Female US Marines to Go to Rural Afghanistan to Befriend Village Women

Are female Marines headed for Afghanistan preparing to exchange recipes for ethnic foods with rural Afghan women and donning head scarves or hijab? What will they talk about through their interpreters? Food? Intelligence? Children? Needs of Rural villagers? Who's making the bombs? According to a March 7, 2010 article in the NY Times by Elisabeth Bumiller, "Teams of female Marines train to meet village women," female Marines at Camp Pendleton, CA are taking cultural awareness training including instructions in breaking the social ice. Also see the article online, "Letting Women Reach Women In Afghan War - NYTimes.com."

Female engagement teams in the past were made up of women working as cooks such as chefs and/ or engineers. The women were thrown into cultural work after quick training that anthropologists and ethnologists would have envied after years of training for doctorates in their fields.

Training that these female Marines are getting emphasizes cultural and cooking training such as first getting to know rural Afghan women by playing with their children as a way to introduce themselves to find out the wome's needs. Then comes the talk about foods and exchanging recipes. It's hoped the rural Afghan women will become friendlier to female marines, many of whom are of Latino-American, Asian, European, Native American, and African-American ancestry, and some female Marines look similar to the Afghan women, particularly when they don their head scarves worn under their military helmets.

How effective will the recent "cultural awareness" class be in helping the Marines make friends with the rural Afghan women when the interpreter is more likely to dominate the conversation in the native language? And should the talk be mostly on exchanging recipes or on intelligence gathering without losing the trust of the rural Afghan women?

Part of the training the Marines are getting is instruction in what to do when talking to villagers in Afghanistan, according to the NY Times article. The rules include the following advice: "Don't start by firing off questions, do break the ice by playing with the children, don't let your interpreter hijack the conversation."

Around 40 female Marines at Camp Pendleton, Calif., will be sent to Helmand Province next month to try to win over rural Afghan women. The units will accompany men on patrols to meet with the Afghan women in their homes. The approximately 40 women will have a job to do because the male Marines can't get to know the Afghan women in their homes with the same closeness in friendship as the female Marines might be able to accomplish. Women relate to one another quickly when exchanging food tips or playing with children in a way that builds trust.

The cultural awareness exercises ask the women to wear headscarves that look similar to a hijab and when they are wearing Marine helmets, to let their pony tails hang out of the back of the helmet so the women will realize these soldiers are female and not be reluctant to talk with the women.

Next month they will begin work as members of the first full-time "female engagement teams," the military's name for four- and five-member units. The Marines are doing this because rural Afghan women are off limits to males outside their families.

The reason why the Marines want the female teams to meet with the Afghan women in their homes is to find out what aid they need. But it also is to gather intelligence as part of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's campaign for making friends with individual Afghans. "His officers say that you cannot gain the trust of the Afghan population if you only talk to half of it," according to the NY Times.

The plan is to have the teams work like American politicians that campaign door to door and learn what voters care about. But will this work culturally with Afghan women where there are male and female entrance doors to private homes?

The plan is to land the female Marines in a rural Afghan village, get permission from the male elder to speak with the women, settle into a compound, hand out school supplies and medicine, drink all ltypes of herbal and local healthy teas, make conversation and, ideally, listen to intelligence information about the village, local grievances and the Taliban.

Anthropologists are wondering how after nine years of war, this idea is only starting now, and whether it will work. Women worry that they will be used for critical jobs like bomb disposal or intelligence.

Will the female Marines truly be ethnographic engagement teams "attached" to all-male infantry units within the First Marine Expeditionary Force? Or will they serve as an extension of housewivery, assisting the males in gathering intelligence just like in ancient times men were used for hunting and women for gathering. Whatever the outcome, currently, the assignment in a cultural job is a source of pride and excitement for the female Marines.

The idea for the teams grew out of the "Lioness" program in Iraq, which used female Marines to search Iraqi women at checkpoint, according to the Times article. Are Marines famous for giving females jobs where they can think outside the box rather than work as helpmates to the males?

The Afghan war has no front lines, just ambushes and snipers, and the female Marines are well trained with combat-training refresher courses. On patrols, the women will carry M-4 rifles. Once inside an Afghan compound, and with Marine guards posted outside, they have been instructed, assuming they feel safe, to remove their rifles and take off their intimidating "battle rattle" of helmets and body armor. But then they have to wear headscarves under their combat helmets to fit in with the Afghan women and also show respect to local customs.

In the heat of the Afghan summer, the Marines are told it's okay to keep the scarves around their necks and use them to cover their heads once their helmets are off inside. Women who are Marines have told their officers that the Afghan women have a lot of influence in their villages, especially the matriarchs.

Afghan males may look to the female Marines as people willing to help them rather than as fighters. It's about intelligence gathering, ultimately. It's the social fabric that the American Marines want to learn about, the power brokers and militants. And female Marines are hoping the rural women will talk so much they'll reveal intelligence information about who are the insurgents and bomb builders perhaps while they exchange girl talk with the females.

Female marines are trained to ask basic questions about problems the villagers are having so they can offer help. They want to know what's the biggest problem facing the village. Answers go into a computer database.

The goal is to let aid workers as well as the military know what the villagers greatest needs are. If the women beg for clean water and food, they are supposed to get it. That's how rural Afghans make friends with female Marines. The women on both sides want to feel safe while they exchange cultural talk. Is it all about learning ethnography or intelligence gathering or both?