Women and Political Violence

Female Combatants in Ethno-National Conflict

Miranda Alison

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781134228935
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book directly challenges the stereotype that women are inherently peaceable by examining female combatants' involvement in ethno-national conflicts.

Drawing upon empirical case studies of Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland, this study explores the ways in which women have traditionally been depicted. Whereas women have predominantly been seen as victims of conflict, this book acknowledges the reality of women as active combatants. Indeed, female soldiers/irregulars are features of most modern conflicts, and particularly in ethno-nationalist violence – until now largely ignored by mainstream scholarship.

Original interview material from the author's extensive fieldwork addresses why, and how, some women choose to become violently engaged in nationalist conflicts. It also highlights the personal / political costs and benefits incurred by such women. This book provides a valuable insight into female combatants, and is a significant contribution to the literature.

This book will be of great interest to students of political violence, ethnic conflict, gender studies and international relations in general.

1 Introduction

The assumption that women are generally more peaceful and less aggressive or warlike than men is a familiar one. The belief in women as nurturing, non-violent beings (whether it is argued that this arises through biology or socialization) has been expressed by a variety of people and groups in the West, even those in conflict with each other on almost every other social and political issue. It has been used by social conservatives to continue to restrict women’s life choices and career options to the domestic; by traditional militarists to argue against the inclusion of women in combat roles in the military; and by some (certainly not all) feminists to maintain that peace is somehow a ‘women’s issue’ and to argue that having more women in powerful decision-making positions nationally and internationally would lead to less war. This book is premised on the claim that this belief in women’s peacefulness is mistaken. A more nuanced picture of the variable ways that women participate in specific conflicts and wars is important and also necessary for effective peace work. In this introductory chapter I first briefly outline the background context to the book and my motivations for undertaking the research. I then outline the structure of the book and the issues that will be addressed. In the remainder of the chapter I attend to methodological issues relating to the process of doing feminist research, including discussion of how the research for this book was undertaken.

The bulk of the research for this book was carried out for the purposes of my doctoral dissertation (Alison 2003c). I conducted fieldwork in Sri Lanka August–September 2002, and in Northern Ireland January–June 2003 (though the whole time I lived in Northern Ireland between 2000 and 2004 had an impact on my work and might constitute fieldwork in the broader observational sense). After the doctorate was completed I interviewed a further woman in Northern Ireland and conducted another period of fieldwork in Sri Lanka June–July 2004. With regard to Northern Ireland a small amount of the fieldwork material that is utilized here is drawn on in a previous publication (Alison 2004b) but most of it is presented here for the first time. With regard to Sri Lanka some of the material used has been drawn on in previous publications (Alison 2003a, 2003b, 2004b) but the material arising from the second period of fieldwork has not been presented before. Furthermore, some of the earlier interview material has been altered in light of interesting re-translations of the interview tapes which were done in 2007, revealing some misunderstandings or mistranslations on the part of interpreters.¹

Context and motivations

The academic field studying women, gender and armed conflict is still relatively new and the research and literature has tended to emphasize and focus on women as victims of armed conflict – as victims of sexual violence, widows, refugees and internally displaced women. These are extremely important areas of research. However with this focus on victimization there has been a corresponding emphasis on representations of women as somehow inherently or ‘naturally’ more peaceful and peace-loving and less violent than men. This has meant that the issue of women as agents of political violence or war has been very much neglected. The focus of this book is on a particular form of women’s violent political agency – participation as combatants in ethno-nationalist movements. This has been largely ignored in the mainstream literature on nationalism and political violence. Here, too, an image has been perpetuated of women as being almost inevitably victims, and only victims, during armed conflict.

I believe that research on female combatants is necessary for various reasons. If we see women as only victims of, not also as perpetrators of violence and perpetuators of conflict, we see only part of the story. Even though it is clear that being a victim of violence does not mean one has no agency (Coulter 2008: 66), nevertheless it has been rightly argued that ‘the prevalent view of women as victims of conflict … tends to overlook, explicitly or implicitly, women’s power and agency’ (Sharoni 2001: 86), and that ‘[v]iewing women as homogeneously powerless and as implicit victims, does not allow us to theorize women as the benefactors of oppression, or the perpetrators of catastrophes’ (Lentin 1997a: 12). This also prevents us from addressing and responding to the effects of women’s violence, alongside men’s violence, which makes attempts at peacemaking, peacebuilding, or post-conflict reconstruction less effective. A greater acknowledgement and understanding of women’s involvement as combatants is needed as part of an overall struggle towards peace. This book challenges the idea that women are necessarily more peaceful than men through an exploration of female combatants, as a group of women who do not fit the mould expected of them by most societies. Women who choose to become combatants do not sit well with the image of Woman the Peacemaker, regardless of whether this peacemaking role is assumed to be something biologically innate or socially constructed. My interest is specifically in non-conscripted, non-state military members who have engaged in active combat or are/were trained and prepared to do so: those women who have stretched our notions of femininity to breaking point by engaging in political violence. Ethno-national conflict is examined because anti-state ‘liberatory’ nationalisms seem to attract greater activism by women than state nationalisms and these conflicts often produce comparatively high numbers of female combatants; thus, they are interesting in terms of how this fits with theories of gender and nationalism.

