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Rasheeda Bhagat

ON THE eve of the International Day for Women, and with the war against Iraq looming large on the horizon, with military strikes by the US and the UK planned, perhaps as early as next week, it is worth taking a look at how wars and all conflict situations take a much greater toll on women. Women are particularly susceptible to all forms of oppression and exploitation during such traumatic periods. So it is hardly surprising that women all over the world have always spoken out against resolution of conflict through military strikes.

In the backdrop of a hysterical US administration furiously beating the war drums, Kali for Women has very appropriately bought out an interesting book Terror-Counter Terror: Women Speak Out.

A collection of essays and articles from some of the finest women writers, this anthology is a timely reminder that during periods of immense distress, provocation and hostilities, women speak in a voice different than that of men.

Somehow, as a group, they are able to rise above the fury, agony and trauma of a situation, and analyse calmly the futility of using more violence to respond to violent acts.

Many of us would recall a poignant article in our mail-boxes, within a couple of weeks of September 11, written by Barbara Kingsolver.

First published in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 25, 2001, the article titled "And our flag was still there," came out when the entire American media was stepping up the rhetoric on what its President so pompously called the "war against terror." This is one of the articles included in this book.

Those were days when anybody questioning the "war on terror" and the need to bomb Afghanistan was immediately dubbed anti-national. A couple of print and electronic journalists lost their jobs for voicing dissent or questioning the hysteria of the entire nation.

At this time it required raw courage for Ms Kingsolver to write an article that begins with her questioning her daughter's school for asking the children to come to school one day dressed in the red, blue and white colours of the American flag. When she asked her little daughter why, the child replied, "For all the people that died when the airplanes hit the buildings."

Says the author: "I fear the sound of sabre-rattling, dread that not just my taxes but even my children are being dragged to the cause of death in the wake of death. I asked quietly, `Why not wear black then? Why the colours of the flag?"

Referring to the jingoism in the media and the lone vote cast by Congress Rep Barbara Lee refusing to hand over unlimited power to the US President, it is an anguished and defiant voice which says: "Patriotism seems to be falling to whoever claims it loudest, and we are left struggling to find a definition in a clamour of reactions. Patriotism opposes the lone representative of democracy who was brave enough to vote her conscience instead of following an angry mob. (Several others have confessed they wanted to vote the same way, but chickened out). Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth who've spent years learning our culture and contributing their talents to our economy." This book, edited by Ammu Menon and Kalpana Sharma and priced at Rs 200, has an entire chapter on how conflict situations impact women adversely. In an article titled "Women in War," Gayle Forman details the testimony of women from three war-torn regions of Afghanistan, Kosovo and East Timor before the UN Security Council in October 2001.

"Their stories described a variety of abuses they and their countrywomen suffer on a daily basis. Sexual exploitation, in the form of rape, trafficking, forced prostitution or early marriage, has become as commonplace in modern conflicts as land-mines and sniper fire, as Haxhere Veseili, a 21-year-old from Kosovo attested.

The writer adds that in most conflict situations women and children constitute 75 per cent of war refugees and, in many situations, widows and single mothers receive no aid. "Unfortunately, even after fighting ceases, all too often such dilemmas are disregarded or swept under the rug once the ink has dried on a peace accord, prolonging instability and misery for millions."

In yet another article, published in December 2001, Elizabeth Schulte fiercely disputes the claim that the US "liberated" the women of Afghanistan. She is up in arms against the cover story in BusinessWeek featuring an unveiled Afghan woman and commenting, "The scenes of joy in the streets of Kabul evoke nothing less than the images of Paris liberated from the Nazis. Women taking to the streets to bask in the Afghan sun, free at last to show their faces."

Says the author wryly: "They must not have asked Abdul Abdullah for his opinion". He was one of scores of men whose wife Fatma was captured by the Northern Alliance soldiers while trying to flee from their home near Herat. He escaped but most of the men were shot dead by the NA soldiers.

Abdul didn't know Fatma's fate. But given the appalling record of rape among these soldiers, he could guess. "I know they let most of the women go, but they kept the young and the pretty ones," he said.

She quotes from a Guardian report, which comments on the western media carrying pictures of women appearing in public without a veil. "What the photos do not show is the women putting the veils back on again, moments later. For the fact remains that the Alliance feels the same way about women as the Taliban did — they are chattel, to be tolerated but kept out of real life."

So much for the US President, Mr George Bush's tall claims about "liberating" the women of Afghanistan and now endeavouring to repeat the feat in Iraq. Low on general knowledge about other countries and cultures — at least now he knows the Indian Prime Minister's name and even has phone chats with this "ally" — he is perhaps not aware about the real status of Iraqi women in some regions.

At least in big cities like Baghdad, these women are more emancipated than the women in most parts of the Arab world, including the US ally Saudi Arabia. The book has also reproduced the text of an interview of Susan Sontag, one of America's finest political essayists, by David Talbot, the editor in chief of Salon magazine. The introduction says: "In the piece she wrote shortly after the terror attacks of Septermber 11, Sontag dissected the political and media blather that poured out of the television in the hours after the explosions of violence.

After subjecting herself to what she calls `an overdose of CNN', she reacted with a coldly furious burst of analysis, savaging political leaders and media mandarins for trying to convince the country that everything was okay, that our attackers were simply cowards, and that our childlike view of the world need not be disturbed."

In her column "World Without Colours" originally published in The Hindu, Kalpana Sharma underlines the irony of thousands of Americans gathering in New York on a particular day to mourn for those who died in the September 11 attacks. "On the same day, a lone Afghan mother mourned alone for her dead children — the `collateral damage' of the increasingly senseless bombing of Afghanistan."

The editors leave us with a poignant thought in the introduction to this anthology. "As the world hurtles towards greater conflict, fragmentation, poverty and deprivation, where are the voices of sanity, of hope, of conciliation, of healing? What they (the women quoted in the book) say has relevance over time, even if their words were prompted by particular moments.

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