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 بين أخوات نسيبة و بنات العم سام ..و الحرب الجبانة و صباحكن في بغداد الابية
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Frontline females too young to drink
01 April 2003
AT 18 Miranda Nichols is not old enough to buy a beer in her home state of Georgia - but she is old enough to carry a gun and fight for her country.
Miranda is the new face of combat - very young, highly trained and female.
She was photographed yesterday with her female comrade, heavily armed and involved in a defensive alert at a forward base of the US's 3rd Infantry just south of Baghdad - in the thick of the action.
Since the US Government lifted the "risk rule" in 1994, in effect letting women take military positions where they might come under enemy fire or be captured, thousands of young women have been deployed to take up "forward" positions in the Iraqi conflict.
This means that about 90 per cent of all military jobs are now open to women, and that they must follow their male counterparts into hostile zones.
Unlike the UK and Australia - US women now fly combat missions and serve on naval vessels, although they are still barred from submarines, special forces and the US Army's infantry, armour and artillery divisions.
Just how close to the action they get was graphically illustrated by the TV images of a terrified Shoshana Johnson, the young Texan woman who was among five US soldiers captured by Iraqis. She is the mother of a two-year-old.
Women are eligible to serve in about 90 per cent of employment categories in the Australia Defence Forces and are only excluded from direct combat.
Of the 200 Australian women in the Gulf, 50 per cent are in the RAN, 40 per cent in the RAAF and 10 per cent army. Twenty per cent of HMAS Kanimbula's crew are women.
According to the Defence Department, these women undertake tasks ranging from "combat support tasks" and logistics in the army, aircrew, maintenance and logistics in the RAAF, and boarding parties, weapons system operations and logistic support in the RAN.
Female sailors and officers have been involved in boarding intercepted vessels and the ships including the Kanimbla are vulnerable to mines and suicide missions.
The RAAF allows women into all roles except guarding airfields. Women are amongst the support staff for the 14 RAAF F/A-18 fighter jets flying escort and bombing missions in Iraq.
But, a spokesman confirmed that no Australian woman was actually inside Iraq.
Women are not new to the military in non-western countries.
They serve in the Iraqi, Syrian and Israeli armies, and played an active role in both Christian and Muslim militias in the Lebanese civil war.
Of the 13 US servicewomen killed in the 1991 Gulf War, four of them were from enemy fire, including three servicewomen who were killed by an Iraqi Scud missile attack. Twenty-one women were wounded in action, and two were taken prisoners of war.
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