just as African-American leaders remain shamefully mute on the Sudan, the silence of American feminists in defense and support of their Muslim sisters is deafening.
Posted by Zozo at July 12, 2004 10:20 AM | TrackBack