Members of the Daughters of Iraq collect cell phones from visitors at a hospital in Baghdad's Adhamiya neighbourhood. (LAT-WP)

baghdad • The two women couldn't be less alike: Melath Dulaimi is a single woman in her mid-30s who wears a knee-length skirt, strappy sandals and refuses to cover her hair. Lekaa Mohammed is a retiring widow draped in a navy blue veil and concealing robes.

But when the US military advertised for women to join its neighbourhood guard program last fall, both answered the call.

"Iraqi women are the same as Iraqi men," said Dulaimi, the businesslike leader of 42 female security guards in Baghdad's blast-scarred Adhamiya section. "We want to take back our neighbourhood."

The women work in pairs, frisking female visitors for weapons and explosives at schools, hospitals, banks and government offices.

The programme was set up to counter a growing threat of female suicide bombers. But even as the response from women has been enthusiastic, it has faced resistance from tradition-bound community leaders who believe that fighting insurgents is men's work.

So far, 500 women have joined the more than 90,000 Sons of Iraq, a mostly Sunni Arab guard force that helped drive out insurgents from some of the country's most dangerous areas. Unlike their male counterparts, the new Daughters of Iraq do not carry weapons, and they operate in just a handful of places in Baghdad, south of the capital and in Anbar province.

US commanders are keen to expand the programme, but such efforts would require delicate negotiations with the communities where the women would operate. And the Iraqi government has made it clear that it has no intention of retaining female recruits when US forces eventually hand over responsibility for the neighbourhood guards.

Army Lt-Colonel Jeff Broadwater, who commands the US troops in Adhamiya, a walled-in Sunni enclave surrounded by Shia neighbours, would like to assign women to checkpoints and markets, which are among the favoured targets of suicide bombers. But neighbourhood leaders say those places are far too exposed.

Critics blame the rise of religious conservatives for the government's apparent reluctance to tackle the threat of female suicide bombers.

There have been at least 21 such attacks since November, according to US military figures.

Adhamiya was once one of the more progressive Baghdad neighbourhoods. Many of its women were once employed as teachers or administrators in government offices across the city. But when the bombing of a revered Shia shrine in Samarra unleashed revenge killings against Sunnis in 2006, most retreated to their homes, too afraid to leave the neighbourhood.

For more than a year, the tortured bodies piled up. When the old graveyard behind Abu Hanifa mosque was full, a new one was carved out of a park where families had once picnicked.

Mohammed's husband is buried there. A taxi driver, he was pulled over one day by gunmen in a Shia neighbourhood. Five days later, his body turned up at the morgue with a single shot to the head.

Mohammed was left to support five children on her own. She said her job searching women at a busy hospital had provided her "a good opportunity to help my family and my country."

Officials say they have lost count of neighbourhood widows, who make up many of the Daughters of Iraq. Others signed up because their husbands were disabled or lost jobs in the fighting.

A senior US military official said the government was not willing to take on the Daughters of Iraq because of "cultural norms regarding the employment of women in dangerous jobs."

US commanders expect to continue the programme at their own expense for a year or two. But that is small consolation for the Daughters of Iraq. "We help our families, our community and the American forces," Alam said. "So we want the government to give us real jobs."