Thanks, Alison. My question--emerging from Christopher's point about urban
rape in Afghanistan (that a change had occurred, and for the better, with
the arrival of the Taliban)--was how we might unpack and make some sense of
Afghani soldiers being sent by the Taliban into battle with not only the
usual authorizations to kill, but also these blank marriage certificates
authorizing them to rape, or, euphemistically, to "take wives."

Hassani's description of these certificates as "a licence to rape" raises
the obvious question of why any license would be deemed necessary for a
soldier. To the extent that it reflects the bureaucracy by which the Taliban
brought order to Afghanistan, it's consistent with Christopher's example of
their controlling or cracking down on urban rape. Then there's the issue of
rape as "tak[ing] wives" in a context of _civil war_, which--for all I
know--was exactly what made rape's licensing on the battlefield necessary.
(Does anyone know?)

Here are another couple of passages from this interview that reinforces
Christopher's point in terms of (positive) change introduced by the Taliban,
whose order-restoring bureaucracy then became an instrument of religious
law-and-order for controlling civic space and daily life within it (the
"urban" being as important as the "rape" to understanding this development):

"Mr. Hassani at first was impressed by the Taliban. 'It had been a crazy
situation after the Russians left, the country was divided by warring groups
all fighting each other. In Kandahar warlords were selling everything,
kidnapping young girls and boys, robbing people, and the Taliban seemed like
good people who brought law and order.'"

Hassini joined the Taliban and, having been assigned to the secret police,
was put on night patrol, his duties "looking for thieves and signs of
subversion. However, as the Taliban leadership began issuing more and more
extreme edicts, his duties changed."

"Instead of just searching for criminals, the night patrols were instructed
to seek out people watching videos, playing cards or, bizarrely, keeping
caged birds. Men without long enough beards were to be arrested, as was any
woman who dared venture outside her house. Even owning a kite became a
criminal offence."


It seems to me that these forces and factors are intricately related, and
its the glue I'm interested in, not so much in whether wartime rape is
gendered aggression or whether war itself is--those are general questions;
mine is specific to this society whose leaders cracked down on urban rape
while licensing rape on the battlefield during a civil war. If we can keep
our focus on these specific conditions, maybe we can learn something we
haven't already formed an opinion on as a result of limiting ourselves to a
gendered (or a sectarian) lens.

Candice



Alison wrote:

> I don't remember enough about this to speak with any authority, and maybe
> someone else can remember better, but I read a long article a few years ago
> (when the war rapes of Moslem women in Bosnia hit the headlines) about an
> official policy of rape in Pakistan during the war of Partition.  And also
> I think more contemporaneously in Burma (?) recently by Buddhist troops, as
> a policy of demoralising the population.  Rape during war - which is most
> certainly a gendered aggression - can't be associated neatly with any
> particular culture, although certain official practices and condonings
> might be - and it would certainly be a minefield to attempt to do so.  It's
> certainly always been a practice of war, and part of its horror (who was
> Kassandra?) - the Korean "comfort women", the women of the Joy Division of
> the German army in WW2, etc etc etc.  But it's only recently - after much
> campaigning by women - that it's been recognised as a war crime at all.
>
> If you put the prevalence of rape together with the vocabulary, especially
> the slang, of military aggression it's hard not to draw the conclusion that
> war is deeply and intimately connected with a masculine sexuality (note: I
> say "a"). And that it's a gendered business.  That doesn't mean it's not
> full of contradictions, nor that women might not adopt aggressive
> behaviours themselves.  In a masculinist and militarised society where
> women are assumed to be inferior it would not be in the least surprising if
> there were more rape.
>
>
>
> Candice wrote:
>
>>    I also misunderstood Christopher's point and thought he was tweaking the
>> British press for the mindless violence it can be said to visit upon ideas,
>> information, and the real lives of real people. Which is not to denigrate
>> his actual point or the strong exceptions taken to it by Geraldine, Alison,
>> and (in a back-channel to me) Richard. In fact, Richard passed along a very
>> interesting document (the background and provenance of which I hope he can
>> fill in for us) that includes something we might find useful in further
>> complexifying the issue of Afghani political regimes relative to urban
>> rapes. Headed "I was one of the Taliban's torturers: I crucified people
>> (Filed 30/09/2001)," it's an interview by Christina Lamb of hafiz Sadiquilla
>> Hassani, the former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden who defected to Pakistan
>> last month.
>>
>> Among the many fascinating (and disturbing) revelations here are those to do
>> with the status and treatment of women and children, including this curious
>> detail: "The soldiers were given blank marriage certificates signed by a
>> mullah and were encouraged to 'take wives' during battle, basically a
>> licence to rape." This set of confounding terms and anomalous cultural
>> references begs for unpacking, but I don't have the expertise to even begin
>> such an analysis and have been hoping that some of you do/can, so that we
>> can evaluate the socio-gender-basic issue from the wider or multiple
>> perspective obviously informing this bureaucratized battle practice and to
>> some extent continuous with urban rape in Afghanistan.