Strategy of rape as a weapon of war???

Rape, Islam, and Darfur’s Women Refugees and War-Displaced.

“As you have raped me, please don’t leave me alive… kill me with your gun” begged Almina to her rapist. “May shame kill you” was the reply of the Janjaweed militiaman who raped her on July 4th.
In order to keep the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice Equality Movement from controlling any territory in the Darfur region, the Islamic government in Khartoum has employed a campaign of terror in which Muslim women from Darfur are victims of rape conducted and directed by Muslim men from the Arabic nomadic tribes known as the Janjaweed.


Rape is a dominant characteristic of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. While in the 1994 Rwandan genocide a raped woman was more often than not killed, in Darfur in 90 % of the rape cases the rapists have kept the women alive and sent them back to their community.


I have been amazed by the courage of the women of Darfur. I have seen in these women a strong sense of resistance. They are determined to survive and have given themselves over to the necessary daily tasks in the camps, such as the search for firewood, with a tenacious will to live. Moving out of the camps exposes them to the risk of attack and rape, yet wood is needed to cook with and water to drink. The displaced women of Darfur continue to face the menace of rape and shame in their plight to ensure the survival of themselves and their children.


This strategy of rape as a weapon of war and social control is having a profound effect on the conception of the meaning of being Muslim for the people of Darfur. A distinction is being drawn between the Islam lived out in Darfur and that promulgated by the Khartoum government. Abnan and Al Tahir, two women from Darfur who have been raped had this to say: “A minority in power uses both Islam and Arabism to blindfold the whole society, to silence any political opposition or arrest human rights activists. On the contrary, in Darfur the ordinary people see Islam through a different lens. It’s for them a religion with its true meaning. It’s a religion and not a political tool. This is how you can understand how a Janjaweed Muslim can be told by Khartoum to rape a Muslim woman and her young girl regardless of Islam... and they too can do it…Muslims in Khartoum have corrupted Islam.”


The fate of a raped woman in an Islamic fundamentalist society such as that in Sudan is already sealed. Rape survivors are more often than not rejected for being a visible reminder of the shame inflicted on the community by the rape act. The women will be inhibited from acting as full and honored members of society; their prospects for marriage or a happy home life effectively erased forever. Compounding the trauma of the physical abuse of rape is the loss of identity and the imposition of a new, dishonored identity. Ironically, the act of freeing themselves from the burden of shame and perhaps starting the process of healing by naming the offense is guaranteed to cement their rejected status in their societies.


This rejection can already be observed in the refugee camps in Chad and in displaced camps in Darfur. As their rape status is known by the community members, rape survivors have expressed fear and a lack of desire to return to their home communities even after safety is restored. Their only hope for the future, they feel, is in establishing themselves in a new community where their past experiences will not be known. The injustice of being cut off from their home communities, families and friends --- the things that give life meaning and joy --- compound the physical trauma of the rape act and possible unwanted pregnancies and exposure to disease.


These rapes are occurring in areas where Islam regulates both the political and social lives of the citizens. Rape is happening among those who shared Arabism and Islam. The women of Darfur report feeling betrayed by their Islamic government, which has formed an alliance with Muslim and Arab rapists rather protecting its own civilians.
The ramifications of rape as a weapon of war seem without end. Women and girls are victimized and ostracized, men emasculated, families and communities destroyed, and the very faith which gives life meaning is cheapened and rendered an expedient political tool. The rape of Darfur’s women is an injustice which will reverberate through Sudanese culture and society. It must be stopped.

" i would rather die in a bom blast during war rather than being raped and the act is justified as war strategy"!concernedheart.