Beyond Survival: Militarism, Equity and Women's Security

CHAPTER 3 Beyond Survival: Militarism, Equity and Women’s Security

Amina Mama1

Abstract

This paper explores the tension between the prospects for equitable development and the global investments in militarism. It argues that militarism—a highly gendered economic, political and cultural phenomenon—not only sustains under-development in poorer nations, but also poses a key obstacle to gender equity in militarized societies more generally. Evidence from current research on the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars illustrates women’s increased participation in more recent conflicts, their improvised livelihood strategies and their contribution to peace activism. In the era of neoliberal globalization, postcolonial militarism continues to undermine the prospects for democratization, social justice and genuine security, especially for women. An effective strategy for addressing the dual perils of militarism and gender inequality requires strengthening the work of women’s movements, to engage in more effective evidence-based advocacy that highlights and challenges the gendered political, economic and cultural foundations of militarism and insecurity.

Introduction • 231 million deaths were caused by war in the twentieth century. (Leitenburg 2003) • In the 1990s decade alone, about 3.6 million people died in wars within states, while the number of refugees and internally displaced persons increased by 50%. (UNDP 2002: 2) • In 2011, the world spent 1,738 billion US$ on weapons. (SIPRI 2011) • World military expenditure in one year is greater than would be required to fulfil the Millennium Development Goals in 11 years. If 10% of world military

1 Second holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2003–2004.

expenditure, or 20% of US military expenditure, were diverted yearly, the MDGs could be fully funded. (ECAAR 2003)

Over the last decade, enormous investments of human and financial resources in military expansion have taken place in the context of the sustained economic liberalization popularly referred to as neo-liberalism (SIPRI 2007). Yet, there appears to be a low level of public awareness regarding the costs of this global military expenditure. The military as an institution undoubtedly profits some very influential actors, but it also carries enormous material, human and environmental costs. The military are the world’s largest source of carbon emissions, so posing one of the most ignored threats to planetary sustainability.2 The redirection of even a modest proportion of the vast resources allocated to weapons of mass destruction alone would provide enough finance to fully attain the Millennium Development Goals.3 Why do we, the people who inhabit the planet, not act more intelligently to change this starkly destructive reality, either individually nor collectively? Part of the reason may lie in the fact that the general public remains largely unaware of these massive costs.4 Much military expenditure is veiled from public scrutiny by the secrecy that surrounds the security establishment, so that even the large sums that are made public do not reveal the full picture. Security spending and decision-making is largely defined beyond the exercise of public scrutiny and accountability within nations. At the global level, military costs are exempt from the regulation of international trade organizations like the WTO.5 Yet both the investments and the costs are huge and the out- comes affect everybody, not just the military.

2 The largest producer of carbon emissions in the world is the US. According to local critics, the US military account for 80% of the US government’s carbon emissions. See http:// www.greenbiz.com/news/2010/04/23/us-military-battles-massive-carbon-footprint [accessed 28 August 2012]. 3 Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (ECAAR) 2003 (name subsequently changed to EPS: Economists for Peace and Security). 4 See the work of Catherine Lutz and her colleagues at Brown University, available at: www .costsofwar.com 5 How the arms’ trade benefits from economic globalization: “[A]rms corporations derive a double benefit from the WTO system: not only do they profit from the elimination of environmental, health, and labor standards generated by the WTO process, but their own activities in the military sphere—including massive research and export subsidies from their home governments—are EXEMPT from challenge under WTO rules.” See Stephen Staples et al., The WTO and the Globalization of the Arms Industry (World Policy Institute, December 1999).

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More people-centred approaches to governance are likely to be more atten- tive to the human costs of increasing global inequities (between rich and poor nations) and thus to the threat that this entrenched spending pattern poses to democratic and people-centred development, as well as to the developmental inequities that are part and parcel of the global norms of excessive and com- petitive investment in the military. This is the case even in the poorest and least defendable territories that face no imminent threat of invasion. I will discuss the manner in which public acceptance of militarism and war is mediated by highly specific militarist definitions of ‘national security’ and ‘national interest’. Understandings of ‘security’ are strongly mediated by gender, class and other more context-specific differences, which become aug- mented into more antagonistic relations. These “horizontal inequalities” (Stewart 2000) then play out in violent ways inflected by religion, clan, ethnicity, sexual politics and so on. Frances Stewart (ibid.) discusses the role of both vertical and horizontal inequalities as both cause and effect of conflict, or in other words, inequalities and conflict exist in a recursive (mutually constitutive) relationship. She addresses class, through the developmentalist rubric of poverty, as well as religion and ethnicity. Curiously, she makes no mention of gender inequities, despite the centrality of gender as a key dimension of social organization featuring both vertical and horizontal inequalities, also greatly exaggerated by militarization (Enloe 2000, 2007) and military rule (Mama 1995). Including gender would of course complicate her schematic discussion of group and inter-group relations, because the production of all the other group identities that reflect inequalities—be these national, ethnic, class, caste or religion based—is invariably mediated by normative, discursive con- structions of gender and sexuality. Feminist literature places an emphasis on the gendered features of militarism and conflict, to demystify the conserva- tism of militarist gender politics and draw attention to the co-constitutive relationship between gender (masculinity, femininity and heteronormativity) and militarism. Instead of being presented as gender-neutral, military ideologies, institutions and practices are conceptualized as androcentric, relying on and re-inscribing patriarchal idealizations of masculinity that valorize aggression, killing and the latest high-technology weaponry. This ranges from benevo- lently paternalistic notions of men-as-protectors to more problematic con- structions of men’s physical and sexual prowess in relation to their own and other women. There is a rapidly growing body of work that draws links between conflict, gender and development, some of which will be drawn on below. Economic liberalization may also be part of the problem. While we can agree that it has produced varied results globally, it is clear that it has favoured the wealthy within nations and across regions, enriching the already rich and

