Wielding Guns and Handcuffs, Women Join Iraq Police
Sun Jul 11, 9:11 AM ET By Matthew Green
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Whipping out her handgun and slamming a magazine into the grip, 20-year-old Hadeel Alwan can't wait to start catching criminals.
"My biggest wish is to destroy terrorism," said Alwan, one of the youngest of Iraq's new women police recruits. "I want to go out on the streets and do everything a man does." Battling a raging insurgency and an explosion of violent crime since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq has started hiring women police officers for the first time in decades.
Like the men, they face the risk of suicide car bombs, attacks by heavily armed militants on police stations and death threats for cooperating with U.S.-trained forces.
But they must also tackle prejudice from more conservative Iraqis who think police work is man's work, a throwback to years of male domination of the security services under Saddam.
"Some of my friends make fun of me," said Alwan. "They ask me if I'm afraid, and they tell me it's not a woman's job," she said, speaking after a practice session with her Glock 19 pistol at Baghdad's police academy.
[snip] Women have traditionally played a more prominent role in Iraq's work force than in many more conservative Muslim cultures, but many women say they feel under more pressure to keep a low profile since the invasion.
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