[w]omen in the military has never been an easy topic … But gradually I began to realize that paying attention only to women as soldiers was simply too confining. Militaries – and militarized civilian elites – have relied not just on sporadic infusions of a ‘few good women.’ Military policy makers have depended on – and thus maneuvered to control – varieties of women, and on the very notion of femininity in all its myriad guises.

(2000b: x, emphasis in original)

Therefore, she says, ‘[t]o invest one’s curiosity solely in women as soldiers is to treat the militarization of so many other women as normal. If I slipped into that naive presumption, I probably would be allowing my own curiosity to become militarized’ (ibid.: xii). As always from Enloe, these are significant and thought-provoking comments. I am certainly not suggesting here that combatant is the only women’s role that has any significance in militarized socio-political mobilizations. Nor do I suggest that stark binary categories of ‘woman-warrior’ versus ‘woman-peacemaker’ are the only forms of agency or political activism available to women in war. Nor do I wish to imply, by focusing primarily on women in combat roles, that women’s more common auxiliary military roles are less important (or less problematic) in the service of war. As de Pauw notes in her history of women in war, ‘[a]lthough some women in war appear in conventional combat roles, most do not’ (1998: 17). Nevertheless, I support her suggestion that ‘[t]he reality of women’s experience is distorted by focusing exclusively on exceptional females, but it is also distorted by focusing only on the most typical’ (ibid.). It remains the case that women who engage in organized political violence challenge, more than any other women, the enduring image of women as natural peacemakers. These women have also been consistently under-examined. If we fail to consider and try to understand the full range of women’s responses to and roles in war in varied contexts, including as combatants, we are missing vital pieces of the puzzle of violent human conflict. Accordingly, it is both justified and important to examine women combatants as part of the broader study of war and peace.

Given the focus here on ethno-national conflict, which is frequently asymmetric and includes non-conventional guerrilla forms of warfare and ‘terrorist’ tactics, in this book ‘combat’ is conceptualized broadly to include things like bomb-making and planting, assassinations, and suicide bombs, as well as more conventional forms of battle. ‘Combatant’, therefore, is equally used in a fairly broad sense to include all people engaged in such activities or trained to do so. I deliberately use the relatively neutral term ‘combatant’ throughout this work and actively avoid the word ‘terrorist’. I side with those who argue that the word ‘terrorist’ has no internationally acceptable or agreed definition, is highly contested and is often used (selectively) because an author disagrees with the aims of a particular group, while the words ‘guerrilla’ or ‘freedom fighter’ are used for groups the author has more sympathy with (see Guelke 1995, among many others). As Meehan notes, it is not possible to avoid labelling in social science but we need to recognize that this has political implications and think about which label is used and by whom (1986: 124). The two case studies examined in the book are Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland, both having experienced long-drawn-out violent ethno-national conflicts. In the case of Northern Ireland, some loyalist women are discussed who engaged in the conflict in more auxiliary military roles (such as moving and hiding arms and ammunition, first aid and so on), rather than active combat as outlined above, but the primary focus is on combatants.

It has been alleged that when a violent armed conflict between groups becomes designated a war ‘is the prerogative of dominant nations and groups’ (Kelly 2000: 48–9). The persistent labelling of a violent conflict as a war is often a political tactic used by subversive, less powerful groups; however, the control over when a conflict is generally recognized as a war is usually held by the dominant group. In the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, for example, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) has consistently referred to its activities as a war against the British state, while this period has not always been recognized as a war by successive British governments and indeed some have actively refused to acknowledge it as such. It is clear that the naming of wars is a highly contested and political matter. Furthermore, it has been claimed that among military specialists, agreeing a definition of war is difficult and frequently arbitrary (de Pauw 1998: 9, 14). In this book, to an extent the terms ‘conflict’ and ‘war’ are used interchangeably, although ‘conflict’ is used more frequently to try and encompass all armed struggles without making a political judgement about which should qualify as ‘wars’. It should be noted, however, that I do consider the armed ethno-national conflicts in both Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland to be wars, but in fact ‘conflict’ is a more useful word because it can also encompass the non-physical political and social struggles between groups that are as central to the overall picture as military conflict. Following on from this, it is also clear that for many people the definition of ‘peace’ has been evolving to encompass much more than the absence of violence, much more than the ending of war in the sense of a cessation of military hostilities. Newer conceptualizations of peace include ideas to do with cooperation, tolerance, mutual respect, possibly social justice and so forth (Reardon 1993; Ognibene 1998), which hint at a concern to address conflicts holistically and to try and resolve the underlying causes rather than just end military clashes, and which stem in no small part from Galtung’s notion of ‘positive peace’ versus ‘negative peace’ (Galtung 1969, 1985).

