Women in COIN

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Friday, September 25, 2009 - 5:05 PM Share

Paula Broadwell, a reserve Army officer who is doing a PhD at Harvard, made the point that the military needs to think more about using female soldiers and Marines in counterinsurgency operations. If the point of COIN is to reach out to the population, then female soldiers are likely to be able to better deal with the half of the population that also is female, she noted. I think this is especially true in Muslim societies, and also in other tradition-oriented cultures. Broadwell noted that some 200,000 U.S. military women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:MIDDLE EAST, AFGHANISTAN, CULTURE, IRAQ, ISLAM, MILITARY, WOMEN

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GRANT

7:11 PM ET

September 25, 2009

I wonder how the different

I wonder how the different groups in Afghanistan see this. I understand that there are strong taboos on men speaking to women they are not related to, but do they see women in the military speaking with Afghani women acceptable?

INTELTROOPER

12:39 AM ET

September 26, 2009

Female

Female soldiers/Marines/airmen/sailors are a good resource to have, but they must be used very carefully and I don't think most American servicemembers understand or appreciate the level of gender separation to be able to use females operationally without messing up.

We once had the Taliban use an American patrol as propaganda when they splashed each other with river water. The horror of horrors -- males were splashing females, and vice versa, in full view of the public. The Taliban got a lot of mileage out of that, reinforcing negative views of the American occupiers.

TYRTAIOS

2:10 PM ET

September 26, 2009

The Lioness

An astute well stated comment based on experience! Our women in uniform have come a long way, and will go further.

However, let's not throw them under the bus, along with compromising the mission, without undestanding social/cultural norms based on other than our own one dimensional thinking.

JPWREL

1:46 PM ET

September 26, 2009

Re: Good grief

This idea of making the invasion and occupation of their country more palatable to Afghan women by using foreign infidel gun toting women is so absurd that it could only come from the U. S. military. Do you think Israeli women would be any more accepting of an Arab invasion if Arab women did it? Who thinks up this kind of nonsense?

FASHION

2:15 AM ET

September 27, 2009

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PRASHANTRAO

12:00 PM ET

September 27, 2009

If you're interested

Earlier this month, NPR described how the US military is attempting to put this into practice, if you are interested. The link is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112606206&ft=1&f=7407153.

PHILIP GOLD

4:45 PM ET

September 27, 2009

Women in COIN

Tom,

Philip Gold here. Love your work, especially that piece on Petraeus. A lot more freedom than at the WP. Press on. My next book, Closing Ranks: The Citizen's Guide to a New Defense, will be published by Praeger next spring.

On women in COIN:

When Erin Solaro (my wife-mate) was in Iraq and Afghanistan to study American servicewomen, she spent a good bit of time watching the reactions of Iraqi and Afghan women to the sight of armed American women working with US soldiers and Marines. Her conclusion -- they'd gotten a glimpse of a different universe. Maybe they hated us. Maybe they didn't want us there. Probably they didn't want to be soldiers or want that for their daughters. But they'd had that most enlightening of human experiences: the realization that it doesn't always have to be this way. Unfortunately, our penchant for working with corrupt middle-aged males with large stomachs and Rolexes, not to mention warlords and male tribal elders, guarantees that Afghanistan will remain as it is for a long time to come, no matter what happens to the Taliban.

Women in the Line of Fire (Seal, 2006) remains as relevant as ever.

GINA M. DINICOLO

6:53 PM ET

September 28, 2009

Women need not apply

Tom,

Gina DiNicolo here from "Military Officer." I also was at the conference and came away with a different take. This appeared at MOAA, but is too involved to replicate here. Here's the link: http://moaablogs.org/inside/2009/09/no-girls-in-the-tree-house/

SIERRAKIDD

12:33 AM ET

October 2, 2009

You fools, don't you

You fools, don't you understand? As a thirty year infantry soldier, I'm here to tell you: if you want to join special operations of any kind, don't distinguish yourself as a female! That's like trying to get into CION because you're black or Asian. I DON'T CARE WHAT COLOR YOU ARE OR WHAT GENDER YOU ARE! All I want to know is, can you do the job without creating new problems or having standards reduced. If you must force the fact that you are female as the reason that you should have a particular mission then you must be hiding other deficiencies that you have. What ever happened to "...we are soldiers in one uniform, only." I have worked with a few females that forgot they were female and just did the job. The rest disgrace the uniform by identifying themselves as individuals. Stop it and get back to work.

SIERRAKIDD

12:36 AM ET

October 2, 2009

What happened to proper hair styles?

No further comment should be needed...