Female Fighters in Armed Conflict: Listening to Their Own Stories [1 ed.] 9781003326359, 9781032353173, 9781032353180

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Female Fighters in Armed Conflict

This book explores the why and the how of women’s participation in armed struggle, and challenges preconceived assertions about women and violence, providing both a historic and a contemporary focus. The volume is about women who have participated in armed conflict as members of an armed group, trained in military action, with different tasks within the conflict. The chapters endeavor to make women’s own voices heard, to discover the untold stories of women as perpetrators and facilitators of military violence, and the authors do this through the use of personal interviews and the study of primary documents. The work widens the geographical perspective of feminist security studies to discover in what ways the historical, political and social context has motivated the women to participate in military action, and presents new case study data from Germany, Ukraine, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Cameroon, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and Latin America. Temporally, the chapters cover almost two centuries, from the late 19th century to the present day, touching upon a wide variety of examples of armed conflict, from wars of independence to the Second World War. Bringing together approaches from politics, history, anthropology and area studies, the chapters are informed by the fundamental insights of feminist research and address such pivotal questions as hegemonic masculinity in the armed forces and the relation between women’s armed violence and female agency. This book will be of much interest to students and researchers in gender and security studies, armed conflict and history. Béatrice Hendrich is a professor of Turkey studies at the University of Cologne, Germany.

Routledge Studies in Gender and Security Series Editors: Laura Sjoberg, University of Florida, and Caron E. Gentry, University of St. Andrews

This series looks to publish books at the intersection of gender studies, international relations, and Security Studies. It will publish a broad sampling of work in gender and security – from private military companies to world wars, from food insecurity to battlefield tactics, from large-n to deconstructive, and across different areas of the world. In addition to seeking a diverse sampling of substantive work in gender and security, the series seeks a diverse author pool – looking for cutting-edge junior scholars alongside more established authors, and authors from a wide variety of locations and across a spectrum of backgrounds. Gendering Military Sacrifice A Feminist Comparative Analysis Edited by Cecilia Åse and Maria Wendt NATO, Gender and the Military Women Organising from Within Katharine A. M. Wright, Matthew Hurley and Jesus Gil Ruiz Gender and Drone Warfare A Hauntological Perspective Lindsay C. Clark Gender and Civilian Victimization in War Jessica L. Peet and Laura Sjoberg The Gender and Security Agenda Strategies for the 21st Century Edited by Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Michael E. Brown Gender Mainstreaming in Counter-Terrorism Policy Building Transformative Strategies to Counter Violent Extremism Jessica White Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Listening to Their Own Stories Edited by Béatrice Hendrich For more information about this series, please visit: https://www​.routledge​.com​/ Routledge​-Studies​-in​-Gender​-and​-Security​/book​-series​/RSGS

Female Fighters in Armed Conflict

Listening to Their Own Stories

Edited by Béatrice Hendrich

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Béatrice Hendrich; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Béatrice Hendrich to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hendrich, Béatrice, 1964- editor. Title: Female fighters in armed conflict: listening to their own stories/ edited by Béatrice Hendrich. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2024. | Series: Routledge studies in gender and security | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023009454 (print) | LCCN 2023009455 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032353173 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032353180 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003326359 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Women soldiers–History. | Women and the military–History. | Women and war–History. | Women in combat–History. Classification: LCC UB416 .F446 2024 (print) | LCC UB416 (ebook) | DDC 355.0082–dc23/eng/20230530 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023009454 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023009455 ISBN: 978-1-032-35317-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-35318-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-32635-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003326359 Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

List of contributors 1

vii

Female fighters in armed conflict: Introduction1 BÉATRICE HENDRICH

PART 1

The historical perspective: Changing perceptions, repeating patterns?19 2

A woman in power in 19th-century South Asia: An inspiring life path for struggles against injustice

21

RICHARD HERZOG

3

Fighting for peace, fighting for the country?: The inclusion of women in Turkey’s national defense in the late 1930s

39

BÉATRICE HENDRICH

4

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras: Camp followers and female fighters in Latin American armed conflicts in the 19th and 20th centuries

60

BARBARA POTTHAST

5

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam: “In my heart, I always wished to go” HUE NGUYEN THI AND EVA FUHRMANN

78

vi Contents PART 2

Case studies 1: Women in national armed forces 6

Transfer, transformation and use of combat experience inside Nazi concentration camps, 1942–1945: The fight continues after the battle

103

105

OLESIA ISAIUK

7

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms: Protecting the nation on the backstage of war

126

AYELET HAREL

8

Women of color in the armed forces of Germany: Invisibly exposed? 146 EGZONA GASHI AND BÉATRICE HENDRICH

PART 3

Case studies 2: The gender of sacrifice and agency169 9

Gendered resistance: Self-portrayals of female suicide bombers in Palestine171 BRITT ZIOLKOWSKI

10 Jihad with a woman’s face: Boko Haram female fighters in Cameroon191 AIMÉ RAOUL SUMO TAYO

11 Demythifying the caliphate: Asymmetrical dependencies of radicalized women in jihadist groups in the Philippines

211

CHARLOTTE MEI YEE CHIN

Index233

Contributors

Charlotte Mei Yee Chin, M.A., works as research associate and lecturer at the Institute for Islamic Theology at the University of Osnabrück, Germany. Her research interests include religion, gender, radicalization and prevention of violent extremism and her PhD dissertation focuses on the topic “Demystification of the Caliphate – Reintegration of (De)Radicalized Females in Southeast Asia”. Eva Fuhrmann received her PhD in Southeast Asia studies at the University of Bonn,  Germany. She currently is a research associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her research focuses on gender, work and learning in Vietnam. Egzona Gashi holds a bachelor’s degree of social work and is currently a master’s student in gender studies at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her work focuses on intersectionality (especially migration and gender) and gender-based violence. Ayelet Harel is a professor of political science at Ben-Gurion University’s Conflict Management and Resolution Program, and the Department of Politics and Government, Israel. Her research is at the intersection of politics and feminist international relations. Her latest coauthored book is titled Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies: A Gendered Analysis of Women in Combat (Oxford University Press, 2020). Béatrice Hendrich is a professor of Turkey studies at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her research areas are gender history and the religious landscape of Turkey, religious topoi in the literary history of Turkey and the history of the Muslim/Turkish community of Cyprus. She leads a research group on female warriors in Turkey. Richard Herzog is a postdoctoral research fellow at the History Department of Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany, and at a DFG Collaborative Research Centre. His main research focuses on Latin America, decolonial studies and intellectual history, specifically from a transnational perspective. Olesia Isaiuk received her PhD in Lublin, Poland, in 2016 with her dissertation titled “Lviv University during the First World War”. She does research at the Center 

viii Contributors for Liberation Movement Studies and at the Lontsky Prison National Memorial Museum, Lviv, Ukraine, with a focus on Ukrainian victims during the Third Reich. Hue Nguyen Thi, PhD, is a researcher at the Department of Area Studies, the Institute of Vietnamese Studies and Development Science, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam. Her research interests are Vietnamese history and culture; gender and gender equality; and current social and cultural changes in Vietnam, particularly in the countryside. Barbara Potthast is a professor of Latin American history at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her research interests include the history of gender and family, and social movements, as well as processes of collective identity formation in Latin America. Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo, PhD, is an associate researcher at the laboratory, Observer les Mondes En Recomposition (OMER), “Observe the Worlds in Recomposition” of the University of Liège and a visiting professor at the University of Maroua, Cameroon. His research focuses on borders, wars, counterinsurgency strategies and contemporary criminal threats. He recently completed a Swiss Government Excellence Postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, after a French Ministry of Foreign Affairs postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Paris Descartes, France. Britt Ziolkowski, PhD, is a scholar of Islam and researcher at the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In her research, she focuses on Islamic political movements (specifically, the Salafi movement and Hamas), gender and radicalization.

1

Female fighters in armed conflict Introduction Béatrice Hendrich

Beyond the androcentric narrative: What this book is about This is a book about women who join armed conflicts. While their participation is not always as combatants on the battlefront, they are clearly members of an armed organization, serving outside the administrative or medical barracks, trained in the use of certain weapons – even if only for the sake of self-defense – and deployed in conflict areas. The persons presented in this book as women identify as female; or at least they do not oppose being identified as female. As such, the book does not explicitly inquire about the experiences of queer soldiers or the national conscription rules toward transpersons. Our focus is on female persons in armed organizations, on their self-positioning and experiences, and routines and practices in a field that is connoted as masculine, and in which women still count as “the other” (Kümmel, 2006), as the minority and exception, no matter how long the history of women in armed battles, how fast the number of deployed women recently has been increasing, how rapid the change of deployment rules has been throughout the last decades or that many national forces feel pushed to reconsider gender diversity in their employment policies. This approach may be criticized for promoting the idea of a world consisting of cis persons, of “‘properly’ gendered bodies … crucial to our imagining and doing of war” (Welland, 2018, p. 132). While we acknowledge that engaging with armed women (and men) necessitates critically addressing femininities (and masculinities), we focus in this very volume on one aspect in the area of gender in war and violence. The book considers women’s participation in armed fighting a historical given, notwithstanding highly different percentages or forms of deployment and military duties throughout history and in different world regions. The book is not in doubt that women are mentally, intellectually and physically able to command and exert violence, to think in categories of “enemy and ally”, and that some of them believe in the necessity of armed combat – (albeit not always in) the same way men do. To acknowledge women’s participation in acts of violence does not at all clash with the reality of women being endangered by male violence worldwide in a gender specific and massive way. Nevertheless, it allows a differentiated understanding of women’s reality. It makes it possible to develop new perspectives on the social and cultural circumstances and power relations that shape women’s lives, and to DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-1

2  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict apply Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality (1989) to the analysis of all these aspects. Moreover, if the presence of women in various instances of armed conflicts is a given; silencing their presence renders it impossible to speak about the concrete circumstances of their participation, deployment or armed self-defense. Female fighters are exposed to additional forms of threat and danger in conflict zones that need to be addressed, not silenced, academically and politically. Unfit equipment and pathetic sanitary conditions are among the many problems experienced by servicewomen. Instead of pondering on the unfit female body, the focus should be geared toward solving the issue of unfit equipment and addressing physical needs.1 Another issue is the long-standing “hesitation” to deploy women in combat roles, which produces curious results: In the British Armed Forces, for instance, women had been included in combat situations without being allowed to carry a weapon until 1981 (Goldman, 1982, p. 6). In other instances, the weapon as a status symbol can be denied to women: Cases are known from non-state armies or rebel groups where young people and women are used in lower non-soldier status, with bad or no equipment at all, for allegedly minor duties, which are nevertheless life-threatening. This observation is in line with Laura Sjoberg’s argument that “gender often constitutes what counts as security and what does not” (2016, p. 53). This book is about women participating in armed conflict, as members of an armed group, trained in military action, at varying positions and with different tasks within the conflict. The armed groups in question here differ in their organizational degree, power and status. There are national armed forces as well as paramilitary units, and non-state armed opposition groups (NSAGs; Mazurana, 2013). The book does not aim to discuss the differences between state violence and other forms of military violence, or between soldiers and terrorists. This is partly due to the challenges of defining terrorism and separating it from other forms of organized armed violence. Arguing from a historical perspective, which is indeed the approach of several chapters in this volume, not a small number of insurgents, rebels and terrorists are known to constitute the core of the later national forces, after the success of the insurgency, thereby dislocating the distinction between soldiers and terrorists. What is even more important in the frame of this volume is that we did not want to observe women’s activities through a normative or moral lens, since this approach would obstruct our real goal, which is listening to women and their stories. It is, however, within the scope of academic freedom, and justified by the key topic of each chapter, that some of the contributors discuss certain violent acts as terrorism, particularly in the case of suicide bombing. The chapters included in this volume are based on fundamental insights of feminist research and gender studies, and are also indebted to the burgeoning literature on women and gender in international relations and security studies. Feminist research ethics is a shared and indispensable ground for the chapters. This applies to both the contributions from social and political sciences and the historically oriented ones. Some main aspects of feminist research ethics, such as the empowerment of the research participants or reciprocity between the researcher and the participants (Kingston, 2020, p. 533), are, however, not applicable to the analysis of

Female fighters in armed conflict  3 historical documents or only in an intermediate form. Nevertheless, self-reflection, deconstruction of power relations and avoidance of reproducing inequalities and (implicit) hierarchies (Leprince and Steer, 2021, p. 11) are also necessary qualities of any feminist research in the humanities. Ultimately, the authors in this volume all believe that rigid categorizations and dichotomic thinking are dangerous; they not only fail to enrich our understanding of the world but also silence and obscure the complex diversity and relationality that we set out to analyze. Cynthia Enloe’s legacy in feminist security studies (FSS) is fundamental here for two reasons: She not only compelled us to ask “Where are the women?” during our preparatory online sessions, but she also emphasized the significance of “feminist curiosity”, which allowed us to critically inquire personal certainties about the gender aspects of armed combat and armed forces, and broaden the disciplinary horizon by taking our own research projects further. This was done in some cases by relocating soldiering women from the margins of the research into the center, in others by focusing on the beginning of a story instead of the end; the question of how and why women happen to join armed activities instead of describing the disarmament and reintegration process. We also endeavored not only to broaden but to transcend disciplinary restrictions toward a feminist transdisciplinary approach, in the sense of “opening towards a reflexive transgression of artificially imposed boundaries” and “consistently and repeatedly leave our disciplinary comfort zones and go into unfamiliar knowledge fields” (Hughes, 2020, p. 2). We do not claim to have realized this goal in toto, but one could argue that for feminist transdisciplinarity, the journey is the goal. In addition to these early classics of Enloe or Yuval-Davis (Yuval-Davis and Anthias, 1989; Yuval-Davis, 1997), the recent generation of in-depth studies has inspired, supported and facilitated the process of reading, listening and interpreting what we came across in our documents and in the field. There is now a sound basis of theoretical work that explores the relation between gender and security from different angles, including the regional differentiation of FSS (Leprince and Steer, 2021; Stern and Towns, 2022), soldiering and citizenship (Lomsky-Feder and Sasson-Levy, 2017) and women’s violence (Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015). There are also comprehensive works such as Women and War by Carol Cohn (2013a) and the Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security (Gentry, Shepherd and Sjoberg, 2018). Two subfields among the more recent publications were particularly helpful: The first is the growing number of empirical case studies on the gendered experiences of women during their participation in the armed forces or during the postwar reintegration process (Gentry, Shepherd and Sjoberg, 2018; Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah, 2020; Katto, 2020; Hlatky, 2022). The second includes studies on different aspects of security that do not focus on gender issues as their main subject but include the gender dimension of the issue under investigation in an organic manner (Ware, 2012; Hutchinson, 2018; Hagemann, 2019; Varma, 2020). In hindsight, the book chapters should have discussed more explicitly the broad issue of embodiment (Narozhna, 2022); the militarization and mutilation of the (masculine) body (Sünbüloğlu, 2018); or the enactment of embodied experiences

4  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict in art, literature and mass media (Baker, 2020). That being said, an integration of narrative approaches and embodiment (Heavey, 2015), both experienced and narrated, has been implemented in this volume in Chapter 7 by Ayelet Harel on Israeli women soldiers in frontline war rooms, and in Chapter 5 by Hue Nguyen Thi and Eva Fuhrmann about female warriors in Vietnam. Listening to their voices A crucial interest in all chapters collected in this volume was to make women’s own voices heard. This endeavor comes with a variety of challenges; some of the challenges are discipline-specific, some are the result of the specific circumstances in security studies. For historians, for example, discovering the untold stories of women having joined an armed fight and/or military violence is still a novelty. A fundamental reason for this belatedness in research is the dominance of male “experts” both in general historiography and in military history (Hagemann, 2017, p. 180). Women’s experiences, voices and memories are considered part of the private sphere, while men constitute the public, and the public constitutes male historiographers’ key interest (Hagemann, 2019). This purposeful negligence of the presence of women in historical armed conflict is obviously not related to historical and social reality, as its continuation in male narratives on more current conflicts, particularly in patriarchal societies, such as in Bosnia (Smeulers and Simić, 2019) or India (Basu, 1991; Patel, 2022), demonstrates. Furthermore, as part of feminist reflexive empowering practice, the contributors have sought ways to make women’s voices heard in an authentic way. In the case of field studies, qualitative interviews seem to be a suitable tool to ensure this. However, in security studies, qualitative studies have their limits: Due to the peculiar circumstances of research in this field, many approaches are difficult, if not impossible, to apply. In his chapter on Boko Haram female fighters (Chapter 10), Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo, for instance, mentions the challenge of talking about women “who do not use speech as their primary mode of expression” (Ashby, 2011) in a context where stories about them often define them. There are only a handful of studies that can build on such an extended sample of 100 interviews as that of Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah (2020). Research in security is also confronted with challenges regarding security sensitivity. Security sensitivity is all encompassing: It covers the researcher, interview partners and their surroundings, and handling the collected data (Gurol and Wetterich, 2021, p. 109). Therefore, it might be impossible, harmful or ethically unacceptable to interview women during an ongoing underground activity, a related engagement with an armed troop or even after their deployment. Another problem with interviews is the lack of any pristine authenticity; the interview as well as the interview partners are part of a setting that is formed by power relations and only decipherable in its context. In a (post)colonial research environment, it is almost impossible to eliminate asymmetric power relations from the qualitative research process. Kate Coddington (2017) suggests replacing the interview with other forms of engaging with relevant persons, for example, participating in activists’ meetings,

Female fighters in armed conflict  5 and reading all sorts of written documents much more intensely. These are not only egodocuments and artistic works produced by persons of interest, but also all kinds of interviews and videos, including third-party productions such as newspaper articles or parliamentary debates and court documents (Strange, 2010; Lafi, 2018). By means of collecting and comparing as many different texts as possible, careful reading and historical and political contextualizing, women’s voices and narratives can be retrieved against all historiographical odds (Purvis, 1992). Soldiers, combatants, fighters: Why “war” is still a more complex battle zone for women than for men The individual chapters in this volume differ in their regional and historical references. Likewise, women’s motives for joining the struggle and their experiences during this struggle are of quite different natures. One of the common features, however, is that women’s participation in the armed struggle is a significantly more complex field than that of men’s. This applies to women’s rank in the military hierarchy, their tasks, the evaluation of their activity by the military and civilian environment and the assessment of whether they perform “genuine” soldierly or military tasks at all, or whether they provide simple support services. Women’s participation in armed struggle is not taken for granted; moreover, they are under much stronger pressure to justify themselves. When women volunteer for service in the armed state forces, they are asked why they do it at all. When women, for social and economic reasons or under threat of violence, are forced into a fight, which then in retrospect is interpreted as immoral by the victorious side or the majority society, the contempt for women is significantly greater than for the male combatants (Mazurana, 2013, p. 151). These different aspects are used in a way that reinforce and justify each other. In a way, it means that because women are unfit for real – i.e., manly – duties; if they want to join, they have to do the less glorious tasks and be content with that. As a result, women are on average deployed in positions of markedly lower status. These are by no means only “female activities” such as nursing, office work and making coffee (Yuval-Davis, 1997, p. 101, cited in Sjoberg and Via, 2010, p. 82). Rather, these are potentially high-risk tasks, such as safehouse keeping, espionage, ammunition transport or reconnaissance in the field.2 Due to fewer career opportunities, which are often already predetermined by law through maximum quotas and restrictions on certain positions, women in regular armies earn less and benefit less from retirement pensions or financial care that would be their due for post-traumatic stress disorder or bodily traumatization. In historical cases where women joined informal insurgent troops that were included in the emerging state forces after the victory, such as the Vietnamese Youth Shock Brigade or the Turkish nationalists during their War of Liberation (1919–1922), the women were excluded or had to campaign for financial support in their old age, because they were not considered to have been regular soldiers. In cases where women serve in higher positions, tokenism sets in. Their visibility as an exception to the rule rises overproportionally, “resulting in strong pressure for performance

6  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict excellence … and polarization of gender differences, which encourages behavior that adheres to gendered stereotyping” (Lomsky-Feder and Sasson-Levy, 2017, p. 144). So, women’s tasks and positions in warfare and insurgence are numerous but often underrated, unpaid and located somewhere between or beyond the usual ranks and carrier paths. The Female Engagement Teams and Cultural Support Teams, active in international military missions, are a telling example of how to increase the number of female soldiers in regular armies without de facto integrating them into established male units.3 In the same vein, it is almost impossible to delineate the physical space within which women fighters’ activities take place. While the front line is usually conceived of as men’s space, women are deployed in spaces that appear to be located at a (safe) distance from the war zone; in ambiguous spaces such as a safe house or the territory occupied by the enemy (as a spy); a war room, at the supportive infrastructure in the rear; or at the home front, in civil defense and paramilitary activities. This observation clearly corresponds to the feminist perspective on war that contests and refutes the existence of “a clear location and a distinct beginning and end” of war (Cohn, 2013b, p. 21). The issue of naming female fighters is likewise no small feat. The definition of “combatant” is indeed a frequently discussed matter in the literature. Moreover, even though the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions have endeavored to define a combatant clearly and comprehensively, it is often the fighting parties who decide in the final analysis whom to call a combatant. According to the convention, a combatant is someone who is authorized to use force in a violent conflict “under a clear chain of responsible command” (Medecins sans frontieres, n.d.). Denying the status of combatant of a person means denying the right to be treated as a prisoner of war (POW) in case of captivity. Combatants and POWs, respectively, cannot be prosecuted for their execution of violent orders, and they enjoy certain rights during imprisonment. Denying this status leads, in effect, to uncontrolled forms of punishment against everyone who is identified as having exercised violence as a noncombatant, and this affects civilians in self-defense more often than not (Medecins sans frontieres, n.d.). The cases of female soldiers of the Red Army during the Second World War in Olesia Isaiuk’s chapter (Chapter 6), and of the female members of the IS-affiliated Boko Haram in Cameroon in Sumo Tayo’s chapter (Chapter 10), exemplify how and why female warriors are more likely to be denied the legal safeguards of combatant status. There is, however, a second aspect in the definition of the combatant that should be taken into consideration. Hlatky (2022) traces how armed state forces themselves have been trying to exclude women from what they define as combat positions for a long time, based on the presumption that women are mentally and bodily unfit. Not recognizing women’s contributions, Hlatky maintains, eventually turned into “hypocrisy” (p. 31) when the US was at war in Kuwait and Iraq where “women who were deployed faced no less risk than their male counterparts but were not recognized for their contributions or eligible for combat medals because they were technically barred from combat roles” (pp. 31–32). Harel’s chapter (Chapter 7) provides an example of the increasing blurring of “the line between combat and

Female fighters in armed conflict  7 non-combat” (Hlatky, 2022, p. 32) due to the increasing technicalization and digitalization of warfare. The Israeli female soldiers serving in war rooms in proximity to the war zone challenge the definition of combatant as well as of war space. It is remarkable that women have access to NSAGs more easily than to state forces.4 The organizations’ rhetoric about why they include (or reject) women, is manifold. A very common aspiration, as often adopted by politically left leaning revolutionary groups, is to achieve the desired social equality even during the struggle. Publicly shaming men who have yet to join in the struggle (or who have been considered not to be fighting wholeheartedly) may also be a reason for women’s demonstrative participation. This perspective is also held by women themselves, as Britt Ziolkowski’s chapter on Palestinian female suicide bombers reveals (Chapter 9). Beyond the rhetoric, pragmatic reasons exist, such as the existence of tasks that should be explicitly performed by women or the lack of male combatants. Women’s ways into an NSAG are also diverse: Ranging from being violently forced to passionately supporting the cause (Loken and Matfess, 2017). Just as entry into an NSAG is more flexible than into a state army, the division of non-combat and combat tasks is less cemented and more adapted to current needs (Mazurana, 2013, p. 150). From a gender studies perspective, female fighters always come with an extra benefit for the organization: They ideologically solidify the cause (national unity or revolutionary equality), they strengthen the bond between the organization and the civil population (Dirlik, 2018), they hand down the message to the next generation (their children) and under certain occasions they can trick the other side because they are not perceived as fighters or terrorists.5 Finally, the chapters in this volume present several instances where, for the women, the armed fight has come to an end or not started yet, but it is (still) a dominant part of their everyday lives, of body and mind. Evidently, wars do not start with the shooting of the first bullet, nor do they end with the declaration of ceasefire (Cohn, 2013b, p. 22). This can be traced in the establishment of an encompassing system of militarizing the society of Turkey between the World Wars (as discussed in Chapter 3 by Béatrice Hendrich), the continuation of the fight by Ukrainian warriors during their imprisonment in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, or women’s social and economic living conditions when they are back in civil society after their armed fight, as explored in several chapters of the volume. Beyond the Eurocentric narrative When we planned this book, we intended to include contributors from a variety of countries and diverse academic backgrounds, so that we could widen the geographical range of the case studies; discover in what ways specific historical, political and social contexts motivated women to participate in armed organizations; and provide an inclusive approach on FSS. This ambition was based on the awareness of the generally inadequate inclusion of the Global South in (feminist) security studies and international relations, both in terms of the location of research institutions and scholars, and in terms of the appropriate consideration of issues and perspectives emanating from the Global South. In security studies,

8  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict which “derives its core categories and assumptions about world politics from a particular understanding of European experience” (Barkawi and Laffey, 2006, p. 330), a decentered perspective is still the exception, not the norm. It is even argued that the absence of the Global South is not an unintended byproduct of “Western-Centrism” but a “constitutive practice” (Bilgin, 2010) in security studies. It appears that from its beginning, the relatively young discipline of FSS has been aware of the shortcomings and distortions of both White security studies and White feminism. However, being aware of a challenge does not necessarily lead to overcoming the same, as Katerina Krulišová and Míla O’Sullivan (2022) show in their outline of FSS’s short history: the high ethical and thematic standards that the discipline sets for itself include a consequent anti-imperialist stance, awareness of the significant achievements of (women’s) movements and activists especially in the Global South, and a focus on “lived experience, positionality, reflexivity, and emancipation of marginalized subjects” (p. 35). At the same time, internationally visible research is still produced at established research institutions in the Global North (Krulišová and O’Sullivan, 2022, p. 36). As Krulišová and O’Sullivan also demonstrate, the academic periphery includes European geographies such as “CEE, South-eastern and Southern Europe” (p. 36), and, one could add, all the borderlands with strong intellectual ties with Europe, despite their continual othering by Europe, such as Ukraine and Turkey.6 In recent years, the number of specific case studies related to the Global South and comparative works has increased considerably (Asaad and Hasanat, 2022; Steenberg, 2022; Katto, 2020). This can be considered a major step toward an inclusive research area, but there remains inexorably a dependence on publishing criteria and rules of academic writing created by the center (Kloß, 2017), and a substantial need for material resources facilitating an exchange of academics and activists from different parts of the world on equal footing. When we prepared the book, we were confronted with all sorts of COVID restrictions but also with a rapidly emerging “digital turn” in academic conversations. Taking advantage of these circumstances, we circulated a call for papers and “met” with everyone interested in the topic during multiple but short online meetings. This provided the opportunity to include discussants and contributors from a variety of countries. Throughout the process, as always happens, tentative contributors withdrew. While some informed us about their reasons for withdrawal – often related to difficulties because of the pandemic – others just disappeared. We had the experience that it was more difficult to continue communication with people located at research institutions in the Global South. Relying on earlier experiences in global cooperations, we, the core group from Cologne, had the impression that their teaching load and the demands of their employers, but also differing modes of academic communication reduced their motivation to stay with us. A positive example of successful cooperation is Chapter 5 by Hue Nguyen Thi (Vietnam National University, Hanoi) and Eva Fuhrmann (University of Cologne) on female participation in the Vietnamese military from the 1940s to the present. To sum it up, an open call for papers and digital communication means are not enough for “more balanced relationships in the global system of knowledge production” (Kloß, 2017, p. 13), and it

Female fighters in armed conflict  9 will take persistence and doggedness before the easily stated “internationalization approach” of academia in the Global North turns into productive reality. So, while the topics treated in this collected volume are located on four continents, the academic background of the contributors is still, to a significant degree, shaped by European academia. Yet, we endeavored to decenter Europe, to question the homogenizing national perspective on war and peace, to display how warrelated and war-justifying discourses travel at an accelerating speed in a globalized world, and how personal and political networks connect world regions beyond the colonial divide. At the same time, the chapters present seemingly similar phenomena that are not necessarily the result of similar circumstances. Some contributions in this volume explicitly tackle a “fluidity between supposedly separate scales” (Al-Bulushi, Ghosh and Grewal, 2022, p. 2) such as Global South/North or different religious communities; for example, the chapters about women of color in the armed forces of Germany (Gashi and Hendrich, Chapter 8), or women from a variety of countries including Germany and Finland joining the Islamic State in the Philippines (Chin, Chapter 11). Yet those chapters with a focus on a specific country also mirror cultural, economic and political interconnectedness between regions more or less far from each other, as a result of colonial continuities and “neo-colonial globalization” (El Habbouch, 2019, p. 3). Richard Herzog’s contribution on the Lakshmibai (Chapter 2), a female ruler during the British colonial rule in South Asia, illustrates the significance of one historical exemplar figure for early anti-colonial insurgents, various Indian nationalist agendas and for the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, which was established in 1943 as part of the Indian National Army, and was composed of volunteering women from Malayan rubber estates. Postcolonial states share the experience of a war of independence with the countries in the eastern Mediterranean, in this case, Turkey and Israel, even if the political and historical context of these countries is decidedly different. The impact of a war of independence on women’s lives is a telling case in point, since it provides both universal and specific aspects. The assessment of an armed struggle against external enemies as a progressive, liberating and thus justified act has turned into an integral part of the national founding DNA in many different countries from the North as well as the Global South. In those countries, it constitutes an almost insurmountable hindrance to the activities of feminist pacifists. On the other hand, it is often argued that there exist fundamentally different feminist perspectives on warfare in postcolonial countries, almost irreconcilable with the perspectives of feminists from the North. One argument is that the convergence of African women’s fight for equality with their anti-colonial fight (Oluwaniyi, 2019, p. 5) is completely missing from the European feminist experience. Another argument is that for “women in the Euro-American sphere, access to combat has been read as claiming equal citizenship with men”, while for “women in the Global South, their claim to combat has often prioritized national self-determination for the colonized people” (Magadla, 2021, p. 27). Countries that are not so unambiguously located on the colonial world map are often out of sight of postcolonial studies.7 The chapter “Fighting for peace, fighting

