Quote Originally Posted by Abu Buckwheat View Post
I sort of disagree with you that women's issues and empowerment are a vital part of COIN. First what makes us think that the women in societies which are dissimilar to ors want out involvement in the first place. I worked as an NGO security director for a few years and in the ten 3rd world places I investigated or lived I found that women wanted to be empowered inmainly one way... micro-economics of the family. They did not want to wear bikinis, take off the Burqa or be shown western respect that would be disrepectful in the eyes of their own men. They wanted education for the children and mico-credit. Doesn't our view that helping them will help us only show a disdain for their connections to their own cultural identity? Levae it to Phase IV NGOs or the UN who have the cultural senstitivty to do this. In 2003 pre-war the head of USAID made some very similar statements about our ability to change NGOs way of thinking about helping foreign cultures that sounded very similar to the ones above. He made a statement that NGOs who want to help traditionally can leave the coalition and 'we will find NGOs who will do what we want them to do' with regard to 'adjusting' other cultures to our own humanitarian world view.

If we all agree that respect of cultures, traditions and peoples is job one in COIN, why would we suddenly make adjustments for such a core issue as not harassing their women and children? I believe the rumors in Somalia about African-American soldiers 'feeling and disrespecting our women' at checkoints, the rape and murder of the girl in Mahmudiyah by US Army soldiers (which resulted in the deaths and mutilation of two others) and the use of female Marines to search women in Fallujah were all exploited by the enemy as examples of the deep disrespect Americans show moslem women.

There are proper ways to do it, within UN standards but it should be left to the touchy-feely NGOs... they can be quite good at empowerment, particularly in improving the family welfare.

One other thing ... as for the part to impress girls ... I am sure it is a deep down possibility that depends on the locale of the conflict. Here in the ME its about the respect of your peers and community. Salafists are staunchly mosogynistic unless that woman has been given to him by a trusted-source imam and blessed by Allah otherwise ... death and the virgins ... my favorite bumper sticker here in the Gulf is the one on Landcruisers. Its the International female symbol with a red circle and line through it ... they refer to it as the "No Women (B**ches)" sticker ... they mean to say impure women (aka sluts) don't get in their cars, just the guys. Amazing.
By "empowerment" I didn't mean Westernization. I simply meant giving women some degree of influence over events within their societies. As I mentioned, I've become convinced that two vital elements of breaking a conflict-producing system that our doctrine and strategy for counterinsurgency do not address are: 1) providing alternative, non-violent means of empowerment; and, 2) providing alternative, non-violent outlets for the aggression and risk-taking behavior of young males. I believe women's empowerment helps constrain this aggression and risk-taking behavior. It's not a silver bullet, but it's an important part of the problem.

To put this in a larger context, I think we tend to psychologically "mirror image" when we approach counterinsurgency and stabilization operations. Because our political/cultural/economic system is not badly flawed, we assume others are not. Hence we view insurgents or terrorists simply as psychological deviants. I tend to see them as products of badly flawed systems. Thus without systemic re-engineering, new bad people will simply replace the old ones. And--this is the important part--systemic re-engineering is more than simply holding elections, creating a democracy, and tossing in some reconstruction aid. It entails changing values, preferences, and culture.

Now, I'm still strugging with exactly how one does this. The women's empowerment idea is just one small element of a really big task.