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access 44 Mama worsening the lot of those already poor. Stewart (2000) confirms the connec- tion between extreme poverty and conflict, to argue quite clearly that this is a reciprocal relationship: poor nations are more prone to conflict and conflict exacerbates poverty, exactly as feminist scholars have noted in relation to gender and militarized masculinity (Enloe 2000, 2007; Gallimore 2009). Globalization as it has been pursued so far—largely dominated by the promo- tion of free-market capitalism—has generated an inordinate emphasis on nar- rowly defined measures of economic growth that obscure the human (and social) aspects of development (UNDP, Human Development Reports, 1995– 2011). It has also been clear since Boserup (1970) that economic growth (as mea- sured by increase in gross domestic product, for example) does not translate into greater gender equity, but relies on the devaluation of women’s labour within and beyond the household. So it is that some of the world’s wealthiest and most militarized economies do very poorly on the gender and development index. Macro-economic growth also does not in any case necessarily lead to the reduction of violence and conflict, and can sometimes lead to conflict, particularly in resource-rich zones. On the other hand, increases in military expenditure generally bear a relationship to social expenditure (SIPRI 2007) and are thus associated with increased inequalities, particularly gender inequities. The well-documented human costs of globalization as it has so far been pursued—through public sector divestment and private sector subsidization— are increased inequities globally and locally, as well as the particular burdening of women through their gendered roles as carers. The care economy is deval- ued by the focus on macro-economic growth, in ways that reflect male bias among the most influential development players, public and private. Because gender intersects negatively with class, poor women are especially badly off (UNDP 2012). These negative effects of growth-driven modes of globalization on the prospects for gender-equitable development have been the subject of much critique since the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s,6 drawing our attention to the manner in which growth-centred approaches to development exacerbate longstanding historical legacies of inequality that are mediated by gender, class, ethnicity, religion and national interests.7

6 Sen & Grown (1988), Elson (1995), Beneria (2003). 7 The United Nations Research Institute for Development (UNRISD 2005) extensively reviews global progress with regard to gender equity in development, pointing to the contradictions of a post-Beijing Decade, in which growth has had disparate effects regarding gender equity. For example, the gender gap in employment levels has decreased, only for gender disparities in pay and working conditions to increase. In other words, more women work than ever before, but the terms under which they labour have remained far from equal.

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The divestment of the public sector has significantly curtailed the capacity of governments to deliver on gender equity and other social justice concerns. The popular critiques emerging very clearly from the anti-globalization and the Occupy movements give much emphasis to the fact that today’s most powerful players—the international financial institutions and corporate interests that dominate the global economy—are neither democratic nor accountable to the public. This then is the global context in which I argue that militarism poses a key threat to equity, development and freedom. The term militarism includes military institutions and expenditures but in addition describes the related socio- cultural, ideological and material changes that are wrought in societies that can be said to be undergoing militarization. The conceptualization of militarism applied here extends beyond the conventional focus on the security sector, security institutions and weaponry, to include changes in all aspects of social organization and subjectivity, including gender relations.8 The fact is that global military expenditure has escalated dramatically since the new century dawned, reaching the highest levels in human history. The most recent global total is 1,738 billion US$, led by a US that leads the way, being responsible for almost 50% of total global expenditure.9 These figures are all the more shocking because of the gendered inverse relationship between military and social spending. The divestment of health, education and social welfare directly burden women in two immediate ways. Through their gender roles and the gendered divisions of labour, women are impacted both as the major consumers of public services and as women workers who rely on the same sector for their jobs as teachers, nurses, hospital staff, social workers and so on. In other words, high military spending may well add specifically to women’s insecurity as well as human insecurity in general. I will develop this argument with reference to the African region. Africa has been the region worst affected by militarization, with more than 20 major civil wars since 1960, characterized by huge numbers of civilian casualties, not to mention unrecorded deaths due to related ecological destruction (e.g. of farmlands, fishing grounds, etc.), infrastructural damage (roads, rail- ways, bridges, etc.) and disruption of public institutions and services (government offices, health and social welfare services), as well as dislocation and disruption of livelihoods—the list is endless. Yet, in 2011, when the post-9/11

8 This usage draws on the work of Catherine Lutz (2002, 2009), Cynthia Enloe (2000, 2007) and others working on the militarism in the US and globally. 9 For details, see Appendix 3.1. In fact, the most recent data shows the first flattening of this global escalation since 1998, largely due to a very modest decrease in US spending as the Obama administration draws down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access 46 Mama global escalation slowed, Africa’s military expenditure in Africa was the largest of any region (see Appendix 3.1). Over the decade 2002–2011, African military spending increased by 65%. It would be hard to refute the link to social development, when Africa is also failing to attain the modest targets set by the Millennium Development Goals, and mass abjection remains a dominant feature of life for ordinary people. African leaders who have reason to fear for their own security still address many social problems arising out of mass abjection with military action, working increasingly under the leadership of the US High Command for Africa (AFRICOM) and in complicity with the free-market traffic in weapons. Military action can also be identified as a cause of new outbreaks of conflict,10 and the prospects for durable regional peace are poor given the fact that conflict is the biggest predictor of future conflicts.11

Militarism under-develops Africa

The real security need for Africans is not military security but social security, security against poverty, ignorance, anxiety and fear, disease and famine, against arbitrary power and exploitation; security against those things which render democracy improbable in Africa. (Ake 2000: 147)

Africa today remains deeply marked by the history of colonization, a project that relied directly and indirectly on the military superiority of the colonizers. Colonial rule was in its essence military rule. The military might of imperial and colonial armies was buttressed by a far-reaching array of technologies of power. These ranged from brutal forced labour and taxation systems to sophis- ticated psychological and cultural strategies, including abduction, eviction and land seizure, hostage taking, incarceration, rape and torture, to which women and men were variously subjected. These strategies worked together to create complex tapestries of consent and coercion, terrorizing local populations and orchestrating complicity and provoking anti-colonial resistance. The examples of Algeria during French colonialism (Lazreg 2009), British colonialism in Kenya (Elkins 2004), the Belgian occupation of the Congo (Hochschild 1999) and Rwanda (Mamdani 2001) illustrate how colonial regimes relied on

10 For instance, the Nigerian military’s massacres of civilians in its responses to the elusive Boko Haram are largely credited with the escalation of violence across northern Nigeria. 11 Stewart (2000).

