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Article Excerpt
Abstract
In his article Violence and Resilience, Dr. Jok Madut explores the insidious effect that militant opposition to the Sudanese government and that the Sudanese government's counter-insurgency tactics has had on Sudanese women. Madut begins his article by highlighting and criticizing the majority of media attention and academic scholarship on gender in Sudan, which myopically focuses on Sudanese women as helpless victims of warfare. Madut's article illustrates how gender-based violence has been an unquestionable trait of Sudanese warfare used by all parties of the conflict to dehumanize and devastate enemy populations. Madut argues, however, that the militarization of Sudanese society has led to the continuous reproduction and entrenchment of gender-based violence throughout Sudanese society resulting in widespread gender-based violence and marginalization within communities and families. Moreover, Madut's article illuminates a complex subculture of "expanded self-reliance" created by Sudanese women relying on newly found and traditional methods of resisting gender-based violence and marginalization. Madut warns that development programs often fail to address women's rights in Sudan in an attempt to return Sudanese women to their traditional female roles.
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Introduction
At the mention of war in Sudan, an image of women and children as hapless victims immediately comes to mind. For two decades since the start of the north-south second round of conflict in 1983, these images of the impact of war on women and children have featured .in mass media, documentary films, human rights reports and aid-related research literature, much of which has accomplished the task of exposing the sheer tragedy of Sudan's wars. But there is only scant scholarly writing that focuses specifically on the lived-experiences of these women that moves beyond the tropes associated with women as war victims. Such close investigation, particularly to gain their own perspective on the tragedies that befall them, would reveal the humanity of the victim; it would highlight some moments when they feel defeated along with the resilience it takes to rise above the daily challenges of living with war. Here we employ basic ethnographic research methods in an attempt to give room to the women's own efforts to explain things to the outside world in their own words; in a way that avoids the nearly pornographic representation of war victims now in vogue, especially in the visual media. Because of this kind of physical depiction, it has been possible for their suffering to be used by the Sudan's warring parties as mere tools of propaganda, each trying to show up the other in a bad light as the abuser of basic rights. Pandering to the media in order to promote political cause and gain sympathy has been an important practice used by both the state and non-state actors, and the suffering of women, which they are primarily responsible for, has been the object of campaigns. Rarely do the warring parties use the international media coverage as part of an effort to bring awareness and to minimize such gendered violence. In other words, the pictures of suffering also have negative uses, i.e. political uses in favor of the belligerents. The tale and picture of women as passive victims of wartime violence has been a part of the popular story of Sudan's war, and as such, it has obfuscated some of the women's notable struggles and coping strategies that must be highlighted and applauded. Without a doubt, the adverse conditions of such prolonged wars have forged a subculture of expanded self-reliance among women that is usually missed by reporters or quick assessment missions that are characteristic of humanitarian aid activities. Of course, these media representations cannot be dismissed or condemned in their entirety, for they arouse the sympathy of the world community, which people still hope could bring relief to these war-stricken societies. (1)
Alternatively, in addition to describing the suffering, the mirror image of these victims as fighters for survival, to protect their families, to prevent their children from starving, to search for the whereabouts of their abducted children, and to deal with the consequences of rape and other types of physical abuse, should also be made a familiar part of the tale. It is perhaps these latter struggles that come nearer to capturing the experience of many Sudanese women living in conflict zones. Beyond the usual ways in which such state-sponsored violence as found in Sudan affects women and children--through rape, abduction, sexual slavery, and labor exploitation, it is also important to draw attention to how women live with such violence on a day to day basis. (2) The years of the prolonged conflict have important implications for the changing roles of women. This paper attempts to address four issues regarding war and gendered violence in Sudan. The first is to provide a context by describing the practices of the warring parties, such as the politics of opposition to the government and the actions of the government in its counter-insurgency tactics in the south between 1983 to 2002, and in Darfur since 2003. The second is that while the war impact is felt by all sectors of the Sudanese communities in war zones, there are gender differentials in the war experience and how war is lived. The third issue is how the family--women and children--became a major battle field for the Sudanese government's war machinery, where the agenda was driven by what appears to be a conviction and determination to either reconfigure the cultural and racial identity of the nation, or effect physical elimination and/or displacement of the groups expressing opposition to such policies). (3) Finally, the paper will provide the women's perspective on a number of these issues.
1. The Warring Parties and the Logic of Gendered Violence:
Of the many urgent humanitarian issues in Sudan today, there is no question that the number-one imperative is to stop the killing that is occurring in Darfur and to a lesser extent in other parts of the country. The number-two imperative is that women and children must be protected from the blight of gender-based violence that continues even long after peace agreements have been signed. The need to resettle the displaced people and to ensure justice for all, including compensation, should also be high on the agenda of both the Sudan's warring parties and the international humanitarian community. The most cowardly of all the war-related crimes is the rape and abuse of women and children, which has been rampant throughout Sudan's war zones and many other modern conflicts. It has been hoped that the end of the war in the south was going to be the best way to cure that. However, protection for women against the violence left over from the years of the war continues to be absent. Women's and girl's reintegration into society is often hindered by reconstruction and development programs that fail to address women's rights and expect them to return to traditional female roles, regardless of their changed circumstances. What is comparatively good in southern Sudan is that some of the women who were abducted and raped by soldiers and have long retumed from areas of captivity were generally well received by the families and the communities. In Darfur, this does not seem to be the case. Very often families reject them--that they are impure. It is important that the local society integrates them and Non-Governmental Organizations will probably have a lot to contribute to this process. In southern Sudan, I have interviewed women's groups and they report that they are working for the reintegration of women coming out of displaced persons camps or from refuge in foreign countries, many of whom have had traumatic experiences and are mothers to children they were forced to have.
In all of these wars Khartoum's attacks on villagers everywhere in the south, Darfur and the eastern front have been documented as viciously aimed at civilians and are executed either directly by the regular army, through aerial bombardment, or by use of militias recruited as a means to fight the war by proxy. These tactics have reduced the people in the various war zones to precarious level of subsistence, without food, clean drinking water, not to speak of the outright denial of citizens' rights to services. This level of deprivation is often deliberate and is made possible by well-coordinated attacks on civilian targets, during which property is looted or destroyed and the people are forced to flee their homes. During these raids, much of the destruction does not have immediate military significance other than to mete out collective punishment and humiliate the civilian population accused of abetting the opposition. Hence, the rural subsistence economy and its assets were the primary target for attack. In the south, water hand pumps were often blown during the raids, cultivation fields were often set on fire, and the civilians were driven into extreme poverty by these mechanisms over the years. Relief inputs were also targeted. Since 1994 (4) especially, food drops, primary health care facilities and relief agency compounds have invited attacks. For example, on February 20th 2002, an aerial attack on a food aid distribution center in Western Upper Nile instantly killed 47 people and injured hundreds of women who were receiving relief. A United Nations World Food Program staff member who was in charge of food distribution described the attached like this: "The gunship maintained its position right over the WFP compound and started shooting sideways aiming at the huts across the compound. Missiles/rockets were used to blow hut after hut with large number of people inside, followed by machine guns aimed at those running for cover." Those who were in the huts were children, the sick, the elderly, the more vulnerable, who were waiting for...
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