10  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict for the country?” (Hendrich, Chapter 3) illustrates the ambiguity in which feminists of Turkey found themselves in the 1930s when, on the one hand, they declared solidarity with the women of the colonized countries and their call for independence and armed resistance, and, on the other hand, they invoked the “Western model”, according to which military service was an element on the way to civic equality. Likewise, the broad range of women who fought wars not strictly anti-colonial but still aiming at overcoming an oppressive rule, such as civil wars or the anti-Fascist resistance in Europe, or women who consider themselves a part of the international anti-imperialist war against the very state whose citizenship they hold, is missing from the discussion. The Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), based in the USA, is an eminent example of this globalizing perception of armed female resistance (Gosse, 2005). The TWWA conceived of women’s fight as self-defense: Whereas the struggle for liberation must be borne equally by all members of an oppressed people, we declare that third world women have the right and responsibility to bear arms. Women should be fully trained and educated in the martial arts as well as in the political arena. Furthermore, we recognize that it is our duty to defend all oppressed peoples. (Third World Women’s Alliance, 20 December 1971) Decentering Europe is a requirement in FSS as much as it is inescapable to avoid any essentialization of the “women of the Global South” and to take account of “the multiple manifestations of subaltern subjectivities” (Souza, 2019, p. 9). A new level of digital post-spatiality adds to the complexity of the Global South as a “subversive perspective” (Kloß, 2017) and a “normative conceptualization” (Demir, 2017, p. 55). The twisted and multispatial biographies of women supporting and fighting for local and global organizing powers such as the Islamic State, cannot be adequately analyzed without using an approach that includes all those aspects. The structure of the book The book consists of three parts. The chapters are, however, not arranged according to their geographical references or along a timeline but according to common key topics and structural approaches. The first part, titled “The historical perspective: Changing perceptions, repeating patterns?”, includes chapters that scrutinize change and continuity over an extended time span. Richard Herzog’s chapter (Chapter 2) on the female ruler of Jhansi, Lakshmibai, traces the cultural and political reception of a woman in an unexpected position. After the death of her husband, the Maharaja of Jhansi in northern India, she declared herself to be his heir and became one of the leaders and emblematic figures of the massive uprising against British colonial rule in South Asia of 1857. She died while actively involved in armed battles. In the following decades, she turned into a legendary figure for the Indian independence movement, Indian nationalism and related literary production. The “Rani of Jhansi Brigade”, established in 1943 as a regiment of the insurgent Indian National Army, was one of the few all-female combat units

Female fighters in armed conflict  11 of the Second World War. The example of the Jhansi Brigade also strengthens our claim that women’s armed fight or female units have a strong tendency to be organized from the beginning as a symbolic exception to the rule, with peculiar and unclear rules and duties, independent from the women soldiers’ perspective and the danger of their activities. The Jhansi Brigade was trained but never participated in active combat. While the effect of such a brigade’s existence on Indian women’s self-esteem is mostly positively rated, it can also be argued that the political gain it has offered to its creator, the second president of the Indian National Congress, Subhas Chandra Bose, is higher than what it has done for the women who remain politically underrepresented to this day. In Chapter 3, titled “Fighting for peace, fighting for the country?”, Béatrice Hendrich analyzes Turkey’s public discourse on women’s soldiering in the 1930s. In the second decade of the Turkish Republic, the War of Liberation had already turned into a blueprint for militarizing the whole society, including girls and women, covering all parts of life from formal education to pastime activities. Women’s inclusion was presented in relation to the already established meta-narrative of the poor but brave Anatolian women who contributed to the War of Liberation by carrying ammunition to the field, or, in rare cases, by actively participating in armed combat. Meanwhile, the influential all-male politicians and militaries of the time were eager to keep the women outside this last stronghold of masculine homosociality, the armed forces, even after educational institutions and the parliament had already opened their gates for females. Allowing girls into the organization for gliding and parachuting, the Turkish Bird; establishing military preparatory school classes for girls; and neighborhood courses on civil defense, particularly for women, were meant to reconcile differing expectations. Unlike in other countries, the Second World War did not lead to the official inclusion of women in the armed forces of Turkey. Women’s participation in (post)colonial insurgent and state forces, their historical background and political context are treated in Barbara Potthast’s chapter as well as that of Eva Fuhrmann and Hue Nguyen Thi. Potthast (Chapter 4) focuses on women as agents in armed conflicts in Latin America over the last two centuries. Until the mid-20th century, female participants were variously characterized as providers, camp followers or as idealistic supporters, while during the second half of the 20th century, the figure of the female guerrilla fighter became prominent. Their use of arms was evident, but they were still idealized and characterized by “female” attributes, such as beauty and sacrifice, albeit in service of a political cause. Regarding women and violence in armed conflicts, Potthast poses some fundamental questions in her chapter, such as the motivations for participation in various ways and the conflicts with traditional roles, as well as questions concerning intergroup gender relations, public discourses and memories about these women, especially in post-conflict societies. She argues that a long-term perspective can shed light on persistent structures and problems as well as changes in gender roles. Hue Nguyen Thi and Eva Fuhrmann’s chapter (Chapter 5) investigates the (dis) continuities of female participation in the Vietnamese military from the 1940s to the present. Based on a critical analysis of public discourses related to women and war, both today and in the past, and drawing on narrative interviews with female

12  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict veterans, the chapter outlines and compares the place of women in NSAGs as well as in today’s state forces. During the fight for independence, from 1945 to 1975, women in all parts of the country took up arms to join the fight. Numerous female fighters who lost their lives during the war became national heroines. Today, there is no formal law that prevents women from joining military or security forces; on the contrary, women are encouraged to contribute to the nation’s defense and security. While being constructed as courageous and brave defenders of the nation, women are simultaneously depicted as the caretakers of the family. The chapter also provides a precise background of the Vietnamese state with its institutions such as the Vietnamese People’s Army, the Communist Party and the Vietnamese Women’s Union, all of which closely cooperate to produce and control the roles women can assume inside and outside the army. The second part of the volume, titled “Case studies 1: Women in national armed forces”, focuses on the service within and for state forces, looking closely at a variety of physical places and political expectations that altogether constitute this wide space of serving the nation. Chapter 6, by Olesia Isaiuk, is on Ukrainian women who were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. This study sheds light on a group of female fighters neglected by political memory, historiography and academic research, similar to the Jhansi Brigade. Before imprisonment, these women had been participating either in underground activities in the frame of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, led by Stepan Bandera, or in officially recognized armed forces such as the Red Army of the USSR. While the structure of the Red Army and the Banderites (named after Bandera) was completely different, and the women’s training and tasks had different focuses, both groups considered themselves fighting for an already existing, legally recognized state under occupation. In the concentration camps, they not only shared the same experiences but also shared the contention that imprisonment was an integral part of their fight, and that the fight had to continue, even in a modified way, during captivity. According to Isaiuk, the women endeavored to reorganize themselves inside the camp and to support the weaker inmates. Additionally, they considered survival as a necessary task that would allow them to continue their armed fight after imprisonment. Ayelet Harel’s chapter (Chapter 7) presents a special case of inclusion and exclusion from the front lines, of being noncombatant but in proximity to combat at the same time, using the example of Israeli female soldiers serving in war rooms. In the past decade, female soldiers assigned to strategic war rooms have become significant participants in war; with some of them running and commanding the war rooms. Because of both their locatedness (Susan Bordo) and professional capacity, they challenge the traditional concepts of security, war and gender roles. The use of various visual devices, which bring images of war into the war room, affects how the women in there both “experience” and “make” war. Even though they are not physically present on the battlefield itself, this has not stopped them from being exposed to extreme violence. In Isaiuk’s chapter, protection is carried out toward other women and children by the imprisoned female soldiers as a part of the military masculine role model the female soldiers attune themselves to once they acquire the status of a combat soldier. The Israeli combat-support soldier in the strategic war

Female fighters in armed conflict  13 room, according to Harel, protects both the state and the soldiers in the battle zone, while at the same time being protected by the combatants. While the diversifying of military tasks may question the understanding of gendered roles in the military, this doubt, as formulated by Orna Sasson-Levy (2002, p. 357), that whether this development will ever “undermine[s] the hegemonic order” of masculinity, remains. Chapter 8, “Women of color in the armed forces of Germany”, by Egzona Gashi and Béatrice Hendrich, discusses the consequences of intersectionality in the German Federal Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr, with a focus on migrant German women and women of color serving within the Bundeswehr in different positions. The guiding question is how these women experience their military service and how they make sense of themselves in this core institution of the nation-state and “hyper-masculine organization” (Lomsky-Feder and Sasson-Levy, 2017, p. 1). The study shows that discrimination based on religion, ethnicity and gender often overlap and multiply in the case of women of color, who are often of Muslim creed given Germany’s immigration history. The chapter outlines the recent history of changes both in German citizenship law and in regulations regarding conscription and serving in the armed forces since these changes constitute the backdrop of the topic. Intersectionality, German nationalism and racism, citizenship, and the significance of (a precarious) language form the theoretical framework of the discussion. The empirical part of the analysis is based on two original qualitative interviews as well as on further published material such as videos, interviews and semiautobiographical books. The research process itself showed that the German case remained hitherto untouched by the academia, while similar cases such as the situation of female soldiers of color in the US Army have been substantially researched and written about. The third part of the book, titled “Case studies 2: The gender of sacrifice and agency”, looks at female members of organizations located in the field of political Islam. The presentation of these three chapters, by Britt Ziolkowski, Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo and Charlotte Mei Yee Chin, respectively, by no means intends to suggest that there is a special form of violence just because these organizations are all Islamic. Instead, they are connected to each other by certain elements that illustrate the main questions of this volume remarkably well. To begin with, the participation of women in armed violence by organizations that promote a most binary and patriarchal worldview, seems to challenge established concepts of gender and security. Second, the deployment of female suicide bombers is not a new phenomenon. It can be argued that male-made propaganda finds more and more rhetorical devices to justify women’s participation. Third, the effort to include women is often stipulated by ideological concerns, a lack of “manpower” and the hope to mobilize hesitating men. Fourth, (inter)national security institutions have realized quite late that women can commit “such things”. Indeed, the Western conception of Muslim women as being essentially passive caters to this perception. Finally, participation in such extremely violent organizations as Boko Haram, for example, brings to the fore, once again, questions related to our understanding of agency and military sacrifice: How are supposedly “female” forms of sacrifice – for the family, but also for the extended family in form of the nation – and men’s soldierly sacrifice of

14  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict dying during a battle connected to each other? Do we have to discuss the matter of agency in joining an armed group or perpetrating violence separately in each case, or does participating in an organization based on order and obeying constitute a loss of agency in any case? Ziolkowski’s chapter (Chapter 9) focuses on the self-portrayal of Palestinian female suicide bombers during the Second Intifada. It examines the written testaments and visual documents of three women who carried out their acts with the support of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. The visual documents in particular underline the possibility of reading martyrdom as the ultimate fulfillment of patriarchal motherhood, while shattering the myth of the peaceful woman at the same time. Sumo Tayo (Chapter 10) provides a rare case of research based on original interviews with female former jihadists, Cameroonian army officers and former Boko Haram captives, prominent counterinsurgency actors, and eight former suicide bombers arrested before or during the attacks. The author discusses the weaponization of female bodies by Boko Haram, cosmetic feminization in the context of a military phallocracy, and the mobilization of women by Boko Haram in the hypermale combat role as well as in intelligence and support activities. The reasons for women’s participation in armed conflicts, he concludes, cannot be reduced to one single idea like victimhood. Finally, in Chapter 11, Chin highlights the continuing significance of the Islamic State (or Daesh) in the Philippines as well as women’s increasing relevance in these groups. Her chapter analyzes dependencies of radicalized women in jihadist groups there and focuses on the social context from which women “depart” in order to join these groups. To this end, she gives an overview of the historical and political background of the Philippines, illustrates the roles and functions of female jihadis, and shows how the intersection of multiple oppressed identities enforces marginalization and vulnerability resulting in the radicalization of women. Based on her holistic understanding of the initial conditions of radicalization, she concludes that contrary to radicalization theories, which focus mainly on ameliorating socioeconomic conditions of the individual, group narratives facilitating radicalization processes must additionally be addressed. A distinctly important motivation for presenting this book was undoubtedly the authors’ desire to address and scrutinize their own view of gender in violent conflicts within a transnational exchange among colleagues. Our exchange was realized in the form of repeated online meetings, since the COVID pandemic had forced us to try new ways of academic cooperation. However, while the pandemic made us revise our hesitation toward exclusively online meetings, the next crisis undermined many certainties about pacifism and armed fighting in Western Europe: the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. From a Western European perspective, doing research on war and peace has acquired a different quality since then. The chapters included in this volume are both the result of individual research and of the online meetings. The hope is that we can feed additional knowledge and perspectives, as well as productive questions, into the field of feminist international relations and security studies.

Female fighters in armed conflict  15 Notes 1 A NATO report from 2021 criticizes both the lack of appropriate equipment and of adapted healthcare (vaginal and urinary tract infections are common, menstrual cycle symptoms are not addressed, pregnancy is just regarded as a “mishap”) and demands explicitly “to mainstream the inclusion of female research subjects” in future research projects (Braithwaite and Lim, 2021, pp. 48, 58, 75). 2 It seems that the categorization of “traditional male” and “female” tasks in the field should be discussed further. Taarnala (2016) also includes not only cooking and caring but also intelligence in the noncombatant female area. Cohn, however, underlines the importance of “male care” for a successful combat (2013b, p. 23). 3 “The term itself [cultural support team] took sex out of the equation; however, the teams still solely comprised female Servicemembers” (Katt, 2014, p. 109). 4 Quantitative data is provided by Wood and Thomas (2017); Mazurana (2013). 5 The deployment of (allegedly pregnant) women in violent action, and the blindness of the hegemonic institutions toward women’s sheer ability to exert violence has a long history. One wonders if this arrangement, which is only successful in a world of totally gendered perception and prejudice, will now come to end. After all, the (inter)national institutions have started to understand that “IS brides” are not victims that should be rescued and sent home without any interrogation. 6 Catherine Baker (2021) shows how the population of former Yugoslavia is categorized as non-White and to which extent this arbitrary categorization is related to practices of securitization. 7 For a case in point, see Fatma Müge Göçek’s “Parameters of a postcolonial sociology of the Ottoman Empire” (2013).

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Female fighters in armed conflict  17 Katt, Megan (2014) ‘Blurred lines: Cultural support teams in Afghanistan’, Joined Force Quarterly, 75(4), pp. 106–113. Katto, Jonna (2020) Women’s lived landscapes of war and liberation in Mozambique: Bodily memory and the gendered aesthetics of belonging. London: Routledge. Kingston, Anna Karin (2020) ‘Feminist research ethics: From theory to practice’, in Iphofen, Ron (ed.) Handbook of research ethics and scientific integrity. Cham: Springer, pp. 531–550. Kloß, Sinah Theres (2017) ‘The Global South as subversive practice: Challenges and potentials of a heuristic concept’, The Global South, 11(2), pp. 1–17. https://doi​.org​/10​ .2979​/globalsouth​.11​.2​.01 Krulišová, Katerina and O’Sullivan, Míla (2022) ‘Feminist security studies in Europe: Beyond Western academics’ club’, in Stern, Maria and Towns, Ann E. (eds.) Feminist IR in Europe: Knowledge production in academic institutions. Cham: Springer, pp. 33–53. Kümmel, Gerhard (2006) ‘Integrating the “other”: The Bundeswehr and women soldiers’, in Caforio, Giuseppe (ed.) Military missions and their implications reconsidered: The aftermath of September 11th. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 343–368. Lafi, Nora (2018) ‘Finding women and gender in the sources: Toward a historical anthropology of Ottoman Tripoli’, The Journal of North African Studies, 23(5), pp. 768–790. Leprince, Caroline and Steer, Cassandra (2021) ‘Introduction: Bringing feminist perspectives to the forefront of international security studies’, in Leprince, Caroline and Steer, Cassandra (eds.) Women, peace and security: Feminist perspectives on international security. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp. 3–18. Loken, Meredith and Matfess, Hilary (2017) ‘Women’s participation in violent non-state organizations’, in Sandal, Nukhet A. (ed.) Oxford research encyclopedia of international studies. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi​.org​/10​.1093​/acrefore​ /9780190846626​.013​.712 Lomsky-Feder, Edna and Sasson-Levy, Orna (2017) Women soldiers and citizenship in Israel: Gendered encounters with the state. New York: Routledge. Magadla, Siphokazi (2021) ‘Theorizing African women and girls in combat: From national liberation to the war on terrorism’ in Yacob-Haliso, Olajumoke and Falola, Toyin (eds.) The Palgrave handbook of African women’s studies. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 561–577. Mazurana, Dyan (2013) ‘Women, girls and non-state armed opposition groups’, in Cohn, Carol (ed.) Women and war. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 146–168. Medecins sans frontieres (n.d.) The practical guide to humanitarian law. Available at: https://guide​-humanitarian​-law​.org​/content​/article​/3​/combatants/ (Accessed 17 October 2022). Narozhna, Tanya (2022) ‘The lived body, everyday and generative powers of war: Toward an embodied ontology of war as experience’, International Theory, 14(2), pp. 210–232. Oluwaniyi, Oluwatoyin O. (2019) ‘Women’s roles and positions in African wars’, in YacobHaliso, Olajumoke and Falola, Toyin (eds.) The Palgrave handbook of African women’s studies. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–20. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/978​-3​-319​-77030​ -7​_85-1 Patel, Vibhuti (2022) ‘Lost in history: India’s women freedom fighters’, Insights (Impact and Policy Research Institute), 27 August. Available at: https://www​.impriindia​.com​/ insights​/history​-indias​-women​-freedom​-fighters/ (Accessed: 23 October 2022). Purvis, June (1992) ‘Using primary sources when researching women’s history from a feminist perspective’, Women’s History Review, 1(2), pp. 273–306.

18  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Sasson-Levy, Orna (2002) ‘Constructing identities at the margins: Masculinities and citizenship in the Israeli army’, The Sociological Quarterly, 43(3), pp. 357–383. Sjoberg, Laura (2016) ‘Centering security studies around felt, gendered insecurities’, Journal of Global Security Studies, 1(1), pp. 51–63. Sjoberg, Laura and Via, Sandra (eds.) (2010) Gender, war and militarism: Feminist perspectives. Santa Barbara: Praeger. Smeulers, Alette and Simić, Olivera (2019) ‘Female war crime perpetrators in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, in Mouthaan, Solange and Jurasz, Olga (eds.) Gender and war: International and transitional justice perspectives. Cambridge: Intersentia, pp. 65–93. Souza, Natália Maria Félix de (2019) ‘Introduction: Gender in the Global South: Power hierarchies, violence and resistance in the postcolony’, Contexto Internacional, 41(1), pp. 9–14. https://doi​.org​/10​.1590​/S0102​-8529​.2019410100001 Steenbergen, Michanne (2022) Female ex-combatants, empowerment, and reintegration. Gendered inequalities in Liberia and Nepal. London: Routledge. Stern, Maria and Towns, Ann E. (eds.) (2022) Feminist IR in Europe: Knowledge production in academic institutions. Cham: Springer. Strange, Carolyn (2010) ‘A case for legal records in women’s and gender history’, Journal of Women’s History, 22(2), pp. 144–148. Sünbüloğlu, Nurseli Yeşim (2018) Politics of rehabilitation of the disabled veterans of the Kurdish conflict: Militarism, the body and masculinity in Turkey. PhD thesis, University of Sussex. Tarnaala, Elisa (2016) ‘Women in armed groups and fighting forces: Lessons learned from gender-sensitive DDR programmes’, Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) Report, 30 June. Available at: https://reliefweb​.int​/report​/world​/women​ -armed​-groups​-and​-fighting​-forces​-lessons​-learned​-gender​-sensitive​-ddr​-programmes (Accessed: 10 May 2022). Third World Women’s Alliance: Smash! Capitalism, Racism and Sexism (1971), Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA, national office, 346 West 20th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011), in National SNCC, 20 December, pp. 8–9. Bay Area chapter records, series III. affiliated organizations, Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History, SSC MS 00697, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. Available at: “Third World Women‘s Alliance: smash! capitalism, racism and sexism,” Third World Women’s Alliance, Bay Area chapter records | Five College Compass - Digital Collections (fivecolleges​.e​du) (Accessed: 28 January 2023). Varma, Saiba (2020) The occupied clinic: Militarism and care in Kashmir. Durham: Duke University Press. Ware, Vron (2012) Military migrants: Fighting for your country. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Welland, Julia (2018) ‘Gender and war’, in Gentry, Caron E., Shepherd, Laura J. and Sjoberg, Laura (eds.) The Routledge handbook of gender and security. London: Routledge, pp. 129–139. Wood, Reed M. and Thomas, Jakana L. (2017) ‘Women on the frontline’, Journal of Peace Research, 54(1), pp. 31–46. Yuval-Davis, Nira (1997) Gender and nation. London: Sage. Yuval-Davis, Nira and Anthias, Floya (eds.) (1989) Woman, nation, state. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Part 1

The historical perspective Changing perceptions, repeating patterns?

2

A woman in power in 19th-century South Asia An inspiring life path for struggles against injustice Richard Herzog

Introduction The Rani, the damsel fought for Jhansi, Recount her valor, people of India!1 With this plea ends the long poetic narrative written by the Indian independence activist and poet Subhadra Kumari Chauhan in 1930 about Lakshmibai, the Rani (female ruler) of Jhansi. Lakshmibai was an emblematic figure and one of the main leaders of the massive uprising against British colonial rule in South Asia in 1857. This raises two questions: How was it possible for the image of this local ruler to expand into serving as a model for all of India nearly 70 years later? How and for what purposes was this legend of the Rani used by politicians and writers at the time of the Indian independence movement?2 To trace the origins of the legend, this chapter starts with an overview of its roots in Hindu mythology and folk poetry, as well as of its reception in British “mutiny novels”. Fictional works by Indian authors provide information about its exploitation in Indian nationalism in the mid-20th century; Subhas Chandra Bose’s “Rani of Jhansi Brigade” further illustrates its application to pressing political struggles and issues of gender inequality. It was one of the few all-female combat units of the Second World War, mobilizing women and girls in an unprecedented form. While traditional history writing sees the military as an exclusively male domain, the Rani’s legacy forcefully exemplifies that women have been key players in military conflicts throughout history. The time frame covers 1857 to the period shortly before independence in 1947. Due to the scope of the question, I limit this chapter largely to the literary reception of the Rani.3 Indian literature on the Rani is especially extensive, comprising at least three biographies, and several novels and plays, as well as numerous (often unpublished) poems. In addition, many official British accounts of the Rani’s life are preserved in the archives of the East India Company and the British Raj. Due to this almost one-sided documentation, we are much better informed about her “actual” life from the British than the Indian perspective. Despite or because of this, Indian historians in particular have relied on legends and local lore in addition to archives. Especially in Jhansi, a city in the North Indian region of Bundelkhand, today in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the study of the Rani is considered sacred. In DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-3

22  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict addition, only a small number of writings by the Rani herself have survived: A few letters to British administrators from the period leading up to the lapse of Jhansi in 1858, mostly concerned with this British takeover of rulership. The controversies surrounding the assessment of the rebellion – as a military revolt or as the first national war of independence, among others – also had a considerable impact on the discussions about the role of the Rani in it (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 157– 158; Pati, 2007, p. 1) This problematic state of sources means that her own voice is quite distant and filtered through writings about her, mostly by male authors, hence this chapter’s focus on the Rani legend. Key excerpts from the memoir of the captain of the Rani of Jhansi Brigade, Lakshmi Sahgal, add an important female voice to this chapter, in keeping with this edited volume’s themes. These transversal foci allow for a contextualization of how different images of the Rani were used to further both British-colonialist and Indian-nationalist political agendas in multiple, contrasting ways. The transepochal approach further adds to a broader research discussion of the uprising of 1857 and of studies on gender, representation and military history. While the focal point throughout the chapter is on her role as an influential female fighter, other aspects of her legend – among them the Rani as mother, politician and anti-imperial icon – should be taken into consideration in order to better understand her multifaceted history and legacy. The chapter thus sheds light on Lakshmibai’s continuing function as a female role model for feminist and subaltern causes, whose heritage remains intrinsically linked with interests derived from processes of national identity-building. A brief overview of her short but significant life helps contextualize and better assess the legend of the Rani. The Rani’s biography Due to the proliferation of legends and the scarcity of contemporary sources, it’s difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction in the Rani’s life story; even her date of birth (around 1827) is disputed. She was born in Varanasi as the daughter of a Karhade Brahmin, Moropant Tambe, and was given the name Lakshmi after her marriage, in honor of the Hindu goddess of prosperity and victory. It is reported that the Rani learned to read and write and even to ride and fight, in her childhood in Bithur – exceedingly unusual for a Brahmin daughter in those days. Popular stories recount that she played with other later revolutionary leaders: Nana Sahib, Rao Sahib, Bala Sahib and Tatya Tope. These seem to be based on subsequent legends, since these different persons also came from very different social classes (Jerosch, 2003, pp. 15–17). In 1842, the young woman married the much older, childless Maharaja (ruler) Gangadhar Rao of Jhansi, taking the name Lakshmibai. After the marriage, she had to live in seclusion and follow the court etiquette with purdah, especially in the beginning.4 In Jhansi, however, she also continued her unconventional military training; there is talk of the formation of a women’s regiment, to which the Rani herself taught riding and fencing (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 17–19; Jerosch, 2003, pp. 29–32).

Woman in power in 19th-century South Asia  23 The marriage remained childless after the early death of an heir to the throne. Fearing British annexation, the Maharaja adopted a distant relative, Damodar Rao, shortly before his death in 1853. The governor-general Lord Dalhousie then applied the rule of “lapse” of territories without legitimate heirs to Great Britain, leaving the Rani as a widow without a principality. According to this rule, Jhansi had formerly been under the Maratha Empire, which had been taken over by the East India Company, so that the latter now held sovereignty (Jerosch, 2003, pp. 32–35). Subsequent attempts by the Rani to object to the annexation and have her adopted son recognized were rebuffed by Dalhousie (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 33–38) After the start of the revolt of 1857, the Indian military mutinied in Jhansi as well, beginning in June. Jhansi, located in the North Indian region of Bundelkhand, was strategically important due to its location at the junction of four major roads (see Figure 2.1). A major problem of the rebellion, which was suppressed by 1858–1859, was the lack of a coordinated organization as well as conflicts of interest among leaders and troops, who often joined the British or switched sides. Therefore, instead of a nationwide war, there was rather a series of rebellions in different (especially north and central) Indian regions, owing to similar causes – mainly economic, political and social exploitation by the British (Pati, 2007, p. 1). Princes in Bundelkhand also condemned the British actions in the region, so sporadic uprisings occurred even before the mutiny took hold there, but they did not spread more widely until 1858, during the late stages of the rebellion (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 49–50). The role of the Rani in these revolts and especially in the infamous 1857 massacre in Kanpur, in which all the English men, women and children of the place were killed, was and is highly controversial. It is generally considered the worst massacre of British civilians during the entire revolt and is known as the Bibighar massacre. However, the Rani’s involvement in the revolt is more commonly dated in recent research to a period after the massacre, to 1858 at the time of immediate threat from the British, based in part on eyewitness accounts such as that of the British T.A. Martin, who absolved her of participation in the massacre (LebraChapman, 1986, pp. 52–60 and 66–67).5 According to a letter from the Rani herself, probably dated 12 June, she was not able to support the British at all due to a lack of soldiers of her own, at the same time condemning the rebels’ cruelty (Jerosch, 2003, p. 67). A final appeal against the lapse of Jhansi to Lord Dalhousie on 14 June is worth studying in more detail. In it, the Rani highlighted that the people of Jhansi had held no complaints under her late husband’s rule. In addition, for four months after the Maharaja’s death, she herself had maintained the state’s administration, showcasing her great competence to organize state affairs, which the British had decided to completely ignore (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 37–38). For the Rani, this meant that the British government had called off any form of negotiation, turning instead to the “exercise of the power, without the right, of the great and strong against the weak and small” (IOL [India Office Library], F/4/2600, quoted in Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 37–38).6 She then alluded to other, successful cases of adoptions that had been sanctioned in nearby princely states. In her letter’s conclusion, the Rani

Figure 2.1  A map of North India by an unknown author, 1912. (From The Cambridge Modern History Atlas.)