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access Beyond survival 47 military force and modern weaponry—deployed along with a formidable array of political, economic and social technologies12—to militarize the societies they conquered and governed. These extended far beyond the barracks, into the very fabric of peoples’ lives. The armies established in the colonies differed profoundly from the conventional modern armies of Western nations because their major role was not so much the protection of the nation from invasion as the suppression of anti- colonial dissent and rebellions arising among the subjugated peoples inhabit- ing the colonial territories (e.g. Gutteridge 1975; Decalo 1990; Echenberg 1991). Colonial soldiers were also used to fight their colonizers’ battles, not only on European soil but all over the empire during the First and Second World Wars, with some being sent as far afield as Burma. Finally, at root, imperial and colonial armies were deployed to secure the natural and human resources necessary for Western capital accumulation, with minimal regard for the societies that were being so profoundly affected by militarism. Twentieth-century feminist Virginia Woolf (1938) is among the many Westerners who draw links between war and the male domination of political and economic arenas. Woolf may not have been fully aware of it, but she wrote at a time when African women were losing sons, fathers and husbands con- scripted and recruited into colonial armies, dispatched around the world to fight for their European masters. The records show that over 175,000 French West African conscripts fought in the First World War, of whom at least 30,000 died in the trenches. In the Second World War too there were huge numbers of French West African conscripts, with as many as 20,000 participating in the Allied landing of 1944 alone (Echenberg 1991). The British also utilized large numbers of Africans, as the living memories in many communities confirm. Less well documented is the fact that those who returned did so as militarized men who saw Africa’s future in ways that reflected their training in all-male colonial armies, as did their own aspirations for dignity and power. The use of military force to pursue economic objectives has also provoked dissent among Western leaders and military personnel. We can find an early critic in General

12 The term derives from Foucault’s concept ‘technologies of power’, used to conceptualize production of ‘the self’ and ‘the market’ as developed by social theorist Nikolas Rose (1999) and cultural theorist Theresa de Lauretis (1987). Rose refers to the array of techniques for regulating the social sphere, particularly in relation to production of ‘the self’ and ‘the market’. Technologies of power are those “technologies imbued with aspirations for the shaping of conduct in the hope of producing certain desired effects and averting certain undesired ones” (Rose 1999: 52).

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Smedley Butler in the 1930s13 or President Eisenhower’s warning (1961) about the corrupting dangers of militarized politics he foresaw in the rise of the US military-industrial complex. After the Second World War, much of Africa gained independence during the 1950s–1960s, years that overlap with the Cold War era. Africa was caught up in the politics of East versus West. A series of ‘proxy wars’ were sponsored as the powers competed for influence and provided massive military assistance driven by their strategic interests (Schroeder & Lamb 2006). Throughout the 1990s, in one estimate, the US sold over 1.5 billion US$ worth of weaponry to Africa, with many of the top buyers—Liberia, Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—governed by despots responsible for significant human and women’s rights abuses. The US provided military assistance to 94% of Africa’s already indebted nations, and in order to ensure that the huge debt incurred in this way would be repaid, it was accompanied by another 87 million US$ in loans during the first five years, thus compound- ing the enormous debt burdens rooted in the colonial history of nations that remain as poor as ever. It is ironic that Western governments that think of themselves as defenders of democracy continue to provide military support to dictatorial regimes. In the case of the DRC, for example, the US government supplied arms and provided training to both sides in the conflict, thereby pro- longing it (Hartung & Moix 2000). Yet coltan exports continue apace, ensuring the profits of high-technology corporations that dominate the computer and mobile phone industries.14 This evidence confirms the argument that external powers have continued to pursue their own vested interests through military means in the postcolonial era. It may be true that the manner in which this is done has changed since the end of colonial rule, but the fact is that Western nations have resourced and therefore sustained militarism in postcolonial Africa, thus retarding progress to democracy and undermining development (Hutchful & Bathily 1998; Ake 2000). Much of the African continent therefore emerged from colonial rule to be governed by regimes already imbued with a patriarchal militarist logic that is authoritarian and anti-democratic, and clearly inimical to consid- erations of gender equity. Indeed, by the mid-1970s, more than half of Africa’s newly independent nations were under military rule.

13 A highly decorated General Smedley Butler wrote a famous treatise entitled War is a Racket in the 1930s. It begins “[War] is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” Available at http://www.ratical .org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html [accessed 1 September 2012]. 14 Coltan is an extremely rare mineral, indispensible for the manufacture of silicon chips.

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The African experience of conflict and military rule provides good grounds for arguing that in Africa, militarism has generated more insecurity than security, often terrorizing rather than protecting local populations, dominating the political sphere, blurring the boundaries between civilian and military and thereby undermining all non-military forms of political and institutional authority and accountability (Hutchful & Bathily 1998). Gender analysis points to military rule as an extreme variant of patriarchy, a regime characterized by discourses and practices that subordinate and oppress women and less powerful men, reinforcing existing social divisions and hierarchies of class, gender, race and ethnicity, religion and location. Catherine Lutz (2002: 5) characterizes militarism as “[t]he contradictory and tense social process in which civil society organizes itself for the production of violence”. She continues:

This process involves an intensification of the labor and resources allocated to military purposes, including the shaping of other institutions in synchrony with military goals. Militarization is simultaneously a discursive process, involving a shift in general societal beliefs and values in ways necessary to legitimate the use of force, the organization of large stand- ing armies and their leaders, and the higher taxes or tribute used to pay for them.

She further notes socially divisive effects that include the impact on gender relations and sexuality:

Militarization is intimately connected to the less visible deformation of human potentials into the hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and to the shaping of national histories in ways that glorify and legitimate military action. (ibid.)

Many others15 single out the particular dynamic through which men adopt particularly violent hyper-masculine identities and behaviours. To understand the hegemonic power of militarism requires us to go beyond the obvious material aspects of the craft—weaponry, armed forces and security institutions—to critically engage with its more enduring cultural, ideological, political and economic aspects. It is these that cast light on the pervasiveness of militarism,

15 The work of Cynthia Cockburn (UK; 2007), Cynthia Enloe (USA; 2000, 2007), Jacky Cock (South Africa; 1992) and Dubravka Zarkov (Croatia, at ISS; 2001, 2008) is illustrative of the growing body of international feminist studies of militarism.

