In a powerful op-ed piece for the New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof points out something we already know but try not to think about: rape has moved from a by-product of war to a weapon of war, used coldly and calculatingly to inflict maximum pain and intimidation on an entire population. It’s not a fun piece, but it should be mandatory reading for foreign ministers who deal with Sudan, Zimbabwe, the Congo and other countries where rape is as much a tool of war as the cheap and ubiquitous Kalashnikov.
From the piece:
The world woke up to this phenomenon in 1993, after discovering that Serbian forces had set up a network of “rape camps” in which women and girls, some as young as 12, were enslaved. Since then, we’ve seen similar patterns of systematic rape in many countries, and it has become clear that mass rape is not just a byproduct of war but also sometimes a deliberate weapon.
“Rape in war has been going on since time immemorial,” said Stephen Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador who was the U.N.’s envoy for AIDS in Africa. “But it has taken a new twist as commanders have used it as a strategy of war.”
There are two reasons for this. First, mass rape is very effective militarily. From the viewpoint of a militia, getting into a firefight is risky, so it’s preferable to terrorize civilians sympathetic to a rival group and drive them away, depriving the rivals of support.
Second, mass rape attracts less international scrutiny than piles of bodies do, because the issue is indelicate and the victims are usually too ashamed to speak up.
If you check this space regularly, you’ll know that Zimbabwe is a bit of a soft spot for me — as much for the model of African peace and stability it could have been as for the hellish island of chaos it has become — and under President Robert Mugabe it has become one of the worst systematic-rape offenders. Its militias train in government-funded rape camps, where young soldiers are taught to inflict maximal pain, suffering and humiliation upon the ruling ZANU-PF party’s political opponents. But even Zimbabwe doesn’t come close to the Congo. More from Kristof’s piece:
The rape capital of the world is eastern Congo, where in some areas three-quarters of women have been raped. Sometimes the rapes are conducted with pointed sticks that leave the victims incontinent from internal injuries, and a former U.N. force commander there, Patrick Cammaert, says it is “more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier.”
The international community’s response so far? Approximately: “Not our problem.”
I’d love to be able to use the “news” tag for this post, but unfortunately hardly any media are actually covering the subject. Maybe I should set up a new tag for “shamefully ignored.”
Image from the New York Times, via the Foreign Policy Association.
Thanks, Phoebe!
1 response so far ↓
1 Lysanne // Aug 7, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Actually, two of our grad students up here are looking into the fact that you cannot prosecute in a single case the fact that girls are pressed into being child soldiers AND raped/used as sex workers. When they testify in court, the two themes have to be kept completely separate. Their hope is that their work will get the law changed so that perpetrators can be prosecuted on a single, stronger charge.
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