Iraqi girls perform a skit for Iraqi officials and Soldiers during a re-opening ceremony at Yassamin School, Nov. 5. The project was a joint effort between Government of Iraq officials and U.S. forces. Photo by Sgt. Joshua Risner

Education is essential for a child growing up in the world today. That is no less true in Iraq, where schools are a building block for a child’s future.

Three schools were officially re-opened here, Nov. 5, thanks to Multi-National Division Baghdad Soldiers.

The Shab Female School, Yassamin School and Monte Tenaybo Schools were in shambles before they came to the attention of Army civil affairs Soldiers, according to Staff Sgt. Frank Halstead, from Brooklyn, N.Y.

“All three schools had to be completely redone because they were a mess,” he said. “They had to be painted and cleaned, the wiring had to be redone and the walls on the outside needed repair. Basically they were just the shells of buildings.”

So Halstead and his fellow civil affairs Soldiers took up the contracts and set to work. They arranged for the repairs to be made and periodically checked the work to make sure things were being done to their specifications.

“We had to make sure they were done up to standard,” said Halstead. “Finally it all came together and the people have schools now.”

On opening day, the students gathered to sing songs and perform skits for the Soldiers and officials who came to see the work come to fruition.

“It feels pretty good because today you actually get to see the kids’ reactions – it’s not just a bunch of older people standing around talking to each other,” said Halstead. “The kids were happy, they looked like they wanted to be in school, to me that’s a good thing.”

1st Lt. Lacey Rector (right), from Willoughby Hills, Ohio, talks with students and teachers at the reopening ceremony for the Shab Female School, Nov. 5. Photo by Sgt. Joshua Risner

For 1st Lt. Lacey Rector, from Willoughby Hills, Ohio, assigned 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, the girls at Shab Female School were a welcome sight.

“It’s nice to see females because you don’t see them very often over here,” she said. “It’s nice to see that they are being educated as well.”

The project is another example of the continued commitment of U.S. forces to helping the Iraqi people, according to Halstead.

“We’re there to help them not to hurt them,” he said. “They know if their children are being educated then that’s going to help them in the long run. They appreciate it.”

With three more schools operational in the Baghdad area, more children are getting the chance to better themselves and their communities by getting an education. It is one more thing that U.S. forces are doing to make Iraq a better place.

Col. Maria Zumwalt (left), a native of Bayamon, Puerto Rico, chats with students of the Shab Female School, Nov. 5. Zumwalt is the commander of Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. Photo by Sgt. Joshua Risner

DVIDS
Story by Sgt. Joshua Risner

Capt. Ann Demapan, Women's Initiatives coordinator, Multi-National Division – South, speaks to Iraqi women at a conference held at the Basra Airport recently to discuss business opportunities available to educated women. Photo by Spc. Stephanie Cassinos

In January, we spoke to a number of Iraqi women about the business opportunities that they were opening up for themselves. Here’s a similar story from Southern Iraq.

More than fifty Iraqi women met with Soldiers and contractors recently at the Basra Airport to discuss opportunities in business development and business contracting.

A large portion of the conference was dedicated to explaining opportunities with Joint Contracting Command – Iraq’s Women-Owned Business Initiative, a program that reserves Department of Defense contracts for businesses primarily owned by women.

“The target audience for the conference was educated women because contracting normally deals with a huge scope of work that requires specialties in engineering and business management,” explained Capt. Ann Demapan, Women’s Initiatives coordinator, Multi-National Division – South. “Programs like these can prove to both men and women that women are competitive and competent in almost any field of work.”

Jasim Al-Sarraf, a business development consultant with Regional Contracting Center – Basra, concurred.

“Most contractors are men,” said Al-Sarraf, a native of Baghdad. “We know for sure that there are many educated women in this society. The university is pumping students out every year.”

“They need jobs. They need income,” added Al-Sarraf. “And if they don’t have it they’ll end up sitting at home.”

Civil Affairs and contractors such as JCC-I assist Iraqi women by introducing business opportunities as well as providing training along every step of becoming a contracted company. From filling out paperwork to learning the rules and ethics of contracting, these women are guided through the process of establishing and learning how to manage a DoD contract.

“It’s our job to find them, get them out, encourage them to have a company, show them the way to do it and train them,” said Al Sarraf.

In 2008, JCC-I awarded four percent of all contracting to women-owned businesses, totaling $187 million. Following successes in the past, this year the aspirations are even higher.

“Joint Contracting Command – Iraq has made it a goal to award 10 percent of its contracts to women contractors,” said Demapan. “Women contractors will only compete amongst other women contractors. Past contracts done by women contractors resulted in quality, professional work.”

Both Al Sarraf and Demapan believed the conference was beneficial for the women who attended.

“My objective is first encouraging them, stimulating them,” said Al Sarraf. “Then to give them a general idea about the contracts and tell them that we are here to help you.”

“From the questions asked by them, they were very eager of wanting more details in completing applications to become contractors,” Demapan said. “And even before the conference took place, 40 women contractors applied to JCC-I to be added into their database system of contractors.”

In addition to aspirations of becoming contracted, Iraqi women at the conference expressed a desire to give back to their communities.

“Some of the women were very passionate in wanting to help other women in rural areas,” Demapan said. “Some spoke of outreach programs concerning health care and humanitarian assistance for women in rural areas.”

Demapan, a mother, hopes to help women understand how their roles as business-owners can offer Iraq even more than economic development.