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access 50 Mama even in nations that have never been invaded. Philosopher Iris Young (2003) describes the escalation of US militarism as being fuelled by a “masculine logic of protection” that relies on a gendered politics of fear. Women and men experience war and conflict very differently. Men are mobilized by the opportunities to glorify themselves as men, through heroism, and by the valorization of violence and killing. Men—particularly from poorer social strata—may join up to earn a living. Others may be drawn by the promise of rapid wealth accumulation, and various other forms of adventure less enjoyed by women. Indeed, the conditions that have seen much larger involvement of women as fighters suggest quite different rationales, as I will explore in the cases discussed below. Detailed studies of post-conflict, post-military-rule nations suggest that part of the answer lies in the fact that these nations continue to exhibit the political, cultural and economic features of militarism, alongside the detrimental effects that these have had on both the economic options and the political prospects for women (Meintjes et al. 2001). Recent evidence suggests that post- conflict reconstruction often re-marginalizes women within contemporary, security-based policy discourses and practices focusing on demobilization, disarmament and reconstruction (DDR) and on security sector reform (SSR) (Pugel 2007; Fuest 2008). The fact is that male-dominated security institutions and military forces continue to dominate the post-conflict policy landscape, with clear implications for women’s prospects. In addition to national armies and various rebel forces, the West African region has seen the involvement of the Economic Community of West Africa’s Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) forces, the UN peacekeeping forces and a plethora of foreign military advisors. This raises some serious doubts as to whether conventional security-centred strategies actually lead to demilitarization and/or a return to the pursuit of development understood in terms that go beyond the cessation of hostilities and narrow, militarist definitions of national security. There is now evidence that, for all the good that they may do in vanquishing local military forces involved in conflicts, the soldiers deployed to quell unrest and secure conflict areas also become participants in the war economy and in the distorted social practices that have arisen and become normalized. So, for example, UN troops are also implicated in abusing and exploiting girls and women in ways that resemble the actions of the forces they are mandated to control (Highgate & Henry 2004; Defeis 2008). Local research indicates that DDR and SSR are not in fact yielding the much-anticipated post-conflict ‘peace dividends’ for women (MARWOPNET/Isis-WICCE 2009). Despite such concerns, peace-building operations have sustained militarism in the name of ‘national security’, by replacing the temporarily deployed foreign forces with

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access Beyond survival 51 newly trained local military forces, rather than demilitarizing. This is the only aspect of overseas development financing that has not decreased with the global economic crisis of the last few years.

Postcolonial Militarism in Africa

Twenty-first century wars are not like those of the twentieth century. Much twentieth century war took place in the developed world. Today’s wars look more like export products. Most of those fighting, dying and otherwise having their lives disrupted by war now live in the least developed countries of the global South, far from the corporate headquarters profiting from the production and financing of armaments and wars. Contemporary conflicts are less boundaried, with battlefields that include inhabited streets and villages. Militias of various forms have taken to replenishing themselves from civilian communities, a fact which may explain the high recruitment of women and children into fighting forces that would traditionally have been comprised largely of adult men. The pervasive and diffuse character of today’s ‘theatre of war’ is reflected in the dramatic change in the ratio of civilian-to-soldier causalities—from 1:9 at the end of the First World War to 10:1 by the end of the twentieth century (International Committee of the Red Cross, cited in Tavernise & Lehren 2010). Thandika Mkandawire (2009) critically examines in some detail the rebel movements that have been the visible actors in Africa’s postcolonial conflicts, to challenge rational choice dogma, by drawing on the link between economic crisis—exacerbated by reform measures—and the breakdown of impoverished nations into conflict. He also argues that failures in national governance and continued external domination have put extreme pressure on the political sphere by exacerbating the gaps between the nouveau-riche political class and the impoverished majorities, thereby creating a strong sense of relative depri- vation. The rebel forces he describes are made up of horizontally dispersed, roving bands that operate at great cost to the communities they pass through, acting more as predators than as the liberators they have sometimes claimed to be. The technologies of violence used to pursue their objectives include attacking, torturing, humiliating and otherwise terrorizing civilian populations. Mkandawire does not address the gender inequities that precede and are sustained through conflict, or the horrific extent of sexual violence and torture of women in particular, though this too is a common feature of wars every- where, now gaining more attention.

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In today’s globalized economy, the connections between militarism and capitalism have in no way diminished (e.g. Kirk & Okazawa-Rey 2000; Staples 2000; Enloe 2007). Extraction of oil in Nigeria, diamonds in Sierra Leone and rubber in Liberia have fuelled armed conflicts of unspeakable dimensions (see, respectively, Okonta & Douglas 2001; Leavitt 2005; Hirsch 2001).16 There is little doubt that war and conflict continue to be highly profitable for those posi- tioned to take advantage of deadly opportunities for capital investment (e.g. Klein 2007). Peterson (2008) offers a useful conceptualization of war economies. She delineates three main economic modes that specifically characterize war economies: the coping economy, the combat economy and the criminal economy. Applying Peterson’s framework to the cases of Liberia and Sierra Leone (below) allows us to highlight the gendered features of war economies. If, as she suggests, the ‘coping economy’ addresses individual survival and the social reproduction of families and households, then it resembles the peacetime ‘care economy’. However, the notion of ‘care’ extends beyond the Western for- mulations of ‘women’s work’ as largely within the household, as in Africa it includes women’s farming, food production trading and numerous micro- economic transactions such as bartering among dislocated groups. In this respect, the coping economy looks very much like the peacetime ‘informal economy’ that women in West Africa have always been located in, presumably because of the long-term experience of gendered economic hardship. It is the feminized bottom end of the war economy, as the hard subsistence labour of finding and providing food and caring for and nurturing children, elders and fighting men falls even more heavily on women in any crisis situation. In other words, the pre-existing, peacetime gender divisions of labour initially sustained in the context of mass poverty are merely exacerbated by war. All the same, violence—especially sexual violence—has drastic effects on women’s lives and prospects. Peterson’s ‘combat economy’ coexists with the coping economy, but is somewhat more specific to preparation and execution of war, being run by combatants who directly supply and fund fighters and insurgent activities. This fraternity is locally and transnationally networked, and our evidence suggests that it involves some women at local level, most likely through the informal-sector-provisioning networks, because these also service combatants and criminals operating in conflict zones, even when women are killed and their goods are seized rather than being paid for. Peterson defines the ‘criminal economy’ as opportunistic, run by profit-seeking entrepreneurs who take full advantage of economic deregulation and the collapse of the state to

