Erin Coates

I was the first Canadian woman law enforcement officer deployed to Iraq in a police peace operations capacity. I made new friendships with people from around the world. Team teaching with other nations with different perspectives and experiences makes us so much stronger. I worked alongside police instructors from the Italian Carabinieri, the Czech Republic State Police, the Czech Republic Military Police, the Slovakian Military Police, and the Finland Civilian Police. The training instructors provided key training to the Government of Iraq civilian sector entities, including federal, provincial, local and specialty police forces from within Iraq. I believe we made a difference just based on the interaction we had with our students and the connections we made with them. We listened and learned just as much as we taught.

Early in my mission, I was given a nickname by some students. This happened when I was teaching one of the big Law & Order classes and I was instructing on crime scene investigations and basic investigation techniques. I had a kidnapping scenario to use and had a Canadian name for the victim. But in order to make the scenario more authentic and relatable, it needed to be an Iraqi name. So the class pitched in and offered up some suggested names. I chose Selema. From that moment on, for the entire 8-week Law & Order class, my name was Selema.

After the Law & Order class, the best students are chosen to take the Basic Police Procedures Train-the-Trainer (T3) course to become instructors themselves. As it turned out, some of the students from the Law & Order course returned for the T3 course and they kept on calling me Selema. The Iraqi school also had Federal Police officers who worked at the school and managed the students and facilities outside the classrooms. Well, they heard me being called Selema and they picked right up on it. It spread quickly and it stuck to me!

And, I liked it! I really believe that the students, even in that large class, truly accepted me and welcomed me into their community. And this can be a real point of concern for a foreign woman coming to teach in an Arabic environment with some of the very traditional attitudes and sentiments still present in Iraqi society. Plus, any time I heard the word Selema, I knew they were chatting about me. And I would give them a quick look and would get a laugh every time!

Participating in this mission and teaching a variety of topics to a multitude of students, all while living in a very different environment among an international coalition of police and military personnel, can be enormously challenging and rewarding. But above it all, I cannot emphasize enough the profound experience I gained from instructing on the Female Policing course. I was part of a team comprised of Canadian and Italian police officers. Everyone’s contribution made the course a high-quality training experience for the Iraqi female police officers. I am very proud to have been part of that team. Our interpreter played an important role, as well. She helped us understand the culture and answered all the questions we had for her, which was a lot. She made sure to understand the concepts from us prior to delivering them to the class so she could help them understand the messages we were relaying.

Because the class size was smaller, and we taught this off-site at a location exclusively set aside for an all-female class with all-female instructors, we had an opportunity not just to teach but to share our experiences with each other. Everyone knows that storytelling is a powerful method to convey meaning from one person to another, and the stories that I heard from these Iraqi women were altogether heartbreaking and empowering. I can’t overstate the degree of respect I have for these women who have committed themselves to taking on such a non-traditional vocation for females in Iraq because they believe in the importance of the work they need to do.

And through this all, I kept comparing what I was hearing and seeing from them with my own experience as a police officer in Canada, noting both the shared and unique victories and difficulties that we could relate to each other. It is absolutely impossible not to come away with a new perspective of this region of the world, and a renewed insight into life in Canada. And I risk sounding cliché when I describe it as simply amazing and life-altering. But truly, it was exactly that. I can’t imagine gaining that type of experience which I can carry back to my workplace and my family without having committed the time, effort, and emotional investment into the opportunity I had on this mission. If there was ever a justification I had in going to Iraq, it was right there in the room with those brave Iraqi women.

With this experience, I learned what kind of leader I want to be. I learned that we as Canadians are very lucky where we live. I knew that before from all the traveling I have done. But in Iraq, it became so obvious on a different level. We are all human — we all want safety security and to be loved, whatever that looks like.