Sgt. Raja Valenzuela

RAJA VALENZUELA ANN SCOTT TYSON

Sgt. Raja Valenzuela speaks softly in Arabic to two women in black robes, cradling their children on the side of an Iraqi road.

"Where did you come from?" she asks.

"From An Najaf," say the women, pointing to the city's gold, onion-domed mosque in the distance. Along with a truckload of men, they are refugees from days of guerrilla warfare in and around the city which is under siege from US forces.

Just then, a mortar round explodes several hundred yards away, and the women jump and cover their heads. Several other blasts follow, sending up white clouds in the wheat fields below the city.

Sergeant Valenzuela, a native of Morocco, is performing a crucial job as an Arabic linguist for the Army in Iraq, where in many localities, it is culturally unacceptable for male US soldiers to search, or even question, women. Military police and civil affairs units rely on women such as Valenzuela for this work.

The previous night, for example, women stopped at the checkpoint were found to have hidden AK-47s under their ankle-length robes. Indeed, US intelligence reports indicate that scores of female suicide bombers ready to attack US military targets are among the forces loyal to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"In this culture, men cannot touch or search, or even look at, women," says Spc. Ashley Beaty of the 422 Civil Affairs Battalion. She recently visited an Iraqi farmhouse and was welcomed into the women's hut to drink tiny glasses filled half with sugar, half with tea. A female Army doctor examined women and children.

Valenzuela enjoys working as a linguist, a job she began only days ago when her translating talents came to light. Still, as the daughter of a Moroccan diplomat, she finds many aspects of life as an Army sergeant hard and degrading, especially in Iraq. And she misses her 2-year-old son.

Raised in Europe and the Middle East, Valenzuela immigrated to the US from Morocco in 1995 after getting a job working at the Moroccan Pavilion at Disneyworld in Orlando, Fla. She recalled being impressed when a male coworker from Morocco joined the Marines. "He used to come to the Pavilion to flaunt his Class A uniform, and we all said, 'Wow!'"

She visited an Army recruiter, but was so upset by the basic-training video he showed her that she left in tears. "All the yelling, I wasn't used to that. I was taught Oxford English, very proper, so I didn't understand the slang. I felt like a retard."

Determined to enlist anyway, she went to boot camp, where her poise paid off. Out of her entire company, she was chosen "Soldier of the Cycle" for her confidence, knowledge, and military bearing. "I got to stand at a special place near the reviewing stand at graduation," she says, smiling.

Yet aspects of Army life grate on Valenzuela, who notes that in the Moroccan military, women serve only as officers. "In America, everyone is equal, but this is a little too equal for my tastes," she says.

"Some things we do are very degrading to women, like cleaning the [excrement] and digging foxholes. Sometimes women do the hard work and men sit around flossing because they have rank on us. I don't like disrespect, like the way males talk to you when they outrank you. That ticks me off," she says.

The constant battle with dust and dirt here is also harder on women, Valenzuela says. "We're not like guys. We have to be clean," she says. "We need soap and water. You can't live off baby wipes."

Like many mothers here, Valenzuela is heartbroken about being away from her son, her only child. "I always lived in fear that I would leave my son," she says, sitting on her cot and pulling out a snapshot. "I have to have my baby with me. We never even bought a crib because he slept in our bed." Valenzuela's husband is also deployed with the Army, and their son is with her mother in Morocco.

Long separations from children are a major reason why many Army women decide to leave the military. That, combined with perceived obstacles, concerns about harassment, limited occupational roles, and the challenges of dual-military-career families, help account for Army attrition rates being far higher for women.

Though white female officers are promoted in only slightly lower proportions than are white males, they're more likely to leave. Before their first three years are up, nearly 47 percent of enlisted women have left - by choice or by order - compared with about 28 percent of their male comrades. And across all armed services, about 38 percent of women - and one third of men - leave in their first three years.

Valenzuela, for one, does not plan to reenlist when her contract expires in 2004. "This time," she says, "I will get out."

Spc. Stephanie Keenan

	STEPHANIE KEENAN ANN SCOTT TYSON

Spc. Stephanie Keenan and her team of medics with the 3-7 Cavalry was inching past a small Iraqi town when suddenly, her Humvee was surrounded by 30 to 40 curious villagers.

Intrigued by Specialist Kennan's light blond hair and blue eyes, the Iraqis stared and drew close to her. "One kid was telling me he loved me and wanted to marry me. He gave me a keychain for a ring," she says. Then the villagers started reaching into the Humvee, touching her arm and grabbing things.

"No thank you, no," Keenan said, starting to panic. She put on her sunglasses and Kevlar helmet and shrank into the vehicle. A short way up the road, things rapidly worsened as night fell. After crossing a bridge, fighting broke out. An artillery round landed near Keenan's Humvee, shaking the ground. "Debris was flying everywhere," she says. "Then a Bradley at our right got hit with an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]. It was scary. We didn't have communications in our vehicle, so we didn't know what was going on."

Keenan, a medic from the 703rd Batallion, is performing what has long been a woman's job in the military: treating the wounded. But given new strategies of warfare, with linear battles giving way to the rapid insertion of forces across the battlespace, women like Keenan are finding themselves increasingly on the front lines. Moreover, the guerrilla tactics of Iraqi forces in this war have blurred the very definition of the front line: The five 3rd Infantry Division soldiers lost so far were killed by a sniper and a suicide bomber well behind the leading edge of the fighting.

Indeed, Iraqi fighters have not hesitated to attack "soft targets" in addition to armored vehicles. An ambulance withKeenan's company, clearly marked with a red cross, was destroyed by a mortar round. "The soldiers jumped out, took what they could from the ambulance, and ran to another vehicle," she says.

Keenan grew up in Ormo, Wisc., a tiny farming town of 2,800 that has no stoplight or movie theater. Her mother ran a beauty parlor, Debbie's Hair House, from her home, and Keenan knows everyone in town. But as the outgoing baby of the family, she decided to join the Army, both to see the world and to earn money for college and medical studies.

"I'm the kind of person who, if people told me I can't do something, I'm going to do it," she says, resting her rifle beside a sandbag. "I wanted travel and excitement."

Initially, it bothered Keenan when officers decided to replace her and other women medics in 3-7 combat platoons with males because "they didn't want females up so close." She quickly realized, however, that it made little difference. "We are all in the same danger in the end. I ride in a canvas-topped Humvee, so I am basically unprotected."

As gender and military expert Dr. Miller points out, that's one reason the notion of "combat" has shifted. With changing methods of warfare - and a growing acceptance of women's presence in certain roles - many positions that were once declared "combat roles" are no longer defined as such. "Over time," she says, "the line of exactly what combat is, has shifted. It tends to be whatever women aren't in. So based on history, I'd say the line will keep moving. And as [war] goes more and more high-tech and becomes less about heavy physical labor and front lines, more positions will open."

Although Keenan fears what the future holds in Iraq, she feels toughened by the war. "It's made me a stronger person, going through some of the scariest stuff I've been through in my life and surviving," she says. "I know there are still a lot of people who believe people shouldn't be here. But we're here, and we're doing a great job."

• Staff writer Liz Marlantes in Washington contributed to this report.

TOM BROWN - STAFF SOURCE: RAND