16 The DRC is another of the worst ongoing cases of ‘resource curse’.

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access Beyond survival 53 pursue profitable businesses, in ruthless, free-market bliss. They include gun- runners, conflict entrepreneurs, money launderers and traffickers of people, sex slaves, drugs and consumer goods—in short, all those who finance and supply the conflict on a for-profit basis. This mafia-like aspect is the most profitable, internationalized and also the most male-dominated sector. Peterson’s framework as applied here suggests that de-militarization will require political and economic changes to dismantle the war economy. In other words, building sustainable peace and restoring democratic politics will not be possible unless it is also accompanied by economic transformation to dismantle and displace the war economy that has developed with militarization, and place reconstruction and human security at the centre of economic policy. There is little basis for assuming that leaving matters to market forces will be an adequate strategy given the evidence that neoliberalism has facilitated recent outbreaks of conflict and the emergence of the war economy. The remainder of this paper explores the gendered costs of surviving militarism, with particular attention to the impact of conflict—and the war economy—on the arena that has proved vital to West Africa’s resilience throughout the modern history of the region: women’s work and livelihoods.

The Gendered Costs of Surviving Militarism

Africa’s conflicts have never been addressed by anything as comprehensive as the Marshall Plan, which injected a giant ‘stimulus package’ into the reconstruction of war-devastated Europe. Africa’s worst conflicts have been mani- fest in contexts in which a viable national economy has never existed, despite the best efforts that followed flag independence. Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular have long histories of elite military rule and mass poverty coupled with elite alienation and dependency on the West. The development of good governance and democracy has been constrained by the same. The global response to these terrible conflicts has been the imposition of constraints on public spending in the name of economic reforms, reforms which deepen inequality and dependency on investors and speculators with limited interests beyond rapid profits. Austerity measures prevent the development of social protections and services. The civilianization of casualties since the end of the Second World War has taken a disproportionate toll on women. This fact alone weakens the very fabric of survival sustained by networks of women that tran- scend men’s battle lines and borders. The availability of those networks (infor- mally and with minimal support) actually provides the survival services that sustain war-affected communities, as we shall see below. It is clear that if left

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access 54 Mama unchallenged, the social and economic criminality that gains ground during conflict persists after peace has been formally declared, with particularly griev- ous implications for gender relations, sexual politics and the prospects for freedom and justice. The wars in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) and Liberia (1989–2003) were characterized by the significant involvement of women as fighters, on the one hand, and the horrendous victimization and abuse of women, on the other. These two features are related, rather than contradictory, given the testimonies of women fighters who report joining the fighters and learning to kill following their own victimization. The fact that women can and do become as brutal as men challenges the assumption that merely including women in existing security institutions will reduce the widespread abuses of and contempt for women that characterize today’s conflict zones, whether women are given weapons or not. Yet it is this assumption that underlies UN Resolution 1325 (UNSC 2000). The kind of equity that women fighters endured suggests the naivety of any such assumption and defies the evidence—the involvement of women (most of whom are children, for that matter) only worsens the social impact of war— and the prospects for societal rebuilding. Equal participation will not make war and conflict any less damaging to women. The various militias involved in these conflict zones became notorious for their terror tactics—amputations, hangings, burnings and extraordinary levels of sexual violence—used to intimidate rural communities. Rebel bands heavily preyed upon local communities, within and across the borders, as civilians fled from one camp to another trying to escape the violence. Militarized ver- sions of masculinity were played out through sexual violence, coercion and abuse, with enduring damage to women. Gender-based violence has received much attention as an index of gender inequity, but it is also often mediated by ethnic, racial, religious and/or class differences that are acted out by men against other men, but using the bodies of women. Local cultures of tolerance and cooperation become displaced by a militarized culture in which gendered and ethnicized violence against dehumanized ‘others’ is normalized and sustained, even after the formal declarations of peace. Most of the largely rural populations of both Sierra Leone and Liberia became deeply militarized, with spill-over into Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea, both of which have continued to experience political instability and some conflict, including the unprecedented rape of women by the Guinean military in 2010. The basic statistical facts of the Sierra Leonean and Liberian wars are shown in Table 3.1. These data can only hint at the devastating effects these two conflicts had on all aspects of society. How were the already fragile livelihood options of ordinary women and men changed by the gendered realities of

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Table 3.1 Some statistics on the Sierra Leonean and Liberian wars*

Sierra Leone • By 1999 approximately 2 million people (almost 50% of the 4.5 million population) were already displaced. • 50,000–75,000 Sierra Leoneans were killed. • 250,000 girls and women were raped. • 25–50% of the RUF fighters were women and girls.

Liberia • By 2003 half a million of the 3.3 million population were displaced. • 250,000 Liberian were killed. • 20–40% of fighters in Liberia were women and girls. • Two thirds of Liberian women were subjected to various forms of violence, including random acts of sexual assault, mass rape and other forms of abuse.

* All figures are estimates, culled from Mazurana & Carlson (2004), Pugel (2007), Isis-WICCE (2008). conflict and what options did they have before, during and after the actual fighting? To what extent did women actually choose to become fighters? What constitutes ‘choice’ in such extreme situations? What are the prospects for sustaining peace and freedom without addressing social injustice and security? How can ‘peace’ even be imagined without addressing the gender dynamics of the long-term insecurities that feed wars? Can ordinary women living in such contexts move beyond mere survival in societies that remain impoverished and precariously located in the global economy? Not all these questions can be answered without substantially more in-depth studies on women’s status and their options. However, drawing on preliminary research, and the existing studies, the discussion below explores how women survived the war and the war economy, with the objective of considering the potential of women and women’s movements in Sierra Leone and Liberia with regard to a more active and effective role in the reconstruction and transformation of their societies towards more socially just and gender-equitable political and livelihood options.