24  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict

Woman in power in 19th-century South Asia  25 convincingly argued that the dispossessions “of” herself and her ward effectively meant a “gross violation and negation of the Treaties of the Government of India [...] and if persisted in they must involve gross violation and negation of British faith and honor” (IOL, Z/E/2600, quoted in Lebra-Chapman, 1986, p. 38). Her detailed knowledge of colonial judicial procedure comes through in her detailed arguments. Lastly, she noted her own sorrow due to the deprivation of her “authority, rank and affluence”, leaving her reduced to a state of “subjection, dishonor and poverty” (IOL, Z/E/2600, quoted in Lebra-Chapman, 1986, p. 38). Following this letter, Lakshmibai’s spirited requests to the East India Company were no longer answered, which led her to arm Jhansi against the advancing British troops. After fierce resistance to the siege, the Rani fled and after another rebel defeat at Kalpi, her initiative succeeded in capturing Gwalior. The uniform-wearing Rani was killed in a cavalry skirmish outside Gwalior on 17 June, in one of the last major battles of the revolt (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 93–95, 99–103 and 109–117). The birth of a legend … Though a lady, the bravest and best leader of the rebels.7

The remark made by Sir Hugh Rose, the great adversary of the Rani, shows how her martyrdom immediately won recognition on the Indian as well as the British side. Her military feats alone as well as her courage on the battlefield as the first woman to fight the British inspired generations of writers, painters and Indian patriots (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, p. 117; Rag, 2010, p. 78). Social factors likewise encouraged the creation of legends, including Lakshmibai’s ritual support of the Jhansi’s poor, her participation in religious festivities, and the inclusion of women and members of various religious groups in her army (Jerosch, 2003, p. 268; Rag, 2010, p. 95). From the British perspective, a more nuanced assessment of the Rani compared to other rebel leaders took place, for example, in comparison to the demonized Nana Sahib – Sir Rose’s portrayal of her as the best rebel leader and the “Indian Joan of Arc” is not exceptional here, especially after her death. Nevertheless, the aforementioned controversy surrounding Lakshmibai’s role in the Bibighar massacre included critical voices that highlighted her alleged brutality toward innocents (Sen, 2007, p. 1755). The great importance Hindu society attaches to myths as well as its cyclical conceptualization of time result in a different understanding of history compared to those found in Western societies. Here, myths play a central role in creating meaning and identity, and the line between real and epic heroes and deities, and thus between real and fictive, is often blurred. In addition, the traditionally largely oral transmission of cultural norms and the strongly spiritual orientation of South Asian classical literary traditions has created a fertile ground for the spread of the Rani legend. In this regard, the integration of her legend into folk culture and ultimately into India’s collective memory is its chief characteristic (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 118–119).

26  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict In folklore

According to Lebra-Chapman (1986, p. 119), legends take on a history of their own, “apart from the people who inspired them”. This is evident in the interconnections between the Rani legend and Hindu folk traditions through which it gained influence. In poems and stories, the Rani is often equated with the goddess Durga and her destructive embodiment Kali, as are her battles against the British Raj with theirs against the demon Mahishasura. Superhuman powers are attributed to her, and she is even said to have wielded two swords with the reins held between her teeth (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 123–124 and 131). Another clear parallel is made to the deity Shakti as a cosmic elemental force and in this way linked to the archetype of the mother, quite widespread in Hinduism. Thus, astrologers are said to have predicted already at Lakshmibai’s birth that she would embody characteristics of the three main goddesses Lakshmi, Durga and Saraswati. Moreover, her role as mother and protector of her adopted son Damodar Rao is emphasized in many statues and paintings, where she is depicted riding with her infant son tied around her waist (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 125–127). The legend builds on myths and images of powerful and active female deities, among them Kali and Shakti, rooted in female agency.8 The Rani legend developed in the Jhansi area, where the memory of the Rani is still passed down from one generation to the next through oral tales in poems, ballads and songs. It was not possible to publish texts praising the rebels during British rule and especially in the wake of the rebellion.9 Nowadays, parts of this oral tradition are available to us in written form, while the rest is either lost or lives on in the memory of poets. In addition, the legend is present in a variety of paintings and statues, especially in Jhansi, Gwalior, Nagpur and surrounding areas, situated in museums, public places or markets (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, pp. 127–129). A very personal and regional image of the Rani can be gleaned from Bundelkhand’s folk songs, where rural and everyday aspects of her life are emphasized and her problems – for instance, the struggles of ruling as a young widow – are dealt with sympathetically. Vernacular expressions of sympathy with the Rani emphasize the local support for the rebellion in Jhansi. Interestingly, the folk tradition records only the ruler’s total devotion to the rebellion once she acted against the British, notwithstanding the possible tensions between her and the sepoys before 1858 (Rag, 2010, pp. 64–67). At the same time, however, Bundelkhand’s oral tradition can be seen in a continuum of local resistance to foreign rule, reaching back all the way to the Bundela rebellion of 1842 to 1857. The folk songs of fakirs10 denied any legitimacy to British institutions as invaders. The virtues of folk leaders, and in some cases even the participation of lower-class village communities, were emphasized alongside those of the rebel leaders (Rag, 2010, pp. 67–69 and 73–74). According to traditional understandings of honor, the Rani here embodied truth in the struggle against British falsehoods (Rag, 2010, p. 91). Moreover, there were numerous mentions in local folklore of female leaders such as Sheili Devi and Nanhi Rani of Jigri, as well as of loyal servants of the Rani, including Mundar and Sundar from her women’s corps known as Durga Dal. This important role of

Woman in power in 19th-century South Asia  27 women in Bundelkhand is related to the fact that, in addition to traditionally “masculine” tasks such as governing and fighting, they largely continued to follow the central rituals and practices of local culture and worship. For Lakshmibai, these included visits to the temple of the family goddess Mahalakshmi, support of artists and Brahmin scholars, and distribution of warm clothing to beggars in winter (Rag, 2010, p. 94–95). According to Pankaj Rag (2010, p. 78), popular culture thus provides us with strongly divergent images of the Rani – from a young, troubled woman to an infallible demigoddess – which depend greatly on the difficulties and hopes, as well as the changing circumstances of the population. In colonial novels

The Rani of Jhansi similarly occupied a special place in colonial British discourse as well, as one of the few important female rebel leaders. This was also because her story contained a particularly large number of surprising twists and turns, at least as seen by the English. In addition to being portrayed as an enemy to whom the infamous Bibighar massacre in Jhanis was attributed, she paradoxically emerged as a tragic figure and loyal ally who fell victim to colonial strategies of annexation and “home rule”. Thus, the British fascination with the legendary heroism of the Rani resembled her Indian recognition in several ways (Sen, 2007, p. 1755).11 This was reflected in “mutiny novels”, provoked by the great rebellion and hugely successful in both colonial India and Britain. The main goal of this new genre was to establish the supposed moral and military superiority of the British in the wake of massive uncertainties regarding British domination after 1857 (Sen, 2007, p. 1754). In the following decade, reports portrayed the Rani mostly negatively, which also coincides with stereotypical depictions of “native” Indian women of the time, who were labeled as treacherous and cruel. Similarly, the 1887 mutiny novel The Rane: A Legend of the Indian Mutiny written by Gillean (Col. J. N. H. Maclean) describes the Rani as a ruthless seductress who uses her sexuality to manipulate her white enemies. This calculated use of seduction for political purposes feeds the stereotype of the brutal Asian ruler, as well as that of the treacherous Brahmin, with an additional misogynist dimension (Gillean, 1887, pp. 1757–1758). A racist and sexist exaggeration of public opinion in the New Imperialism phase of British rule is also reflected in novels such as The Queen’s Desire (1893) by Hume Nisbet. In it, a voluptuous and promiscuous Rani is depicted as falling for a lowerclass British soldier who, however, abandons her and eventually even unknowingly kills her in her final battle. This twist of fate appears all too clearly as a revenge by the superior British military on the rebellious India, here embodied by a Rani heavily drenched in orientalist tropes (Nisbet, 1893, pp. 1758–1759; Singh, 2014, pp. 33–34). These examples, however, can be contrasted with mutiny novels of a different orientation, including, most notably, Philip Meadow Taylor’s Seeta of 1872. The novel contains a rare admiring portrayal of the Rani, in which she appears as a courageous, deceived warrior queen – betrayed by the British despite her highly successful rule (Sen, 2007, p. 1756). In Michael White’s later work, The Jeanne

28  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict d’Arc of India (1901), published in the US, Lakshmibai remains celibate. She is also acquitted of the guilt of the Bibighar massacre in this novel, in contrast to Taylor’s. This creates an image in the tradition of the European warrior maiden, bringing to mind particularly Joan of Arc as victor over English invaders; but also that of the celibate fighter, a central ideal of militant Indian nationalism.12 Through comparisons with Durga/Kali and the anachronistic attribution of patriotic feelings for India instead of Jhansi to the Rani, the text once again presents her as an embodiment of Indian nationalism (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, p. 136; Sen, 2007, p. 1760). This comes out clearly in her prophetic farewell speech: “If I have sinned against the laws of my caste, it was for the love of my country. Surely, thou wilt forgive a woman who has tried to inspire others to be brave and just. Oh India”, she cried, [...] “a day will come when their law shall be no longer obeyed, and our palaces and temples rise anew from their ruins. Farewell!” (White, 1901, p. 295) These characterizations as an icon of anti-colonial resistance show, on the one hand, the multiplicity of interpretations of her legend in colonial discourse that were then possible and publishable. These interpretations range from dominant portrayals to orientalist demonization and sexist degradation of the Rani on to implicit criticisms of British actions. On the other hand – together with popular representations – they also influenced her very positioning as a major role model for emerging Indian nationalism. Uses in Indian nationalism I: In Indian literature

A legend can be perpetuated on a regional level through folk art; however, to influence an emerging national consciousness requires additional, more effective and wide-ranging methods. The Rani legend increasingly spread beyond Jhansi: An artwork portraying the Rani of Jhansi on horseback killing an Englishman with her sword from the late 19th century provides one particularly impressive example of this process (see Figure 2.2). In addition to poems, paintings and songs, numerous Indian novels and plays about the Rani appeared, positioning her in the then-dominant, Indian nationalist discourse as a heroic mother who fought for her son and for his inheritance. The first book on the subject was written in 1888 by Bengali author Chandi Charan Sen, who specialized in patriotic themes (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, p. 135; Deshpande, 2008, p. 856). Probably the best-known fictional book on Lakshmibai, Jhansi ki Rani [The Queen of Jhansi], written in Hindi by Vrindavanlal Varma, was published in 1946. The author was from Jhansi, and his grandfather had fought on the side of the rebels. In his historical novel, he depicts the ruler as a nationalist heroine: The embodiment of an idealized Indian femininity, deeply rooted in tradition. She is portrayed as participating in a resistance movement that encompassed Maratha history and local past – in the novel she reveres the Maratha ruler Shivaji as well as Chhatrasal, lord

Woman in power in 19th-century South Asia  29

Figure 2.2  Artwork from an unknown artist, The Rani of Jhansi on horseback kills an Englishman with her sword; painting ca. 1860. (From the San Diego Museum of Art Collection, painting owned by Edwin Binney the 3rd).

of Bundelkhand, who resisted the Mughal expansion into her territories. Thus, the Rani likewise appears as an Indian patriot and her behavior in the rebellion is lent additional context and gravitas (Varma, 1992; Deshpande, 2008, pp. 856–858). Much like in the folk songs of Bundelkhand, Varma emphasizes her humanity – to set her apart from the British colonialists, and to criticize British racism as well as the feudalist tendencies of many native rulers. At the same time, he portrays Jhansi under Lakshmibai’s rule as a place of interreligious harmony, thus putting the rebel demand for the restoration of Mughal rule into perspective (Deshpande, 2008, pp. 859–860): [The important revolutionary leader, Tatya Tope, told the Rani,] I met a lot of eager Muslims; they say that the Empire should be established again in Hindustan. I said, ‘Swarajya’ [self-rule] and Empire can actually co-exist. When they said, how, I said that people would establish their own rule in their regions and provinces, and while the emperor could certainly intervene in them, his seal would be on inter-provincial issues and big matters. (As quoted in Deshpande, 2008, p. 860)

30  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict In this way, the author articulates his own vision of anti-colonial and autonomous possibilities in the novel, but from a reformist Hindu perspective. By characterizing the Rani as a progressive, educated and patriotic widow acting in the service of a larger political cause, Varma presents an idealized past that is reshaped for a nationalist mission. At the same time, his authorial blending of historical Indian sources with fantasy contributes to the blurring of fact and fiction in the reception of his protagonist (Varma, 1992, pp. 860–862; Singh, 2014, p. 166). One main source for Varma was an early Lakshmibai biography: D. B. Parasnis’ Jhansi Sansthanchya Maharani Lakshmibaisaheb Yanche Charitra [A biography of Queen Lakshmibai of Jhansi (1894) written in the Marathi language and published in a Hindi translation in 1938. Western-educated Parasnis sought to create a modern, patriotic historiography in Marathi, in this case by contradicting colonial historians who would portray the Rani as a scheming rebel. Eyewitness accounts took a central role and Lakshmibai’s militancy was associated with a regional politics based on caste and masculinity (Deshpande, 2008, pp. 862–865). The Hindi translation published at the height of the nationalist movement, on the other hand, was far more critical of British actions during and after 1857. The abridged version by an unknown translator shortened the original text by about 100 pages and included major modifications that have often been overlooked. Its incorporation into a Hindi context also deemphasized the larger impact of Maratha history on Bundelkhand. In addition, it portrayed Gwalior’s ruler Shinde, who remained loyal to the British in 1858, more negatively. This influential translation again illustrates the changing perceptions and nationalistic overtones the rebellion had attained by the mid-20th century. What is more, “it served as another smoothing layer in the accumulating nationalist narrative about Lakshmibai, Jhansi and 1857” (Desphande, 2008, pp. 865–866). The most famous modern poem about the Rani, the “Jhansi ki Raani” [The Queen of Jhansi] mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, written in Hindi by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, is still taught and memorized in many schools today, especially in northern India. Chauhan joined Gandhi’s campaign of non-cooperation in 1921 and was the first female satyagrahi13 to be arrested in Nagpur. She campaigned for rights for women and Dalits (“untouchables”), as well as against dowry, before tragically dying in a car accident in 1948 (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, p. 134; Rag, 2010, p. 63). Given Chauhan’s nationalist sentiments, it is not surprising that the nationalist quest for freedom emerges as the central motif of her poem. In this respect, Jhansi’s fate is embedded in the context of the disastrous impact of British trade, economic and social policies on indigenous Indian states. While it is true that the concept of “nation” as conceived by the 20th century liberation movements had not yet developed in 1857, when rulers and sepoys fought for their own more local territories and homelands, Chauhan’s projection of modern nationalism does not seem wholly out of place, insofar as the rebellion, with its focus on British claims and possessions, and clearly advanced seminal anti-colonial claims (Rag, 2010, p. 65). A distinctive feature of the poem is that Chauhan drew inspiration for it from a Bundelkhand folk song; by adopting its refrain, the Rani is ascribed masculine, warlike qualities: “O Rani of Jhansi, how well like a man she fought” (Rag, 2010,

Woman in power in 19th-century South Asia  31 p. 64).14 Other elements, such as the equation with Durga, are also reminiscent of traditional poetry (Chauhan, 2010). For these reasons, too, the poem has often been presented as a continuum to oral narratives from 1857. This is contradicted not only by its nationalist orientation but also by its different emphases – Chauhan focuses on other important leaders of the revolt and jagirdars15 such as Nana Sahib and Tatya Tope, in addition to the Rani; while in folk poetry local leaders play a greater role as initiators of the Jhansi rebellion and community cohesion (Rag, 2010, pp. 69, 74 and 85). Here, once again, a unified, iconic portrayal of the Rani is evident in her recasting as a nationalist role model and “freedom fighter” – in a poem that has itself become part of the country’s oral tradition (Rag, 2010, p. 69).16 This depiction stands apart from historical facts, chief among them the Rani’s turn to revolt, which is attested as relatively late, since she was still making petitions to the British authorities as late as June 1858 (Sen, 2007, p. 1755). Uses in Indian nationalism II: The Rani of Jhansi Brigade

Through Mahatma Gandhi’s use of deep-rooted symbols, Indian women were mobilized for the independence movement to an unprecedented degree. For Gandhi, women represented religious and moral role models rather than active combatants, in keeping with his doctrine of non-violent resistance. The role of women was modeled on the goddess Sita as a self-sacrificing housewife. Following this, spinning and weaving were more in keeping with “female nature” for Gandhi (Hills and Silverman, 1993). However, his view of women differed greatly from that of another important, more controversial pro-independence campaigner – Subhas Chandra Bose (known by the honorific title Netaji or “Respected Leader”). The former Congress leader Bose attempted in vain to convince Hitler to come to India’s aid from 1941 onward; in 1943 he traveled by submarine from Germany to Japan, securing Japanese collaboration for his Indian National Army (INA) (Sahagal, 2013).17 In contrast to Gandhi’s more conservative view, Bose, a strong proponent of armed resistance, saw women as activists. Moreover, he wanted to abolish child marriages, purdah and the ban on widow remarriage through specific programs. He insisted on female education, economic independence for women and the right not to marry: According to Bose, Indian women were denied their basic human rights. Like Gandhi, he used ancestral images of women, but chose a historical figure that both matched his notion of powerful women and served as a metaphor for Indian resistance to British rule (Hills and Silverman, 1993, pp. 754–755). From 1943 up until his death in 1945, Bose led the INA of his “Provisional Government of Free India” from exile, which acted against the British colonial government. It drew thousands of former prisoners and volunteers from the Indian expatriate population in present-day Malaysia and Burma to fight alongside the Imperial Japanese Army against British and Commonwealth forces in Southeast Asia. By naming the women’s regiment of the INA after the Rani of Jhansi, Bose gave expression to a new form of Indian female heroism that merged nationalist and feminist ideas (Hills and Silverman, 1993, pp. 753–755).

32  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Under Bose’s leadership, 1500 Indian women in Burma, British Malaya and Singapore; Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs; poor and rich alike, adopted the uniforms of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment between 1943 and 1945. The INA was largely made up of poor migrant workers from the diasporic Indian community in East Asia (Viswanath, 2014, p. 63). Bose dreamed of “thousands of Ranis of Jhansi” in his “last war of independence” (Hills and Silverman, 1993, p. 743). Importantly, according to Geraldine Forbes, the Rani Regiment was “not only […] India’s first and only women’s regiment [but also] one of the first conscious attempts in world history to integrate women into the military as a fighting force” (Forbes, 2013, p. xiii). The recruits’ duties consisted of military and medical missions for which they were trained – most were trained as combatants and a minority as nurses. Their training and their uniforms were the same as those of the male soldiers. According to female recruits, the regiment was also intended to promote the empowerment of women’s rights in peacetime. Bose was even challenged by women soldiers to prove his commitment to large-scale female mobilization – through a petition demanding their right to fight signed in their own blood (Hills and Silverman, 1993, pp. 744–746; Forbes, 2013, pp. xxi–xxii). By early 1945, the British Indian Army had reversed the Japanese attack on India. Nearly half of the Japanese forces and half the INA forces were killed, and the INA – including the Rani Regiment – finally surrendered with the recapture of Singapore in September 1945. Since, after its training, the regiment had arrived at the Malaysian front when the Japanese and INA forces were already retreating in 1943, they would never serve in battle, a major frustration for the female soldiers. Many returned to Singapore without seeing action, while some who remained to help in Burma were taken prisoner – including the female commander of the regiment, Lakshmi Sahgal (Forbes, 2013, pp. xviii–xix). Still, even though the soldiers did not take part in active combat, they were involved in several skirmishes and endured air attacks, capture and interrogation. From this perspective, marginalizing them because of their retreat appears as a male judgment, somehow marking out only those who participated in battle as “true soldiers” (Forbes, 2013, p. 62). A memoir written by Lakshmi Sahgal provides us with a valuable personal account of the Rani Regiment. A few main points and perspectives from this rich source will be discussed, due to this chapter’s scope. Sahgal was a medical doctor, a military leader and would continue her activism following her return to India after the end of World War II, working on behalf of refugees as well as for the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Sahgal strongly believed in equal rights for women and in the necessity for women to participate in the Indian freedom struggle. She was always financially independent due to her medical practice, allowing her to freely pursue her political and advocacy work that challenged conventional norms of what was and was not acceptable for Indian women. In this way, Sahgal and her memoir, as well as the regiment’s female warriors, subverted the traditional role of nurturing peacemaker in Indian society (Sahgal, 2013, p. 62). When Subhas Chandra Bose took over control of the INA, he made Sahgal the captain of the newly formed Rani of Jhansi Regiment, as well as the Minister of

Woman in power in 19th-century South Asia  33 Women’s Affairs of the provisional Azad Hind government; she came to be known in India by the sobriquet “Captain Lakshmi” (Forbes, 2013, pp. xvi–xvii). Sahgal had been strongly in favor of the INA’s formation: “I had always […] felt that the final blow for independence would have to come from armed struggle” (Sahgal, 2013, p. 43). At the same time, it was clear to her that “no mass movement can succeed if one entire section of the community were to remain outside it” (Sahgal, 2013, p. 138). In her memoir, the captain applauds Bose for realizing: How deeply [Indian women] felt the chains of slavery, which in their case [were] doubly strong as it was India’s domination by a foreign power that had retarded her progress and had kept alive the antiquated superstitions which bound down women far more than [they] did men. (Sahgal, 2013, p. 140) In this narration, a sharp awareness by both Bose and Sahgal of the deeply intertwined nature of discrimination by way of British colonial policies and of sexism comes through. The Rani Regiment’s legacy remains contradictory. The INA has been called “The Forgotten Army” in “India’s Untold War of Independence” (meaning the INA’s battles), but even within this still quite marginal history, the Rani Regiment has been marginalized and often remains erased from male author’s writings on the INA (Forbes, 2013, p. xiii; Viswanath, 2014, p. 60). On the one hand, at the time the regiment was not taken seriously by Japanese nor by British troops, as they did not consider it a threat. This was due to the relatively small size, but also surely to misogynistic attitudes toward female soldiers. On the other hand, the fact that the regiment’s soldiers never fought in battle – unlike the historical Rani – undermined their claims for equality in the eyes of male soldiers. In an interview conducted in 1989, more than 45 years after the Regiment’s formation, Sahgal commented on the positive psychological effects of recruitment on the soldiers: “You see, the main thing was, they were being made to feel like human beings. Before that, they were mainly being treated like cattle”. For her, in the aftermath of the war, the experience of participating in an armed force “made them very much more independent. They would voice their opinions and not cow down. It gave them a lot of self-confidence” (Sahgal, 2013, pp. 169 and 171). Then again, as Gita Viswanath points out, Sahgal glosses over more controversial issues in her memoir, chief among them the court martial held in independent India for the officers who had joined the INA. While their sentence was finally remitted, it did raise uncomfortable questions about what it meant for Indian soldiers of the British army to rebel (Viswanath, 2014, p. 63). It becomes clear, then, that analyzing the regiment in purely military terms is too simplistic. As Forbes argues, its larger goal was sociopolitical: Both Bose and Sahgal wanted to build a structure that would allow women to realize their full potential to become equal partners in a newly built India (Forbes, 2013, pp. xxviii– xxx). Then again, Bose held more strategic goals as well: The women’s regiment

34  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict might counter then-current accusations against the INA of being a puppet army indirectly formed by the Japanese. To quiet such claims, the regiment made up of highly motivated women would showcase the voluntary recruitments into the INA. Beyond such practical considerations, there is no doubt that the creation of the Rani Regiment was a novel and meaningful move that transcended mere representation: “The INA being a revolutionary liberation army used women as symbols of modernity that promised equality between the sexes. Bose’s gesture of inducting women in his INA, motives notwithstanding, was far ahead of its time” (Viswanath, 2014, p. 61). Despite the INA’s ultimate military defeat, the formation of the Rani Regiment nevertheless succeeded in mobilizing women and girls in an unprecedented way. They committed themselves to the liberation struggle independently, together with men and women of other castes and religious affiliations. This mobilization was bolstered by Bose’s charisma and his references to mythical elements with predominantly female attributes such as Kali and the Indian motherland, as well as to the Rani legend, which was once more effectively invoked, and in the process, reinterpreted (Viswanath, 2014, pp. 749–750 and 757). Clearly, the Rani’s hold over Indian imaginations, or rather that of her multiple, evolving legend, was ever strengthening during the mid-20th century. The ever-changing Rani: An outlook One explanation for the persistence of the Rani legend is certainly the multitude of different facets it has taken on over time. Whether for British or Indian groups, whether as a deceived widow or a goddess of revenge, a cunning seductress or an Indian Joan of Arc, a nationalist or feminist icon, the portrayal has been subject to constant change from 1858 until independence. This took place in relation to developments of the time, such as the rise of Indian nationalism, but also depended on the backgrounds of the respective authors. The very divergent representations in British narratives, some of which were highly prejudiced, also reveal a lack of colonial authority that was to be remedied by references to the past and, at the same time, a renewed political program manifest in policies of the British New Imperialism (Singh, 2014, p. 2). The independence movement’s appropriation of the legend, in turn, built on myths as well as regional folk art and even isolated works of colonial-era literature, thus appealing to a broader public. In addition, there was an interplay between Indian literature and political instrumentalization, so that the Rani as a role model finally passed from regional to national memory18 during the struggle for decolonization. During this protracted process, numerous discrepancies between the mythicized and the historical Rani evidently occurred, beginning with her martyrdom. This included stylizations, for instance, when her attachment to local traditions did not fit into the respective image, or the projection of an Indian patriotism and modern interpretations of the rebellion into the 19th century. These artifices served to adapt

Woman in power in 19th-century South Asia  35 her image to the present moment as an accessible legend, then as now. At the same time, her biography, with its combination of traditional and modern elements, has not lost any of its powerful impact on collective imaginations. For even after India’s independence, Lakshmibai’s influence continues through poems learned in schools, through comics, films, election posters, and novels – for example, as a cameo in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children – all transmitting their own ideas of their protagonist. Moreover, she remains visible in the public space via Rani statues erected especially in Bundelkhand, but also in many Indian regions – often portraying her as a warrior queen on horseback. Her influence is also tangible in a women’s organization in Nagpur, Rashtra Sevika Samiti (RSS), which continues to sing her praises (Lebra-Chapman, 1986, p. 133; Jerosch 2003, p. 271). This organization mainly focuses on the institution of the family, wherein motherhood is considered the most powerful role for shaping the development of the Hindu nation. The RSS “evokes … Hindu women from history as an aspirational ideal for its members to embody … For her fight against the British the [RSS] regards Lakshmibai Newalkar (1828–1858), queen of Jhansi … as an inspiring leader and the one [female leader] embodying exemplary netr̥ tva [leadership]” (Tyagi, 2020, p. 135). Evidently, despite Indians having succeeded in overthrowing British domination decades ago, the identity-forming effect of the Rani is still very much visible and relevant to the present day. One particularly meaningful example to the continued influence of the Rani is literature written by Dalits (Scheduled Castes, formerly known as “untouchables”). It generally combines myths with memories and stories from 1857 as well, but in contrast to more mainstream literature uses them to portray the rebellion as part of the Dalit liberation struggle. A central role is played by the “Viranganas”, mostly female heroes who are also incorporated into campaigns of political parties, especially the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The BSP aims to represent the groups at the lowest levels of the Hindu social system, with its main support coming from Dalits. The BSP’s central focus lies in its opposition to and strong criticism of the inequalities of the caste system. Lakshmibai’s legend forms the background of numerous Virangana stories, including that of Jhalkari Bai. The latter is said to have disguised herself as the Rani after the ruler’s escape and to have gone into battle in her place. Thus, the Dalit heroine is portrayed as more courageous than the Rani herself – after all a member of a higher caste who is said to have collaborated with the British. Due to the lack of sources, the voices of the historical Viranganas are difficult to reconstruct; their accounts are largely based on male authors and are therefore not necessarily representative of Dalit women. On the other hand, different images are conveyed here by recourse to Rani legends, which counteract dominant, negative stereotypes of Dalit women (Gupta, 2007). Concluding remarks Role models are needed in the world’s largest democracy, especially in view of issues such as women’s emancipation and large-scale violence against women

36  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict that are still all too pressing. The empowered female ruler serves as a precedent and figurehead in her historic, active roles as mother, strategist and fighter. Her example showcases the agency wielded by women both in battle and as inspiration for future generations’ activism. We have seen other possible role models: Subhadra Kumari Chauhan as an activist for satyagrahi and women’s rights, or Subhas Chandra Bose and Lakshmi Sahgal, who brought female fighters together in one regiment regardless of their religion or social status. For them, too, the Rani of Jhansi was a trailblazer. Notes 1 From the translation by J. L. Kanchan, quoted in Lebra-Chapman (1986). 2 A first exploration of the chapter’s topic from my side (posted in 2016) can be found online at the Cross Asia Repository of the Heidelberg University Library: https://fid4sa​ -repository​.ub​.uni​-heidelberg​.de​/3916/. 3 For the Rani in Indian visual art, see Lebra-Chapman (1986, pp. 127–128 and 137–141). For a brief historiographical overview, see Lebra-Chapman (1986, pp. 157–165). 4 The Islamic tradition of physical seclusion of women through veiling and via separate areas in buildings. The practice was taken up among Hindu elites by the 19th century. 5 See also Sen (2007, p. 1755): “T. A. Martin subsequently wrote a letter to the Rani’s son, Damodar Rao, saying that she ‘took no part whatever in the massacre of the European residents of Jhansi in June 1857. On the contrary, she supplied them with food for two days after they had gone into the fort’”. 6 From the National Archives of India, New Delhi, Foreign Consultations, April 1854; India Office Library, British Library, London (hereafter: IOL), F/4/2600, quoted in Lebra-Chapman (1986, pp. 37–38). 7 Forrest, G. W., Selections from the Letters, Despatches and other State Papers preserved in the Military Department of the Government of India 1857–58, Kolkata, 1902, vol. 4, 139 (quoted in Jerosch, 2003, p. 14). 8 In a poem by the Jhansi folk poet Bhaggu Dauju Shyam, the Rani is compared to Kali, but at the same time to the male trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva as well, see Rag (2010, p. 77). 9 Only two ballads about the Rani written shortly after the rebellion survived in parts, one written by the Datia court poet, Kalyan Singh Kudara, the other by the poet Madnesh; see Lebra-Chapman (1986, pp. 129–130). 10 An itinerant ascetic or wonder-worker, traditionally used for Sufi Muslim ascetics. The term has also been frequently applied to Hindu ascetics since the Mughal era. 11 For a detailed discussion of colonial British writings on 1857 more generally, see Erll (2007, pp. 176–216). 12 Singh sees the comparison with Joan of Arc, the European model of heroic and sacred femininity, rather as an attempt to downplay Lakshmibai’s anti-colonial attitude; see Singh (2014, p. 67). 13 A person who practices satyagraha, Gandhi’s strategy of non-violent resistance. 14 For the complete refrain in Hindi and English, see Rag (2010, p. 64, lines 5–17). 15 Autonomous or semiautonomous rulers who collected taxes as a form of revenue, based on land grants (jagir)] 16 For an English version, see also http://www​.poemhunter​.com​/poem​/jhansi​-ki​-rani​-english/. 17 Forbes, Introduction, in Sahgal (2013, pp. xvii–xviii). Due in part to his alliances with fascist regimes, Bose remains a controversial figure in India until today. For a classic study, see Gordon (1997).

