Session 21: Rape as a Strategic Tool in War

DISCLAIMER: This post is long and deals with a very sensitive issue. 

Abeer Qassim Hamza al Janabi was gang raped and killed at the age of 14 by soldiers of the United States army in 2006 during the Iraq war. Yes! Raped at age 14. A beautiful, young, innocent child that deserved all the protection and adoration in the world. But apparently not in the brutal times of war, by the very soldiers who were sent there to ‘liberate’ her and the people of her state.

This is just one example of the gang rape in war. There are most probably millions of others. Mass rape as a strategic weapon of war is a harsh reality. A tool in itself. It is downright disgusting. That is probably why it gets buried. No one wants to face the nauseous reality of it and thus rarely anyone ever talks about it.

I could be done with this blog post by giving a summary of our text ‘Feminist Perspectives on International Relations’ by J. Ann Tickner. But I won’t because quite frankly that is pathetically boring and the least substantial and most useless thing to do. What I want to explore by the evocating the above example is to focus on the discussion on ‘gendering international security’ as one of the major contributions by feminist theorists in the field of IR as mentioned by Tickner. 

Feminist theorists explore the idea of ‘protection’ of the vulnerable people (mostly the women and children) as a tool to legitimize waging of wars. ‘The poor women and child need to be saved by our ‘brave, heroic, strong men’.  It is used all the time because it works like a charm. In reality, sometimes it’s the exact opposite. It’s like an ironic slap in the face, when sometimes these very ‘protectors’ become the ‘predators’. That is when they go ahead and use gang rape as a weapon in an attempt to psychologically cripple the ‘enemy’. To make matters worse, they can even most probably get away with it.

The case of Abeer was different in that respect. All 5 of the criminals were charged, convicted and punished according to their part in the gang rape by US courts within the following year. But sadly, such convictions are a little too few in numbers given the frequency of such crimes.

Let’s take this issue a little closer to home, to the near fully absent topic of the use of rape in the civil war of 1971 between the two wings of Pakistan that lead to the creation of Bangladesh, in the Pakistani side of the narrative. The first time I heard the term ‘rape’ associated with the 1971 was in 2013 when the conviction of a political leader in Bangladesh named Abdul Quader Molla (who fought for West Pakistan's agenda) had led to mass protests and demonstrations in Dhaka and later in other parts of Bangladesh. He was given a life sentence on charges of war crimes of murder and rape but the thousands protestors demanded a death penalty instead which was granted and Molla was executed after several months. For someone who has had to suffer through almost a decade of Pakistan studies (history) in school, this being the first time that I had heard about such war crimes was shocking. All my life, I have been taught this about the war: ‘Yes, Bengalis were treated a bit unfairly, but India was the mastermind. It was a war against India. India was threatening our country. India divided us.”

In my attempt to research more on this topic, I discovered an article by Pervez Hoodboy and he presents a very good picture of how this war is taught in Pakistani schools in the following words:

“The disinterest in Shahbag Square (protests) epitomises the enormous gulf that separates Bangladesh from Pakistan. The period of our national history — where 54 per cent of the country’s population chose to secede from the other 46 per cent — remains supremely inconsequential to Pakistanis. For them, Bangladesh could well be on the other side of the moon. The question is: why?

Searching for an answer, I browsed through textbooks currently used in Pakistani schools. The class-five Social Studies text (English), taught to 12-year olds, begins with citing the differences between Hindus and Muslims (e.g. Hindus burn the wife after her husband dies but Muslims don’t), the need to be aware of the hidden enemies of Pakistan (religious extremists are not mentioned) and the importance of unceasing jihad. It devotes a total of three sentences to a united Pakistan, the last of which reads: “With the help of India, East Pakistan separated.”

The class-eight Pakistan Studies textbook (English) is still briefer and simply states that, “Some leaders of former East Pakistan with the active help of India managed to break away from Pakistan and established Bangladesh.” The class nine-10 (Urdu) book — by far the most detailed — devotes nearly three pages to explaining the disintegration. The listed subtitles include: a) Incompetent government of Yahya Khan; b) Hindu domination of trade; c) Nefarious role of Hindu teachers; d) Language problems; e) Indian interference; f) The elections of 1970.