Gendered Livelihoods The first and most obvious change is the militarization of livelihood options as the economy becomes skewed toward military priorities, notably fighting and sustaining the national army and the various militias that emerge. However,

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access 56 Mama the implications of becoming a fighter are highly gendered and persist long after the fighting has ended. Researchers find that the vast majority of women and girls in all the fighting forces reported ‘abduction’ or ‘forced recruitment’, following raids and destruction of their communities (Coulter 2009). Young men and boys may be coerced into becoming fighters, but the roles they under- take and the social implications of their wartime activities are quite different. Women played multiple roles in the military forces and militias. Many were involved in ceremonies and rituals, serving as spiritual leaders, medics, herbal- ists, spies and cooks, as well as frontline fighters and commanders. According to Mazurana and Carlson (2004), among the girls, 44% received military and weapons’ training from their commanders or captor ‘husbands’, while many served as cooks (70%), porters (68%), carers for the sick and wounded (62%), ‘wives’ (60%), food-producers (44%), messengers between camps (40%), spies (22%), communication technicians (18%) and workers in diamond mines (14%). These roles were fluid, with many serving in more than one capacity either simultaneously or over time. These various jobs were also hierarchically organized in such a manner that the women who were able to earn the status of fighters improved their chances, because it allowed them to better protect themselves, to have access to food and other benefits and to gain greater opportunities to escape than captives. Within Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF), child-wives were often left in command of the compounds, where they could exercise substantial authority, deciding who would fight, carry out reconnaissance and raids for food and loot, selecting and sending troops and spies and generally supporting and advising their commander-husbands. They had their own weapons and were often provided with personal bodyguards, usually groups of other girls and boys charged with their security. They com- manded the Small Boys Units and Small Girls Units carrying out scouting and food raiding, but also involved in some of the most gruesome killings and mutilations. Surrogate ‘families’ were formed in many of the camps and it was through these that food and favours were distributed. Girls seeking protection from gang rape were reported to have formed liaisons with commanders and boys. However, the vulnerability of even the most powerful of these girls and women persisted, as those who fell from favour were very easily disposed of (Denov & Maclure 2006; Coulter 2009). Surviving among the fighters was only one of the modes of livelihood generated by the conflict, but the multiplicity of women’s roles points to the fact that women participated in both the coping and combat economies, perhaps in greater proportion than may have been predicted. While the involvement of women is considered high relative to conventional wars (but not to national liberation wars that preceded the postcolonial era), most women survived as

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access Beyond survival 57 civilians, pursuing activities that may have been familiar such as farming and trading, under the entirely different conditions of war. Given the very high rates of dislocation in both conflicts (more than half of the population), this very often meant being displaced, perhaps several times over, to roam in the bush or live in refugee camps. Many women engaged in trade within and across borders, in keeping with the pre-war livelihoods, but under the more hazardous and unstable conditions of violent conflict. However, given the impact of war on the normal systems of producing and supplying food, this role became far more vital to war-affected communities. In some instances, women extended their activities into terrain abandoned by male traders, not necessarily because they were more willing to face the risks than men, but because others depended on them. In other words, market women filled the economic vacuum left by the severely devastated infrastructure by engaging in high-risk trading. Sierra Leonean women also smuggled goods across the Guinea–Sierra Leone border by col- laborating with and bribing border police and customs officials. They traded with various armed forces, an activity that places at least the more successful traders firmly in the combat economy. Their entrepreneurship was based on complicated relationships with sets of cross-border and cross-ethnic business partners that demanded extraordinary strategizing:

Market women profiteers were also engaged in a thriving trade with reb- els. Foodstuffs and petrol were smuggled from ‘safe’ stores in Freetown to rebel-held areas in the provinces, on board trailers or big trucks, and sold to rebel commanders. In turn, they were either paid in cash (Leones or Dollars) or in kind, including jewellery, gold or diamonds. Back in Freetown, market women either sold their diamonds to Lebanese diamond dealers or smuggled the gems across the border to Guinea where they fetched higher prices enabling them to buy more foodstuffs. (Solomon 2005: 10)

It is not possible to ascertain how successfully women participated in the combat economy, or indeed whether significant profits were made, given the low rates paid to locals even for products that might fetch high prices under more stable conditions. Furthermore, many women met their deaths in road acci- dents or ambushes, and sometimes their own customers would organize for them to be pursued after their business was ostensibly completed. Women in conflict zones also survive by engaging in transactional sexual relations with soldiers and militiamen, commanders, peacekeepers and humanitarian agency staff. While this may be referred to as sex work, the

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access 58 Mama conditions under which sexual transactions take place suggest this too to be predominantly a means of survival. If profits were made at all, they cannot be compared to the more serious profiteering that took place in the criminal economy. Sierra Leone also included mining areas that utilized forced labour in the arduous extraction of diamonds that involved some women, although young men and boys were preferred. The war years saw women in both countries taking on many of the roles previously carried out by men, such as making bricks, building and roofing houses and clearing farms, as well as trading. At the bottom of the war hierarchy were women prisoners, kept under horrendous conditions of confinement and multiple raped at the will of their captors, a great many of whom did not survive to tell of their experience. Costs are very high for women, and while these have not been given enough critical attention, the existing gender analyses suggest they may be more enduring. Mazurana and Carlson (2004) note that it is much harder to return to any level of ‘normalcy’ because women who have gained notoriety as fighters and killers are stigmatized even more than men. Fuest (2008) is critical of the fact that projects for women re-inscribe conventional gender limitations through income-generating projects for women that continue to focus on hair- dressing, sewing or raising chickens. The result is that the livelihood strategies that women (and men) develop during the consolidation of a war economy are likely to persist, thus jeopardizing the prospects for more substantial and equitable economic development. Finally, it has been noted that the implementation of demobilization, disarmament and reconstruction (DDR) programmes was carried out in ways that did not reach women effectively because the programmes did not take male– female power inequities into account. Thus, payments were made to men who turned in guns, while many girls and women had little option but to remain with their war-time male partners and their children. All in all, one can con- clude that the economic and social costs of conflict worsen the prospects for ordinary women, in part because they are already at the base of the economy prior to the war, and in part because an economy that is both poor and militarized limits the options and prospects facing women. The fact that women understand this can be deduced from their anti-war activism and peace- building work in these militarized under-developed contexts.