Woman in power in 19th-century South Asia  37 18 Aleida Assmann (2008) here refers to the “construction of a national memory” through “such points of reference in history that strengthen the positive self-image and are in line with certain goals of action”.

References Assmann, Aleida (2008) ‘Kollektives Gedächtnis’ [Collective memory], bpb​.de​, 26 August. Available at: http://www​.bpb​.de​/themen​/6B59ZU (Accessed: 30 July 2022). Chauhan, Subhadra Kumari (2010) ‘Jhansi Ki Rani (English)’, Poem Hunter, 31 August. Available at: http://www​.poemhunter​.com​/poem​/jhansi​-ki​-rani​-english/ (Accessed: 30 July 2022). Deshpande, Prachi (2008) ‘The making of an Indian nationalist archive: Lakshmibai, Jhansi, and 1857’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 67(3), pp. 855–879. https://doi​.org​/10​.1017​/ s0021911808001186 Erll, Astrid (2007) Prämediation-Remediation: Repräsentationen des indischen Aufstands in imperialen und post-kolonialen Medienkulturen (von 1857 bis zur Gegenwart). [Premediationremediation: Representations of Indian insurgency in imperial and post-colonial media cultures (from 1857 to the present)]. Trier: WVT, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Forbes, Geraldine (2013) ‘Introduction’, in Sahgal, Lakshmi, A revolutionary life: Memoirs of a political activist. New Delhi: Kali for Women, pp. v-xxxi. Gillean (1887) The Rane. A legend of the Indian Mutiny 1857-1858. London: Gustavus Cohen & Co. Gordon, Leonard A. (1997) Brothers against the Raj: A biography of Indian nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose. Calcutta: Rupa & Co. Gupta, Charu (2007) ‘Dalit “viranganas” and reinvention of 1857’, Economic and Political Weekly, 42(19), pp. 1739–1746. Hills, Carol and Silverman, Daniel C. (1993) ‘Nationalism and feminism in late colonial India: The Rani of Jhansi regiment, 1943–1945’, Modern Asian Studies, 27(4), pp.741– 760. doi: https://doi​.org​/10​.1017​/s0026749x00001281 Jerosch, Rainer (2003) Die Rani von Jhansi, Rebellin wider Willen: Biographie der legendären indischen Freiheitskämpferin von 1857/1858 [The Rani of Jhansi, rebel against her will: Biography of the legendary Indian freedom fighter 1857/1858]. Frankfurt am Main; New York: Peter Lang. Lebra-Chapman, Joyce (1986) The Rani of Jhansi: A study in female heroism in India. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press. Nisbet, Hume (1893) The Queen’s desire: A romance of the Indian Mutiny. London: F. V. White & Co. North India: The Mutiny 1857–1859 (1912) [Hand-drawn Map], in Ward, Sir Adolphus William; Prothero, G.W. and Leathes, Sir Stanley Mordaunt (eds.) The Cambridge Modern History Atlas. Cambridge University Press: London, 1 January. Available at: https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Indian​_Rebellion​_of​_1857#​/media​/File​:Indian​_ Rebellion​_of​_1857​.jpg (Accessed: 3 August 2022). Pati, Biswamoy (2007) The 1857 rebellion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rag, Pankaj (2010) 1857, The oral tradition. New Delhi: Rupa & Co. Sahgal, Lakshmi (2013) A revolutionary life: Memoirs of a political activist. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Sen, Indrani (2007) ‘Inscribing the Rani of Jhansi in colonial “mutiny” fiction’, Economic and Political Weekly, 42(19), pp. 1754–1761.

38  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Singh, Harleen (2014) The Rani of Jhansi: Gender, history, and fable in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tyagi, Aastha (2020) ‘SahꞋdharmiṇī and more: Rāṣṭra Sevikā Samiti, the familial Hindu nationalist’, Interdisziplinäre Zeitschrift für Südasienforschung, 6, pp. 122–145. Varma, Vrindavanial (1992) Jhansi ki rani Lakshmibai [Lakshmibai, Rani of Jhansi]. Delhi: Diamond. Viswanath, Gita (2014) The ‘nation’ in war: A study of military literature and Hindi war cinema. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge School. White, Michael Alfred Edwin (1901) Lachmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi: The Jeanne d’Arc of India. New York: J.F. Taylor.

3

Fighting for peace, fighting for the country? The inclusion of women in Turkey’s national defense in the late 1930s Béatrice Hendrich

Introduction In 2017, the internet journal Derin Tarih (Deep history) launched an article titled “A message from Atatürk to the women on the occasion of the 8th of March: ‘no voting right without military service’”.1 Written under a scientific guise and employing a highly polemical tone, the article insinuates two things: First, the women of Turkey had to fight for their rights. These rights were not granted to them as a gift from Atatürk.2 Second, Atatürk and others had intended to force women into military service in exchange for granting them their civil rights. While the first argument has gained validity as the result of critical gender studies in Turkey and can be considered a much-needed revision of the earlier narrative, the second argument is rather makeshift and lacking precise foundation. It is, however, meaningful that in 2017 the matter of female soldiers was still, and again, being brought forward in the context of women’s citizenship in Turkey. Taking its cue from this, this chapter retraces the historical discussion on women’s place in the national security structure of Turkey in the second half of the 1930s. This is the time period between the World Congress of the International Alliance of Women held in Istanbul in 1935 and the beginning of the Second World War. The years covering the period between the inauguration of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and the internationally praised World Congress in 1935 saw the most rapid political and societal change in Turkey. Women’s legal equality and the opening of the educational system for girls and women had been among the milestones of this change. In the political sphere, the Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923 ended ten years of war in Turkey,3 and the great number of bilateral friendship agreements in the following years heralded a new period of peace. However, the collective experience of the National Struggle, interior conflicts as well as military conflicts in neighboring areas and around the Mediterranean Sea, culminating in the emergence of Fascist regimes, provided the Turkish government with a convincing justification to maintain a strong army, even at economically dire times. In 1927, conscription for all male citizens of Turkey was made compulsory. Conscientious objection has not been an option since. Considering the weight of female equality in the Turkish modernization discourse, one wonders how the state defined the place of women in the national DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-4

40  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict defense structure. In the period under consideration in this chapter, one sees a prevailing tendency to include women in the structure but not as regular soldiers in the armed forces. Military preparation courses and public home defense lessons for girls and women, as well as the popularization of scouting, skydiving, and flying were presented as an equally honorable way of defending the country. While stories about exceptional female warriors in Ottoman and Turkish history have been very popular from late Ottoman times until today,4 there was no intention to convert the adoration for exceptional women into concrete law. There is no – and there has never been – obligatory military service for women. The right to pursue a military career was allowed for only a few women in 1955; between 1992 and 2001 women were allowed to serve as combatants (Kuloglu, 2005, p. 557).5 In 2018, merely 1.2% of all armed military personnel were female – the smallest percentage in all NATO member countries (NATO, 2018, p. 281). In 2022, the first female general was appointed.6 In view of this almost insignificant number of female military personnel, one might assume that the related discourse may not be of any political or social relevance. The chapter argues that the discourse’s significance lies precisely in this tension between the sheer numbers and its discursive potential and versatility. As a key element of feminist (historical) research, the chapter endeavors to make women’s voices heard, by “studying their own accounts and analyzing their own construction of their lives and life histories”, as Ayse Durakbasa and Aynur Ilyasoglu (2001, p. 195) wrote in their study on Turkey’s first generation of “modern women”. However, it is not possible to realize this task to a fully satisfying degree due to the difficulties of retrieving relevant accounts from the archives. Political pressure and censorship in the late 1930s, for instance, hampered the production of independent or critical publications. Nevertheless, their stories can still be salvaged, at least partially, by means of collecting and comparing diverse texts as well as by a critical reading informed by “a feminist narrative approach to security” (Wibben and Metha, 2018). Before delving into the historical perspective, it is necessary to discuss the place of militarism and the relation between gender and militarism in the Turkish state and society. Feminism, nationalism and militarism in Turkey It was a most significant step in security studies when the gender perspective was added to the analysis of war and nationalism in the late 1980s (Enloe, 1988; Yuval-Davis, 1997; Blom, Hagemann and Hall, 2000; Goldstein, 2001; Harders and Roß, 2002). Once this perspective was presented to the academic community, it was no longer possible to carry out serious research without taking into account the gendered power relations as well as gendered imaginations in the field of war, terrorism and violence. Ayşe Gül Altınay (2000, 2004) was the first to embark upon research on Turkish militarism and Turkish military history through the lens of gender. Since then and together with the huge increase in feminist and gender studies in and on Turkey, a significant number of relevant

Fighting for peace, fighting for country?  41 publications has come out (Metinsoy, 2017; Hendrich, 2019; Ahmed and Aksoy, 2020; Çağlayan, 2020). However, the discourse on women’s soldiering throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, women’s inclusion in the national security structure, and their demand for the general – not exceptional – right to soldier, to have a military career, have not yet received the academic attention they deserve. The discourse on women’s soldiering in the widest sense, be it women’s inclusion in the security structure of the state or their participation in irregular troops as combatants, is without a doubt directly related to the modernization discourse that had already been at the center of debates for Ottoman policy makers and intellectuals in the 19th century (Hanioğlu, 2008, p. 73). The revision of women’s status and tasks inside family and society was considered a key element of modernization, as was militarism (Provence, 2017, p. 13). Because of this shared background, Ottoman and Turkish feminism is closely linked with nationalism and militarism from its onset. In the early decades of the Turkish Republic, “the main legitimizing discourse for the woman question in Turkey has been that of Turkish nationalism” (Kandiyoti, 1989, p. 139). The emergence of a feminism as part of the civil society centered on women’s own needs and perspectives would have to wait many decades. During the 1920s and 1930s, the place of the new Turkish woman was continually discussed in relation to women’s share in winning the war of independence and their future duties in a militarized society and state. In this public discourse, women’s duties were not limited to cooking, caring and teaching – at home as well as in the new state institutions – but they included active participation in national defense. Only a small number of people would object to this idea in its entirety. The remaining question was to what extent and by which specific activities would women support national security. Was it enough to give birth to future soldiers, to raise and to feed them, and in the case of war to support the soldiers behind the lines by all kinds of war-relevant activities? Or did the new political equality mean to include female conscription? By their recently audible voices, women themselves underlined both the necessity of national defense and the importance of women’s participation in it. Some women, however, discussed women’s military service not in terms of duty but as a right. To them, gender equality meant having the right to serve the country in every capacity, and this could only be achieved by opening the military ranks to women. In a nutshell, the public discourse toward peace, (robust) peace building and women’s military service did not follow a clear path during the early years of the Turkish Republic. While some argued that modern warfare, including the use of combat planes, was no longer in need of sheer muscle power and would render the (voluntarily) inclusion of women in the national forces an appropriate decision (M. Şevki, 1927), others stressed women’s role as mothers of soldiers. An advertising slogan of the Republican People’s Party underlined that the duration of mandatory military service for boys (“your babies”) had been shortened from 3 years to 18 months and that “Peace means woman. The peace-loving RPP [Republican People’s Party] is your party” (Hanımlar! Belediye intihabına iştirak ediniz, 1930).

42  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Suffrage and military service In Turkey, women gained passive and active suffrage much earlier than in many other states, first in 1930 on the municipal, and later in 1934 on the national level. February 1935 marked the first time female parliamentarians entered the Great National Parliament of Turkey. The literature indicates that this political success was rather an outcome of the government’s strategic roadmap: To symbolically stress the cultural difference from the Ottoman mentality, to prove an increasing democratization toward the West and “to dissociate his (Atatürk’s) single party regime from the European dictatorships of the time” (Kandiyoti, 1987, p. 321; Özkan-Kerestecioglu, 2001, p. 26). The public debate, which took place concurrently at the time the bill on women’s suffrage was passed, connected the citizenship right of voting with the citizenship duty of military service right away.7 In December 1934, when the bill passed, women’s military service made headlines on newspapers as follows: “After the women were given the right to elect and be elected deputies, a new trend emerged, especially among the deputies. According to this trend, women should also be soldiers” (Kadınların da asker olmaları isteniyor, 1934). In another article from the same period, female teachers and students at a Girls’ Institute shared their impressions on suffrage and military service for women. Their fashion teacher mused: “To become a parliamentarian! No. But I would like to become a soldier … please note: Not a soldier behind the front lines but a combatant” (Kadınlarımızın meb’usluğu, 1934). A student similarly voiced her wish to be part of the army as follows: Since I was a child, I had no girlfriends. When I was a child, I was like a soldier. I always run, rode and jumped … I don’t think that the (proud) Turkish army will need the women. However, the Turkish woman who has proved her shrewdness among the Turkish warriors in Turkish history, can become conscripted voluntarily, not in order to help the Turkish army but to carry out her duty. Another female student voiced her excitement over the possibility of serving her country as a soldier: I’m a child of a military family. Whenever a military company marches down the road, my heart is full of excitement. Currently, I’m a scout. Maybe my lucky fate will give me the present of becoming a soldier. (Kadınlarımızın meb’usluğu, 1934) The then president of the Turkish Women’s Union (Türk Kadınlar Birliği),8 Latife Bekir, declared her happiness for a law that would “send women to military service” (Türk Kadını heyecan içinde, 1934). The matter of peace and the World Congress The 1930s were the time of “High Kemalism” (Çağaptay, 2002), the exclusive rule of the Republican People’s Party (RPP; Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), and of the assertive promotion of women by the state to outstanding positions. The

Fighting for peace, fighting for country?  43 participation of women in international events such as the Miss Universe Contest in 1932, or the Berlin Olympiads of 1936 representing modern Turkey was considered a national task. By the same token, international scientists and public intellectuals were invited to major congresses held in Turkey. The World Congress of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship (IAW) in 1935, organized by the Turkish Women’s Union, symbolizes both the state-controlled promotion and the significance of war and peace in the public discourse. The state supported the idea of holding the congress in Istanbul because it helped enforce the international image of the new republic as a place of progress and modernity (Özkan-Kerestecioglu, 2001, p. 26). The strong tradition of support of peace and disarmament in the international feminist movement (Stöckmann, 2018) was not supported unanimously in Istanbul. It was not only the male politicians in Turkey who had an issue with disarmament, but also feminists from different countries, including Turkey. The dividing line between those women who argued in favor of military self-defense, including women at support duties or as combatants, and those who propagated an anti-militarist approach and disarmament, ran, roughly speaking, between women from the West, including the colonial powers, and women from countries under pressure by the great powers, from Estonia as well as from Egypt and India (Libal, 2008, pp. 39–40). Turkish women speaking up for disarmament were a minority (Şükufe Nihal, 1935). Nezihe Muhiddin, founder of the Turkish Women’s Union, argued that disarmament is a naïve idea “since war is an unavoidable human disaster,” and maintained that “we will invite the world’s women to defend whichever nation is attacked unjustly” (Suat Derviş, 1935). One can presume that most feminists in Turkey supported the state’s ideology of armed peace.9 Yet, despite women’s support of official politics, the Turkish Women’s Union “self-dissolved” in May 1935, right after the World Congress. It did so at the behest of the government. As documents show, this did not come as a surprise (Ünal, 2016, p. 555).10 The official reading was that the disbanding had been the organization’s own decision because the women of Turkey had reached total equality, the union had fulfilled its tasks and so there was no longer a need for an independent feminist organization in Turkey (Özkan-Kerestecioglu, 2001, pp. 28–29). The literature mainly discusses three intermingling reasons for the forced dissolution: the political climate in Turkey of the later 1930s, the increasing pressure on any organization or network outside of and acting independently from the ruling RPP, and the “matter of peace”. Given the international political situation and Turkey’s security politics, a call for disarmament and a non-militarist foreign policy was not acceptable for the government (Toprak, 2015; Ünal 2016; Eralp, 2021). The Kemalist state’s peace was an armed one, careful to suppress any upheaval at home and to anticipate any military danger abroad, while the IWA’s peace was one of (moral) disarmament, peace education and democracy. Preparation for military service classes In the middle of the 1930s, there existed a variety of competing voices and perspectives on how to include women in the national security design. On 4 November 1936, several Turkish newspapers had the military service for women on their title

44  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict pages, though with differing statements, and in the following days, they criticized one another for providing wrong information. While some newspapers insinuated that women would be outright treated like men in a new military service law (Haber), others shifted their focus to the inclusion of girls’ military training in the school curriculum (Yeni Asır), whereas the ruling RPP’s mouthpiece Cumhuriyet provided only vague information on the topic but offered several articles at once glorifying Atatürk’s progressive perspective on soldiering women in a speech by him in 1931. The article titled “In the case of mobilization, our women will do military service” in Halkın Sesi mentioned the tasks women would be asked to do in such a case, such as health service, back office or intelligence. Preparation would start at high school including summer camps, similar to the boys’ camps. Beyond that, “those who do not attend school will be taught at separate courses” (Seferberlikte, 1936). The front page of the Turkish newspaper Son Posta on 11 November 1936 contained articles on a Fascist gang in Russia, the Civil War in Spain, the continuous dispute on the district of Alexandrette,11 new regulations on civil servants’ payment and “Women’s Military Service” (Kadınların Askerliği). These seemingly separate stories create a coherent narrative not only due to their reference to conflict but also due to the way they are presented. Three of the four photographs on the front page show young women: female members of the Spanish resistance with shaved heads and in a poor condition after being captured by the Fascists on one picture. On the other two, Turkish young women and men, proudly parading the streets with rifles on their shoulders and learning how to handle the rifle.12 A closer look at the said headline on women’s military service shows that Son Posta combined two topics in one narrative: the introduction of military lessons for schoolgirls, and the inclusion of women in the national military system. While the first topic was on the verge of being implemented at the time when the article was published, the second was rather like a revenant: never completely taken off the political agenda and never resolved. Military education for boys at state schools had a certain tradition in Turkey, beginning with the late Ottoman Empire (Gündüz, 2018, pp. 290–291). The lesson’s name and focus, and the number of hours taught per week changed from time to time, but it was an undisputed part of the school curriculum in the 1930s. Füsun Üstel characterizes the 1930s as a time when “the expansion of the militarist understanding of citizenship was intended to accelerate via the school system” (2016, p. 136). Primary sources related to the introduction and implementation of girls’ military preparation classes in 1936–1937 are scarce. Based on research literature (Gümüşel, 2015, pp. 195–207; Aycan et al., 2018; Gündüz, 2018; Gezer, 2020) and newspaper clippings, the general picture shows that in 1936, military education in girls’ classes or schools was an issue of public interest, and in 1937, Preparation for Military Service Classes for girls became mandatory and relevant for passing the class. The girls should be trained not only in support duties or at the home front, but also in the use of machine guns (Gündüz, 2018, p. 296). Photographs (Aycan et al., 2018, p. 230) and oral memories prove that the girls not only learned to march and greet like soldiers but to handle the weapons inside the school compound, albeit

Fighting for peace, fighting for country?  45 not without occasional accidents (Kazankaya, 2020, pp. 50–51). Protection against poisonous gas attacks was also part of the curriculum, included in chemistry lessons (Milli Seferberlik Direktörlüğü, 1939). Textbooks for girls’ classes differ in some respects from those of the boys: less technical or topographic details and more stress on care and health work (Gümüşel, 2015, pp. 206–215). The introduction of the classes was justified by the reasoning that this would be “a major move for the nationalist and revolutionary Turkish girls who are destined to take a position side by side with the men in the defense of the country” (Kızlarımızın Askerliği, 1937). The newspapers gave the impression that it was the girls’ own desire to join the preparatory training and not to be treated differently from their male classmates: The female students at this school (a high school in Istanbul) did not want to be separated from their boyfriends in the military service class and told the school administration that they would follow the class together with them. (Genç Türk kızları askerliğe başladılar, 1936) The production of the ultimate soldier-Turk was ensured through the whole education system, formal or otherwise. Law 3225 from June 1937 is an impressive proof of this approach since it enlarged the Ministry of Culture (Kültür Bakanlığı)13 by a Mobilization Directory (Seferberlik Direktörlüğü) that oversaw taking “precautions for protection from all air and gas attacks, the development of the Preparation of Military Service course and camps, and the coordination of military concerns, teachers, and students” (Gündüz, 2018, p. 296). The Directory of Physical Education and Scouting (Beden Eğitimi ve İzcilik Direktörlüğü) was also part of the Ministry of Culture. According to Law 3225, the directory controlled both physical education and scouting both within and without the formal school system. Scouting and public training for poison gas attacks (“gas conferences”) beyond the school curriculum were available, if not even mandatory, for girls and women. To this paramilitarist structure, a state organization for gliding and skydiving called the Turkish Bird (Türkkuşu) was amended in 1935. The Turkish Bird had female members since its foundation. The modern female soldier In 1936 and 1937, military service of women, in support and care duties and even as combatants, was more intensely discussed than ever before. Some arguments of the earlier years were still in circulation: In exceptional times, in times of need, women must support the combatants in different roles, as fearless and sacrificial backups and replacements.14 These were expanded by new representations and arguments, all in line with the zeitgeist of the 1930s in Turkey. Almost 15 years after the war, the image of the brave Anatolian woman carrying ammunition during the National Struggle had become the historical basis for expectations toward the young republican urban woman. Republican girls were expected to attend Turkish state schools where they would learn everything needed in modern life: from arithmetic to hygienic housekeeping, from breeding doves for the national intelligence

46  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict

Figure 3.1  A cartoon, Bay Amcaya göre (According to Mr. Uncle). According to Mr. Uncle: - Look here. Women’s military service has finally become more than a rumor. - Once the law has past the parliament, this step will be taken. - When the privates see next to them Officer Zehra, they will be so astonished! - But I ask myself one thing: while the law is being prepared, will they have in mind the urban woman or the villager? - Mr. Uncle [answers]: Obviously the urban woman since during the War of Independence, the woman from the village has already shown her commitment (1936).

service (Gümüşel, 2015, p. 207) to how to use a machine gun. They also needed to discern and “acquire” their Anatolian role models’ character, the “innate” sense of commitment and selfless bravery. This new narrative is best illustrated by the cartoon Bay Amca (Mr. Uncle) (Figure 3.1). The new female soldier was also discussed in scientific terms: Is the female body suitable for heavy physical tasks? The question was directed at doctors, and they brought forward contradictory arguments: Some said women were physically and mentally underdeveloped, always in need of a rest, unable to control subordinates, and, because of their delicate and peaceful quality, it would be completely against nature to employ them as soldiers (Kadınların askerliğine tıbbi mani yoktur, 1936). Others alluded to Russian and Spanish female warriors and their military access (Kadınların askerliği, 1936; Kadınların askerliğine tıbbi mani yoktur, 1936). An army physician and gynecologist eventually had an evolutionary approach. While women were for the time being physically and mentally unable to fight at the front but fit enough for other military tasks, he argued, military training in general would strengthen women’s health and endurance, so one day they might even become combatants. But what was more significant in the gynecologist’s view was the belief in progress and a better future following it: “Because of the training and education our girls and women will go through, because of our [well trained] women, the whole generation will be sturdier and more beautiful” (Kadınların askerliğine tıbbi mani yoktur, 1936). M. Şevki (Mehmet Şevki Yazman, 1896–1974), a public intellectual, parliamentarian and trained soldier, emphasized the sheer necessity of women’s service. He repeated some of his earlier arguments such as the positive example of female soldiers inside the Red Army, the demographic need for women joining the military structure, and the “totality” of the next war.15 The question was no longer if, but how to soldier. What was more, the interest in natural sciences in the 1930s allowed M. Şevki, like other authors, to explicitly tackle the issue of menstruation: “I’m not an expert in these affairs, but I know that during the War of Independence the

Fighting for peace, fighting for country?  47 [ammunition] carrying village women in my division did not refrain from their service in times of fight even during their menstruation” (M. Şevki, 1936). By saying so, he set himself apart from the then internationally held conviction that menstruation was a disease and thus evidence of women’s physical and psychological weakness.16 Despite the official narrative that Turkish women were fully emancipated since they had gained suffrage in 1934, women’s own voice did not really come through. The newspapers quoted happy girls looking forward to learning shooting or skydiving. The National Parliament, which could have been a stage for the female delegates, had turned into a rubber stamp for party-controlled decisions. One exception is Suat Derviş’s (1936) article titled “To be a soldier, one needs bravery”. In the guise of a chat with a small witty boy, Suat Derviş sketches the dominant political air of the time – other countries may once again unite and launch a war against Turkey – and mentions in passing the prevailing “arguments” against women’s military service: Their hair is too long and their heels too high. While the author seems to be amused by these statements coming from the mouth of a small boy, the final statement reads like a riddle: “To be a soldier, one needs the brave heart of a man”, says the boy, and the author answers: “You are right, I don’t have that heart. No woman can possibly have that heart”. The ambiguity of the statement implies two possible interpretations: Either women are not brave, or that men and women are entirely different. The latter sounds more like Suat Derviş and includes a very subtle critique of militarism. However, the defensive tone of an otherwise self-confident and popular author demonstrates how politically sensitive a topic women’s military service must have been in those years.17 The Turkish Bird Aviation became a major matter of prestige for all states of the Global North in the beginning of the 20th century. The first military aircrafts were in use during the Ottoman–Italian War in 1911. The establishment of a national aircraft industry, military air forces and the training of pilots were among the most eminent goals of Turkish politics since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. “The ephemeral wonder of planes in the air” (Ferguson, 2018, p. 2) fitted the nationalists’ intention of demonstrating the nation’s greatness. Military aviation became a cornerstone of the overall security structure. While the literature outlines the gendered, masculine nature of “airmindedness” (Ferguson, 2018, p. 2), the propagandistic value of women pilots and particularly “first women pilots” was also immense (Gils, 2011). Women and aviation were closely linked both in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, where the belated societal and technical modernization went hand in hand with the emergence of feminism. With the state-sponsored feminism of the republic and its oscillating gender images under the guidance of “the father” Atatürk, the photographs of young women in uniform, caressing their aircrafts or bombs (to be dropped from the fighter) get an almost erotic undertone.18 The skydiving and gliding organization Turkish Bird (Türkkuşu) was an important component of aviation politics. When young skydivers – girls and boys – jumped out of planes at official festivities, it proved progress, emancipation and bravery in the eyes of the spectators (Türk kuşu gençlerin dünkü muvaffakıyetleri, 1936).