“The ladies and I share a commonality in that we are mothers. Mothers only want the best provided for their children. That entails building a strong Iraq for their children,” said Demapan. “I wanted to convey to them that all Iraqis, men and women, have a stake in the future of Iraq. That the women of Iraq need to become and need to be recognized as major players in policy-making and decision-making for their motherland.”

DVIDS
Story by Spc. Stephanie Cassinos

The Iraqi security services continue to add women, no matter what you may read in the old media. Here are a few recent pics:

KARBALA, Iraq (March 22, 2009) Iraqi female recruits disassemble AK-47 assault rifles during weapons training for recruits in basic training at the Iraqi Police Academy in Karbala, Iraq. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Wendy Wyman/Released)

KARBALA, Iraq (March 22, 2009) An Iraqi female recruit looks down the sights of her AK-47 assault rifle during weapons training for recruits in basic training at the Iraqi Police Academy in Karbala, Iraq. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Wendy Wyman/Released)

KARBALA, Iraq (March 22, 2009) An Iraqi police instructor demonstrates how to load an AK-47 assault rifle during weapons training for recruits in basic training at the Iraqi Police Academy in Karbala, Iraq. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Wendy Wyman/Released)

Lioness tells the story of a group of female Army support soldiers who were part of the first program in American history to send women into direct ground combat. Without the same training as their male counterparts but with a commitment to serve as needed, these young women fought in some of the bloodiest counterinsurgency battles of the Iraq war and returned home as part of this country’s first generation of female combat veterans. Lioness makes public, for the first time, their hidden history.

In April 2004, at the height of the insurgency in Iraq, five female soldiers unwittingly found themselves fighting alongside Marines in the battle for Ramadi and Fallujah.

Their story is told in a documentary film bearing their unit name, “Team Lioness,” which has been shown in private and public screenings throughout the United States and Europe in the past year. The Center for Women Veterans hosted the film at the Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters here yesterday.

“These stories are important to us at VA, because women veterans are coming to VA in great numbers, and we need to make sure we understand their experiences,” Betty Moseley Brown, associate director of the VA’s Center for Women Veterans, said as she introduced the film to an audience of about 50 viewers. “They became the first female soldiers in U.S. history to be sent into direct ground combat.”

Since the American Civil War, women have played important roles in the U.S. armed forces during war time — as nurses, journalists, pilots, engineers, logisticians and much more. But what they’re not, still, is infantry, armor or artillery — combat-arms specialties.

Still, many female servicemembers have been wounded and killed as a result of enemy fire. But it wasn’t until the start of the Iraq war in 2003 that women began finding themselves engaged in direct fighting.

Team Lioness pioneered women in direct fighting, although somewhat unintentionally. The women were intended to augment combat-arms platoons to search Iraqi women for money, weapons and drugs smuggling at checkpoints and on patrols. But eventually, their new roles in the ranks of combatant units led to ground combat alongside infantrymen, cavalrymen and artillerymen on the frontlines.

The film opens in a wilderness setting with b-roll of trees and damp leaves lining a still-flowing creek. The only sounds for several seconds are crickets chirping in the background. The tranquil silence of Mena, Ark., is suddenly broken by the boom of several shotgun rounds fired at a turtle in the creek.

The documentary’s introduction of Shannon Morgan, a former Army mechanic and Lioness, shows her innocence as a country girl, but with an obviously troubled past. Much of the film follows her around her family’s farm as she hunts squirrels with her shotgun and shares emotional testimonies of her time in Iraq.

“I don’t watch the news. I don’t read newspapers,” Morgan says in the film. “But the memories of war never go away.”

Morgan and the other Lionesses said they never expected to have to fire their weapon. But they quickly found themselves performing combat patrols, raids and house-to-house searches with the Marines in what was considered the most dangerous region of Iraq during what was arguably the most dangerous period of the entire campaign.

The Lionesses talk about their first enemy encounters and the stress of seeing dead bodies for the first time, while fighting to stay alive. Morgan recalled battling with the darkest side of war just before shooting an insurgent in a firefight.

“It’s something you learn to deal with,” Morgan said. “I don’t regret what I did, but I wish it had never happened.”

The soldiers also talk about the difficulties of learning the tactics and vocabulary of the Marines they worked with. The transition from their Army ways, plus the frequency of enemy engagements, didn’t allow for much of a learning curve to make up for their lack of knowledge of various weapons systems, Army Capt. Anastasia Breslow, a signal corps officer and former Lioness, said in the film.

“If everyone [in the platoon] had been hurt, I would have had no idea how to get back to the forward operating base,” Breslow said. “I didn’t know how to use the biggest casualty-producing weapon we had. I felt we needed to know more.”

Although the film takes place primarily on the home front with Lioness and family interviews, it brings to light the realities today’s generation of military women, and all combat support troops, face in Iraq and Afghanistan. The line that separates the front from the rear is blurred by the urban and guerilla warfare troops encounter fighting terrorism within the Middle East.

The nature of modern warfare — fighting counterinsurgencies in random locations, as opposed to nation states on prescribed battlefields — has made it difficult to define what constitutes a combat-arms military specialty and what doesn’t.

Military women today still cannot legally serve in combat-arms positions, but they serve competently and are trained in a variety of roles and capacities in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the lessons learned from the original Team Lioness. Their experiences prompted training for women that was never done before. They learn infantry tactics, qualify on more weapons, and are better prepared for the chance they may have to engage the enemy.

“As a result of their experiences, now each military service trains female servicemembers to be Lionesses, training that was not offered whenever this documentary was actually filmed,” Brown said, referring to the weapons and tactical training female military members now receive.

DoD
By Army Staff Sgt. Michael J. Carden
American Forces Press Service