The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and
its catalysing effect on other parts of the Middle Eastern (Yemen) and Central
African (Nigeria*) region dominated news headlines in 2014 and on into 2015.
Gender is fundamentally entwined in to this situation. This is actually what I
will be writing my undergraduate dissertation about so I will attempt to remain
as concise as possible! Whether you interpret them as a barbaric by-product
of two decades of gruesome western foreign policy, simply the violent warpath
of brutal religious extremism or a combination of the two, it should go without saying that the catastrophic
violence spreading through Iraq and Syria since last summer is having hideous
consequences for both men and women. For the most part, the western media is
yet to catch on that they are supplying oxygen to the Islamic State’s war on
the ‘War on Terror’. Especially when it comes to women. For a brilliant article
on this see Owen Jones.
There is speculation that perhaps ISIS would like western intervention as it
would only fuel their cause to have more members of local communities murdered
by western soldiers. And arguably it would give them recognition as a state. Yet
the majority of said press remains staggeringly gender blind. There is no way
to look at ISIS without seeing their direct exploitation of both femininity and
masculinity; it is their modus operandi and it is working.
 |
| Photo Source: http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/how-should-newspaper-front-pages-cover-isis-propaganda-videos--gJ2bKfo9Hl |
Much
of the original War on Terror hinged on the discourse of ‘women and children’
and employed the ‘protection myth’ to justify intervention. (Tickner & Sjoberg, 2010: 205.) This
protection dichotomy assumes weak, passive women (with their children) in need
of protection and strong, aggressive men ready to protect and has historically
been used as a justification of war. Obama and others in the coalition are
still using it today to justify air strikes in the region**. ISIS knows this.
Everyday they have to think of another atrocious act they can commit to rile
the West and using women and children to do so is written into the very
constitution of the Islamic State. Recently there were reports of the
introduction of mandatory FGM in the region, these have been denied, but given
the blatant misogyny of this act it does not seem beyond ISIS’s shock tactics. Likewise,
systematic and strategic rape, gendered recruitment of foreign fighters and
prizing masculinity upon violence and sexual prowess are just a couple of the
gendered analytics fundamental to understanding how and why ISIS have been so
successful. Unfortunately
sexual violence is no new phenomenon, especially not in the region. Whilst
other terrorist organisations may not lop of the heads of western journalists
on Youtube, militaries and insurgents have been raping women for strategic
objectives throughout history: civil wars in Sierra Leone, Bosnia and DCR are
just some of the extreme examples. Women, men, girls and boys bodies are being
employed as the currency of the Caliphate. Systematic rape and sex trafficking of Christian, Yazidi and Kurdish women is used as psychological and
physical warfare that serves to dishonour families and communities.
Foreign
fighters and the spread of both ‘radical Islam’ and Islamaphobia throughout the
globe is also a profoundly gendered problem. Men and women from western states,
who chose to go and join ISIS, in whatever capacity, are presented vastly
differently in the mainstream press. Women and girls are presented as being
‘sexually groomed’ into becoming Jihadi brides. Whilst men and boys are
immediately criminalised and demonised by the press as members of Bush’s ‘axis of
evil.’ Are these men not being groomed also? These discourses serve the triple
purpose of removing any kind of political agency from women, employing
neo-colonial/orientalist discourse about 'othered' foreign men and ‘pure’ western women and implying
that men are inherently violent whilst women can only be coerced into violence
by romanticised ideals. Tests of such masculinity can then be seen in ISIS’s
frontline media, masculinity is not contingent or varying for ISIS. It is
aggressive, misogynistic, violent and relentlessly asserted as dominance over
women and other masculinities. Patriarchy is at the heart of the Islamic State but
it is also just one of their strategic tactics that allows them to keep the
west on puppet strings.
Paradoxically, there have been reports of a Kurdish
women’s resistance movement that threatens ISIS because they believe that if
they are martyred by women, they will not go to heaven. (Parramore, The AlterNet
2014) The indifference towards death is fundamental to ISIS’s recruitment
policy. This could be a resolute turning point in this battle against the
Islamic State and exemplifies how if diplomats and the media gave more
attention to gendered dynamics, perhaps it could expose ISIL's Achilles heal. But this would mean disrupting two racial and gendered binaries that are entrenched into both the media and the diplomatic minds of our times. Firstly, the west has always been constructed as powerful and dominating (masculine) whilst the east, particularly the middle east, is therefore constructed as its 'other' as feminised, weak and submissive in both media and academic sources. (Said, 1977.) This leaves Eastern women as the ultimate 'other', they are weak because they are eastern and they are further weak because they are women. Kurdish women fighters turn all of these ideas on their head. An engagement with this tactic would mean a fundamental overhaul of foreign policy and representations of women's political agency. It would also require significant international attention directed towards how these women will then be treated if they return to their daily lives. If these Kurdish women were mobilised, could ISIL indirectly liberate the international arena from stereotypes and binaries?
Al Jazeera Stream 2015 http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201503111528-0024619
*I will be posting a separate specific blog on the gendered perspectives of Boko Haram's ascendancy in Nigeria at a later date.
**This is especially ironic in Britain where the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition has recently cut all funding to legal aid, shelters and support for victims of sexual violence. Many will be shocked at this comparison but arguably rape is rape regardless of its spatial dynamics and part of the problem with the phrase ‘rape as a weapon of war’ as that it allows for rape to be de-sensitised in the West whilst presented as one homogenous body of evil in war which serves as a justification for air strikes. Dichotomising rape in this way almost suggest 'acceptable rape' and 'unacceptable rape' and the underlying misogyny and racism in this analysis is undeniable.
**This is especially ironic in Britain where the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition has recently cut all funding to legal aid, shelters and support for victims of sexual violence. Many will be shocked at this comparison but arguably rape is rape regardless of its spatial dynamics and part of the problem with the phrase ‘rape as a weapon of war’ as that it allows for rape to be de-sensitised in the West whilst presented as one homogenous body of evil in war which serves as a justification for air strikes. Dichotomising rape in this way almost suggest 'acceptable rape' and 'unacceptable rape' and the underlying misogyny and racism in this analysis is undeniable.
Sources:
- Gender and War: ISIS (2014) http://www.genderandwar.com/tag/isis/
- Lynn Stuart Parramore (2014) The AlterNet http://www.alternet.org/gender/strange-complex-story-women-and-isis-militants
- The Guardian (2014) Under Isis, Iraqi women again face an old nightmare: violence and repression http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2014/jul/03/isis-iraqi-women-rape-violence-repression
- Gendering the Militarisation of the War on Terrorism: http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut/val/yleis/pg/repo/genderin.pdf
- Al Jazeera Stream 2015 http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201503111528-0024619
No comments:
Post a Comment