The Contingent Power of Women in African Armed Groups

This week’s WAPPP seminar, “Rebel Queens and Black Diamonds: Gender Politics in African Armed Groups,” was named after two female rebel fighters, Rebel Queen of Sierra Leone and Black Diamond of Liberia. In the seminar, WAPPP fellow Zoe Marks discussed the research on gender politics within rebel groups that led her to these women, primarily with Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

Through her field work in Sierra Leone, which experienced a brutal civil war from 1991-2002, Marks found that 17% of women reported experiencing sexual assault in their lifetime, which she argues is likely an underestimate. However, Marks discussed how these statistics have created a paradigm in which women are victims and men are perpetrators that has led to the dominant discourse over sexual and gender-based violence. While sexual violence in Sierra Leone varied over time, it was less common than other forms of abuse, and women also participated in the violence.

Women and girls make up 10-30% of non-state armed groups worldwide, which is a much higher rate than in state militaries. Marks hypothesizes that this is due to the fact that rebel groups use broad based recruitment because they need all the people they can get. In addition to serving as soldiers and spies, women carry supplies and work on base producing and cooking food. They are also the wives and girlfriends of the male fighters, though a significant number of the relationships are forced and oftentimes violent, as was the case with the RUF.

To try to better understand the social-organizational context for women in rebel groups, Marks looked into the sources of female power in the RUF. She found that power largely existed on the individual level, not in groups or networks of women. As is traditional in Sierra Leonean culture, age and marital status contributed significantly to a woman's status in the group. Martial status, i.e. whether a woman was trained in warfare and had weapons herself, could also elevate her position. Marks argued that though some women were able to obtain military dominance, this rarely translated into political power once the conflict has ended. Instead, it was largely the commanders’ wives who were invited to peace talks.

She added that gender relations within rebel groups varies greatly, ranging from the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, with its progressive stance on gender equality, to the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. Made famous in 2012 by Joseph Kony, LRA uses marriage as a reward for commanders and to clamp down on immoral behavior, with the understanding that civilian rape hurts the public image and mission of the group.

Marks closed by citing research from Hudson et al, which listed the micro-aggressions of global gender inequality as (1) lack of bodily integrity and physical security, (2) lack of equity in family law, and (3) lack of parity in decision-making. Marks argues that these issues aren't actually that micro; they all help explain women’s experiences in war and gender politics in rebel groups, both in western Africa and worldwide.

Trying to Explain Rape in Civil Wars

Gang rape has been a vicious element of war since time immemorial. It is slowly starting to receive the attention it deserves by the international community, with campaigns to Stop Rape Now and Stop Rape in Conflict, particularly as its use in the killing fields of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has continued to shock the world.

But when and where has gang rape happened during civil wars? And why, even in the same war, do some factions commit rape while others don’t?

Those are the questions that Professor Dara Kay Cohen of the Harvard Kennedy School has sought to answer in her last years of research. She presented some of those findings at her WAPPP Seminar last week.

As rape has become a weapon of war in places as diverse as Rwanda, Bosnia, the DRC, most people have tried to explain it in three ways. First, that it is due to opportunism and greed: a collapse of norms and access to resources attracts violent people that will commit violent deeds with impunity. Second, that it is due to ethnic hatred: rape is part of humiliating or erasing the next generation of a people based on their race. And third, that it's a symptom of extreme gender inequality: that even in times of peace, women lack rights and opportunities, so rape is a byproduct when other norms break down.

However, Professor Kay Cohen argues that, in fact, gang rape may be a tool of combatant socialization during wartime. Using the cases of Sierra Leone, El Salvador, and East Timor---even analyzing situations where rape did not occur---she suggests that when armed groups recruit foot-soldiers by force, through random abduction or impressment, gang rape is used by the members of the combatant group to create unit cohesion. Because there is no basis for unity amongst the diverse, abducted soldiers, gang rape of the victim population creates a shared experience that builds a twisted form of solidarity. In fact, gang rape during civil conflicts is rarely ordered by commanders. But a “desire to fit in” compels even female abductees to participate in gang rape of their victims.

Though many have referred to rape as a “costless weapon” that evidently also increases unit cohesiveness, it often has multiple costs to the perpetrators---including the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases and reduced battlefield effectiveness.

The difficulty for outside policy-makers trying to respond to or intervene in these horrendous situations is that wars with widespread rape tend to be more difficult to end, and have less durable episodes of peace. However, understanding that it is the composition of a warring faction that drives gang rape in war, can serve as a warning signal to outside observers that rape as a tool of war is imminent---hopefully prompting earlier intervention.

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