It is widely believed that war is the business of man, and patriarchy glorifies wars and conflicts. ‘Courage’ and ‘gallantry’ are said to be the domain of men, which is why most of the invaders, military adventurers, conquerors have been from ‘the chosen gender’.
Apart from Joan of Arc, Catherine of Aragon, Isabella of Spain and a few British princesses and queens, women have not invested much in the horrible business of war that inflicts death and misery on humanity. Over the years, the desire of some men to conquer the world or subjugate people has unleashed a torrent of destruction across the globe. From Alexander the Great to Hitler, most acts of military savagery were committed by men.
Women suffer disproportionately in wars and conflicts despite having had no role in waging them. During the Sino-Japanese war, at least 20,000 Chinese women and girls of all ages were raped by Japanese troops while Imperial Japan was accused of forcing 50,000 to 200,000 women into sexual slavery in the territories that remained under Tokyo’s domination before and during World War II. Some estimates suggest a higher number – 400,000 women. Towards the end of World War II, around two million German women are said to have been raped. In Rwanda, half a million women and children were either raped, sexually mutilated or murdered during the civil war of the 1990s. In Bosnia, around 20,000-50,000 women are reported to have been sexually assaulted by Serb soldiers.
These appalling numbers highlight the fact that women are the worst victims of the jingoistic mentality that has pushed humanity towards war over and over again in history. Laws protecting women during conflicts are often ignored. The International Red Cross observes in one of its reports on the subject: “Despite a full panoply of laws to protect women in war, including international humanitarian law, human rights law and refugee law, women continue to suffer unnecessarily in wartime.”
Wars and conflicts also badly affect children. During World War II, an alarming number of 1,500,000 children, nearly all Jewish, were eliminated by the Nazis. In the Nazi bombing of the UK, nearly 7,730 children died and 7,622 were seriously wounded. The inhuman sanctions imposed on Iraq following the First Gulf War claimed around 500,000 Iraqi children’s lives. The deaths were unabashedly defended by US former secretary of state Madeleine Albright. Yemeni children are also said to be one of the biggest casualties of the conflict that has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians besides creating a humanitarian catastrophe.
Conservative estimates suggest that 84,000 children perished during the US invasion in Vietnam while five million children under the age of five died as a result of armed conflicts between 1995 and 2015 in Africa. Three million of these were infants, aged 12 months or younger. Research on Africa, published in The Lancet journal in 2018, says that children in the African continent died from preventable diseases, as armed conflict deprived them of access to clean water and basic healthcare. The study looked at nearly 15,500 conflicts in 34 of Africa’s 54 nations over two decades and examined data on conflict-related deaths, live births and child mortality rates.
Children not only get killed in conflicts but they are also encouraged to take others’ lives. Tens of thousands of child soldiers are recruited by armed groups in various parts of the world. In 2019 alone, this number stood at 7,740. According to Unicef, between 2005 and 2020, more than 93,000 children were verified as recruited and used by parties to conflict. Some other child rights activists claim the world currently has 250,000 child soldiers in at least 20 countries. About 40 percent of child soldiers are girls, who are often used as sex slaves and taken as ‘wives’ by male fighters. The West and Central African region houses the highest number of such soldiers. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Angola and several other states have also used children as soldiers. Children are not only recruited by armed forces and groups as fighters but are also used as informants, looters, messengers, spies and as domestic or sex slaves.
The history of warfare is replete with instances where military generals and war-mongers employed tactics that were meant to starve enemy armies or civilian populations. During the American Civil War, Union soldiers fought under rules of engagement known as the Lieber Code, which allowed them to starve the hostile belligerent, armed, or unarmed. Nazi Germany also allegedly came up with a catastrophic plan of annihilating enemies through starvation and drew up a ‘Hunger Plan’ that, had it been implemented, could have resulted in the starvation of some 20 million people or more in territory controlled by the (former) Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands did starve to death during the German siege of Leningrad (St Petersburg) between 1941 and 1944.
Wars and conflicts even today fuel hunger and starvation. Among the 815 million people suffering from chronic malnutrition in 2016, 60 percent lived in areas affected by armed conflicts. By the end of 2018, the UN said more than half of Yemen’s population urgently needed food assistance to prevent starvation. Although rival factions negotiated a tenuous ceasefire in Sudan in September 2018, UN agencies reported that well over half of the population was facing acute food insecurity as of early 2019.
In conflict areas, crops stand destroyed, livestock are stolen and people are driven off their land. One of the ways to view this destruction can be seen in the Central African Republic where in 2013, armed militias and rebel groups sparked a civil war. Within two years, agricultural production in the country drastically dwindled to 70 percent below the pre-conflict levels.
One of the biggest consequences of war is the displacement of people, who move from region to region in search of shelter and food. It is believed that displaced people are among the most vulnerable populations in the world; they frequently suffer from food insecurity and undernourishment. An estimated 80 percent of those who are displaced by conflict live in countries where people struggle to feed themselves adequately. For instance, impoverished Afghan people sought refuge in Pakistan where over 60 million people live in poverty and over 44 percent of children suffer from malnutrition. Most of the people uprooted by conflicts in Africa ended up in neighbouring states which are already struggling to feed their own population. The number of those displaced by conflict and violence has risen continuously since 2011 and by the end of 2019 had reached a record level of 79.5 million people – almost twice as many as in 2010.
The European Far Right and even conservative politicians lump all the immigrants together, declaring them economic migrants looking for greener pastures when in reality most of those fleeing to Europe do so owing to wars, conflicts and persecution – most of which Europe has had a hand in. According to research led by Professor Brad Blitz of Middlesex University, war was the biggest push. According to a report published in the Guardian on July 7, 2017 more than 80 percent of an estimated 1,008,616 arrivals in 2015 came from refugee-producing countries including Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and a quarter of that number were children.
To be continued
The writer is a freelance journalist.
Email: egalitarianism444gmail.com