The widow was nervous the first time she shot a loaded Kalashnikov rifle at the dusty Iraqi police academy north of Baghdad. But she was smiling after she fired 160 rounds at a black-and-white target.
“I felt like the practice was real — like I was part of the war — and I was protecting my country from terrorists,” said Wafaa Najah Abdalla, wearing something rarely seen on an Iraqi woman — a police uniform of a blue shirt and black pants.
The 30-year-old recruit and the 20 other women training at the academy are a critical part of the US and Iraqi response to the latest deadly tactic of al-Qaeda in Iraq: female suicide bombers.
But the academy — the only one of its kind in Iraq — is taking that response one step further. For one month, the women stay and train at the academy in the volatile Diyala province with 680 male colleagues.
Unlike many other security programs for women, where they come only during the day and where classes are confined mostly to search methods, this academy offers women the same lessons as men — including weapons training.
Women have been serving as auxiliary members of Iraqi security forces in markets and during pilgrimages, but these recruits will be full-time policewomen once they graduate next week. They also will receive an official police certification from the Ministry of Interior.
There is still some resistance to women police officers in Diyala, one of the most violent pockets in Iraq. Some men believe the job is too dangerous. Others object to women leaving their families for a month to live at the academy.
Diyala police Major Raied Khalaf dismissed the idea of women officers: a “nightingale” who will be “a soft and easy target for abduction and murder.”
But as the frequency of female suicide bombers increases, the need to include women in the police forces is overruling the opposition. Iraqi men are reluctant to search women and risk breaking social taboos, and al-Qaeda exploits this by having them conceal explosives in long, flowing robes.
Diyala has been particularly vulnerable. Women have carried out 12 suicide attacks this year in the strategic and ethnically diverse province northeast of Baghdad that was a former al-Qaeda in Iraq stronghold.
Iraqi and US officials hope the women training at the academy can start closing that gap.
During their month at the academy, the women learn how to tame riots, take apart guns, set up checkpoints and search for weapons.
“We have joined the police so that we can defend our country, Iraq. And we’ve joined because we see so many female suicide bombers sneaking through checkpoints without being searched. We come to help our colleagues, policemen,” said Asraa Jumaa Yaseen, a 28-year-old mother of five.
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