48  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict On Republic Day (Cumhuriyet Bayramı) of 1936, October 29, in the presence of Atatürk, an air show was organized in Ankara, including female skydivers (Türk kuşu gençlerin dünkü muvaffakıyetleri, 1936). The same day, Turkey had to mourn its “first female aviation martyr”,19 Eribe Hürkuş, who died “during a training jump … because of excitement”, according to the newspapers. The statements following her death are evidence of how Kemalist state feminism is related to militarized sacrifice and technical advancement. The young women of the Turkish Bird were expected to follow the historical example of women fighting during the National Struggle. At the same time, they symbolized a shift of the fight from the Anatolian soil to the air space above.20 At Eribe’s burial, the head of the Turkish Aviation Organization gave a speech that depicted her as an appreciated daughter of the republic: You steadfast children of the Turkish Bird, you know how much I love you, like a father does, so you can guess how much pain I feel because of Eribe’s death. What comforts us, is that we have seen once again the bravery of a Turkish woman who fights in every field side by side with the Turkish man, who is not afraid to shed blood if necessary. […] You see that [the Turkish woman] is active not only on land and sea, but also in the air, relentlessly, fearless, and despising death, so that they won’t fall behind their mothers who fought at the borders of the Sakarya [river]. […] Happy for your friend that she gave her life at this young age for our cause of aviation (hava davamız), instead of dying in an average traffic accident. (İlk hava şehidi Türk kadını, 1936) The text appeared in several other newspapers, complemented by an additional statement from the attorney general. According to the newspapers, the attorney general had stated during Eribe’s funeral that Turkey would see very soon men and women carrying out all military tasks side by side. The newspapers purposefully added to this news pictures of foreign female soldiers such as of the Red Army (Türk kadınları asker oluyor, 1936) or of a female Chinese honorary colonel (Kadın bir diplomat, 1936). The general’s statement obviously fueled the discussion on women’s military service, which evolved throughout winter 1936–1937. In the following months, newspapers published interviews with excited girls who wished to become professional skydivers or soldiers.21 In hindsight, the propaganda on girls’ military education, scouting, skydiving and flying reads like a preparation for the military destruction of the Dersim region in 1937–1938. The political propaganda in support of the so-called Dersim Harekatı was, to a hitherto unknown degree, dominated by a gendered discourse. Sabiha Gökçen and the Dersim Harekatı The paramilitary organization the Turkish Bird and the military operation of 1937– 1938 at the Dersim region in Eastern Anatolia are linked to each other in the person of Sabiha Gökçen, who was one of the adopted daughters of Atatürk, and a

Fighting for peace, fighting for country?  49 teacher and exemplary figure for the girls at the Turkish Bird. In 1937, she joined the so-called Dersim Maneuver (Dersim Harekatı) as a fighter pilot. Her outstanding biography has been more recently outlined by Ayşe Gül Altınay and others (Altınay, 2004, 2009; Hür, 2013). Altınay (2009) has conceptualized Sabiha Gökçen as the privileged “proud warrior”, one of the three societally accepted roles for women of those years. The other roles of that triad, the soldier-wife and the sacrificing mother, “play an important role in keeping the warrior position as an exception” (Altınay, 2009, p. 92). The discursive construction of this proud – woman – warrior should be considered in relation to its counterdiscourse: The depiction of the Dersim region and its inhabitants as underdeveloped bandits and heathens whose exotic and loose women are in need of rescue by the state. The reconstruction of this discourse is based on the newspaper articles of that time and to a much smaller extent, on Sabiha Gökçen’s autobiography, written by Oktay Verel, which was published as late as 1982 (Gökçen, 1994).22 The war on Dersim evolved into two campaigns during 1937 and 1938. The population of the region was and is until today of Alevi faith and Kurdish ethnicity. This endogamous minority has been living in this remote mountainous region since Ottoman times, establishing their own cultural and social rules. They were economically poor due to the harsh living conditions but autonomous in most aspects of daily life and religious practice. While most Alevis had hailed the advance of the republic replacing the Sunni-Ottoman rule, some Alevis of the Dersim region saw no need to surrender to the new power which was, in terms of faith and language, as alien as the former one, and even more intrusive with its armed forces and all-encompassing Turkification campaigns (Van Bruinessen, 1994; Törne, 2017). The “stubborn” resistance of “some bandits” and their unwillingness to accept neither the power nor the promise of civilizational progress, rendered this conflict an ideological one with fundamental importance for the future of the Turkish state. In the eyes of the Kemalists, Dersim was a “canker”, a “zone of illness that needed surgery” (Kieser, 2011, pp. 4 and 11). While the campaign as such started in March 1937, the council of ministers decided for a more radical approach in May 1937: Kill all insurgents. This included an attack by the air force.23 At the time, Sabiha Gökçen was on the verge of completing her military aviation training. When she heard about the campaign, she wanted to join it despite her male comrades’ and superiors’ initial rejection of this idea (Gökçen, 1994, pp. 115–117). On the actual days of the air attack, newspapers were suspiciously silent on any issue regarding Dersim and its insurgents even though the unrest had been covered before. Toward the end of the month, however, Sabiha Gökçen made headlines, being awarded with a medal “because of her success” (İlk Kadın tayyarecimiz, 1937), although it was not specified to what this success referred. It becomes clear, however, that this success included both her efforts in the Turkish Bird and her participation in a recent military campaign. During the award ceremony, the pilot herself expressed her gratitude for the opportunity to join the military expedition and “to gather some precious experience” (İlk Kadın tayyarecimiz, 1937). The related

50  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict news coverage of the following days and weeks was dominated by two intermingling topics. On the one hand, Sabiha Gökçen was depicted as a role model, the proud female warrior setting an example for all Turks and as proof of Turkey’s success in modernization. On the other hand, parallel to the propagation of that image, with the lift of the military secrecy, Dersim, its people and the military campaign returned to the public agenda, becoming even more present than ever before. Saime Sâdi, a nationalist female journalist,24 wrote about Gökçen in June 1937 as follows: During the latest Dersim Maneuver, as a soldier and aviator in the army, as a Turkish woman, she flew like an eagle over the highest mountains of Dersim. She unleashed her bomb the same way her brother [does] on the cliffs, where malice sprouts. She descended with lightning speed from dizzying heights, spewing fire at them from the barrel of her machine gun. Defying death lurking among the dreadful, jagged cliffs, she sought the bandits’ hideouts one by one, saw, identified, shot, and reported. […] This is not like going to the beaches by car. […] This is outright joining a war, carrying out a duty which puffs up the Turkish woman’s chest with pride. […] Woman and man are one. Neither more nor less. The homeland belongs to all of us, the regime and the republic to all of us. So, we will protect it at the risk of such deaths. (Saime Sâdi, 1937) This newspaper campaign culminated in an article where the subjection of one of the alleged bandits, Seyit Rıza,25 by the hand of a Turkish woman, was explicitly formulated. Under the heading “Sabiha Gökçen met Seyit Rıza yesterday. The old bandit greets powerlessly the heroic Turkish girl who had bombed [him] during the maneuver” the article continues: When Sabiha Gökçen arrived here (in Elaziz) she wanted to see Seyit Rıza. … When he saw the pilots, he put his hand to his head and straightened his beard. He was told “this is Atatürk’s daughter who had thrown the first bomb at you.” (Sabiha Gökçen dün Seyit Rıza ile görüştü, 1937) Sabiha Gökçen herself did neither at that time nor later in her autobiography question her duty or dwell on details. When a journalist asked about her feeling while throwing bombs at living people: The young Turkish girl answered without hesitation: “The target of the bomb was not human in my eyes, but a kind of a moving target. Since my superiors had considered it a patriotic duty to throw a bomb, I had no other thought than … to do it well.” (Yalman, 1937)

Fighting for peace, fighting for country?  51 The narrative surrounding her person and her “success” at Dersim was a significant part of the securitization policy of the state. Together with the many other newspaper articles of the time on the national defense activities and the looming threat of a new world war, the daily news on her activities was meant to motivate and encourage other young women to participate in national defense activities. More important, however, she was the ideal figure for pointing at the difference between the modern and civilized, secular but Sunni Turks, and the underdeveloped, wild Kurdish-Alevi tribes. The number of articles on strange or exotic traditions of Dersim and the happy prospect of Tunceli26 at the hand of the new Turkish leadership exploded in the summer of 1937. Many of these articles mused on Dersim women and their cultural particularities: “In Dersim, woman’s position is rather strange. Sometimes, she dominates the man absolutely, many times she is the man’s absolute slave” (Dersimde kadınlar nasıl kaçırılır, 1937). Also, there is “no regular wedding” – no formal wedding at a state office – and sexual relations outside of wedlock happen on a regular basis. In those cases, the religious specialist, the dede, runs a religious ceremony to absolve the loose woman from her sin (Dersimde kadınlar nasıl kaçırılır, 1937). Some women handle the gun better than any man in the region (Sergerde Ali Şir, 1937).27 However, what is praiseworthy for Turkish heroines, is reprobate for wives of Kurdish bandits. Seyit Rıza’s “young and beautiful wife” is reported to have used her female attraction in order to prevent “the 70 years old head of the bandits” from surrendering to the state by wearing “a three-skirted caftan, a Tripoli belt on the waist, a silver and silk tasseled fez on the head, and a very artistic outfit with silk embroidered pockets” (Tunceli mıntakasında, 1937). The story of Sabiha Gökçen and her involvement in Dersim reveal two main characteristics of the period: the absolute primacy of militarized thinking over social or moral consideration, and the confusion about women’s societal role. This confusion was not restricted to the judgment of the behavior of Dersim’s women; it could also be traced in the relation between fathers and daughters, the state and its women, Atatürk and Sabiha Gökçen. Her mythicized readiness to die for the country shows the conflation of gender images: While to die for the country is often qualified as a male duty, women have to care for the survival of the nation (Ase and Wendt, 2019), Sabiha Gökçen was expected to sacrifice her life in order to safeguard the country as well as the sexual honor of her own and the national body. It is important to note that even in the heydays of Kemalism, the inclusion of women in the security structure, particularly their military training and career in the professional cadres, was not supported by everyone in the ruling circle. Even Sabiha Gökçen, who was the posterchild of female fighters within the army, was not allowed to have a military career after Dersim. She remembers how she demanded to continue her military career but was denied her right, which meant that the right of all women was also denied. Atatürk had made Marshal Fevzi Çakmak decide on this issue and the marshal told the young woman: “I do not at all agree that our girls and women should become soldiers. For a nation to exist, its women need to live” (Gökçen, 1994, p. 228).

52  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Conclusion The chapter focused on the discourse on women’s soldiering in Turkey during the second half of the 1930s. It covered the institutionalization of military service for women and the diverse voices regarding the embedding of women in the national security structure. It was shown that in the 1930s the state worked vigorously to change the way women participated in public life. This included giving women the right to vote and stand for election, organizing the World Conference of Women, and teaching girls and women war-related skills such as civil defense, skydiving and the use of simple weapons. In 1936–1937, some voices advocated military service for women parallel to that for men. Newspaper articles quoted schoolgirls who looked forward to military preparatory lessons in schools and a future as soldiers or paratroopers. The expectation that the next war would be a “total” one (Sencer, 2017, p. 42) made it seem all the more urgent to include women in the security structure. With Sabiha Gökçen’s participation in the operation in the Dersim region and the media treatment of Gökçen’s national sense of duty and capability, it seemed only a matter of time before women would also be granted that civic right: joining the armed forces. It became apparent, however, that influential voices in the military and political spheres saw women’s national role primarily in procreation and care work. The proud warrior women of wars past and present remained exceptional figures who buttressed the conservative understanding of gender roles, as Altınay has shown (2009). While the exceptional female warriors were needed because of their symbolic value, average women were incorporated into the security structure so that they would take on concrete tasks as they had done during the independence war. The Turkish mobilization law of August 1944 included women and men between the ages of 16 and 60 in the defense of the country (Dalaman, 2022, p. 164), and the military lessons for girls remained part of the curriculum. After the Second World War (in which Turkey did not actively join), the political scene started to change again, toward a strong alliance with the US and an equally strong anti-communism, including a period of social revisionism and an explicit emphasis on the mother role (Emen-Gökatalay, 2021). Rikke Schubart argues regarding the superheroines of action movies that a “woman with a gun does not signify a man with a phallus. She is always daughter, mother or amazon, always a fantasy, always using a fetich offered by him. And she is always at his command, at his feet and at his service” (1998, p. 213). This description of the fictional heroines coincides to an astonishing degree with the situation of Turkey’s heroic female fighters. The women who had supported the National Struggle and the establishment of the new nation-state were neither superheroines nor average women. They had not dismissed the idea of care work as basically a female duty, but they had a clear vision that equality meant equal citizenship and equal citizenship meant equal rights and duties, including suffrage and military service. Additionally, the armed forces were a highly prestigious institution and everything “military” was held in great esteem. These women expected their share in glory and power, and

Fighting for peace, fighting for country?  53 they believed in the need to defend the new country. Therefore, in the case of the early Turkish Republic, the remaining question is not why the women wanted to join the national forces but why the men so vigorously kept them outside the barracks. Notes 1 “Atatürk’ten kadınlara 8 Mart mesajı: ‘Askerlik yapmayana oy da yok!’” Derin Tarih is a product of the Albayrak Holding and Media Group, which are said to have close ties with the JDP (Justice and Development Party, AKP). 2 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) was the founding father of Turkey. He promoted female emancipation as a significant element of the national modernization process. 3 Balkan Wars (1912–1913), First World War, the National Struggle (Milli Mücadele, 1919–1922). 4 There is an ample production of (graphic) novels and children’s books such as Turgut (2018), published by Kahramanlar Org, a publisher dedicated to heroic Turkish war stories. 5 Numerous alternations to the law have been put in place since then, which requires a separate discussion of its own in further articles. 6 According to a NATO report of 2019, the percentage of armed full-time women in the Armed Forces of Turkey has dwindled to 0.3%; certain duties and branches are not open to women (NATO 2019, p. 509). 7 The feminists of Turkey had campaigned for women’s suffrage since the foundation of the republic in 1923. Since then, women’s military service has been discussed as a corollary of suffrage. See for, example, Altınay, (2004, p. 33). 8 The Turkish Women’s Union was established in 1923 under the lead of Nezihe Muhiddin. See Çakır (2006); Zihnioğlu (2003). 9 This inherited burden of “armed peace” for the sake of the country’s survival can still be found on the shoulders of current women’s groups (Coşar, 2010, p. 162–163). 10 In a letter exchange between Rosa Manus and a board member of the union, Necile Tevfik, Rosa Manus concluded: “We, the board members of the Alliance, had the hope that after the successful congress it would be possible to keep your organization alive” (Manus, 1935). 11 The issue of the district of Alexandrette, the Turkish-Syrian border region including Iskenderun and Antakya, was only settled in 1938 with the inclusion of the region in the territory of the Turkish Republic. In the years before, political and violent regional and international pressure had not led to an agreement. Most likely, the increasing military threat by the Fascist states in Europe made Great Britain and France accept the final decision in the favor of Turkey. See further Zürcher (2021, pp. 202–203). 12 This thematic focus on woman and war, as well as the combination of the two on a front page of a Turkish newspaper is neither a mere coincidence nor a new phenomenon. Newspaper issues published during the weeks of the International Women’s Congress in 1935 display the same choice of headlines. This phenomenon is without any doubt worth a much deeper media theoretical analysis. However, this will have to be discussed in a different paper. 13 Ministry of Culture was the new term for the former Ministry of Educational Affairs (Maarif Vekaleti). 14 Ayşe Gül Altınay (2004, p. 15) argues that there was a clear shift from the idea of national and patriotic duty to the idea of the innate soldier quality of the Turk in the second half of the 1930s. However, the ideas do not replace each other. While the “innate quality” can be traced back to Ziya Gökalp and earlier, the idea of national duty (vazife) is still valid in the late 1930s.

54  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict 15 M. Şevki was a supporter of the Turkish Women’s Union. He wrote pieces for The Way of Women (Kadın Yolu), the Women’s Union’s journal, such as “Women and military service” (‘Kadınlık ve askerlik’, 1927). 16 In the US, for example, in 1934, the first female passenger pilot was not allowed to fly during her menstruation (Gils, 2011, p. 56). 17 For more on the feminist journalist and author Suat Derviş, see Hendrich (2022) and Berktay (2006). 18 The photographs of the first Turkish bomber pilot Sabiha Gökçen or the first civil pilot Bedriye Tahir Gökmen are available on many internet pages, e.g., https://www​.thk​.org​.tr​ /turk​_havacilik​_tarihineyon​_veren​_kadinlar or https://tr​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Sabiha​_G​ %C3​%B6k​%C3​%A7en. There is ample literature on the presentation of women with weapons in media, the phallic symbolism of weapons and women participating in the phallic power in a patriarchal phallocentric society (Germanà, 2020; Li, 2020). 19 All the newspapers used more or less the same wording “ilk hava şehidi Türk kadını”. 20 After decades of relentless efforts for the advancement and rise of the Ottomans and the Turks, symbolized in the names of the associations such as the Women’s Association for the Rise of the Fatherland (Teali-i Vatan Osmanlı Hanımlar Cemiyeti), the symbolic importance of national aviation cannot be overestimated. 21 For example, Bursalı genç parasütçü (1936); Es (1937). 22 For the context of this commissioned work, see Adak (2015). 23 The most severe strike, however, took place in August 1938. The death toll was higher than 13,000, plus more than 11,000 deportees (Kieser, 2011, pp. 5, 11). 24 For some remarks on her work and political views, see Bali (2015). 25 Seyit (also: Sey, Seyid, Seyyid) Rıza was “perhaps the most important tribal chief, in addition to being a religious figure” (Kieser, 2011, pp. 4 and 11), so his capturing in September 1937 and execution can be considered the greatest triumph of the military campaign of 1937. 26 With the establishment of a province called Tunceli in 1935, the renaming of the Dersim area set on. In the newspaper articles of 1936–1938, both names can be found. There is a certain tendency that Dersim is used in a folkloristic, nostalgic or negative context, while Tunceli is the name of the new, Turkish, project. 27 Zarife and her husband Ali Şer were most famous for joining first the Koçgiri upheaval in 1921 and later that of Dersim. They lost their lives at the hand of other Dersimis (Kieser, 2011, pp. 4 and 11).

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Fighting for peace, fighting for country?  55 Altınay, Ayşe Gül (2000) Vatan, millet, kadınlar [Homeland, nation, women]. Istanbul: İletişim Yayıncılık.  Ase, Cecilia and Wendt, Maria (2019) Gendering military sacrifice: A feminist comparative analysis. London: Routledge. ‘Atatürk’ten kadınlara 8 Mart Mesajı:“Askerlik yapmayana oy da yok!”’ [Atatürk’s message to women on March 8: “no voting rights for those who don’t partake in military service!”] (2017), Derin Tarih, 28 April. Available at: https://www​.gzt​.com​/derin​-tarih​/ataturkten​ -kadinlara​-8​-mart​-mesaji​-askerlik​-yapmayana​-oy​-da​-yok​-2650234 (Accessed: 31 July 2021). Aycan, Nihat, Uzunlar, M. Sinasi and Aycan, Şule (2018) ‘Liselerde verilen askerlik derslerinin tarihçesi’ [The history of teaching military service in high schools], Akademia Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 1, pp. 223–232. Bali, Rıfat N. (2015) Bir Türkleştirme serüveni 1923-1945: Cumhuriyet yıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri [An adventure of Turkification 1923–1945: Jews of Turkey in the Republican years]. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları. ‘Bay Amcaya göre’ [According to Mr. Uncle] (1936), Akşam, 6 November. Berktay, Fatmagül (2006), ‘Derviş, Suat (Saadet Baraner) (1905–1972)’ in Daskalova, Krassimira, Loutfi, Anna and de Haan, Francisca (eds.) A biographical dictionary of women’s movements and feminism. Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries. Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, pp. 109–113. Blom, Ida, Hagemann, Karen and Hall, Catherine (2000) Gendered nations: Nationalisms and gender order in the long nineteenth century. Oxford: Berg. ‘Bursalı genç parasütçü intibalarını anlatıyor’ [Young skydiver from Bursa shares her impressions] (1936), Cumhuriyet, 8 November. Çağaptay, Soner (2002) ‘Reconfiguring the Turkish nation in the 1930s’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 8(2), pp. 67–82. Çağlayan, Handan (2020) Women in the Kurdish movement: Mothers, comrades, goddesses. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Çakır, Serpil (2006) ‘Muhittin, Nezihe (1889–1958)’ in Daskalova, Krassimira, Loutfi, Anna and de Haan, Francisca (eds.) A biographical dictionary of women’s movements and feminism. Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries. Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, pp. 356–359. Coşar, Simten (2010) ‘Peace is the name of an unborn child in Turkey’, in Wang, Lihua, Fuller, Linda K. and Chandler, Robin M. (eds.) Women, war and violence: Personal perspectives and global activism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 155–170.  Dalaman, Zeynep Banu (2022) ‘Türkiye’de ulus devlet inşa sürecinde (1923–1950) kadın asker ve asker annesi tartışmaları’ [Debates on female soldiers and military mothers during the nation-state building process in Turkey]. Belgi Dergisi, 23(1), pp. 47–71. ‘Dersimde kadınlar nasıl kaçırılır’ [How women are kidnapped in Dersim] (1937), Tan, 31 July. Durakbasa, Ayse and Ilyasoglu, Aynur (2001) ‘Formation of gender identities in republican Turkey and women’s narratives as transmitters of “herstory” of modernization’, Journal of Social History, 35(1), pp. 195–203.  Emen-Gökatalay, Gözde (2021) ‘Popularizing and promoting Nene Hatun as an iconic Turkish mother in early Cold War Turkey’, Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies, 17(1), pp. 43–63.  Enloe, Cynthia H. (1988) Does khaki become you? The militarization of women’s lives. London, Boston, Sydney, Wellington: Pandora. 

56  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Eralp, Feride (2021) ‘18  Nisan 1935: Dünya kadınları 12. uluslararası kadınlar kongresi için Istanbul’da’ [18 April 1935: women of the world in Istanbul for the 12th international women’s congress], Catlakzemin, 18 April. Available at: https://catlakzemin​.com​ /18​-nisan​-1935​-dunya​-kadinlari​-12​-uluslararasi​-kadinlar​-kongresi​-icin​-istanbulda/ (Accessed: 30 June 2021).  Es, H. F. (1937) ‘Asker olacağım alayın en önünde ben geçeceğim’ [I will be a soldier, I will pass at the front of the regiment], Akşam, 16 June. Ferguson, Jane M. (2018) ‘Gender and aviation’, in Callan, Hilary (ed.) The international encyclopedia of anthropology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, pp. 1–9.  ‘Genç Türk kızları askerliğe başladılar’ [Young Turkish girls start military service] (1936), Kurun, 6 November. Germanà, Monica (2020) Bond girls. Body, fashion and gender. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Gezer, Gülnaz (2020) Ankara Kiz Lisesi (1923-1977) [Ankara High School for Girls (1923-1977)]. PhD Thesis. Ankara Üniversitesi, Ankara. Türk İnkilap Tarihi Enstitüsü. Available at: https://dspace​.ankara​.edu​.tr​/xmlui​/handle​/20​.500​.12575​/71982 (Accessed 12 December 2021). Gils, Bieke (2011) ‘“The only race aviatrix in the world”: A tribute to Bessie Coleman (1892–1926)’, Stadion: International Journal of the History of Sport, 37(1), pp. 55–82.  Goldstein, Joshua S. (2001) War and gender: How gender shapes the war system and vice versa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gökçen, Sabiha [1982] (1994) Atatürk’le bir ömür [A life next to Atatürk], ed. by Oktay Verel, Istanbul: Altın Kitaplar Yayınevi. Gümüşel, Günseli (2015) Ortaöğretiminde askerliğe hazırlık derslerinden milli güvenlik derslerine uzanan sürecin eğitimsel bir analizi (1926–2012) [An educational analysis of the process from military preparation courses to national security courses in secondary education (1926–2012)]. PhD thesis. Ankara Üniversitesi: Türk İnkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü. Available at:  https://acikbilim​.yok​.gov​.tr​/bitstream​/handle​/20​.500​ .12812​/82170​/yokAcikBilim​_10096063​.pdf​?sequence=​-1​&isAllowed=y (Accessed: 14 January 2022).  Gündüz, Mustafa (2018) ‘Militarising school: Militarism in the Turkish educational system (1926–1947)’, Paedagogica Historica 54(3), pp. 287–300. Hanioğlu, M. Șükrü (2008) A brief history of the late Ottoman Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Harders, Cilja and Roß, Bettina (2002) Geschlechterverhältnisse in Krieg und Frieden: Perspektiven der feministischen Analyse internationaler Beziehungen [Gender relations in war and peace: Perspectives from the feminist analysis of international relations]. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Hendrich, Béatrice (2022) ‘Suat Derviş, journalist, novelist and feminist: Texts written in Germany and texts about Germany’, in Riettiens, Lilli and Kleinau, Elke (eds.) Views on Europe: Gender historical and postcolonial perspectives on journeys. Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, pp. 29–58. Hendrich, Béatrice (2019) ‘Why Afet Inan had to measure skulls’, in Dönmez, Rasim Özgür and Yaman, Ali (eds.) Nation-building and Turkish modernization: Islam, Islamism, and nationalism in Turkey. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, pp. 185–212. Hür, Ayşe (2013) ‘Dersim’i bombalayan Sabiha Gökçen mi, Hatun Sebilciyan mıydı? [Was it Sabiha Gökçen or Hatun Sebilciyan who bombed Dersim?], Radikal, 5 May. Available at: https://www​.marmarayerelhaber​.com​/ayse​-hur​/15425​-dersimi​-bombalayan​-sabiha​ -gokcen​-mi-​-hatun​-sebilciyan​-miydi (Accessed: 24 March 2020).

Fighting for peace, fighting for country?  57 ‘İlk hava şehidi Türk Kadını’ [The first air martyr Turkish woman] (1936), Kurun, 31 October. ‘İlk kadın tayyarecimiz’ [Our first woman aviator] (1937), Tan, 29 May. ‘Kadın bir diplomat’ [A woman diplomat] (1936), Kurun, 31 October. ‘Kadınlarımızın meb’usluğu’ [Our women’s deputation] (1934), Son Posta, 13 December. ‘Kadınların askerliği’ [Women’s military service] (1936), Cumhuriyet, 4 November. ‘Kadınların askerliğine tıbbi mani yoktur’ [There is no medical impediment to women’s military service] (1936), Haber, 5 November. ‘Kadınların da asker olmaları isteniyor’ [Women should become soldiers too] (1934), Zaman, 6 December. Kandiyoti, Deniz (1989) ‘Women and the Turkish state: Political actors or symbolic pawns?’, in Yuval-Davis, Nira (ed.) Woman, nation, state. Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp. 126–149. Kandiyoti, Deniz (1987) ‘Emancipated but unliberated? Reflections on the Turkish case’, Feminist Studies, 13(2), pp. 317–338. Kazankaya, Sevda (2020) Asker liseliler: Musik muallim mektebi özelinde askerlik dersleri ve uygulaması [Graduates of military high schools: The implementation of military service courses at colleges for music teachers]. MA Dissertation. Hacettepe Üniversitesi, Ankara: Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü. Available at: http://www​.openaccess​.hacettepe​.edu​ .tr​:8080​​/xmlu​​i​/bit​​strea​​m​/han​​dle​/1​​1655/​​22897​​/Kaza​​nkaya​​%2c​%2​​0Sevd​​a​-yen​​i​.pdf​​?sequ​​ ence=​​3​&isAllowed=y (Accessed: 16 May 2021). Kieser, Hans Lukas (2011) ‘Dersim Massacre: 1937–1938’, in Andrieu, Claire (ed.) Online encyclopedia of mass violence. Paris: Science Po. Available at: http://www​.massviolence​ .org​/PdfVersion​?id​_article​=558 (Accessed: 15 March 2020). ‘Kızlarımızın askerliği’ [Our Girls’ Military Service] (1937), Yeni Asır, 26 September. Kuloglu, Ceyda (2005) ‘The Turkish military academy from a gender perspective’, in Caforio, Giuseppe and Kümmel, Gerhard (eds.) Military missions and their implications reconsidered: The aftermath of September 11th. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 575–582. Li, Zhuying (2020) Gender hierarchy of masculinity and femininity during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Revolutionary opera films. London, New York: Routledge. Libal, Kathryn (2008) ‘Staging Turkish women’s emancipation: Istanbul, 1935’, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 4(1), pp. 31–52. Manus, Rosa (1935) ‘Letter from Rosa Manus to Necile Terfik [sic!] concerning the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship’, French. 17 July 1935. Amsterdam: Archive of the Institute on gender equality and women’s history atria. M[ehmet] Şevki [Yazman] (1936) ‘Kadınların askerliği’ [Women’s military service], Akşam, 31 November. M[ehmet] Şevki [Yazman] (1927) ‘Kadınlık ve askerlik’ [Womenhood and military service], Kadın Yolu 27(2), 15 February, pp. 1–2.  Metinsoy, Elif Mahir (2017) Ottoman women during World War I: Everyday experiences, politics and conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milli Seferberlik Direktörlüğü (1939) ‘Zehirli gaz dersleri h.’ [On poisonous gas classes], decree no. 108, no. 8022/1-399, 12 April, T.C. Maarif Vekaleti Tebliğler Dergisi, 14, 17 April, p. 66. NATO/OTAN (2019) 2019  Summary of the national reports of NATO member and partner nations to the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives. Full report. Available at: https://www​.nato​.int​/nato​_static​_fl2014​/assets​/pdf​/2021​/9​/pdf​/NCGP​_Full​_Report​ _2019​.pdf (Accessed: 16 May 2022).  NATO/OTAN (2018) 2018  Summary of the national reports of NATO member and partner nations to the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives. Available at: https://www​.nato​

58  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict .int​/nato​_static​_fl2014​/assets​/pdf​/2020​/7​/pdf​/200713​-2018​-Summary​-NR​-to​-NCGP​.pdf (Accessed: 17 November 2020). Özkan-Kerestecioglu, Inci (2001) ‘Die Konstruktion der neuen türkischen Frau und der internationale Frauenkongress (1935)’ [The construct of the new Turkish woman and the international women’s congress (1935)], in Pusch, Barbara (ed.) Die neue muslimische Frau: Standpunkte & Analysen. Halle, Saale, Würzburg: Ergon, pp. 17–30.  Provence, Michael (2017) The last Ottoman generation and the making of the modern Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ‘Sabiha Gökçen dün Seyit Rıza ile görüştü’ [Sabiha Gökçen met with Seyit Rıza yesterday] (1937), Cumhuriyet, 30 September. Saime Sâdi (1937) ‘Dersim dağların üstünde uçan ilk kadın tayyareci’ [The first woman aviator to fly over the mountains of Dersim], Anadolu, 18 June. Schubart, Rikke (1998) ‘Woman with a gun does not signify man with a phallus: Gender and narrative change in the action movie’, Nordicom Review, 19(1), pp. 205–214. ‘Seferberlikte kadınlarımız askerlik yapacaklar’ [In case of mobilization, our women will serve] (1936), Halkın Sesi, 4 November. Sencer, Emre (2017) Order and insecurity in Germany and Turkey. Military cultures of the 1930s. London: Routledge. ‘Sergerde Ali Şir’ [The Head of the Bandits Ali Şir] (1937), Kurun, 18 June. Stöckmann, Jan (2018) ‘Women, wars, and world affairs: Recovering feminist international relations, 1915–1939’, Review of International Studies, 44(2), pp. 215–235. Suat Derviş (1936) ‘Asker olmak için insanda yürek lazım, [To be a soldier one needs bravery], Tan, 7 August. Suat Derviş (1935) ‘Neye sinirlenirsiniz’ [What do you get angry about], Cumhuriyet, 2 May. Şükufe Nihal (1935) ‘Kadınlık aleminde’ [In the realm of womanhood], Cumhuriyet, 27 April. Toprak, Zafer (2015) Türkiye’de kadın özgürlüğü ve feminizm 1908–1935 [Women’s liberation and feminism in Turkey 1908–1935]. Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları. Törne, Annika (2017) Dersim: Geographie der Erinnerungen [Dersim: Geography of memories]. Berlin: De Gruyter. ‘Tunceli mıntakasında’ [In the Tunceli Region] (1937), Cumhuriyet, 30 September. Turgut, Suat (2018) Kadın kahramanlar [Women Heroes] Kahramanlar Org. ‘Türk Kadını heyecan içinde’ [Turkish women are excited] (1934), Zaman, 7 December. ‘Türk kadınları asker oluyor’ [Turkish women become soldiers] (1936), Haber, 1 November. ‘Türk kuşu gençlerin dünkü muvaffakıyetleri’ [Yesterday’s successes of the Turkish Bird Youth]’ (1936), Son Posta, 30 October. Ünal, Süzan (2016) ‘12.  arsıulusal kadınlar kongresi’ [12th international women’s congress], Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi, 9(44), pp. 533–561. Üstel, Füsun (2016) “Makbul vatandaş”ın peşinde: II. Meşrutiyet’ten bugüne Türkiye’de vatandaş eğitimi [In search for the “acceptable citizen”: civic education in Turkey from the second constitutional monarchy to the present day]. Istanbul: İletişim. Van Bruinessen, Martin (1994) ‘Genocide in Kurdistan? The suppression of the Dersim rebellion in Turkey (1937–38) and the chemical war against the Iraqi Kurds (1988)’, in Andreopoulos, George J. (ed.) Genocide: Conceptual and historical dimensions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 141–170. 