A related point here is to clarify what I mean by violence and political violence. There is a messy debate about how violence is best conceptualized, ranging from a narrow understanding to do with coercive physical force against humans to a broad understanding entailing social injustices, structural economic inequalities and so forth (sometimes called ‘structural violence’), and a whole lot of disagreement in the middle about whether there has to be intention to constitute violence and whether harm to property counts as violence in the same way as harm to people. I do not engage in this debate here. In this book ‘violence’ is generally used in a fairly narrow way to mean deliberately using physical force with the intention of hurting or killing another human being or damaging or destroying property. Furthermore, the focus is on political violence and when I refer in this work to women who commit violence, I usually specifically mean as combatants in the context of a society in conflict. Moser defines political violence as ‘the commission of violent acts motivated by a desire, conscious or unconscious, to obtain or maintain political power’ (2001: 36); de Silva emphasizes the use or threat of force ‘by organised groups or members of such entities, to their perceived political enemies’ (1995: 178). A broad view is taken of agents of political violence, which includes state forces (regular and extra-judicial) as potential agents as well as non-state paramilitary² groups, political parties, and, potentially, private armies. An equally open view is taken of manifestations of political violence, which include guerrilla and paramilitary conflict as well as more targeted or limited acts such as the use of suicide bombs, pipe bombs and other incendiary devices, politically motivated rape and sexual assault, assassinations, kidnappings and so forth.

In many ways this book is a personal exploration for me, as I continue to struggle to reconcile my conflicting beliefs about war and violence. On the one hand, to an extent I agree with liberal feminists who argue that women everywhere should be permitted and enabled to participate in military struggles in the same way as men, should they so choose. Furthermore, I do believe that there are certain situations of oppression and abuse where it may be justified to take up arms (though deciding when we have reached that situation, and when we have exhausted all other options, is so difficult as to be almost impossible). On the other hand, I also have sympathy with a more critical feminist perspective that views militaries and militarization as strongly masculinized and repressive institutions and processes, and I favour non-violence over violence whenever and wherever it is reasonably possible. I most certainly do not in any way wish to denigrate women’s individual actions or collective movements for peace; my problem lies with arguments that women are or should be more disposed in this direction than men. I do not believe that peace and non-violence are ‘women’s issues’ – or even feminist issues – exclusively. This work is part of an ongoing process of unpacking and thinking through the way I perceive war, violence and peace, and the implications this has for my thinking about feminism(s).

Structure and key concerns

This book attempts to address some primary themes and questions, from both a theoretical perspective and a more empirical one: how do feminists, as the primary scholars of women’s experiences of war, approach and analyse women’s relationship to war, peace and nationalism, and what are the main areas of disagreement here? What sort of factors seem to impel and/or enable some women in ethno-national conflicts to become combatants? What kinds of experiences do they have as combatants and within these ethno-national movements more broadly? Are these experiences any sort of catalyst towards developing a feminist perspective and, if so, of what kind? This work helps to highlight the fact that despite the strong cultural expectation that recurs in many societies that women are or should be less violent or aggressive than men, and should not be combatants in war, in ethno-national conflicts many women do choose to involve themselves as combatants. More importantly, I hope the work will contribute to advancing our knowledge of why this is the case and of the complicated interactions between processes of nationalist mobilization and gender constructions.

In Chapter 2 of the book I provide an overview of the two case study conflicts, Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland. This is primarily a narrative of the respective conflicts to provide context for the later chapters examining female combatants, but there are some underlying premises and contested areas which recur in Chapter 2, and elsewhere in the book, that I will briefly outline here. A significant premise is that the conflicts in both Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland are ethno-national in nature, so I will briefly discuss here the concepts of ethnicity, nation and nationalism.

