Policewomen allowed to keep guns

The policewomen who search women for explosives need guns for protection.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

BAGHDAD, Iraq — 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 the Imam Ali.

Jaafer said none of the roughly two dozen female officers posted at the shrine has a gun or uniform, even though they search women and children entering the complex and face threats from the increased use of female suicide bombers. Their male counterparts are armed, said Jaafer, who said she personally 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. I was warned to check her extra carefully. She felt very hard,” 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. “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 Interior Ministry’s decision to revoke the order was done as quietly as the original order to seize the weapons. The ministry announced neither, but critics complained after the Los Angeles Times reported on weapons seizure order.

Advocates of female police officers say Iraq’s growing number of female suicide bombers makes them a necessity. Since November, at least four women have blown themselves up, and police have stopped at least one would-be female suicide bomber before she could detonate her explosives. The military says insurgents are trying to recruit more women because it is easier to get them close to strategic targets and through checkpoints.

The U.S. military said an American soldier died Thursday in the capital when a roadside bomb exploded. The soldier was the 3,942nd U.S. troop to die in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to www.icasualties.org.