Fighting for peace, fighting for country?  59 Wibben, Annick T.R. and Mehta, Akanksha (2018) ‘Feminist narrative approaches to security’, in Gentry, Caron E., Shepherd, Laura J. and Sjoberg, Laura (eds.) The Routledge handbook of gender and security. Oxon: Routledge, pp. 48–58. Yalman, Ahmed Emin (1937) ‘Kadın vatandaş’ [Woman citizen], Tan, 10 September. Yuval-Davis, Nira (1997) Gender and nation. London: Sage. Zihnioğlu, Yaprak (2003) Kadınsız inkılap: Nezihe Muhiddin, kadınlar halk fırkası, kadın birliği [Revolution without women: Nezihe Muhiddin, Women’s People’s Party, Women’s Union]. Istanbul: Metis Yayınları. Zürcher, Erik Jan (2021) Turkey: A modern history. London: Bloomsbury.

4

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras Camp followers and female fighters in Latin American armed conflicts in the 19th and 20th centuries Barbara Potthast

Introduction1 Traditional, and even contemporary, discourses frequently depict women and children as pacific beings who are mainly affected by war as victims2 (Elshtain, 1987, pp. 3–13; Macdonald, 1987, pp. 1–26). Without denying the specific forms of violence enacted against women during war, this article focuses on women as agents in armed conflicts in Latin America over the last two centuries. Despite a long-standing patriarchal culture and Catholic role models of the abnegated and mourning Holy Mary, women have actively participated in Latin American armed conflicts since at least the struggles for independence at the beginning of the 19th century. Until the mid-20th century, however, their roles were variously characterized as providers, camp followers or as idealistic supporters. I argue that even these roles, however, sometimes demanded aggressive, if not violent, action. During the second half of the 20th century, the figure of the female guerrilla fighter became prominent. Their use of arms was obvious, but female fighters were still quite often idealized and characterized by “female” attributes, such as beauty and sacrifice, but in service of a political cause.3 In this chapter, I trace some fundamental questions related to women and violence in armed conflicts, such as the motives of women to participate in various ways, conflicts with traditional roles, questions of intergroup gender relations, as well as public discourses and memories about these women, especially in post-conflict societies. A longterm perspective can shed light on persistent structures and problems as well as changes in gender roles. This article draws on the analytic tools and theories from the field of gender studies, especially the scholarship Joan Scott and Judith Butler (Scott, 1986). Scott reminds us that personal ties are always characterized by power relations and that those based on gender can be considered elemental. Butler’s “gender trouble” (1999) is basic in the sense that this chapter is about the problems (trouble) that result from the ascription, reproduction and essentialization of gender roles. The chapter is also informed by the concept of intersectionality, which considers the interrelatedness of basic social markers, such as gender, class and ethnicity, as well as their embeddedness in local and cultural settings (Anzalduá, 1987; Crenshaw, 1989). Women as protagonists in armed conflicts do not, however, comprise only those who take up arms, but also those who play important roles in logistics or DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-5

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras  61 communication. Especially among rebel groups and in early modern armies, no formal units existed for these tasks, as they were quite often carried out by people – women, more often than not – who did not formally belong to the group of fighters. This informal group of actors is often referred to as camp followers, first of the armies that fought for independence from colonial rule early in the 19th century, and later for the guerrilla groups in the first part of the 20th century. The distinction between armed fighters and active supporters is thus not always clear, and one might ask whether it makes sense at all. In this chapter, I thus point to the various and shifting roles that women played in armed conflicts in Latin America from the 19th century onward, highlighting their increasing participation in guerrilla groups in the 1960s, where about a third of the fighters were women. The main questions that I pose include: How can we account for the important participation of women, given traditional gender roles and the Latin American tradition of “machismo”? What kinds of gender trouble arose from this situation and how did female fighters reconcile their role as combatant with essentialized ideas of women as mothers and as “angel of the home” (angel del hogar)? Generally speaking, opinions on women participating in armed conflicts oscillate between consent and praise because of their contribution to the pursuit of a common goal, such as national independence or a just society, and a general condemnation of women’s use of violence. In this context, the role of women as mothers is an important issue, since motherhood is usually considered incompatible with violence and death. Given these contradictions, women have more difficulties justifying their active support of armed struggles, not only because of the assumed pacifist character of women, but also because their participation in such struggles seems incompatible with the most important female role, that of the mother. Women who voluntarily resigned from that role are viewed as having lost their femaleness, not only by men, but also by other women. This contradiction proved to be one of the main points of conflict within modern guerrilla groups and an important cause of disenchantment among many female fighters, as I will argue in this article. The camp followers of the 19th and early 20th century, however, had no choice but to have children and carry them along, but this was judged differently since female roles of chastely behavior and tender motherhood were not considered part of lower-class women.4 In order to highlight long-term patterns of continuity and change, I concentrate on significant examples, notwithstanding the specificities of each group and context. In terms of chronology, and for practical reasons, I focus on two periods that also reflect changes in gender roles. The first one spans from the wars of independence in Latin America at the beginning of the 19th century to the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1920, in which women played important logistical and other support roles, but active participation in the combat was scarce. In this period, I identify a marked ethnic and social bias, as participating women were mostly from lower classes, often indigenous or mestizo, whereas women of the elite participated in ways and in settings that were acceptable for their gender. Public imagery and historical memory about both groups were, and still are to a certain degree, laden with racism and prejudice. During the second period, ethnic

62  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict and social distinctions lost importance since women of all classes participated, but their conflicting gender roles began to become a point of discussion and conflict for women in armed groups. Damas patriotas: The elite auxiliaries At the beginning of the 19th century, the Spanish and Portuguese empires in Latin America dissolved in the context of Europe’s Napoleonic Wars, and most Latin American colonies gained independence. However, these wars, which lasted from about 1810 to 1824, depending on the region, were followed by internal conflicts over state formation, perpetuating violence and fighting for several more decades. The wars of independence are usually associated with a national hero and are mainly considered a masculine affair. If women entered the “pantheon of national heroes”, it was because they hosted male fighters in a conspiratorial salon, or because they were the mother or wife of a male hero (Cherpak, 1995; Quintero Montiel, 2001, pp. 58–64; Guardia, 2010, Introduction). The Argentine Mariquita Sánchez de Thompson is one such woman. In her salon, the tale goes, patriots sang the national anthem for the first time. This scene is replicated in many school and popular history books and in a painting by Pedro Subercaseaux (1880–1956).5 Manuela Sáenz, the most famous, but also most controversial female hero of the independence movement, is the partner of the most prominent male hero, General Simón Bolívar.6 In her biography, the most important female roles of the time merge: She was the impeccable hero who supported and loved her companion and saved his life more than once due to her attentiveness. At the same time, she embodies the dangers of public life for women, the transgression of boundaries and female roles in wartime. The transgressions of traditional female roles, in particular, led leading men of the time, as well as even historians and biographers of Bolívar, to struggle with the role of Manuela Sáenz and, finally, to explain most of her actions in the context of saving her partner’s life. This act was not analyzed in political terms, but as motivated by the love of a woman (Earle, 2000; Chambers, 2001; Murray, 2001; Quintero Montiel, 2001). However, Manuela Sáenz had strong political and strategic opinions, which she discussed with Simón Bolívar. She became his political adviser, his secretary and archivist, and she organized the sanitary and alimentary logistics of the insurgent army. It seems that she participated actively in the decisive battle of Ayacucho, but this is one of the many disputes, especially since traditional historians do not like to accept this7 (Murray, 2001, pp. 301–304). Due to her important contributions to army logistics, Bolívar had already awarded Manuela Sáenz the title of capitán, but when he raised her to coronel after that battle, their fellow libertador, General Francisco de Santander, protested. In defense of his decision, Bolívar not only justified the measure, but also defended the presence of women among the troops, generally. He thought them to be necessary not only “for the tranquillity of the troops”, but also because they formed part of the “booty” (botín) that could not be denied to the soldiers (Bolívar to Santander, 1993, p. 156). By these terms, Bolívar alluded, on the one hand, to the fact that many women were forcefully abducted, and, indeed, were

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras  63 sexually abused by the soldiers; on the other hand, he had important non-sexual services in mind, which these women provided for the armies. Rabonas and Soldaderas: Auxiliary women of the lower classes Manuela Sáenz accompanied General Simón Bolívar during various military campaigns, as did many other women who followed men into battles. In these insurgent armies, no formal logistics groups had been established, so responsibilities for preparing food, washing and caring for the wounded fell to the women. Women also comforted the soldiers at night. Sometimes they helped to transport weapons or spied on the enemy, but they rarely actively participated in battles. In some cases, these infelicitously termed “camp followers”8 were organized in a military manner and established ranks identical to those used by men (capitana, sargenta) (Reséndez Fuentes, 1995; Potthast, 2011, pp.  278–281). With some exceptions, the contribution of these women to the armies has been largely neglected, both in historical memory and even by scholars (Davies et al., 2006; Martínez Hoyos, 2012). Part of this negligence is due to the fact that these women came from the lower strata of society, were mostly rural and often indigenous, and almost all illiterate. They left no traces in writing or in archives, as did Manuela Sáenz. Scholars mostly know of them through visual sources (e.g., paintings and later photographs) or through the perspectives of foreigners or members of the Europeanized upper class. Their descriptions reflect the classist and often racist biases of their group. A good example of this perspective is the report of Flora Tristan, a woman of Peruvian descent who grew up in France, and later became a forerunner of feminism and socialism. She observed a group of female troops who participated in a civil war in Peru during the 1830s: At the very end of the camp, behind the soldiers’ tents, were quartered the rabonas with their jumble of cooking-pots and children. […] The rabonas are the camp-followers of South America. [ …] They form a considerable troop, preceding the army by several hours so that they have time to set up camp, obtain food and cook it. […] The rabonas are armed; they load onto mules their cooking-pots, tents and all the rest of the baggage, they drag after them a horde of children of all ages […]. When they arrive at their destination, they choose the best site for the camp […]. If they chance to be near an inhabited place, they go off in a detachment to get supplies; they descend on the village like famished beasts and demand food for the army. When it is given with a good grace they do no harm, but when they are refused, they fight like lionesses and their fierce courage overcomes all resistance. Then they sack the village, carry their loot back to the camp and divide it among themselves. These women, who provide for all the needs of the soldier […], receive no pay and their only reward is the freedom to rob with impunity. They are of Indian race, speak the native language, and do not know a single word of Spanish. The rabonas are not married, they belong to nobody and are there

64  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict for anybody who wants them. They are creatures outside society: they live with the soldiers, eat with them, stop where they stop, are exposed to the same dangers and endure far greater hardships than the men. When […] one considers that in leading this life of toil and danger, they still have the duties of motherhood to fulfil, one is amazed that any of them can endure it. […] Several able generals have sought to find a substitute for the service the rabonas provide and prevent them from following the army, but the soldiers have always revolted against any such attempt and it has been necessary to yield to them. They are not at all sure that the military administration would be able to provide for their needs, and that is why they refuse to give the rabonas up. [emphasize BP] (Tristan, 1987, p. 179f) This statement resembles Bolívar’s justification for allowing women into the ranks of the troops. Yet, during the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, soldiers would still not rely on anyone but a woman for food9 (Reed, 1978, p.  45; Poniatowska, 2002, pp.  64–65). However, rape, mistreatment and wifebeating were also part of the daily life of many women in the camps.10 And, as the statement of a woman who had lived through the Mexican Revolution shows, many women reacted to this violence by becoming violent and aggressive themselves: Used to being beaten as a child, Jesusa Palancares felt obliged to punish her father’s lovers when she went to the army with him. Later on, she beat and hurt the lovers of her husband, an officer to whom she was married against her will, in every possible way (Poniatowska, 2002, pp. 66f and 103f). The way Jesusa tells the story, however, reveals that even though she was conscious of her transgressions, she was caught in traditional gender roles, since she constantly refers to herself as being “bad” or “mean” (mala, perra): Pedro [her husband] got nicer after I threatened to shoot him. But then I got mean. From the time I was little, I was mean, I was born that way … The blessed Revolution gave me self-confidence. When Pedro pushed me over the edge, I thought: “I’m going to defend myself or he can just kill me and be done with it”. If I hadn’t been mean, I would have let Pedro abuse me until he killed me. But there came a moment when God must have said to me: “Defend yourself” … And I took out the gun. (Poniatowska, 2002, p. 101) This statement is exemplary in at least two ways: First, it shows the degree to which violence formed part of the lives of these women, whether violence against them or perpetrated by them. Second, it draws attention to the motives of the rabonas, who mostly participated because it was their duty to take care of a man, whether a father, husband or brother. How voluntarily they assumed this role is difficult to say, but we might assume that it was not very different from what young women in guerrilla movements stated later on: Some were forced to join the army, while others saw no future in their village and preferred to be with someone they

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras  65 knew. Contrary to the women in the second half of the 20th century, however, few of these 19th century women followed the troops for political reasons (Potthast, 2009). How did contemporaries judge women who had to overcome traditional gender roles in order to survive under these circumstances? As seen in the preceding citations, many women themselves were uncomfortable with their behavior and considered themselves “bad”. Flora Tristan considered them as “creatures outside society”. Later generations either denied, forgot or reinterpreted the transgressions of these women in the armies in order to make them compatible with traditional social and gender roles (Brown, 2005, pp. 36–51; Potthast, 2009, 2015). In Mexico, after the violent phase of the revolution, military leaders tried to dismiss the presence of women among the troops as a fiction or stated that they had only participated in the army of the others (Salas, 1995, p. 97). In popular memory, the role of the soldaderas was reinterpreted too. Popular songs such as the “corrido de la soldadera” start every verse with the following lines: Abnegada soldadera / de tu bien querido Juan / tú le cubres la trinchera / con tus ropas de percal / y le das la cartuchera / cuando se pone a tirar.11 Selfless soldadera / of your beloved Juan / you cover the trench / with your woven clothes / and you give him the cartridge / when he fires the gun. The first two lines then mark the beginning of every verse. By this repetition the adjective “abnegada”, abnegated or selfless, becomes the dominant characteristic of the soldadera, and brings her back in line with the sacrificing consort and mother. The famous corrido, “La Adelita”, remembered the woman as a person who had to stay home, and las adelitas, as the soldaderas were later called because of this song, inspired romantic novels and films (Salas, 1995, p. 97). This reinterpretation of the role of women during the armed struggles helped to reconcile the phenomenon of women fighters with traditional gender roles, thereby stabilizing society by reinforcing the patriarchal family and gender order. A similar process can also be observed among demobilized female guerrilla fighters during the second half of the 20th century. The Guerrilleras of the 20th century Between battle and the kitchen

The second period of active, continent-wide participation of women in armed struggles in Latin America occurred in the context of the Cold War, involving utopian visions of a just society as well as efforts to bring about this society through armed conflict. The most important event that triggered different political and guerrilla movements in Latin America was the remarkable success of Cuban guerrillas under Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara in 1959. The event inspired various groups in other countries, and the new Cuban government, under leadership of Che Guevara,

66  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict attempted to export the revolution by sending a guerrilla group to Bolivia in order to start a revolutionary process there. There were a few women among the Cuban guerrillas, but gender was not a theme that they discussed. The central line of argument among the Latin American left of the 1960s and 1970s was that the class struggle was the most important political issue, with gender being relegated to a “minor contradiction”. Once socialism was established, or so the story goes, these minor antagonisms would almost automatically vanish. Many revolutionaries (and other left-wing groups) even warned that any discussions of “the gender question” would only divide and weaken the movement. Besides, the vision of women’s roles in armed groups was a rather traditional one. Women were welcome as supporters but not considered fighters. Che Guevara, who quickly became an icon of the revolution worldwide, was no exception, and his view of women’s roles was paradigmatic for many revolutionaries at that time. In his manual on the theory and method of guerrilla warfare, he wrote: The part that the woman can play in the development of a revolutionary process is of extraordinary importance. It is well to emphasize this, since in all our countries, with their colonial mentality, there is a certain underestimation of the woman which becomes a real discrimination against her. The woman is capable of performing the most difficult tasks, of fighting beside the men; and despite current belief, she does not create conflicts of a sexual type in the troops … In the rigorous combatant life, the woman is a companion who brings the qualities appropriate to her sex … The transport of objects, messages, or money, of small size and great importance, should be confided to women in whom the guerrilla army has absolute confidence … But also, in this stage a woman can perform her habitual tasks of peacetime; it is very pleasing to a soldier subjected to the extremely hard conditions of this life to be able to look forward to a seasoned meal which tastes like something. (One of the great tortures of the war was eating a cold, sticky, tasteless mess). (Guevara, 1985, pp. 132–133) Even though a minority, women who participated in the armed struggle were not inclined to restrict their actions to reproductive work and support. The most famous women fighter of the time, Tania “La Guerrillera”, as she is sometimes referred to, struggled to be included among Che Guevara’s troops and allowed to participate in the fighting (Rojas and Rodríguez Calderón, 1971). Tania, whose real name was Hayde (Haydée) Tamara Bunke, was an ArgentineGerman who went from East Germany to Cuba in 1961. There she was recruited by the Cuban Secret Service. In 1964, she was sent to Bolivia with a false identity in order to prepare for struggles of the Cuban guerrilla group under Guevara’s leadership, which started in 1966. Her task was to gather political and military information and build a network of supporters. In 1967, she guided a group of international visitors, and some new fighters, to the camp where Che Guevara and his group had initiated guerrilla warfare. Because of several unforeseen incidents, her car was

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras  67 found by the Bolivian military, where she had left some compromising papers. As her role was discovered, she had to remain with the guerrillas. Until today, it is unclear whether this happened by accident or whether Tania provoked the incident in order to be able to stay with the guerrillas. In the camp, Tania first carried out “typically feminine” tasks, such as cooking, as well as other atypical but role-compatible tasks for her gender, such as analyzing the radio news. After a long dispute with Che Guevara, she finally was given a rifle and became part of the guard. Her role as an active fighter was short, however, since one month before the entire group was exterminated, Tania and the rear guard were trapped and shot by the Bolivian military (Rodríguez Ostria, 2011). Tania’s story is revealing, not only because she was the female counterpart to Che Guevara, but because we also find typical features of female fighters, both during her life and afterlife. Her transition from supporter to fighter, and the circumstances surrounding this shift, make her a transitional figure between women involved in Latin American conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition, judgments about her actions reveal typical gender stereotypes about fighting women. Given the lack of evidence, most biographers speculate about Tania’s “negligence” when going to the revolutionaries’ camp. Some of them, not very surprisingly, speculate that she was in love with Che and wanted to be close to or even die with him. Others present her as a traitor, a femme fatale or a triple agent (East German, Russian, Cuban). In this way, they make recourse to anti-female stereotypes, mostly in order to disqualify the guerrilla effort as a whole. Yet others, who supported the case of the guerrillas, speculate that Tania was tired of life in the shadows and wanted to become a real fighter (Zapata, 1997; Estrada Lescaille, 2005). The fight for equality among the guerrillas As seen in the case of Tania and Che Guevara, visions of women’s roles in armed struggles were changing, but they were still mostly considered unable to engage in armed combat. This slowly changed in the next generation, but the reconciliation of female identities with armed combat remained difficult. During the 1960s and 1970s, in many Western countries, discontent with existing political systems led to new, mostly socialist ideas, and the appearance of armed groups that sought to achieve their aims by violence. Some of these groups involved women in key active roles, such as the Weather Underground in the United States or the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) in Germany. In Latin America, visions of a better society, characterized by social and economic justice, spread among the younger generation of Latin Americans and were nurtured by the successes of Cuban Revolutionaries. This generation had benefited from the literacy campaigns and reforms to colleges and universities, but were disappointed by the unfulfilled promises of modernization and progress. The circulation of Marxist ideas among students and academics also led to the formulation of specifically Latin American theories about ways to achieve a fair society. In the 1950s and 1960s, the “dependency theory” perspective, an influential theoretical framework formulated by leftist sociologists and

68  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict economists, sought to explain “underdevelopment” and social injustice in Latin America by appealing to colonial exploitation and postcolonial structures of an unequal exchange. In Brazil, Paulo Freire developed a literacy campaign with revolutionary content, the “Pedagogy of Liberation”. The opening of the Catholic Church to social questions after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) led to the formulation of a Latin American “Theology of Liberation”.  Although these latter perspectives did not promote armed struggle, many young Latin Americans concluded that reformist strategies would not lead to any improvements of social justice. Armed struggle seemed the better, if not the only, option to them. In this context, several revolutionary groups took up arms, and Che Guevara, who had been killed in Bolivia in 1967, became an icon for young people, female as well as male, around the world (Wickham-Crowley, 1992; Castro, 1999). While women played only a minor role among the Cuban guerrillas, the new groups in the 1970s and 1980s had more and more women in their rank and file, although rarely among their superior ranks. In these decades, approximately one third of guerrilla groups were comprised of female fighters (Luciak, 2001; Kampwirth, 2002). Although most women joined armed struggles for general political reasons, many of them started to reflect about gender equality over the course of their affiliation. Some, like women in the Nicaraguan Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (short: Sandinistas, FSLN), became disappointed after the success of the revolution, which had promised gender equality, but in the end merely returned to traditional gender roles, even within the revolutionary government. In the following section, I will concentrate not so much on the topic of gender equality, but, in accordance with the long-term perspective, I will consider the motives of women who joined the armed struggle as well as their eventual disappointment. I focus especially on the roles that were afforded to them within the guerrilla movement, including their views of the contradictions between armed struggle and femaleness. My focus will be on a Columbian revolutionary movement, which can be seen as a link to the former movements, not only chronologically, but also and mainly because it was the first movement to include a large number of women in their rank and file. It was also the first movement in which women assumed leadership positions (Londoño Fernández and Nieto Valdivieso, 2006, p. 12). In addition, two of the leading guerrilleras extensively documented personal memories and reflections of their trajectory. In 1966, a year before Che Guevara died, Columbian priest and guerrillero Camillo Torres was killed in fighting. In Columbia, a prolonged armed conflict, which started in the 1940s and is not yet over, led to the formation of several armed groups that fought against undemocratic politics and semifeudal socioeconomic conditions in the countryside. In 1970, after another supposedly fraudulent election on 19 April, a new guerrilla movement called the Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19) was founded. The movement was only demobilized in 1990, following peace talks and a new constitution in 1991. For the analysis of the role of women in this movement, I draw on the autobiographies of two prominent women. One of them is Vera Grabe, who participated in various functions within the guerrilla, including its executive board, for about two decades. After demobilization,

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras  69 she turned to politics and was elected as a senator through the short-lived political party formed by the M-19. Later on, she worked with human rights groups, an engagement that she continues to pursue today. The other woman, María Vásquez, was also a long-term fighter with M-19. Due to personal motives related to her role as a mother, she left the guerrilla shortly before the demobilization. Upon her return to civil society, she had to come to terms with her masculinized role as a guerrilla and the feminized role of a mother. Her autobiography, titled “To write in order not to die” (Escribir para no morir), is the result of her reflections. María Vásquez did not, however, enter politics. The biographies of these two women, as well as further insights from interviews with other guerrilleras, will first help to analyze the specific Latin American context in which a large number of young women entered the armed struggle. Their own reflections on the struggle, as well as the demobilization process, will subsequently help to clarify personal and sociopolitical problems. Compared to other Columbian guerrilla groups, the actions of M-19 were less violent and radical. Another important feature for our purposes is the fact that in 1982 the M-19 held a conference in which participants discussed the role of women in the guerrillas. In this conference, one comandante was of the opinion that “women do not fit into the army and only cause disorder” (“las mujeres no caben en el ejército porque sólo generan desorden”). The women present immediately protested and gender roles were treated in more nuanced ways following that conference. In addition, two women, Vera Grabe and Nelly Rivas, were elected to the board of the guerrillas (Grabe Loewenherz, 2000, p. 166). While Nelly Rivas died during her term, Vera Grabe was reelected for a second term. Although the M-19 was known for being the guerrilla movement most open to gender issues, she was the only woman on the board at the time. The underrepresentation of women among higher ranks and directorates is characteristic of all Latin American guerrilla groups, even the later ones in Nicaragua in the 1970s or the indigenous-mestizo Zapatistas in Mexico in the 1990s.12 Nevertheless, the 1970s are characterized by a change in the role of women in rebel armies. Despite the failure of Che Guevara in Bolivia, most young people still were of the opinion that armed struggle was the only possible path to radically transforming society. Equally important was a change in strategy: The later groups did not follow the Cuban theory of a revolutionary vanguard, but counted on the inclusion of broad sectors of society. This led to the participation of more women and further reflection of gender issues in armed struggle. The first Latin American guerrilla group to include gender issues in their program was the FSLN in Nicaragua. In this respect, some authors speak of a huge qualitative step from the Cuban Revolution in 1959 to the Nicaraguan in 1979. Since then, the number of women in Latin American guerrilla movements oscillated around 30% (Luciak, 2001; Kampwirth, 2002). The founding “Historical Program” (1969) of the FSLN included several passages on the rights of women, many of them related to the topic of motherhood. Generally speaking, however, gender was not a major issue in the beginning, and women joined the guerrillas because of general political problems. However, many women became conscious of double standards in relation to their role over the

70  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict course of their participation in armed struggle, as I will explain in the following sections (Luciak, 2001; Kampwirth, 2002). Gender, sexuality and motherhood While the “camp followers” of the 19th century carried their children alongside without anyone objecting, the female fighters of the 20th century had to choose between motherhood and armed struggle. This problem, however, did not exist for fighting fathers. Motherhood and the double standard for men and women were some of the main issues that women had to face in armed struggle and often the first step in their disenchantment with “the cause”. While society, and quite often even their partners, criticized female fighters for having abandoned their families and children, such abandonment in the case of men was considered a heroic act of sacrifice. Although most women entered armed struggle before becoming mothers, sexuality and maternity were among the most painful issues for them. Little research has been pursued on this topic, but almost all memories and testimonies of ex-combatants reflect on it to some degree. As to sexuality, a topic mostly addressed by male guerrillas as a “disorder” among the troops, it seems that it was not a problem until a woman got pregnant. Violence against and among partners was unusual, and if it occurred, it was strongly condemned. Sexual violations were apparently rare, probably due to military discipline and control, but the line between consensual and forced sex is blurry, as related by several ex-guerrilleras in Colombia (Hörtner, 2009, pp. 112– 116; pp. 123–126). Sexual violence was, however, a problem if women combatants were caught by the enemy, as it was then, and unfortunately remains, part of war strategy. María Eugenia Vásquez reflects on this issue as follows: As a militant revolutionary, I use my femininity to good advantage. My gender was useful for throwing people off track, dodging searches and getting information. The most macho men, the ones who underestimated us, wouldn’t grant us the status of enemy, and we took advantage of that. But when they discovered that we had penetrated their territory, war territory, they became implacable foes. They punished us twice as hard, once for being subversives and again for being women. This is why, when guerrilla women are tortured, rape or sexual assault in one form or another is almost always part of the treatment. (Vásquez Perdomo, 2005, pp. 242–243) Most autobiographies by former female fighters do not often address torture and sexual violation, but they do raise another traumatic topic: forced abortion.13 Others were excluded from the group when they became pregnant because they had supposedly infringed the rules of conduct, which stipulated that fighters should not have children. Vera Grabe writes: The hardest thing was the abortion … What for many is an ethical and legal question, for us is, in addition, suffering and violence. This [problem] has been one of the most critical debates I had with myself … The big difference

