Winds has covered the ongoing jihadi campaign in Thailand for some time. One recent wrinkle - a female battalion of Rangers (frontier soldiers, not like the USA's elite Ranger unit). StrategyPage:
"The 300 strong battalion was formed for service in the south, where the Moslem population gets really angry if male soldiers search or manhandle their women. But there were also problems with pro-terrorist Moslem women carrying out demonstrations to provide cover for male terrorists. The Moslem women rioters would make a big media stink if they were dispersed by male soldiers or police. So the army asked for volunteers and soon had 300 women rangers. Some were widows or daughters of men killed in the south, or elsewhere in army service. But most were just women looking for something a little different."
Read the first sentence of the article to which you linked.
From Global Security
They are a border police force. They are using women to search females because it avoids violent confrontations with Muslim males. We have female police officers here too, mate. This isn't making your case.
The bottom line: experiments with female combat units generally fail. You've got nothing.
Jeff, which part of "a female battalion of Rangers (frontier soldiers, not like the USA's elite Ranger unit)" was problematic for you?
Or, for that matter, the quote that followed. You are disagreeing by citing things I've already said.
I will disagree with your characterization of them as police. They're more than that, and the situation there is such that it is a combat zone.
The part I misread. You wrote, "not like." I read, "not unlike." Apologies for the mistake.
The female battalion is being used to search women and disperse women who protest. That's police work, plain and simple.
"The female battalion is being used to search women and disperse women who protest. That's police work, plain and simple."
It's police work, but neither plain nor simple.
It is military police work; an occupational specialty which in counterinsurgency warfare often has as much to do with being infantry as being police. Police work in a war zone is fundamentally different than police work in a society with a purely criminal element.
(For the record, I'm rather more skeptical of women in combat that JK.)
When we get serious about fighting these 'three block wars', will move back to a 15 active division army and create sufficient MP brigades and engineering brigades to hold 'blocks 2 & 3' while the 3rd ID and 1st Armored are talking 'block 1'.
I'm perfectly willing to concede that there are roles and even needs for women in block 2 and 3. It would appear that the Thai's are finding the same thing.
That's equivocation.
True, but misleading. This unit is not functioning as infantry. Hence, they must not be military police by your own definition.
I agree. Those roles are not in combat units.