War and Citizenship What happens to the meaning of citizenship in wartime? Perhaps the first point to note is that citizenship, no less than livelihoods, is entirely disrupted by war. The functioning of government—and whatever policy agenda was in place—is radically interrupted and altered in ways that vary across the dura-

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access Beyond survival 59 tion, location, intensity and extent of the conflict. As noted above, the militarization of the state and politics in Africa dates back to colonial rule (effectively military rule), to the establishment and bequest of all-male colonial armies to independent nations, as a definitive aspect of the ‘modern’ state. In other words, the dedication to maintaining a state of war preparedness, in the conventional sense of securing national borders, was taken for granted and sel- dom, if ever, questioned. Both Liberia and Sierra Leone (along with many other African post-colonies) have since seen politics dominated by the military, either directly as a military dictatorship or less directly during periods of less- than democratic civilian rule (Gberie 2005). The practice of citizenship—and women’s citizenship in particular—is severely limited under conditions of military rule (Mama 1995). With extremely circumscribed access to power and with no voting rights or power, the universal loss of rights and freedom of expression might be mistaken as ‘gender equity’ in the worst sense but for the extreme patriarchy that characterized militarized government and military rule in both nations. Considering the notion of citizenship in militarized contexts poses certain methodological and conceptual challenges. Nonetheless, from the individual and collective experience of all those who have lived and survived decades of military rule, it is clear that there are still ways in which individuals and communities exhibit forms of agency that can be described as practices of citizenship. Women’s movements offer a particularly fertile area for examining questions of citizenship, in part because they have always struggled with the questions of exclusion and marginalization that come to the fore for men under conditions of war and military rule, in which men are also disenfran- chised. Politics in the context of militarism and/or conflict looks very different. Once the ballot box is out of the picture, political action has to be conducted pragmatically and/or subversively and improvised, drawing on whatever has been the history of movement and organizing. It takes the form of informal political practices, including behind-the-scenes lobbying and advocacy, various forms of protest activity and community organizing and many other practices that fall ‘below the radar’ of conventional understandings of politics and citizenship, all of them always already gendered. What is possible in terms of citizenship is drastically affected by the pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict landscape and by the changes it goes through. To be effective, movements can best accumulate experience and work with an inherent flexibility, to both understand and build on whatever shreds of political agency can be salvaged and re-activated. What happens to women’s citizenship in militarized zones and how can this be advanced as a key aspect of the transition to peace and democratic governance?

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Despite the appalling situation they endured, women from all classes and ethnic groups—and across borders—mobilized extensively to facilitate the ending of the war and build peace. Among the best-known examples in Sierra Leone are the Mano River Women’s Peace Network (MARWOPNET), the Sierra Leone Women’s Forum, the Network of Women Ministers and Parliamentarians and the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement for Peace. The various strategies they used included behind-the-scenes lobbying of warlords and political leaders, as well as organizing public rallies and demonstrations and the provision of peace-making-related services such as civilian electoral education and training. As early as 1996, a delegation of women’s groups led by Women Organized for a Morally Enlightened Nation pressured the military government to hold democratic elections. However, when the elections that brought President Kabbah to power were held, only 5 women were on the list of 68 candidates on the victorious party’s list. In 1999, women played a leading role in the negotia- tions that led to the signing of the 1999 Lome Peace Accord. Their insistence on including the RUF in a power-sharing arrangement was probably crucial to the deal, even though it was to be another three years before the end of the war was finally declared. In Liberia, many of the women’s groups that now exist were formed expressly to agitate for an end to the war, prevailing upon warlords and political leaders, in concerted actions all over Liberia, as well as in Nigeria and Ghana where the peace processes were hosted. During the early years of the war (1989–1996), a Monrovia-based group, Concerned Women of Liberia, made contact with women in territories held by warring factions and encouraged mediation, prayer and conflict-resolution techniques that drew on old traditions and new methods. Professional and religious networks of women (the Christian Health Association of Liberia, the Abused Women and Girls Program and the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia) worked to provide support for women who had been raped. Numerous other women’s groups, such as Women in Action for Liberia, and mixed groups with women in leadership, such as Special Emergency Life Food Program, maintained communication across community lines, distributed food and cared for the elderly and refugees. The formation of Liberian Women’s Initiative (LWI) marked the beginning of a more far-reaching movement that was to bring a broader cross-section of women of Liberia together. The LWI went door to door, took to the streets and mobilized diverse groups of Liberian women, and, although not invited to the table, their work had influenced the 1997 Abuja Peace Accord (AWPSG 2004: 17). At workshops during the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, a contingent of Liberian women recounted their experience of living through the war and struggling as peace activists, winning international

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access Beyond survival 61 respect and support and so gaining confidence (AWPSG 2004). The later years of the war (2000–2003) saw a second round of mobilization in which the Women’s Peace Network (WIPNET) steered the movement (among them Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2012). Supported by the Women in Peace and Security Network-Africa, ABANTU for Development and other partners, Liberian women responded to the prolonged crisis of 2003 by organizing more aggressively, setting off mass protests by thousands of women who wore white T-shirts and held sit-ins on the streets for many weeks. They were even- tually able to present a petition for peace to President Taylor. Once the peace talks were in progress in Ghana, WIPNET mobilized protests and advocacy to ensure the success of the talks. When they continued for weeks with no sign of a settlement, a large group blockaded the protagonists into their hotel to pre- vail upon the Nigerian and Ghanaian hosts to insist on progress. The women’s sustained activism and its escalation during the peace talks appear to have been highly effective. Charles Taylor’s ensuing indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, during these talks and women’s protests, and the final major assault on Monrovia launched by LURD and MODEL, saw Taylor accept asylum in Nigeria and the warring factions signing the peace agree- ment, officially ending the war.