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras  71 was that you, the leading compañeros, had historical responsibilities and children, because there were wife-mothers who cared for them [the children] and raised them, with immense generosity and the vision of keeping the paternal image high.14 (Grabe Loewenherz, 2000, p. 179) For her fellow fighter, María Eugenia Vásquez, there was at first no doubt where her responsibilities and loyalties lay. She had two children born during her time as an active guerrillera, and both were raised by another family: I renounced motherhood for the second time. I left the lives of my boys in the hands of others, trusting that we would have time together under better conditions in the future. War was not compatible with motherhood. Once more I put my mission as a soldier above my personal life. I did this with sadness, but without regret. (Vásquez Perdomo, 2005, p. 219) Only when her first son died at the age of 13, far away from her and without her knowing about it, this event … broke me in two. I was sufficiently prepared for my own death, and I had borne the deaths of my beloved compañeros in battle … The hope and faith in the revolutionary project that I had kept alive through the years no longer made sense to me. (Vásquez Perdomo, 2005, p. 231) Resuming her life as a guerrilla in the light of gender relations, Vásquez concludes: Love and emotional relationships were areas in which there were fewer masculine transformations. Perhaps in the areas of politics and participation, even in the recognition of operational abilities of some of the compañeras, progress was made. But in the intimate arena of couple relationships, our compañeros were like all other Colombian men. We, the compañeras, the guerrilleras, paid a high price for innovating and transgressing the norms of matrimony, affection and sex. (Vásquez Perdomo, 2005, p. 244) The bitter fruits of the struggle The Nicaraguan writer and ex-guerrillera Gioconda Belli, who fought with a group that had for the first time addressed gender issues in its program, nevertheless had similar experiences as Vera Grabe and María Eugenia Vásquez. She actively participated in the struggle against the country’s dictator and lived

72  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict through problems of reconciling armed struggle and motherhood. She became a feminist along that way. But more than that, after the triumph of the revolution, she became disillusioned with the Sandinista Revolution because of their lack of attention to gender issues. In her autobiography, she recalls how Sandinista women already faced problems during the first revolutionary government, for whom she worked in several functions. Some ex-guerrilleros began to discuss the “old” problem of the cohabitation of women and men in the barracks. Belli wrote: For the first time ever, I heard someone suggest that perhaps women should be barred from active service. I considered it ludicrous and said so. How could they even think such a thing when women had already proven themselves to be as able fighters as men during the insurrection? Nevertheless, some months later, the top army officials … decided that from that point on women would only occupy administrative posts. (Belli, 2002, p. 149) This quote is exemplary of the frustration that many female fighters felt after demobilization. Their contributions and sacrifices to the cause were neither adequately recognized nor gratified either politically or socioeconomically. In addition, the quote draws attention to the fact that, after the armed conflict, even revolutionary governments returned to traditional gender roles. Former fighters, as well as researchers, agree that we can only assess whether the active participation of women in armed struggle led to changes in dichotomous visions of gender roles and created new opportunities for women, after the violent phase of the struggle is over. In many cases, the answer is a negative one15 (Bayard de Volo, 2001; Hörtner, 2009). Conclusion Male16 and female fighters face specifically gender(ed) dilemmas when struggling for better societies, whether for independence or a better, fairer and more peaceful society. In order to achieve their goals, they resort to the use of violence. While men negotiate prescribed gender roles in conflict situations, women must also reconcile images of their role as gentle and loving with the new role as fighter. Images of the abnegated, selfless mother, and the pacific “angel of the home” enter into conflict with imagery of an active, even violent, fighter in pursuit of sociopolitical aims. Society also judges different subjects’ actions differently according to gender and political positions. Whereas we rarely find egodocuments from women who formed part of armed groups in the 19th century, but only descriptions and judgments by observers, we can draw on testimonials and interviews from women in the 20th century. For this and other reasons, the analysis of both groups draws on slightly different topics, but

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras  73 these themselves are revealing. While the active and sometimes violent participation of women in armed conflicts of the 19th century has mostly been overlooked, or even romanticized by later generations in order to enforce traditional visions of gender and family, women in the 20th century began to reflect on gender trouble in contexts of active female participation in armed conflicts. Most of them eventually became dissatisfied with these struggles, not only for political reasons, but quite often because of the impossibility of reconciling their roles as fighters with those as mothers, contrary to male counterparts who did not face such contradictions. Whereas women of the 19th and early 20th centuries probably considered themselves as transgressing their roles – or as “bad”, in the words of Jesusa – they did not question their female duties to support male fighters. Women in revolutionary armies of the 20th century began to question this role, and it seems that responsibilities for food and logistics were more equally distributed among men and women. Yet, other issues became sources of conflict. Although many guerrilleras initially felt equal and respected, when it came to occupying lead positions, the gender gap could not be overlooked. But most of the women fighters only started to fundamentally question gender roles when they got pregnant and/or had children, as these situations disclosed an implicit double standard. Female fighters thus began to reflect on this topic and felt the ambiguity even more acutely after demobilization. Being an ex-guerrillera was much more difficult than being an ex-guerrillero, since there was significant mistrust of women who had left their families, and even their children, or who renounced motherhood in order to join an armed group (Londoño Fernández and Nieto Valdivieso, 2006). Societies that still rely on traditional gender role models tend to fall back on dichotomies of pacifist and caring women and tough and belligerent men. Female participation in armed conflicts is thus either declared as deviant, or, as in the 20th century, reduced to the service of female fighters not so much to a political cause, but to supporting a specific man. This image remains hard to overcome, as we have seen, with the examples of Tania. But the memories and political writings of ex-guerrilleras,17 who not only reflect on their personal careers but also on wider political and social problems, help us to better understand the motives and struggles of these female fighters. Notes 1 This chapter is based on two earlier chapters of mine, “Rabonas, Soldaderas, Guerrilleras: Mujeres protagonistas en conflictos armados en perspectiva histórica” (2022) and “Female Soldiers and National Heroes in Latin America” (2009). I thank Jonathan DeVore for his careful reading of the English text and his valuable comments. 2 However, the distinction between women who voluntarily participate in fighting and those who are victims of such actions is not always easy, since some are forced to join the armed groups for one reason or another. 3 See, for example, photographs of Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana (1992, p.  75) or some of the iconic pictures of the Nicaraguan Revolution.

74  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict 4 There is an ongoing debate on the question whether lower class and/or indigenous people had different gender and honor codes than the upper-class families, but this cannot be discussed here. See Caulfield et al. (2005). 5 For a traditional version of the life of Mariquita Sánchez, see Rodríguez (2000). For a more differentiated view, see Batticuore (2011). For Chile, Sarah Chambers (2015) wrote an analysis of the independence movement in gender perspective. 6 There is an enormous number of biographies on Manuela Sáenz. Two of the most prominent are by Rumazo González (1970) and Hagen (1957) (English original: Four seasons of Manuela, 1952). For more bibliographical details, see Murray (2001), Quintero Montiel (2001) and Chambers (2001). 7 In descriptions of Manuela on the battlefield, the image of the “Amazonian” woman is invoked several times. 8 At the beginning of the 19th century, however, these women were referred to as troperas, (from tropa, “troop”) or vivanderas (those who provide víveres, i.e., food for, but who also live with [viven] the troops), or simply as juanas. In Ecuador, they were known as guarichas, and in Peru, as ravañas or rabonas. Mexicans during the Revolution called them soldaderas, a word presumably derived not from the word soldado, although these women often were defined simply as “the Mexican soldier’s women”. The word rather was derived from Spanish soldada, an old word for sueldo (pay), since they were entitled to collect pay for their husbands in order to provide for them. At the end of the 19th century, Cubans called their female independence fighters mambisas, a word of African origin, used by the Spaniards to describe a filthy and dishonest person. The freedom fighters, free colored in their majority, adopted the word and called themselves proudly mambises and mambisas. See Tirado Meijía (1976, p. 58); Alzola de Cvitanocich (1981); Salas (1995, pp. 13–36). 9 One of the few authors to address the question of the ethnic origin of the female soldiers and soldaderas in the Mexican Revolution is Reséndez Fuentes (1995, pp. 530– 547). 10 Especially for the Mexican Revolution, we have abundant testimonies of such abuses. See Salas (1995, p. 87–88), or John Reed, a U.S.-American observer who was struck by how rapidly and emotionless a soldadera passed (or was passed) to another man if hers had died (Reed, 1978, pp. 99–109). 11 The full text, as well as some photographs, can be found in Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana (1992, p. 75). 12 For other Colombian groups, see Londoño Fernández and Nieto Valdivieso (2006, p. 31–32). There is only one exception, the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) of the 1990s in Peru, which had a higher number of women on the directing board. Nevertheless, this presence does not mean that the group was dedicated to gender equality or female emancipation. See Coral Cordero (1998). 13 Hörtner (2009, p. 126–135) points out that there were marked differences in the attitudes toward forced abortion between the two major guerrilla groups, the FARC and the ELN. 14 Some years after her abortion, Vera Grabe was pregnant for a second time. This time, she decided to have the baby, although her fellow compañeros from the board strongly opposed the decision (Grabe Loewenherz, 2000, p. 273). However, the baby girl grew up far away from her mother and the troops. 15 The Nicaraguan case is especially dramatic, since the Sandinista Daniel Ortega, initially president from 1985 to 1990, and now president since 2006, has in his second term as president abolished many of the achievements of women during the first revolutionary government. 16 Men who are pacificists, or who refuse to fight for different reasons, such as, e.g., nonable-bodied men, face their own gendered stigmas, which have probably been underanalyzed by scholars as well. 17 See, for example, Grabe Loewenherz (2017).

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras  75 References Alzola de Cvitanocich, Nilsa M. (1981) ‘Imagen tradicional y realidad de la mujer en el ámbito político Argentino (1810–1920)’ [Traditional image and reality of women in the Argentinian political sphere (1810–1920)], Revista Interamericana de Bibliografía XXXI, 31(2), pp. 246–257. Anzalduá, Gloria E. (1987) Borderlands / La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Batticuore, Graciela (2011) Mariquita Sánchez: Bajo el signo de la revolución [Mariquita Sánchez: Under the sign of revolution]. Buenos Aires: Edhasa. Bayard de Volo, Lorraine (2001) Mothers of heroes and martyrs: Gender identity politics in Nicaragua, 1979–1999. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Belli, Gioconda (2002) The country under my skin: A memoir of love and war. London: Bloomsbury Publ. ‘Bolívar to Santander: 17th February 1825’ (1993), in Sáenz, Manuela and Bolívar, Simón (eds.) Patriota y amante de Usted: Manuela Sáenz y el Libertador. Diarios ineditos [con textos de Elena Poniatowska, Miguel Bonasso, Carlos Álvarez, Heinz Dietrich], Heinz Dietrich Stefan et al. (eds.). México, D.F.: Ed. Diana. Brown, Matthew (2005) ‘Adventures, foreign women and masculinity in the Colombian Wars of Independence’, Feminist Review, 79, pp. 36–51. Butler, Judith (1999) Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Castro, Daniel (1999) Revolution and revolutionaries: Guerrilla movements in Latin America. Wilmington, DE: SR Books. Caulfield, Sueann; Chambers, Sarah C. and Putnam, Lara (2005) Honor, status and law in modern Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press. Chambers, Sarah C. (2015) Families in war and peace: Chile from colony to nation. Durham, London: Duke University Press. Chambers, Sarah C. (2001) ‘Republican friendship: Manuela Sáenz writes women into the nation, 1835–1856’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 81(2), pp. 225–257. Cherpak, Evelyn (1995) ‘Las mujeres en la Independencia’ [Women in independence], in Velásquez Toro, Magdala (ed.) Las mujeres en la historia de Colombia. Santafé de Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, pp. 219–234. Coral Cordero, Isabel (1998) ‘Women in war: Impact and responses’, in Stern, Steve J. (ed.) Shining and other paths: War and society in Peru, 1980–1995. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 345–374. Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1989) ‘Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(8), pp. 139–167. Davies, Catherine, Brewster, Claire and Owen, Hilary (2006) South American independence: Gender, politics, text. Liverpool: Cambridge University Press. Earle, Rebecca (2000) ‘Rape and the anxious republic: Revolutionary Colombia, 1810– 1830’, in Dore, Elizabeth and Molyneux, Maxine (eds.) Hidden histories of gender and the state in Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Elshtain, Jean Bethke (1987) Women and war. New York: Basic Books. Estrada Lescaille, Ulises (2005) Tania: Undercover in Bolivia with Che Guevara. Melbourne: Ocean Press. Grabe Loewenherz, Vera (2017) La paz como revolucion: M-19 [Peace as a revolution: M-19]. Bogotá DC, Colombia: Tallar de Edición Rocca S.A.

76  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Grabe Loewenherz, Vera (2000) Razones de vida [Reasons of life]. Santa Fe de Bogotá: Planeta Colombiana Ed. Guardia, Sara Beatriz (2010) Las mujeres en la Independencia de América Latina [Women in Latin American Independence]. Lima: CEMHAL. Guevara, Che (1985) Guerilla warfare. Lincoln; London: University of Nebraska Press. Hagen, Victor W. von (1957) Manuela: Manuela Sáenz und Simón Bolívar. Hamburg; Wien: P. Zsolnay. Hörtner, Maria (2009) Die unsichtbaren Kämpferinnen: Frauen im bewaffneten Konflikt in Kolumbien zwischen Gleichberechtigung und Diskriminierung [Invisible fighters: Women in armed conflict in Columbia between equality and discrimination]. Köln: PapyRossa. Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana (1992) Las mujeres en la Revolución Mexicana: 1884–1920: Biografías de mujeres revolucionarias [Women in the Mexican Revolution: 1884–1920: Biographies of revolutionary women]. México, D.F.: Honorable Cámara de Diputados LV Legislatura. Kampwirth, Karen (2002) Women & guerrilla movements: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Londoño Fernández, Luz María and Nieto Valdivieso, Yoana Fernanda (2006) Mujeres no contadas: Procesos de desmovilización y retorno a la vida civil de mujeres excombatientes en Colombia 1990–2003 [Uncounted women: Processes of demobilization and return to civilian life of women ex-combatants in Colombia 1990–2003]. Medellín: La Carreta Ed. Luciak, Ilja A. (2001) After the revolution: Gender and democracy in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Macdonald, Sharon (1987) ‘Drawing the lines: Gender peace and war: An introduction’, in Macdonald, Sharon, Holden, Pat and Ardener, Shirley (eds.) Images of women in peace and war: Crosscultural and historical perspectives. Basingstoke: Hampshire, pp. 1–26. Martínez Hoyos, Francisco (2012) Heroínas incómodas: La mujer en la Independencia de Hispanoamérica [Inconvenient heroines: Women in the Independence of Hispanic America]. Málaga: Rubeo. Murray, Pamela S. (2001) ‘“Loca” or “Libertadora”?: Manuela Sáenz in the eyes of history and historians 1900-c.1990’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 33(2), pp. 291–310. Poniatowska, Elena (2002) Here’s to you, Jesusa! New York: Penguin Books. Potthast, Bárbara (2022) ‘Rabonas, soldaderas, guerrilleras: Mujeres protagonistas en conflictos armados en perspectiva histórica’ [Rabonas, soldaderas, guerilleras: Women protagonists in armed conflicts in historical perspective], in Arias, Enrique et al. (eds.) Violencias y resistencias: América Latina entre la historia y la memoria. Madrid: Doce Calles, pp. 21–38. Potthast, Bárbara (2015) ‘Heroines or victims?: Gender roles and memories of the war of the Triple Alliance’, in Thies, Sebastian, Pisarz-Ramírez, Gabriele and Gutiérrez de Velasco, Luzelena (eds.) Of fatherlands and motherlands: De patrias y matrias: Gender and nation in the Americas. Trier: Wiss. Verl, pp. 87–100. Potthast, Bárbara (2011) ¿“Paraíso de Mahoma” o “País de las mujeres”?: El rol de la mujer y la familia en la sociedad paraguaya durante el siglo XIX [“Paradise of Mohammed” or “Country of women”?: The role of women and the family in Paraguayan society during the 19th century]. 2nd edn. Asunción: Fausto Ediciones. Potthast, Bárbara (2009) ‘Female soldiers and national heroes in Latin America’, in Dülffer, Jost and Frank, Robert (eds.) Peace, war and gender from antiquity to the present: Cross-cultural perspectives. Essen: Klartext, pp. 181–203.

Soldaderas and Guerrilleras  77 Quintero Montiel, Inés M. (2001) ‘Las mujeres de la independencia: ¿heroínas o transgresoras?: El caso de Manuela Sáenz’ [Women of independence: Heroines or transgressors?: The case of Manuela Sáenz], in Potthast, Bárbara and Scarzanella, Eugenia (eds.) Mujeres y naciones en América Latina: Problemas de inclusión y exclusión. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, pp. 57–76. Reed, John (1978) Insurgent Mexico. Berlin: Seven Seas. Reséndez Fuentes, Andrés (1995) ‘Battleground women: Soldaderas and female soldiers in the Mexican Revolution’, The Americas, 51(4), pp. 525–553. Rodríguez, Teresa V. (2000) Mariquita Sánchez y Martín Thompson: Un himno a la independencia y al amor [Mariquita Sánchez and Martín Thompson: A hymn to independence and love]. Buenos Aires: Ed. Planeta Argentina. Rodríguez Ostria, Gustavo (2011) Tamara, Laura, Tania: un misterio en la guerrilla de Che [Tamara, Laura, Tania: A mystery in Che’s guerrilla]. Madrid: RBA Libros. Rojas, Marta and Rodríguez Calderón, Mirita (1971) Tania, the unforgettable guerrilla. New York: Random House. Rumazo González, Alfonso (1970) Manuela Sáenz: La libertadora del libertador [Manuela Sáenz: The liberator of the liberator]. Guayaquil: Quito. Salas, Elizabeth (1995) Soldaderas in the Mexican military: Myth and history. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Scott, Joan Wallach (1986) ‘Gender: A useful category of historical analysis’, The American Historical Review, 91(5), pp. 1053–1075. Tirado Meijía, Alvaro (1976) Aspectos sociales de las guerras civiles en Colombia [Social aspects of the civil wars in Colombia]. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura, Subdirección de Comunicaciones Culturales. Tristan, Flora (1987) Peregrinations of a Pariah: 1833–1834. Translated by Hawkes, Jean. New York: Beacon. Vásquez Perdomo, María Eugenia (2005) My life as a Colombian revolutionary: Reflections of a former guerrillera. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Wickham-Crowley, Timothy P. (1992) Guerrillas and revolution in Latin America: A comparative study of insurgents and regimes since 1956. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zapata, Friedl and Antonio, José (1997) Tania: Die Frau, die Che Guevara liebte [Tania: The woman who loved Che Guevara]. Berlin: Aufbau.

5

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam “In my heart, I always wished to go” Hue Nguyen Thi1 and Eva Fuhrmann

Introduction Collective memory of the Vietnamese nation includes a long list of venerated female fighters, which begins in an ancient past with the mythical figures of the two Trưng-Sisters (Hai Bà Trưng) and Lady Triệu (Bà Triệu). During the fight for independence, from 1945 to 1975, women in all parts of the country took up arms to join the fight. A number of female fighters who lost their lives during the war for independence became national heroines. Today, there is no formal rule that prevents women from joining military or security forces; to the contrary, women are encouraged to contribute to the nation’s defense and security. However, women are simultaneously constructed as courageous and brave defenders of the nation and caretakers of the family. Our aim in this chapter is to add a perspective that focuses on what motivated women to become soldiers in both past and present. We approach this question through critical analysis of public discourses related to women and war, both today and in the past, drawing on narrative interviews with female veterans. In mid-2021, we conducted interviews with former female soldiers, young volunteers, militiawomen and guerillas who joined the army in North Vietnam between 1970 - 1975. Our research builds on a solid foundation of critical research into discourses on femininity in Vietnam, from the pre-colonial period, through the 20th century wars, to the present day. These discourses are linked in clear ways to discourses about the nation. As has been discussed by other scholars, the nation is not gender-neutral, but rather a highly gendered construction (Mayer, 2002). McClintock (1995, p. 354) notes, “Women are typically constructed as the symbolic bearers of the nation … but they are denied any direct relation to national agency”. While Tran (2012) has already investigated symbolic meanings of women for the Vietnamese nation-state, we further explore the gendered discourses of women viewed as mothers and nurturers of the modern Vietnamese nation, pointing to ambiguities when women take up arms to defend that same nation-state. Thus, we critically examine how these gendered notions of nation and national security reproduce power relations through discourses about femininity and the military. To begin, however, it is necessary to consider who counts as a “female fighter” in this chapter. Through colloquial use of the term, it appears clear that a fighter is DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-6

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam  79 someone who carries a weapon and uses it in combat. Certainly, with reference to female fighters, the transgression of gendered normative boundaries is a defining aspect. However, during the course of this chapter, we will question the conception of “soldier” or “fighter” as those who carry weapons and use them during armed conflict. First, we propose an emic approach to this question. The women whom we spoke to regarded themselves as veterans and former female soldiers (nữ bộ đội), as they were trained in the use of weapons and were ready to use them if needed. They told us about their comrades who had died while transporting goods and working on roads, as well as wounded women on the battlefields in the South. According to Ms. Nguyễn Thị M. (Kim Sơn, Ninh Bình) - who worked as a nurse at the hospital during the 1970s: In 1972 to 1973, many injured female soldiers were transferred to the hospital for treatment, many soldiers lost both legs, many lost their hands, burned their faces because of bombs and bullets, and many suffered from mental illness. Every day, I had to take care of many wounded soldiers, most of them were serious. (Ms. Nguyễn Thị M. - Corporal - Nurse, time in the army 1971 - 1977, hometown: Kim Sơn, Ninh Bình) Although these female soldiers were not directly on the battlefield, they were involved in the fighting through their experiences. This not only affected their physical health; in many cases, it caused psychological trauma. However, despite the many difficulties, the fierceness of the situation, and even facing death, the young women were determined to go to battlefield. Second, from a historical perspective, there were different understandings of the terms “soldier” or “fighter” that were in use in Vietnam. As Raffin (2011, p. 72) states, the term soldier was used throughout Vietnam’s history in a more inclusive sense, built on the historical tradition of employing peasants as soldiers. In pre-colonial Vietnam, soldiers had agricultural duties when they were not fighting. This strategy was adopted by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in the 1950s, as they commanded the army to be self-sufficient, producing their own food and supporting people during harvest. Third, we argue that Vietnam became an increasingly militarized society during the fight for independence. This process involved the militarization of everyday life, as all social practices and activities were (re)oriented so that they would contribute to national defense. Kruse (2017) describes this phenomenon as the “modern war society” (Kriegsgesellschaftliche Moderne), referring to the transformations that great wars initiate in societies. Enloe (2007) traces the connections between militarism, globalization and feminism in contemporary societies by pointing out that militarism can not only be found in military institutions, but in global production chains and social relations. Thus, we argue that militarism is still present in Vietnam, not only through military firms and

80  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict members of the army itself, but through their broader influence on society as a whole. Militarization is not only a process that transforms social relations, but it is also inscribed in bodies. Baker (2020) points to the tension between bodies that experience war and the perception of bodies at war, or militarized bodies. We develop this idea by elaborating the mutual conditionality of a subject’s own bodily experience of war and expectations about the subject’s body at war. Women who wanted to join the struggle for independence described their efforts to fulfill criteria for acceptance as soldiers. Additionally, the aesthetics of war (Baker, 2020) have played an important part in the inscription of militarization into gendered Vietnamese bodies perceived as ready to fight, as will be shown below. This chapter begins with a short overview of women in the military in Vietnam and of femininity and feminism in Vietnam through Confucianism and Socialism. Based on a review of the previously mentioned body of research, we establish how gender polarization has influenced Vietnamese society over history, and we especially consider how a public discourse of gender equality that took shape in Vietnam early in the 20th century was utilized by various actors. The next section explores the relation between gendered social norms and the need to mobilize all available resources between the 1940s until 1975. In these years, we argue, an “atmosphere to join the front” (không khí ra trận), as one of the women we spoke to called it, was created that included mobilizing women for combat, especially in the 1970s. Young women were especially inspired by this atmosphere to participate in the fighting. The subsequent section of the chapter is concerned with the post-war period. During the 1980s, the Vietnamese state military underwent massive demobilization campaigns. While still accepted in the military, women are mainly presented as caregivers and their representation as soldiers thus continues to be influenced by traditional gendered practices. Finally, in the last section of our chapter, we will discuss (dis)continuities that interpenetrate discourses of femininity and the military over the past 80 years in Vietnam, as we illustrate throughout the chapter. These discourses are informed by material and immaterial aspects, including the need to form a new nation state through the war as well as bodily experiences during that war. Women and the military in Vietnam From the 1940s until 1954, Vietnam struggled for independence from French colonialism during the “Indochinese War”. During the Second World War, various nationalist and communist groups were active in the resistance against France. In 1940, they regrouped under the Vietnamese Revolutionary League (Việt Nam Độc lập Đồng minh Hội), or the “Việt Minh”, which was able to mobilize people for their armed struggle (Taylor, 2013, pp.  530–531). After the Japanese emperor’s surrender in 1945, the Việt Minh were able to bring most of Northern Vietnam under their control, forming a new government in Hanoi. French troops re-occupied southern parts of the country between October 1945 and March 1946,

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam  81 and regained control over parts of the North, including Hanoi, by November 1946. The Việt Minh government retreated to the Northern Highlands and undertook a war of resistance. That conflict ended with the creation of two Vietnamese nation states, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) to the north of the 17th parallel, and the Republic of Vietnam (RV) to the south, with both governments claiming to represent the whole country. From 1954 until 1975, these two states were at war. In the South, a communist resistance organization, the National Front for Liberation (NFL), was founded. The North, under the Workers’ Party of Vietnam enjoyed support from the USSR, while the United States supported the RV government, eventually entering directly into the conflict. In Vietnam, the U.S.’s entry into the war led to naming the conflict, “the War against the USA”, while it was called the Vietnam War outside the country. Over the course of this war, women actively participated on the side of the DRV and under the NFL. In 1975, the DRV defeated the RV and, in 1976, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) was founded under the re-named Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). While today, Vietnam’s national army, the Vietnamese People’s Army (VPA), does not have mandatory conscription for women, they may enlist voluntarily. Women’s contributions to combat varied, as did Vietnamese society’s perception of female fighters during the war period. On 20 October 1930, during the first congress of the Indochinese Communist Party, the Vietnam Women’s Union (VWU) was established, although under a different name at that time. The Union’s task was to mobilize Vietnamese women to build the “new socialist woman” and to contribute to the fight against the French colonial regime. During the Indochinese War, women who joined the Việt Minh were referred to as “female guerilla fighters” (nữ du kích). They were mostly involved in local clandestine operations, including work in transportation or communication, and even in assassination plots. Today, many of these female guerilla fighters, for example, Phạm Thị Xuyến or Hà Thị Quế, who was called the “Female Việt Minh General” (Bà tướng Việt Minh) (Báo Quân đội nhân dân, 23 January 2021), are honored by the state and the people of Vietnam for their contributions to achieving independence from France. After 1954 in the DRV, however, no mandatory military conscription for women existed. Teerawichitchainan (2009, p.  68) estimates the percentage of women from the Red River Delta who served in the VPA between the 1950s and 1995 as a low, single-digit number. Only in the late 1960s, with the intensification of war, the VPA began to accept female soldiers (Turley, 1972). Thus, female fighters from the North mostly joined as volunteers or became part of the youth shock brigades (thanh niên xung phong) at a very young age. Youth shock brigades were first established during the Indochinese war and its members formed smaller groups for fast infrastructure interventions, such as repairing or clearing roads ahead of the general army. However, they were also tasked with leading musical performances to help uplift the soldiers’ morale. The main area of their deployment was the Trường Sơn range where they contributed to the building of the “Ho Chi Minh Trail”, a supply route that supported the movement in the South. In media and art, they were often referred to as

82  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict the “Flowers of Trường Sơn Forest”. As Gottschang Turner (1998) describes, despite their critical tasks, these groups were to a large degree regarded as supplementary and were not consistently registered in military documents. In many cases, however, those in the youth brigade were among those who bore the main burden of the war effort and the group was constituted by a large percentage of young women. Despite their poetic nickname, these women suffered tremendously from a lack of hygiene and difficult living conditions (Gottschang Turner, 1998; Guillemot, 2009). After 1965, the number of female youth shock brigades rapidly increased due to the “three responsibilities” campaign implemented by the VWU. Women from the South, who wanted to support the cause of the DRV, usually joined the NFL as guerilla fighters (nữ du kích) (Tétreault, 1996; Eisner, 2018). After the end of the war, in 1975, women continued to be part of the VPA, although in small numbers, while higher ranks in the administration were mostly filled with men, with a few exceptions. In commemoration of the war, women were largely excluded until the 1990s. By then, “heroic mothers” were decorated with medals as a means to acknowledge their loss of children and other family members. The memory of women’s roles during the war is enthusiastically upheld by the VWU. Enloe (1996), while impressed with national museums dedicated to Vietnamese women’s contribution to the war, is slightly cautious as she surveys prominent artifacts in those museums. These items, such as needlework, represent a discourse dominated and directed by a male gaze. While women’s contributions to the war are presented in such museums and public discourses, the adopted perspective is clearly gendered, emphasizing perceived feminine qualities, such as motherhood or longing for peace. Today, there is significant research into women’s participation in the Indochinese War and the Vietnam War. With the economic “Đổi mới” reforms intensifying in the 1990s, feminist research in Vietnam Studies began to increase in prominence, both within and outside the country. Although the bulk of that research focused on the influence the reform process had on women in Vietnamese society, some researchers included historical perspectives on women during the war period. These include the edited volume, Vietnam’s Women in Transition (Barry, 1996), which featured the contribution by Enloe mentioned above. Werner (1981) reviews women’s roles during wartime in the DRV, while Gottschang Turner (1998) portrays the life stories of several women who fought for the DRV or the NFL. In her more recent ethnographic research, Eisner (2018) focuses on war memories by women who participated in the war as guerilla fighters in the South. Nguyễn (2001) studies the involvement of female fighters during the Vietnam war, drawing on a variety of sources to compile statistics on female soldiers who joined the VPA between 1954 and 1975. Her research shows that women mainly worked in the medical corps as well as in logistics and intelligence units. While Nguyễn focuses on the situation in the North, Vũ (2004) analyses the participation of women in political struggles during the war in the South, especially the role of the renowned “Long Haired Warriors” during those years. While the latter two publications provide invaluable information on the participation of female

