Sexual Violence Towards Women During Wartimes

...

The second one, strategic rape theory is the most accepted in the literature of war rape. According to the theory, sexual violence is a weapon of war which is used as a tactic to humiliate the enemy (Gottschall, 2003). The purpose here, is to demoralize the enemy by harming the ones that should be protected, which are of course women. Hence, this theory also has foundations in the social construction of gender roles. Women’s inferiority make them needy objects to be protected. And not being able to protect these women make the enemy to feel humiliated and less men.

Clifford summarizes the purpose of rape during wartimes with these words:

When rape is employed instead of a bullet, the weapon continues to wield its power beyond the primary victim, while the battlefield may be the body, but the target is civil society (Clifford 2008, p.4)

So with certain strategies, this weapon of war is systematic. Women are targets to defeat the enemy. Along with the humiliation that comes from not being able to protect women, another damage is the possible results of rape, which can be pregnancy (giving birth to enemy’s child), illnesses (mainly HIV, especially in African societies) and the social consequences which can take the form of separation of families as a result of the shame that comes up with rape not only to the women, but to her family and relatives as well (Clifford, 2008).

In spite of the fact that it is the most accepted theory for wartime rape, Gottschall argues that in this theory there might be confusion about the driving forces and the results of mass rapes. He claims that the results on the victims and the society are not always intended by soldiers. He gives the example of Japanese conquests in Asia, namely in Korea and China in World War II, and claims that the rape towards local women was regarded as threatening in reaching the higher goals by giving the example that Japanese prostitutes were used in order to satisfy the soldiers’ sexual need and to prevent any rape towards local women (Gottschall 2003, p.132).

The third one, biosocial theory suggests that rape is a sexual act rather than the result of power dominance or strategy. All human beings have restrained sexual aggression and men, as a consequence of natural selection, are more driven by their sex hormones (Ellis, 1991). Along with the biological facts, certain social environments set up the conditions for men to set their sexual aggression free. This theory did not come up with the intention to explain the wartime rape, the aim was to explain the concept of rape in general. When thought in this manner, the acts of women – their attitudes, clothes and so on- can alone set the conditions for released sexual aggression. When it comes to the wartime rape, these environmental conditions can take the form of adaptation, in the sense that since there are thousands of other soldiers who are committing the same thing, it may be normalized. Or the environment of war, the chaos and all the violence can lead to the breaking up of state institutions which in normal conditions should protect women. The absence of them during wartime can also be one of the settings that prepare for the coming out of sexual aggression (Wood, 2006). In other words, both sociocultural environment and biological setting constitute the conditions for wartime rape (Gottschall, 2003). Here, the desire to dominate the other sex is not the goal (as opposed to what was proposed by feminist theory), but it serves as a means while trying to reach the goal (Ellis, 1991).

Biosocial theory received a lot of criticism from the feminist theorist. The opposition was that, this approach was showing the rape as natural, and in some situations women can be blamed for being raped since they would be the ones who let the restrained sexual aggression out. Since men have a tendency to have a higher sexual aggression and desire to reach his goal in certain circumstances, this view normalizes the rape without taking into account hierarchy of gender (Ellis, 1991).

These three theories of wartime rape all have certain contributions to the explanation. The different settings in which wartime rape occurred makes it impossible to make a generalization about the motive behind it. For the sake of being more clear, now we would like to talk about two examples and the applicability of the theories to them.

Bosnia And Rwanda

In this section we will analyze two wars in which mass rape is exercised dramatically. One of them is Rwandan Civil War in 1994, and the other one is Bosnian War between the years 1992 and 1995.

- Bosnian Civil War

In order to understand the reasons of the conflict that set the conditions for the civil war, former Yugoslavia’s multiethnic structure and hatreds between Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Albanians should be considered (Kalyvas & Sambanis, 2005). The conflict took place between April 1992 and December 1995. Starting from 1992, political, economic and social conflicts started to arise and in the end it came into a place in which Bosnian Serbs aimed to create a homogenous region, which is only composing of Serbs. In other words what they desired was ethnic cleansing and Serbian leaders provided Serbian army with financial and military support (Kalyvas & Sambanis, 2005).

As a consequence of this conflict, more than 2,2 million people were forced to leave their homes. During these wars about 250,000 people die. It was reported that about between 20.000 and 50.000 people, majority being Muslim women, were raped during these wars. The exact number still stands to be unknown due to the possibility of exclusion of women by the traditional patriarchial society. Thousands of children were born as a result of unwanted pregnancies (Diken & Laustsen, 2005).

Now we want to analyze the extent to which the theories of wartime rape can explain the Bosnian war. Literature suggests that Bosnian war is one of the most important cases of strategic mass rape. Before starting to analyze the purpose and the use of sexual violence as a weapon, first we should mention the patriarchal characteristics of Bosnians, and Balkans in general. And we intend to do it by getting help from feminist theory.

Feminist theory which has its foundations in the power struggle between sexes is applicable here because of the traditional and cultural structure of Bosnian society. Being a Muslim community and being located in Balkans are themselves contributors to the patriarchal society. Diken & Laustsen, in their paper “Rape as a Weapon of War” describes the situation as such: The family pattern in Balkans states that children