Conclusions

Contemporary militarism—itself a deeply gendered phenomenon—is sustained by enduring political, economic and socio-cultural changes, all of which are also highly gendered. The cases discussed here confirm this in some detail with regard to the effects of violent conflict on women’s livelihoods and their practice of citizenship through peace activism. The changes that occur are intrinsic to militarism, escalating as the process of militarization deepens before, during and after conflict. In states of war and war-preparedness, security concerns and actors displace equity, social justice and sustainability agendas, leading to political regression and under-development. The resulting development reversals have especially high costs with regard to the prospects for gender equity in both the economic and political life of the territory. Humanitarian and aid interventions are problematic insofar as these re- inscribe the long-term culture of gendered economic dependency and retard progress towards a recovery of political autonomy and an actively democratic practice of citizenship that extends to women as much as men. Militarism constitutes a formidable obstacle to equity, development and freedom, both within the militarist-exporting nations (like the US) and the beneficiaries of

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access 62 Mama these exports where the violent conflicts take place. Militarized developing countries accumulate severe debts, only to draw further on foreign military assistance, which is readily available and which sustains this deadly global industry, while the true costs are paid in loss of lives and basic freedoms and the long-term deformation of human potential. Insecurity characterizes the lives of women in Africa in many ways, all of which are sustained by their exclusion from politics and decision-making arenas and by the exploitation and marginalization of their economic roles. These existing inequities are significantly worsened by the militarization of the economy and outbreaks of conflict, which profit the few—most of whom are men—over the many—most of whom are women and children. Women play an important economic role in the coping economy as defined by Peterson. The above material suggests that this develops out of the informal sector, which it closely resembles and which women in West Africa have relied on for survival ever since pre-colonial times and certainly during colonization. Half a century of economic development has seen most West African women remaining in the less profitable areas of the informal sector and still marginal- ized and under-represented in the more lucrative areas of trade, as well as in the formal economy. The combat economy as characterized by Peterson is more organized than the coping economy, as it is specifically concerned with the procurement of all the supplies needed to continue to fight—all that is generally referred to as logistics. There is evidence that women became more organized, but this has more often been for the political purpose of attaining peace—or in defence of their own interests—than to sustain the fighting. Despite the gender inequities and the horrors of conflict, women survivors play active citizenship roles in initiating and facilitating peace processes and in sustaining and re-building affected communities, as exemplified by the women of Sierra Leone and Liberia. In this respect, the women’s movements in these countries have common cause with the transnational women’s movements and networks calling for the complete dismantling of militarism in order to bring genuine security to women.17 Current policy discourses call for the greater inclusion of women in the new armies and police forces (UN Resolution 1325). While this may offer paid

17 The International Network of Women Against Militarism advocates ‘genuine security’, a concept that, like human security, includes economic, educational and other human development concerns, but which specifically addresses security from women’s perspectives. As the members of the network argue, women’s security (and genuine security) requires not just an end to war, but also freedom from rape and violence in the home and on the streets (www.genuineseccurity.org).

Amina Mama - 9789004269729 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:12:29AM via free access Beyond survival 63 employment to the few women who are interested in becoming soldiers or policemen, the evidence suggests that sustainable human security will require a great deal more than ‘adding women’ into existing security arrangements. Real security is based on a respect for human life as a foundational principle of politics, culture and economics. For women, security is defined in ways that include freedom from violence in the home as much as from the hands of soldiers, and decent and secure livelihoods options, as well as political equity. As such, it requires a comprehensive process towards gender-equitable democratic governance, inevitably preceded by the demilitarization of politics and the re-structuring of the war economy to provide for and protect the population, rather than limiting reconstruction to humanitarian aid and security sector reforms that work to sustain dependency and re-militarize war- torn countries. The gender dynamics of militarism and conflict discussed here support the argument that equitable development and freedom will be usefully advanced by a gendered process of change that does not merely include women in security as it is currently defined, but will redefine the meaning of the term. Feminist approaches to security treat women’s insecurity as an integral feature of patriarchal development. This demands that militarism be understood and conceptualized as a key site for the production of gender inequities and abuses. Women’s definitions of security point to the need for alternative approaches to security that treat the matter through critical engagements, drawing the connections between violent conflict, under-development and gender inequities. One way of achieving this is the ongoing work dedicated to strengthening the power and effectiveness of women’s movements in countries that are under- developed and unequal and thus have a hard time sustaining peace, a basic condition for the pursuit of gender-equitable and humane development agendas.

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Appendix 3.1: World Military Expenditure18

World military expenditure slowed significantly in 2011, for the first time since 1998 (see Figure 3A.1 and Table 3A.1). The world total for 2011 is estimated to have been 1,738 billion US$, representing 2.5% of global gross domestic product or 249 US$ for each person. Compared with the total in 2010, military spending remained virtually unchanged in real terms. However, it is still too early to say whether this means that world military expenditure has finally peaked.

n) 1.5 illio tr

S$ 1 (U

ng ndi e 0.5 Sp

0 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Rest of the world United States

Figure 3A.1 World military spending, 2002–2011

18 Source: SIPRI (2011).

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Table 3A.1 World military spending by region, 2011

Region Spending Change (US$ b.) 2010–2011 (%)

Africa 34.3 +8.6 North Africa 13.9 +25.0 Sub-Saharan Africa 20.4 −0.1 Americas 809.0 −1.4 Central America and the Caribbean 7.0 +2.7 North America 736.0 −1.2 South America 66.0 −3.9 Asia and Oceania 364.0 +2.2 Central and South Asia 61.7 −2.7 East Asia 243.0 +4.1 Oceania 28.6 −1.2 South East Asia 31.0 +2.7 Europe 407.0 +0.2 Eastern Europe 80.5 +10.2 Western and Central Europe 326.0 −1.9 Middle East 123.0 +4.6 World 1,738 +0.3

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