Women oppose war

By Mythily Sivaraman

``We have all been overwhelmed by the attacks in the USA... But the Timorese never called for Jakarta to be bombed when their whole country was destroyed by Indonesian forces two years ago... The U.S. President could learn from them.''

- Janet Hunt, Dili, East Timor.

JINGOISM IN America, following the September 11 massacre, appeared to be getting somewhat tempered prior to the strikes on Afghanistan which began on October 7. The inhumanity of a military assault on a miserably impoverished country did not seem to be exercising the sensibilities of Washington very much.

From a civilisational viewpoint, the voices raised across the globe, counselling sanity and human decency - even if not the dominant ones - are truly encouraging. It stands to reason that many women's groups and movements in different countries should have reacted strongly against military retaliation, as women have been the worst sufferers of war. Since war broke out in the Balkans in 1992, more than 20,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, followed by 15,700 in Rwanda, in one year. A U.N. study also shows, ironically, that the arrival of U.N. peacekeeping troops has been associated with a rapid rise in child prostitution! (And far more children are said to die of disease and malnutrition caused by war than from direct attack.) It is also claimed that close to 90 per cent of current war casualties are civilians, the majority of whom are women and children, compared to a century ago, when 90 per cent of the dead were army men.

Hence the increasing awareness and critical responses from the global women's movements that see war even in a distant continent as a concern for them, a concern that impacts gender justice and calls for intervention. Women from war-battered countries are, understandably, very vocal in their views and forthright in expressions. For instance, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), vehemently opposed to the Taliban, cautioned the U.S. against military attacks, for three reasons: ``...further trauma and misery for the hapless Afghans will not in any way decrease the grief of the Americans''; the hope that ``the great American people could differentiate between the people of Afghanistan and a handful of fundamentalist terrorists'' and that America would be able to ``wipe out the root cause of terrorism'' by armed action which would render thousands of deprived, poor and innocent people of Afghanistan as its victims, might, in fact, ``well spread terrorism even to a larger scale''.

The Women of Kosovo, even today living with war-induced trauma, share their own experiences and lessons drawn: ``We have lived through war. We know what it is like to be attacked, to grieve, and to feel anger. We understand the urge for revenge is strong. And we know that it must not be given in to. Violence kills more innocent victims and gives birth to new holy avengers.'' They offer an advice the U.S. could well take in large doses: ``Terrorists are not nations. And nations must not act like terrorists.''

Many social scientists and scholars do point out that if terrorism is defined as violence against civilians for political ends, then the U.S. is guilty of it more than anyone else. Ms. Asma Jehangir, veteran human rights activist from Pakistan, the one country facing a massive influx of refugees from Afghanistan, says: ``As victims of terrorism for a long time, we know very well what it means to humanity. But, no terrorism against terrorism. It solves nothing.'' Women from Canada are aghast: ``How does it increase our security to bomb countries into the Stone Age?''

The not-so-humble political and military establishments of the U.S. would be well advised - for themselves and for others - to listen to the words of women, who are humble and willing to learn from experience, and thereby wiser than the imperial powers with noses in the cloud. On the contrary, they stubbornly refuse to recognise that the dastardly acts that led to the September 11 massacre could largely be of their own making. RAWA states this sharply, ``... it was the Government of the U.S. that supported Pakistani dictator Gen. Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged... Osama bin Laden has been the blue-eyed boy of CIA ...any kind of support to the fundamentalist Taliban and jehadis is actually trampling ...human rights values. The U.S. should examine the root cause of this terrible event, which has not been the first and will not be the last one too.''

Groups from Spain point out that the West never cared when the Taliban attacked women's rights or extremists in Algeria kidnapped, raped, killed and ``ripped to pieces scores of women.'' Presumably, such atrocities did not merit being termed ``barbaric'' when superpower interests were not affected and when the socially radical were not also politically convenient.

Many concerned women organisations such as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) hold that if the present ``gross iniquities in distribution of the world's wealth'' were to continue, ``people in the affluent nations of the West must continue to expect anger and resentments to be directed against ordinary citizens.'' To quote further: ``If world leaders truly value human security as they proclaim, then they will have to abandon their cant about `barbaric' acts of terrorism against `civilised' nations. To use such rhetoric and to try to posit an `enemy' other than the real culprit is to mislead people. To permit such racism to flourish is to further undermine our collective security.''

Women in Black, a British peace movement, now being nominated for the Nobel Prize, also reiterates that feelings of genuine despair in many parts of the world will lead to hatred of the superpowers whose policies are seen to contribute to them. In such a situation created by itself, for the West to resort to military means for conflict resolution would be another means of diverting wealth to the arms manufacturers by creating a ``white elephant missile shield.''

The British section of the WILPF goes one step further and calls the U.S. proposal of a missile shield ``not merely worthless, but a threat to world stability'' and demands that the British Government not support it. Unilateral retribution by the U.S. and its allies are opposed by the Violence Against Women in War Network, Japan and several others who want the United Nations to establish an International Criminal Tribunal to prosecute terrorists instead of a few countries taking ``justice'' - infinite or otherwise - into their own hands. An impressive array of women organisations met in New Delhi last week and declared: ``If we are to live as one world it must be a world that respects diversity and does not insist on a single path or single ideology. We must search for a solution to these seemingly intractable issues in a manner that upholds the rights of all people to live in peace and dignity.''

The U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, has spoken, much like the Oracle of Delphi, ``If you are not with us, you are with the terrorists'' and had threatened action even against ``those harbouring terrorists''. Referring to this, Women Living Under Muslim Laws International Solidarity Network (WLUML) reminds the U.S. and the U.K. that they themselves have become safe havens for terrorists today.

The most moving plea against retaliatory violence comes, uncommonly, from an American couple whose son fell victim to the September 11 massacre; in a letter to Mr. Bush, the Rodriguez couple said: ``...the Government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering and nursing further grievance against us. It will not avenge our son's death. It is not the time to act like bullies. Let us not as a nation add to the inhumanity of our times.''

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