Posted on 09/24/2002 8:14:52 AM PDT by robowombat
U.S. troops find women hiding automatic weapons, grenades... Posted by Afgha.com on Monday, September 23 2002 @ 14:15:00 CEST
Associated Press - via Yahoo News Mon Sep 23, 4:22 AM ET By KIKO ROSARIO
...in eastern Afghanistan
BAGRAM, Afghanistan - U.S. forces conducting searches in eastern Afghanistan ( news - web sites) over the weekend found grenades and automatic weapons hidden by Afghan women, including some weapons concealed under their all-encompassing burqas, a U.S. military spokeswoman said Monday.
Lt. Col. Carla Sylvester said the weapons were found Sunday in searches near the Afghan towns of Khost and Deh Rawood.
"We've seen several incidents of this type recently where women have been used to hide weapons and other materials of intelligence value under their burqas," Sylvester said at Bagram Air Base, headquarters of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.
Many Afghans have complained that U.S. troops' insistence on searching women is humiliating and unnecessary. Most women in deeply conservative Afghanistan are kept strictly apart from men who are not related to them, and most wear the body-shrouding burqas when out in public.
Sylvester said that when Afghan women are searched it is always by female soldiers, or by native Afghans.
Women rarely, if ever, wield arms in Afghanistan's male-dominated Islamic culture. Families commonly keep light arms to protect themselves in Afghanistan's rural provinces, some parts of which are prone to banditry.
In Deh Rawood district in central Uruzgan province, U.S. forces seized two AK-47s, an 82mm mortar site and aiming stakes, all hidden under a blanket on which women were sitting.
Special forces in the same town found several automatic rifles, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and documents for crossing into Pakistan.
In a separate operation in Khost, a small province which borders Pakistan, conventional U.S. troops found another stash of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, machine-gun ammunition and 26 grenades, some of which were found under women's clothes.
The troops also seized laptop computers, passports and terrorist propaganda related to al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden ( news - web sites), Sylvester said.
No, they just haul ammo, weapons, supplies, and - oh yes, they carry suicide bombs with which to blow themselves and their victims up.
If it were the US, Freepers would be defending their rights to bear armes.
He was a sergeant and a squad leader on some God-forsaken island (New Georgia?). One day his squad encountered a pair of heavily-painted and kimona-clad ladies who appeared to be Japanese camp-followers (prostitutes for their officers).
They continued to approach the Raiders despite their repeated attempts to wave them off. They seemed oblivious even when rifles were aimed at them, so my dad made a horrific split-second decision that caused that caused even the battle-hardened Raiders to gasp, shout in protest, and begin to freeze up.
The squad hesitated to fire on the two as ordered, so my dad opened up with his trusty Thompson sub-machine gun. While the jungle still echoed with the sound of gunfire and the shouts of horrified Marines, the women were engulfed in the explosion of the hand grenades they had stashed in their armpits.
How will today's warriors deal with similar threats in the form of burkha-clad women? Just as sure as God made little green apples, we will see at least one incident where our fighting men will kill such "civilians" -- and be demonized by "world opinion" -- or are killed by fanatics following the tradition of the Japanese camp-followers that me father was savvy and brave enough to send home to their Maker.
Sadly, we will be reminded that the balance between battlefield survival and a sense of humanity -- now tempered by decades of PC indoctrination -- is a fine one indeed....
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