Women to Women | Marine FETs Reach Afghans

Saying that ‘you cannot gain the trust of the Afghan population if you only talk to half of it’, America’s Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is implementing an unusually ‘forward-looking’ project for the American military. Next month 40 young women Marines will arrive in Afghanistan as members of the first full-time ‘Female Engagement Teams’.

Accompanying military men on patrols in Helmand Province, the Marine women will attempt to work with the Afghan women in their homes, assessing their need for aid and gathering intelligence. Afghan women are generally off limits to American soldiers and probably wouldn’t feel comfortable talking with them if they could.

As envisioned, the teams will work like American politicians who campaign door to door and learn what voters care about. A team is to arrive in a village, get permission from the male elder to speak with the women, settle into a compound, hand out school supplies and medicine, drink tea, make conversation and, ideally, get information about the village, local grievances and the Taliban. via NYTimes

The project is an evolution of the ‘Lioness’ program in Iraq, which attaches female Marines to combat units to search Iraqi women and children who cannot and should not be touched by male military members. The “lionesses” also train Iraqi women how to conduct proper searches on other women.

The Small Wars Journal says that last year a few female US Marines and a civillian linguist formed the first “Female Engagement Team” (FET) that visited rural Pashtun women.

The women Marines are very enthused about this assignment, believing that they can make a difference in Afghanistan. The NYT quotes a old Afghan man as saying: “Your men come to fight, but we know the women are here to help.”

This new group of female Marines is the first to be trained for FETS. On patrol the women will carry M-4 rifles but will remove all combat-gear, as long as they feel safe, once inside the village and ready to interact with Afghan women.

The Americans are trained to wear head scarves under their helmets. It it’s too hot and unwieldy, then the scarves go around their necks but on their heads, once inside an Afghan woman’s home.

If anyone reading this blog has access to any women working in FETs, I would LOVE them to write a piece for Anne of Carversville. Please contact me in the box above. I’m convinced that programs like this one are progressive and positive. Meanwhile, I will pursue the possibility directly.

Good luck, ladies. Our prayers go with you for success and safety. I saw my first daffodil today in New York and was going to post one somewhere in the website. I think this is a perfect spot.  Anne

Photo via maridesign.