Women Soldiers: Prisoners of Army Discrimination : Military: In Saudi Arabia, yet another excuse for keeping women from showing they can do the job--like guarding Iraqis--too.

Women flew into enemy territory, defended targets, fired missiles, braved the desert and put their lives on the line alongside their male counterparts in the Gulf War. To many female GIs physically capable of going on the offensive, the combat-exclusion policies have proved themselves menacing dinosaurs.

But the combat exclusions do more than keep women from combat positions. They institutionalize sex discrimination. They make it easier for male commanders to get away with their own sexist restrictions on jobs supposed to be open to women--exactly what happened at an enemy prisoner-of-war compound in Saudi Arabia.

At this compound--known as Camp Bronx--military police guarded prisoners without carrying weapons. Women assigned to the compound had been trained as unarmed guards, but at the last minute they were told they could not serve in that capacity. Their presence, it was felt, might incite the Muslim prisoners, cause them to riot or commit suicide.

After all, tales had spread throughout the upper ranks of the military police about Egyptian POWs killing themselves or butchering Israeli female guards rather than taking orders from women. If that happened at this camp, the armed guards would be called into the compound and might even be forced to fire on prisoners to restore order. Since the U.S. military was responsible under the Geneva Convention for protecting Iraqi prisoners, it was decided that women would be barred from internal guard positions.

More than a dozen women in the 403rd Military Police Brigade were relegated to checking identification cards at security checkpoints and answering telephones--while delegating their primary responsibilities to male soldiers. The military played it safe, protecting the prisoners from themselves rather than supporting the female soldiers.

“It was a very special case,” explained camp commander Col. Carl D. Novak. “It was a concession to the Arab world. If this was Germany, we would not deviate.”

The women, who came from reserve units, had helped build the camp--a tent city in the Saudi desert that went from a population of zero to 10,000 in less than a week. The military allowed them to dig holes for water sewerage, pitch tents and fill sandbags. When the women heard they were not going to be allowed to guard, they were stunned.

Sgt. Jeannie Morehart, a single parent who in civilian life works as a correctional officer at a maximum security facility in Lincoln, Neb., requested a transfer to an MP unit closer to the front, to no avail. After 14 years of military training, she had been looking forward to finally doing her job. She had no fear of the Iraqi prisoners--she was certain she had come across more pugilistic men in prison. Like the other women, she was reassigned.

When 9,700 Iraqi prisoners of war showed up at Camp Bronx in nine days--double the number expected--the colonel found himself grossly understaffed. Women not already reassigned were given such tasks as handing out clothing and spraying delousing powder down prisoners’ shirts and pants.

Spec. Meg Griffin checked in most of the prisoners. “Some of them looked at me like, ‘A female? What is a female doing here?’ ” she recalled. “But none of them ever questioned my authority.”

Even though things went smoothly during the processing, women remained restricted to the administration tent. The rest of the compound was off limits, except on short escort duties. The women could not issue supplies to the prisoners, take head counts, oversee the daily life of the prisoners or handle problems.

As weeks went by, the Iraqis were anything but hostile to the service women. They not only took orders from the women, they befriended them. The few potential problems were quickly dissipated. Once, a prisoner yelled to a female MP, “Bitch!” She yelled back, “Prisoner!” Laughter erupted and the situation passed. Even Colonel Novak remarked on the command the women held over the prisoners. Still, he was not prepared to lift the ban. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it was his logic.

It was broke. These women left behind families and young children to risk their lives and make good on their promise: If the United States went to war and they were called up, they would go. Yet the military turned a deaf ear to them. The job segregation made it difficult for the women to be respected by the males in their unit. Some men resented the fact that they were left understaffed; some challenged orders from women of superior rank.

There were those male and female guards who supported the ban, some even saying women should never serve as internal guards, in a Muslim country or elsewhere. They argued that unarmed guards are outnumbered inside a POW compound by more than 100-1, a ratio even a male escort cannot help a woman overcome.

What about the fact that a man could be taken hostage as well? This military of ours, this military that employs over 350,000 women, is going to have to get over the old argument that a female hostage would put the male guards in a precarious situation. Who cares if a male guard would go to extreme lengths to secure a female hostage’s release? That is his choice. His paternalistic attitude should not preclude a woman from doing her job. Furthermore, as history now shows, these guards weren’t the only ones who ran the risk of being captured--the two females who were captured by the Iraqis were not POW guards.

The Army stands to lose some experienced reservists who now see a bleak future for themselves in the military. “What if we went to a country that had some other strange customs and they were afraid to offend people so I only got to be on KP?” Specialist Griffin asked.

The Iraqi prisoners are gone from Camp Bronx. The U.S. public is digesting the role of women in the military, and a Pentagon advisory committee has recommended that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney seek repeal of the laws banning women from combat. If Congress finally holds hearings, there will be testimony that women make better fighter pilots than men because their center of gravity is lower. We will also hear arguments that the American public can--and did--accept female POWs and fatalities.

Add to that the experience of female MPs at Camp Bronx. Clearly, equal-opportunity regulations were not enough to protect them. Only when Congress repeals the combat-exclusion laws and the military lifts its exclusion policies will women be truly equal in the eyes of male commanders. Only then can women, even in support units, be sure that they will be allowed to perform their duties in war.