Women troops added to special ops raids

AP:

Army 1st Lt. Ashley White died on the front lines in southern Afghanistan last weekend, the first casualty in what the Army says is a new and vital wartime attempt to gain the trust of Afghan women.

White, like other female soldiers working with special operationsteams, was brought in to do things that would be awkward or impossible for her male teammates. Frisking burqa-clad women, for example.

Her death, in a bomb explosion in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar, underscores the risks of placing women with elite U.S. special operations teams working in remote villages.

Military leaders and other female soldiers in the program say its rewards are great, even as it fuels debate over the roles of women in combat.

"We could do things that the males cannot do, and they are starting to realize that," says Sgt. Christine Baldwin, who like White was among the first groups of women deployed to Afghanistan this year as specially trained "cultural support" troops.

Male soldiers often cannot even speak to an Afghan woman because of the strict cultural norms that separate the sexes and the tradition of women remaining behind closed doors most of the time. Forcing the issue has yielded only resentment, military officials say, and has jeopardized the trust and cooperation of villagers. From the start of the war 10 years ago, Afghans have especially resented the practice of "night raids" in which male foreign soldiers enter and search homes, the traditional sanctum of women.

"We could search the female, find out the other half of the information," Baldwin said in an interview. "If you're missing half of the lay of the land, how effective are you in engaging the populace?"

That question was eight years in the making. It arose from the frustration of U.S. commanders who realized two years ago that as they tried to apply the principles of counterinsurgency — protect civilians and enlist them to reject insurgents and provide intelligence — they weren't reaching the majority of the Afghan population.

Now, the first female soldiers are serving in commando units. They are trained to ferret out critical information not available to their male team members, to identify insurgents disguised as women and figure out when Afghan women are being used to hide weapons.

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A guy dressed as a woman is unlikely to be another Cpl. Klinger from MASH.  The Marines have also used Women Marines to work with the Afghan women in Helmand.  It makes sense and many times they can find out more than the men are likely to reveal.

Ther3e is much in in the long story.