Ethnicity, by Horowitz’s definition, ‘embraces differences identified by color, language, religion, or some other attribute of common origin’ (2000: 41). An ethnic group is a human collectivity which identifies itself or is identified by others in ethnic terms. The particular social characteristics that become significant to group ethnic identity, and to differentiation between groups, vary between contexts and can have complicated interactions; furthermore, ethnic groups are never as homogeneous as they are sometimes presented. Ethnicity is conceptualized here as a relational and situational construct: ethnic identities are formed in contrast or opposition to others (though this should not be taken to imply a primordial view of inevitable conflict between ethnic groups), in specific historical times and places. It should be clear that ethnicity, then, like gender, is being viewed in this book as socially constructed rather than essential or primordial. Social constructionism argues that the way that people are is constructed through interaction with our surroundings (encompassing social, economic, cultural, historical and political factors), rather than being given by nature. It views people and social worlds as changeable, and ‘is based on an ontological scepticism to what is considered natural or given’ (Skjelsbæk 2001: 50). In this way it differs from essentialism, which has been described as ‘not so much a theory or a philosophy as a largely unrecognised mind-set’ (Smith 2001: 34), based on the idea that some objects have certain immutable, timeless qualities (Skjelsbæk 2001: 49). This perspective entails a philosophy and strategy of politics based on the assumption that people hold particular views and preferences because of their ‘essence’, a core of identity that makes them who they are. Certain characteristics come to be ‘seen not only as the definitive component of that group’s make-up and identity, but also as unavoidable and given by nature’ (Smith 2001: 34). Dan Smith points out that essentialism is a difficult concept to think through analytically: ‘[a]s an object of discussion, essentialism has many of the features of a wet bar of soap: it seems to get all over the place but is often hard to take hold of firmly’ (ibid.: 33). Clearly, an essentialist viewpoint assumes immutable qualities of people in relation to various characteristics, but in this book the two most relevant concerns are essentialist presumptions about gender and ethnic characteristics and differences.

Although it is contended that ethnicity is socially constructed and variable, an ethnic group’s conception of ethnicity is generally based on ‘a myth of collective ancestry, which usually carries with it traits believed to be innate’ (Horowitz 2000: 52). Because of this, ethnic groups can ‘think in terms of family resemblances – traits held in common, on a supposedly genetic basis, or cultural features acquired in early childhood’. Thus, an ethnic grouping is often viewed in terms of kinship, as ‘an extension of family, however imperfect’ (ibid.: 57, 62). For Anthony D. Smith, an ethnic community or ‘ethnie’ is ‘a named human population with a myth of common ancestry, shared memories, and cultural elements; a link with an historic territory or homeland; and a measure of solidarity’ (1993: 28–9). For other scholars the political aspect to ethnicity is central. Yuval-Davis describes ethnicity as ‘a political phenomenon which uses cultural resources to promote its specific purposes’ (1994: 411). Cockburn views ethnicity as a historical, cultural, and linguistic process whereby a sense of collective identity is created and transmitted through generations, but is always changing and adapting. Like Yuval-Davis, Cockburn says ‘[w]hen ethnic differences are stressed, it is always possible to detect a political project’ (1998: 35–6). The relational nature of ethnicity (and nationalism) means that boundaries are continually drawn, and ‘processes of exclusion and inclusion are in operation wherever a delineation of boundaries takes place’ (Yuval-Davis 1998: 25).

The concept of nation is related to ethnicity and ethnic groups, but is not the same. Yuval-Davis points out that some definitions of ‘the nation’ read ‘like a shopping list’ of features, whereas others argue that national identity comes down simply to the conception of membership in ‘a people’ (1998: 25), much like ethnicity. For Smith, along with shared myths and memories, attributes of a nation include ‘a clearly delimited, compact, and recognized homeland; a mass, public culture; a centralized economy with mobility throughout; and common rights and duties for all conationals, usually to the exclusion of outsiders’ (1993: 34). As Pettman notes, ‘[n]ationalism speaks of a people, of “us”, of belonging…. It frequently posits a people–time–land connection – we have been here forever – which presents a particular problem for settler-state nationalisms’ (1996: 46). However Yuval-Davis highlights a sense of ‘common destiny’ as being equally important as the myth of common origins in the construction of nations, an orientation towards the future as well as the past (1998: 25), which can explain ‘a subjective sense of commitment of people to collectivities and nations, such as in settler societies or in post-colonial states, in which there is no myth of common origin’ (1997: 19; 1998: 25).

For Anderson, famously, the nation is ‘an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’ (1991: 6). He views it as ‘imagined’ (which does not mean illusory) because each member will never know or meet most of their fellow-members, ‘yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’. The imagined nation is ‘limited’ because even the largest ‘has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations’, and it is imagined as ‘sovereign’, he argues, because of the historical development of the concept during ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Overview of armed conflict in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland
• 3 Theorizing women-and-peace, nationalism and female combatants
• 4 Enlistment of women in paramilitary organizations in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland
• 5 Women’s experiences in the LTTE in Sri Lanka: gender relations and feminist nationalism
• 6 Women’s experiences in paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland: gender relations and feminist nationalism
• 7 Conclusions and reflections
• Appendix: interviewees/participants
• Notes
• Bibliography