Having seen only grotesque caricatures of history, it is impossible for Pakistan’s youth to understand 1971. But how can I blame them?”

It compelled me to do more research which led to more blood boiling discoveries. I discovered many accounts of how Bengali women were raped by the West Pakistani soldiers. However, history had nearly fully ignored them. It was only after the Bosnian war when rape was declared a crime against humanity by the International Criminal court in 1998 and declared it not subject to any statute of limitations did the process of investigation of war rape start and then the history of the rape in the war of 1971 began to come up.

An article in Forbes discusses this:

“A Bangladeshi scholar (named)…. Bina D’Costa ….went and tracked down the Australian doctor, Geoffrey Davis, brought to Dhaka by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the United Nations. Davis was tasked with performing late-term abortions, and facilitating large scale international adoption of the war babies born to Bangladeshi women.

D’Costa’s conversation with Dr. Davis was recently published in a Bangladeshi publication, and is worth reading in its entirety. The stories of women being tied to trees and gang raped, breasts hacked off, dumped in mass graves, being held in Pakistani rape camps are all detailed.

When asked if the usual figures of the number of women raped by the Pakistani Army, 200-400,000, are accurate, Dr. Davis states that they are underestimated:‘…Probably the numbers are very conservative compared with what they did. The descriptions of how they captured towns were very interesting. They’d keep the infantry back and put artillery ahead and they would shell the hospitals and schools. And that caused absolute chaos in the town. And then the infantry would go in and begin to segregate the women. Apart from little children, all those were sexually matured would be segregated..And then the women would be put in the compound under guard and made available to the troops…Some of the stories they told were appalling. Being raped again and again and again. A lot of them died in those [rape] camps. There was an air of disbelief about the whole thing. Nobody could credit that it really happened! But the evidence clearly showed that it did happen.’

Dr. Davis talks about how Sheikh Mujibur Rahman labeled the rape survivors as “war heroines” to help them reintegrate into their communities, but the gesture largely did not work. After being assaulted and impregnated by Pakistani soldiers, the Bangladeshi women were completely ostracized by society. Many were killed by their husbands, committed suicide, or murdered their half-Pakistani babies themselves. Some women were so scared to go back home after being held captive in Pakistani rape camps, they begged their Pakistani captors to take them back to Pakistan with them.

As I was reading through the article, I found myself simultaneously looking up sources online. This video of a NBC reporter who found a shelter where many women impregnated by Pakistani soldiers stayed until they delivered, makes you remember that when we talk about the large-scale violence against women that took place in 1971, often we are talking about young girls, sometimes just 13 years old.”

It made me so mad that I had no clue about this disgusting part of my own country’s history. In the narrative that is taught to us, we do not hold back stories of how Muslims who were migrating from India to Pakistan in 1947 were brutally raped, tortured and murdered by India loving Hindus and Sikhs to demonize them. I have been told those stories from as long as I can remember. I am certain they are true and thus they deserved to be told and I am glad they are. But so are the stories that we are not comfortable with.  It’s highly hypocritical that we have turned the other cheek when the West Pakistani army itself committed those same atrocities. It is blatant manipulation of fact for agenda pushing. But I get why. It’s shameful and rightly so and no one wants to accept such disgusting truths.

So why bring them up? Because the voice of the women against whom these atrocities of war rape were committed deserve it. I refuse to attach the social stigma that often comes with the label of victim (especially in the case of rape) to them. They are survivors. But I will call them victims of our sin by silence. Therefore they deserve our acknowledgement. Their stories deserve to be told and heard to empower them. To building understanding and empathy.  To condemn the gross injustice they suffer from. To end the undeserved social stigma. I applaud IR feminists for doing so by raising such issues regarding women in world politics in many wars of history and other areas.

I will admit, this piece is a difficult read (if someone had the time and strength to do so, I applaud you). It was even more nauseating to write but I refuse to apologize for it. That was, in fact, my purpose. To highlight that these issues and crimes against women are real, they are even this bad. Thus feminism is a necessity, to give women the voice they need for their empowerment and it is important to facilitate that voice.

Articles used:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/worldviews/2012/05/21/1971-rapes-bangladesh-cannot-hide-history/

http://tribune.com.pk/story/507834/shahbag-square-why-we-pakistanis-dont-know-and-dont-care/