A Commander's Case for Women, Peace, and Security

Yahoo

01-05-2025

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PETE HEGSETH claims to be focused on 'lethality' and 'the warfighter,' yet he just proudly announced the end of a program that saves American lives and helps us win fights. 'This morning,' he said on April 29, 'I proudly ENDED the 'Women, Peace & Security' (WPS) program inside the @DeptofDefense,' calling it 'yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops—distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING. WPS is a UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists. Politicians fawn over it; troops HATE it.'
First, the secretary seems to have overpromised. He's not ending the program, which is required by law, but, he explained, merely 'executive [sic] the minimum of WPS required by statute.' An anonymous administration official further walked back Hegseth's announcement in a statement to the Washington Post: ''Ending' refers to ending the Biden administration's woke WPS initiatives and returning the program to its original intent.' This shouldn't be surprising, considering the secretary of state, the secretary of homeland security, the national security advisor, and the president are all proud supporters of WPS.
Second, I commanded one of the key initiatives that informed the WPS strategy and later the WPS Act, which codified in law the government's commitment to involving women in matters of war, peace, and security, and I have serious doubts about whether the program overburdened the force, distracted from 'war-fighting,' and irritated the troops.
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IN 2008, I WAS COMMANDING THE 1ST Armored Division in northern Iraq when we began seeing a disturbing and confounding trend: an uptick in suicide bombings carried out by Iraqi women. A series of these attacks were executed in crowded markets, polling stations, and police checkpoints—places where the U.S.-Iraqi security posture was already strained. What made this tactic so effective, and so deadly, was that in traditional Iraqi society, male soldiers and police were prohibited from touching or searching women. And there weren't any female Iraqi police officers to close that gap. Al Qaeda in Iraq knew that our lack of women was a weakness. And they exploited it.
At first, our intelligence analysts didn't fully understand the dynamics. We couldn't figure out why women were now involved in this al Qaeda network of death. It wasn't just tactical adaptation—it was social manipulation.
Throughout our fifteen-month tour, fighting the insurgency didn't just mean lobbing ordnance at bad guys. We were also engaged in a broad campaign to improve governance in northern Iraq by helping local officials develop capacity in law, health, education, and justice. To defeat an insurgency, it's not enough just to destroy the enemy; a successful counterinsurgency force must also contribute to the advancement of the society. Our efforts were seeing progress, as rule of law, education, healthcare, and even business initiatives were countering the terrorist message. But I had neglected a key part of the Iraqi society: the women.
The idea that eventually broke the problem came from a junior female soldier, who suggested something unusual: 'Sir, we should also hold a women's conference; they have a say in their future society, too.' It was, admittedly, an unconventional idea in a male-centric society. But I gave the task to all the female soldiers in our division to pull it off, and a few weeks later, we held that conference in Erbil with more than four hundred women from all of the provinces in northern Iraq—Arab and Kurdish.
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Iraqi women—political leaders, educators, clerics, and civil society figures—gathered to talk about their role in securing their communities. My wife, Sue, opened the conference by addressing the group (through an interpreter) via a satellite video link from Germany. I was one of only two men in attendance, and it sent a clear message that my wife, not I or any other man, was opening the meeting. I was extremely proud when she said, 'We women must do more to stop the violence,' and the Iraqi women cheered.
The spark came during the lunch break. One of the women approached me quietly and said, 'We can help stop the bombings. But we need you to help get Iraqi women recruits into our police academies.' We had built and were operating multiple police academies to train Iraq's next generation of male security forces. But the idea of allowing women to enroll—especially to take on active policing roles—met deep resistance from the Iraqi chief of police and the minister of the interior in Baghdad. Eventually, both relented. We started small: 27 women were enrolled. They graduated weeks later. Within months, more than 60 female officers were operating in public spaces across Diyala, Kirkuk, and Salah ad-Din provinces. They became the key to breaking the suicide-vest network.
The breakthrough came when one of the rookie policewomen stopped a 15-year-old girl named Rania from entering a crowded market. Prevented from detonating her vest, she told interrogators she had been drugged and pushed toward a checkpoint by her own mother—a widow of a slain al Qaeda fighter. It turned out that many of the women wearing these vests were widows of slain al Qaeda fighters who had been told, after their husbands' deaths, there was nothing left for them. No future. No food. No marriage. No status. Many had been forced as teenagers into marrying Iraqi or foreign fighters in the first place and so faced a double social sanction: One for having been married to a terrorist, and another for being a young widow. 'Join your husband in the afterlife,' they were told, 'and in the process you can take as many infidels with you as you can.' We briefed Iraqi officials about Rania's testimony, emphasizing that many of these suicide bombers weren't valiant martyrs but abused and coerced victims of terrorism. Their story eventually became a major topic of discussion in Iraqi society, especially after a female radio host dubbed the policewomen 'Doves of Peace.' This wasn't just good counterterrorism—it was community transformation.
By the time 1st Armored rotated home, not only was the female suicide-vest cell almost completely destroyed, but the overall level of violence in northern Iraq was down significantly and the Iraqi security forces were able to take the lead.
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WHILE OUR EXPERIENCE in northern Iraq antedated the WPS strategy and the later WPS Act, it is precisely the kind of success story envisioned by the bipartisan champions of the program. Across many departments and agencies of the federal government, the program has four pillars:
Participation: Ensuring women's meaningful involvement in decision-making about peace and security.
Protection: Safeguarding women and girls from violence, coercion, and exploitation.
Prevention: Addressing the root causes of conflict through inclusive and equitable approaches.
Relief and Recovery: Promoting the roles of women in stabilizing communities and rebuilding post-conflict societies.
Each of these principles was present in what we did in northern Iraq in 2008. And the result was not a 'woke distraction'—it was lives saved, violence deterred, and long-term security effectuated.
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With due respect to Secretary Hegseth, his definition of lethality is troublingly narrow. Yes, lethality can be found in a rifle shot or a perfectly executed combined-arms maneuver. But at the strategic level—where battles are shaped, alliances are built, and where 'warfighting' serves aims that promote American interests—lethality also depends on the ability to secure populations, disrupt enemy networks, and build coalitions of trust.
Empowering women in conflict zones is not a 'soft' strategy—it's a force multiplier. It produces better intelligence, enhances legitimacy, and reduces the grievances that feed insurgency. We did not set out to create a women's rights movement in Iraq. We were trying to stop the killing. And we succeeded, because we recognized that the path to security runs through society, not just the battlefield. Our female soldiers weren't intent on empowering women for ideological reasons, but because they knew they might be uniquely positioned to solve a problem that men could not.
That insight wasn't unique to our war. As Kathleen McInnes of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has pointed out,
In Afghanistan, for example, U.S. Female Engagement Teams helped tactical and operational level commanders better understand the human terrain of battle spaces, therefore improving kinetic and non-kinetic targeting. Simultaneously, partner forces also became aware that the intentional presence of women in kinetic fights could have a strategic impact. Kurdish women's units were fierce fighters against the Islamic State in part due to their combat effectiveness but also because of the reputational damage to Islamic State fighters being forced to fight—and lose—to women. In Ukraine, upwards of 60,000 women are serving in the military, including on the front lines, and women's networks are critical components of anti-Russian resistance networks.
That is what WPS stands for: the strategic inclusion of half the population in the fight against instability, terror, conflict and chaos. The WPS program reflects the reality that modern combat is not simply about force and lethality—it is about legitimacy, alliances, information, and the ability to create peaceful solutions that endure.
Killing this program won't make the U.S. military more lethal. But it might make it half blind.
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