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam  83 soldiers during the Vietnam War, they mainly provide statistics without exploring other aspects of the lives of female soldiers. While the research summarized above deals with the role of women in the military in the past, including continued remembrance of their struggles, inquiry into the situation of women in the Vietnamese military abruptly ends at that point. Research on the military in Vietnam today is mostly limited to exploring its economic role since the reform period. Femininity and feminism in Vietnam In discussing gender, femininity, and feminism in Vietnam, we inevitably enter into politicized debates that can be traced as far back as the 13th or 14th centuries, as Tran (2018) so meticulously details. This discourse was – and certainly still is – embedded in power relations that have shaped various periods since then. Whether emperors aiming to distance themselves from the powerful neighbor to the North, colonists trying to justifying their colonial mission, or revolutionaries seeking to mobilize people to fight against the former – all of these groups have variously participated in shaping contemporary views of gender relations in Vietnam. Arguably, however, both Confucianism and Socialism have been among the most influential philosophies – or ideologies – contributing to the construction of femininity in Vietnam today. Proving exceptionalism is a powerful aim of historical scholarship on Vietnam, both today and in the past (Tran, 2018). An emphasis on the higher position of women in pre-historic Vietnamese society has been important to arguments that seek to contrast Vietnamese culture with China. From the 1920s onwards, popular myths about women were employed in the construction of this argument. Such myths begin with the modern interpretation of the founding myth of the Việt people. According to this story, a mythical being named Âu Cơ, a fairy and ancient mother to all Viet, created the Vietnamese nation together with her husband, a dragon king, and both jointly defended their descendants. Two sisters who followed in her footsteps are regarded as exemplary models for Vietnamese women. The Trưng Sisters (Hai Bà Trưng) allegedly raised an army against the occupying Han Chinese forces in the year 41 C.E., and were able to defeat them for a short time. However, the Han army ultimately vanquished the sisters. Their sacrifice is interpreted as an act of love for their country’s freedom and against foreign domination. Imagery of the sisters riding on elephants to fight for their native land is probably known to all Vietnamese people. Another heroine widely known in Vietnam is a princess, Lady Triệu (Bà Triệu), who fought against the same enemy roughly two hundred years later. According to the annals of the Lê-Dynasty in the 13th century, Lady Triệu was able to assemble various chiefs in her army and rebelled against invaders from the North. Together with zealous folk tales and songs, these stories built the basis for the official narrative of an ancient matriarchal society. Women in these narratives are represented as unflinching defenders of their homes and of the nation. However, they also nurture their children and venerate their fathers and husbands. According to these tales, this world of equality

84  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict between the sexes ended due to oppression by invaders from the North, who not only exploited the people, but eliminated all cultural traits they deemed barbaric and uncivilized (Lê, 1973). While these narratives, among others, construct an image of an ancient matrilineal society that occupied the Red River Delta, and depict cultural adaptions from China that resulted in a patrilineal society (Mai and Lê, 1978), historical and anthropological evidence do not unequivocally support historical claims about a former matriarchal society (Tran, 2018). Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism arrived in what today is known as North Vietnam sometime during the first centuries C.E. from China. In the 2nd century B.C.E., the Han-dynasty extended its sphere of influence to the South, into the area of the Red River Delta. They not only brought technical and administrative knowledge with them, but also religious influences. Chinese administration was based on Confucian ethics, which was eventually transferred to provinces in the South. Scholars still debate the extent to which Confucianism was able to penetrate worldviews of the common population beyond the educated elite. Tran (2018), Hakkarainen (2018), Kelley (2006) and Yu (1994) agree that Confucianism in Vietnam was most influential from the 13th century onwards, after the first independent states were established in the area of the Red River Delta. Together with other influences from Buddhism and Taoism, Confucianism was particularly utilized by local elites as a means to consolidate state power and was disseminated to the general population through teachings and writings. While Confucianism was based on Chinese sources, the spread of the doctrine itself was subject to processes of local adaptation. Indeed, Chinese sources from the period criticize their southern neighbor for loose conduct. Yu (2011, p. 25) suggests that restrictive Confucian norms regarding women were more important to local elites, while women in lower strata of society were less affected by it. He argues that two systems existed in parallel. Women from educated and wealthy families were actively taught to obey Confucian rituals. Women were expected to follow the “Three Obediences” (tam tòng), namely, to serve the father at home (tại gia tòng phụ), serve the husband upon marriage (xuất giá tòng phu) and serve the children after the death of the husband (phu tử tòng tử). They also internalized the “Four Virtues” (tứ đức): Industriousness (công), appearance (dung), speech (ngôn) and conduct (hạnh). Meanwhile, according to Yu (2011), rural and other women from the lower social class absorbed Confucianism more passively, adapting moral obligations to the realities of everyday life. These women contributed income to the household, especially through petty trade, in addition to farming and doing housework. Nevertheless, they were still bound by social norms that followed a strictly gendered social hierarchy. At the beginning of the 20th century, Western feminist ideas arrived in Vietnam through colonialism (Chiricosta, 2010). French colonial policy contributed in particular by creating schools for girls. However, these schools were mainly attended by members of the urban upper class and did not have a large effect on women in the countryside or from the poorer segments of society (London, 2011). While feminism first spread primarily among women from the elite, who were educated in the colonial school system or even went to school in France, some Vietnamese

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam  85 feminists soon turned to communist ideas, as the disadvantage of poor women in the countryside became evident to them (Chiricosta, 2010). Although women in Vietnam embraced the fight for gender equality, this adaptation of Western ideals was disapproved of by nationalists and communists alike, as they perceived it as another source of domination by the West (Turley, 1972). In various newspaper articles from 1946, the communist criticism becomes particularly evident. Western feminism was criticized as “limited”, as it was unable to realize that the enemies of women were not men, but the exploiting colonialists. Therefore, women should join with men in common struggle against colonialism. Ho Chi Minh and other leaders of the communist movement in Vietnam were deeply impressed by Lenin’s anti-colonialist thought and acknowledged Lenin’s ideas on the equality of women. However, they were also influenced by various other ideas of the time and, to some extent, even incorporated some Confucian doctrines into their thinking. This is especially visible in the context of women’s liberation (Chiricosta, 2010; Vu, 2017). The notion that respect for women in the ancient Vietnamese society was suppressed by Confucianism was “recycled” by communist rhetoric. An example is the image of the Trưng Sisters, which was – and still is – used repeatedly for propaganda purposes. In 23 of 54 newspaper articles from the 1940s that we analyzed for this chapter; the Trưng Sisters were cited as “shining examples” that could help to mobilize women for participation in the war. This narrative also encouraged men to join the fight by showing how, in the past, even women were brave and achieved many victories. In the pre-colonial period, Confucian scholars employed the same narrative to distinguish the Vietnamese state from China, the dominant neighbor to the North. French explorers and researchers employed imagery of a Vietnamese woman ready for salvation through Western-style modernization (Tran, 2018). However, leadership of the CPV not only aimed at gender equality but also sought to promote women’s contributions to the creation of a new nation-state, thus emphasizing the “mothering” and “nurturing” qualities of women. This created an approach to the “new woman”, incorporating both progressive views of equality and more traditional notions of women as care workers (Pettus, 2003, p. 10). The task of the VWU since the war was thus to promote a discourse of femininity that included visions of women as serving the nation through participation in political bodies, work and combat, as well as women caring for children and the elderly. The latter received special emphasis following the reform program, as the state’s role in social services was reduced (Luong, 2016). In what follows, the short overview of gendered discourses in Vietnam presented above will be elaborated in more detail with respect to its influences on the perception of women taking part in military conflicts since the 1940s. An “atmosphere to join the front”: Women fighting for independence To understand women’s motives to join the war efforts between the 1940s until 1975, we analyzed two sources. First, we looked at widespread revolutionary press publications from the period, such as the daily newspapers “Quận đội Nhân dân”

86  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict (People’s Army), “Nhân dân” (The People), “Tiếng gọi phụ nữ” (Women’s Voice) and “Báo Cứu quốc” (Rescuing the Nation). Second, we conducted a number of life history interviews with VPA-veterans of the War against America, recounting their experiences as they planned to enter the army during the 1970s. Based on these sources, we found that the Việt Minh, and later the DRV government, both created an “atmosphere to join the front” that first drew young people into the movement and then into recruitment offices. At least from 1970 onwards, this mobilization effort was also directed at women. Mobilization during the Indochinese war took place on many fronts, from literature and poetry to propaganda, demonstrations, and revolutionary struggle movements. People did not necessarily join the mobilizations due to their allegiance to communist ideology. The daily newspaper, “Báo Cứu quốc”, the mouthpiece of the Việt Minh, was first published in 1942 and used to distribute political information, speeches and literary pieces. The newspaper regularly published a column named “Women’s page”, reporting on women who were active in “cứu quốc”-movements. The term “cứu quốc”, which translates as “national salvation”, is a popular term that was introduced by the Việt Minh at the end of 1941 in order to attract people who positioned themselves as patriotic and anti-colonial, while not necessarily communist. The Việt Minh Front subsequently established several national salvation associations, such as “the Youth for National Salvation” (Thanh niên cứu quốc) or “Women for National Salvation” (Phụ nữ cứu quốc), among others. These movements were mainly formed in urban areas, where the movement was quickly able to attract people during the first half of the twentieth century. Through research focused on the early 1940s, Jamieson (1993, pp. 186– 187) describes the excitement created through secret resistance to French authorities – citing the former ambassador of the RV in the United States Bùi Diễm’s memoire as illustrative – which attracted a young urban generation that decided to join the movement. In this situation, political ideology was not as important as the feeling of community and change. During the 1940s, people in Vietnam experienced hunger and poverty. Thus, it can be assumed that those who were less educated did not join the movement as a result of their dedication to communism, but rather because of their experiences of poverty resulting in their opposition to French rule. Specific role models were also used to encourage participation in the movement. In 1946, during the Việt Minh government in Hanoi, the newspaper “Báo Cứu quốc” published several articles about urban women who were willing to give up their comfortable lives, and break with their Confucian ethics, in order to join the revolution. For example, the article “Comrade Trung made a decisive sacrifice for the nation”, was published on 27 June 1946 (Báo Cứu quốc, Vol. 277) and presents the life of a woman named Phạm Lê Thị Trung. According to the article, she was born into a wealthy family but nevertheless felt that it was her duty to join the communist movement. Her decision is depicted as a struggle to overcome several social barriers. Another example is the article, “Memoirs of a woman who saved the country”, published in Báo Cứu quốc (Vol. 285, 18 July) in 1946. The article conveys the earnest desire of a woman to dedicate her life to

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam  87 the revolutionary struggle. These narratives were apparently intended to motivate women, especially those from wealthy backgrounds, to join the communist movement, as they offered examples of peers who had already followed the call and at the same time presented morally correct behavior. A second motive is that of gender equality. In March 1946, the paper “Tiếng gọi phụ nữ” published the “Speech of women for national salvation” read at a meeting of the “Sisters for national salvation” on 8 March 1946. It was aimed at encouraging young women to join the fight to save the country, while simultaneously demanding equal rights for men and women in education as well as marriage. Once again, the authors made use of the Trưng Sisters, who led the rebellion against Chinese occupation in the first century C.E.: We women are bound by many customs: Men are elevated by society while women are belittled; sons are allowed to study, are valued for their work in society. But women are always considered minors: Throughout their whole life, they must follow their father, their husband, their children. They are not allowed to inherit possessions; they are not allowed to receive education like men. If a woman holds power, then she will be looked at like a monstrous omen (Tiếng gọi phụ nữ, Vol. 19, 14 March 1946, translation by authors). Today, the country is in a severe situation. The history of Vietnam is at a turning point. We must try, sisters, to be worthy daughters of the two female heroes who sacrificed themselves for the country’s independence! Those two women’s blood of bravery is boiling in our veins. Following the example of the two women who saved the country, we can decide to fight for the protection of our people’s freedom (Tiếng gọi phụ nữ, Vol. 20, 20 March 1946, translation by authors). The article, “Rich and intellectual women in the movement for women’s liberation”, in Báo Cứu quốc (Vol. 289, 11 July 1946) points in the same direction. Addressed to all women, the editors argue that the position of women is not only behind the door of the family’s home, serving husbands and children, but also as an active part of society. Women should participate in social and political work as well as in fighting. The speech concludes that the movement for women’s liberation must be carried out in parallel with the revolutionary and national liberation movement. In these speeches and newspaper articles, women were called to fight, both in the sense of carrying arms as well as contributing through other means. From 1954 to 1960, the fighting mainly continued in the South, as a fight between communist groups against the Diem government (Vu, 2004). In December 1960, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam was established, and, in February 1961, armed groups operating in the South were unified into the Liberation Army of the South, commonly known as the “Viet Cong”. There were

88  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict now three military forces in alliance with the Communist Party of Vietnam: In the North, the VPA, including local militias and defense groups, as well as the Youth Shock Brigades that were reactivated in the 1960s as an auxiliary force to the VPA, and, in the South, the Liberation Army of the South. While women were widely accepted in the Youth Shock Brigades, and in the Liberation Army of the South, the VPA did not generally accept female recruits. In August 1964, an incident with an American aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin resulted in the open entry of American forces into the fighting. Soon after, bombardment by the United States began in the North. Subsequently, in May 1965, President Ho Chi Minh signed a local mobilization order, mobilizing a part of non-commissioned officers, reserve soldiers, and a part of citizens in the army reserve who had not yet served in the army. Finally, in March 1966, with permission of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Defense issued a directive on the recruitment of women. According to Directive No. 67/QP, women were mainly assigned to administration, logistics and medical units, but also to the armed forces. The directive generally stipulated that not more than half of the members of one unit of the armed forces should be female. Based on our interviews, we conclude that Directive No. 67/QP met the aspirations of young Vietnamese women in this period. According to research by Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Lam, after the issuance of Directive No. 67/QP, the number of women in all branches of the military significantly increased, especially in the medical corps, administration and logistics. Before the issuance of the directive, women were not allowed to participate in the main army force and were not ordered directly to the front. They were usually deployed to operate at the rear to support the front lines. Nevertheless, the “three responsibilities” campaign, implemented by the VWU from 1965 onwards, aimed at mobilizing women to participate in the war effort in three ways: First, through maintaining production while men were gone at war, second, by taking care of the family, and, third, by being ready to take up arms and defend the home and homeland against the enemy. This campaign especially encouraged young women in the North to join local militia groups and the Youth Shock Brigades in the 1960s. The photograph “O du kích nhỏ” (“A little Guerilla”) taken by Phan Thoan in 1965, depicts a female member of the Youth Shock Brigades, a small woman, pointing her gun at the tall American pilot, William Andrew Robinson, who was shot down with his plane and subsequently captured. In the photograph William Andrew Robinson hangs his head, she walks upright and has a determined look. In 1967, the picture became widely known in the DRV as it illustrated a national postal stamp. The message it conveys is obviously related to the context mentioned above, showing that all Vietnamese people have joined the fight, even women. In a 2018 interview with Nguyễn Thị Kim Lai – the woman in the photograph – she explained the context: At that time, I was 1.5 meters tall and weighed 37 kilograms. William Andrew Robinson was 2.2 meters tall and weighed 120 kilograms. I was the first to be discovered, also the smallest in the squad, so everyone let me hold the gun

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam  89 to win the American pilot. On the way back, journalist Phan Thoan took the picture (VNExpress, 30 April 2018). Published on 30 April 2018, the national holiday in remembrance of the country’s reunification, this interview and the accompanying image reflects an omnipresent narrative about the War against America as a war between a David and Goliath. However, it was not until 1970 - 1971 that women in the North were actively recruited for the VPA. As of December 1972, the number of female soldiers working in hospitals accounted for 62.38 %, 56.4 % in the information department, 67.5 % in manufacturing and repairing and 47.3 % in fuel logistics (Nguyễn, 2001). Interviewees who joined the army as female soldiers in the 1970s recounted that what prompted them to enlist was the “atmosphere to join the front”. In every village in Vietnam of the North, mass organizations, such as the VWU, promoted campaigns to mobilize men and women to join the army. The campaigns that were implemented by local members of mass organizations and their media outlets created an atmosphere of patriotism, including the desire to dedicate and sacrifice one’s life for the country. Ms. Phạm Thị H., a corporal-engineer soldier who participated in the building of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, enlisted in the army in the 1970s from her hometown Yen La commune in Bac Ninh Province. She recalls the impression that media and propaganda had on her as a young girl: In the 70s, the loudspeakers announced the situation on the battlefield all day long, in the countryside all the young people went to [the southern battlefield]. I stayed at home to farm with my mother and siblings, but in my heart, I always wished to go to the South, contribute to the fight to protect the country. I hid from my mother to get a medical check-up to join the army. Dedication to the war effort was so strong in Ms. Phạm Thị H. that she even tried to hide her poor health condition from recruitment officers. Ms. Phạm Thị H. not only describes the atmosphere compelling her to join the battle field, with all her heart, but she also describes her embodiment of militarization, defining her body as fit for fighting, in spite of her mother’s concerns. For young girls who often joined at a very young age, their peers, classmates and friends provided important motivation, as Ms. H. describes further as she continues her narrative. Likewise, Ms. Nguyễn Thị H., who enlisted in 1971 and rose to the rank of a corporal, described the situation with her peers in the following way: During the years of resistance, the whole country went to war, my classmates volunteered to join the army, I always wished to go to the battlefield in the South, hoping to contribute to the war. I joined the army entirely as a volunteer, a personal desire and aspiration, wanting to contribute a little of my ability to defend the country.

90  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict The “atmosphere to join the front” was not only created through propaganda campaigns, but it was also fostered through very material experiences of everyday life. People suffered from U.S. bombardments in the North, which brought the war to their doorsteps. Families and villages were afraid for loved ones who had already left to fight. Many people encountered scenes of healthy and wounded soldiers during the war. Ms. Hoàng Thị T., who enlisted in the army in 1971, recalls her eagerness to follow the soldiers she saw on the streets into the army: Every day, on the way to school, I met many smiling soldiers, who were going to the front. At that time, in my mind, that image was extremely beautiful, so I also wanted to become a soldier. Originally, the reason I wanted to join the army was because I liked that atmosphere and the images of soldiers, although the government didn’t require young girls to join the army. (Mrs. Hoàng Thị T., Sergeant – engineer army [road construction], enlisted in the army 1971–1975, hometown: Hoằng Sơn, Hoằng Hóa, Thanh Hóa). Ms. Hoàng Thị T.’s experience of militarized bodies as “extremely beautiful” resulted in her own wish to mold her body to the requirements of the enlistment offices. Ms. Nguyễn Thị M., a corporal nurse who joined the army in 1971, similarly explained how eager she was to enlist when restrictions on women to become soldiers were lifted: I volunteered at the age of 17, in the 10th grade. I joined the army in early 1971, my sister also joined early in 1973. In our family, we were five sisters. In the early part of war, only men could go to war, so my parents were very sad. They thought they can’t help the country. After the government allowed women to join the army, all of our sisters volunteered to join the army, to contribute to protecting the homeland, the country, and helping the people in the South (Ms. Nguyễn Thị M – Corporal – Nurse, time in the army 1971–1977, hometown: Kim Sơn, Ninh Bình). As can be seen in this quote, being impressed with the glory of the war was not only a concern of the young generation, but it was also an issue for some parents. Ms. Nguyễn Thị M. recalls that her parents were devastated having only daughters who could not join the army, but that they were relieved when the policy changed. Ms. Dương Thị Vịn, Vice President of the Association of Former Members of the Youth Shock Brigades, and Former Vice President of the Ho Chi Minh City Women’s Union, shared the following with a journalist: The atmosphere in those days was heroic and very vibrant. Joining the resistance war, saving the country, everyone felt like we were going on a pilgrimage. Although we knew that being on the battlefield would be grueling and violent, everyone was still excited when we prepared to go. During the

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam  91 days on the battlefield, bombs and bullets were as common as our meals, the alarm’s sound had not stopped yet and already called again. But we were still alive, we still fought and sang. We sang for each other, we sang to mobilize our spirit, and we sang for our fallen comrades (Nhân dân online, 4 August 2014). While these motives that encouraged interviewees to join the army were created in an atmosphere that glorified the war, the actual experience of war was devastating. After enlistment, recruits attended a three-month basic training course that helped them build physical strength, receive basic military training, as well as training for the jobs to which they were assigned in the army. The majority of women were not directly assigned to the front, but rather to supportive infrastructure in the rear. From this position, however, as Ms. Nguyễn Thị M. recalls, the women were not shielded from the cruelties of war. Ms. Hoàng Thị T. explains that they often became engaged in fighting. Moreover, they regarded themselves as soldiers. While they did not carry weapons most of the time, they were trained to use them, and they were often under clear attack by the enemy. Under these circumstances, some people doubted their participation in the war. For the young girls who were away from home for the first time, life in the military was not easy. When they enlisted, they imagined a heroic life in battle, based on imagery of soldiers they had seen in a hurry on the marching vehicles. After entering the army, they had to get used to living under circumstances that were life threatening. Apart from threats of injury or being killed by the enemy, they lived in an environment where hygiene was difficult to maintain and illness easily spread. Ms. Hoàng Thị T. vividly describes how women on the march suffered from not being able to attend to sanitary issues. She also told us how she suffered from malaria and dysentery for nearly a year. She became extremely thin and weak to the point that her commanding officers repeatedly told her to discharge herself from the army and get treatment. But she wanted to stay with her comrades. After 1975, most women returned to their civilian lives. Higher ranks in the military continued to be filled by men, apart from a few exceptions, such as the former NFL guerilla fighter and commander, Nguyễn Thị Định, who became the first female general in the Vietnamese People’s Army. Today, there are still only a few female generals in the VPA, as part of the medical corps (hoilhpn​.org​.vn​​, 2014). In addition, the majority of female fighters were not active in the state military, but in the Youth Shock Brigades and guerilla groups in the South. As such, they were not regarded as veterans and thus did not receive pensions. From the early 1940s until 1975, an “atmosphere to join the front”, as Ms. Phạm Thị H. described it, was built by the Việt Minh in the area under their control and later by the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. This atmosphere was difficult for people to resist, especially young people who were apparently drawn to narratives about the heroic and glorious fight for the fatherland, as interviews showed. In many cases, while the idea of liberating the country was held in high esteem by women, the initial incentive was to be part of a

92  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict community, such as one’s school mates or soldiers who could be seen on the streets. During the anti-colonial war between 1945 and 1975, people were mobilized by campaigns that created the “atmosphere to join the front”. The campaign was not only a means for generating more human resources for the fight, it was also “a complex social process and organizational tactic” directed at forming a new nation state (Lentz, 2011, p. 560). The basis for this atmosphere was the narrative that the nation needed to be protected from foreign invaders. It was infused by imagery of female heroines fighting as fiercely as men from the beginning of the 20th century. This immaterial mobilization joined the materiality of war, as bombs destroyed homes and people regularly saw the wounded bodies as soldiers passing by. Continuing the tradition: Female soldiers today The period from 1975 to today is, on the one hand, characterized by demobilization and economic reforms that deeply affected the military in Vietnam. On the other hand, this period has also involved opening to the global economy and multilateral political entities, such as the United Nations. Apart from defense of the country, the main goal of the military today is therefore the enforcement of economic progress and representation of the country in various global engagements. Research on the contemporary military in Vietnam is limited and almost exclusively focuses on civil-military relations as well as economic activities of the Ministry of Defense and the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA). In the context of our research, this body of research illuminates current reporting about female soldiers and women in the military, illustrating the integration of civil and military sectors, as can be observed in media reports. Today, military service in Vietnam is compulsory for men between 18 and 26, while women of the same age can volunteer. As Thayer (2009, p. 4) notes, the VPA has reduced the size of its regular army since the 1980s and can now easily fill its ranks. However, the army is competing for skilled young people with the general economic sector. The law on military service lists a number of situations under which men of conscription age can be exempt from the conscription list, which is put together by local militia. Based on conversations with Vietnamese men from urban areas, it appears easy to avoid conscription, especially if the family has financial resources. However, the military offers a range of welfare benefits to employees. Therefore, especially for people without personal wealth, the army is an attractive employer. The above-mentioned relations between the civil and military sectors in Vietnam are based on three phenomena in the Vietnamese military apparatus, as Raffin (2011) and Thayer (2000, 2014) describe. First, through its historical development, understanding of the VPA as consisting of “civilians in uniform” is rooted in society (Raffin, 2011). Raffin (2011) explains that this is based on the historical practice of engaging soldiers in agricultural work during peacetime. During the war against France, as well as the Vietnam War, this practice was reactivated. Today, soldiers continue to be engaged in non-military economic activities, which

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam  93 predominantly includes work in the medical sector. The campaigns directed at women during this period provide vivid examples of the practice. Second, the VPA is clearly the military extension of the Communist Party of Vietnam. “Building Socialism” and providing security to the current political system are the core tasks of the VPA, visible in its dual leadership (Thayer, 2014). Based on this, Croissant (2016, p. 561) describes the VPA as an army of the party. The army is controlled by a commission of the party’s politburo and part of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, or the VWU, which is strongly involved in political campaigns directed at female soldiers. These campaigns, as will be demonstrated below, mirror the current perspective of femininity as it is propagated by the VWU, as an organ of the CPV. Third, economic reforms of the 1980s – commonly referred to as đổi mới (renovation) – initiated massive demobilization campaigns by the VPA, and ultimately led to larger economic involvement of the VPA (Thayer, 2000). While the VPA was already active in agricultural production since its establishment in 1944, these activities were intensified during the following years. Part of the aim of reforms was to force the VPA to finance itself, which led to a growth in investment outside the military sector. One of the most prominent examples is the large telecommunication company, Viettel. The extension of activities into the civilian sector, which occurred at the same time that the size of the standing army was reduced, resulted in a larger number of employees working in that area. Although the VPA has undergone a tremendous transformation, from being one of the largest standing armies worldwide, to a smaller, but financially more independent army, the discourses surrounding female soldiers have not significantly changed. Women as active soldiers are less common than might be anticipated, given their role during the two long wars in the 20th century. The little recognition given to female soldiers and guerilla fighters by the VPA, and its mainly male leadership, has been a point of criticism since the 1970s (Tétreault, 1996, p. 50). The findings presented here are based on articles from online-editions of daily newspapers from 2016 to 2021 on “military women” (phụ nữ quân đội), the predominant term used to describe female military personnel. This timeframe was chosen as it corresponds with the five-year legislative period and mobilization campaigns of the period. Mobilization campaigns directed at women during that time were regularly reported in the newspaper articles, as well as public speeches, that were analyzed here. Drummond and Thomas (2003) present these campaigns as directed at households, as a means employed by the state to involve itself in the private sphere. These campaigns not only convey information, but they seek to create “civilized” behavior in people’s private life. Although these campaigns present a glossy, idealized picture of society, these campaigns tell us about the government’s perspective on society. As was mentioned above, the VPA is directly linked to the party and is thus involved in implementing party politics. The VWU understands itself as representing the interests of the women in the VPA. Generally, there is strong censorship operating in Vietnam’s media landscape, preventing media reports from straying from policy proclamations by the

94  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict government. Thus, media reports analyzed in this section do not reflect personal statements by news journalists, but rather neatly orchestrated presentations by the government. News reports often present the results of public campaigns implemented by organizations such as the VWU. One interesting phenomenon that can be found in these campaigns is the seemingly contradictory weight put on both, fighting for national security and for care work. Lenin described care work as “the most unproductive, the most savage and the most arduous work a woman can do” (Resistance Marxist Library, 2003, pp. 67–68). However, it was also depicted by the VCP as the most important task that women could contribute to Vietnam’s economic progress in the past. Since the 1940s, discourses about women in Vietnam continued to emphasize women’s role in the economy and in the fight against foreign invaders, as laborers and care workers. This view is discernible in various campaigns of the VWU, as well as in political speeches that refer to those campaigns. As the VWU is also the organization tasked with mobilizing women in the VPA, this corresponds with the view of women in the Vietnamese military. In 2016, the General Secretary at that time, Nguyễn Phú Trọng, emphasized this theme in a speech about women in the VPA, as quoted by a newspaper clipping: Women in the army should continue the tradition of female heroes in being indomitable, steady and courageous; the tradition of the daughters of the Trưng sisters and Lady Trieu, who have the blood of a heroic people; the tradition of the heroic VPA; at the same time, studiously fulfilling their duty and striving for a happy family. This is twice the burden, but also twice the honor and happiness (Nhân dân Điện tử, 7 December 2016, translation by authors). The motif depicted in this statement was chosen as the central campaign slogan by the meeting of women in the army for the five-year period from 2016 to 2021. As can be expected, newspaper clippings from the period constantly point to women’s tasks to create a “happy family” (gia đình hạnh phúc), with children attending school and getting good grades, clean houses and yards, and so forth. Reports of official meetings and presentations praise women for contributing to the campaign’s success, while spending less time reporting on military training or deployment of women to conflict areas. This is in contrast to reports from meetings by the army in general, which usually omit women altogether, speaking of “the military” (quân đội) in a generic way, without mentioning gender. This image of caring women, even as soldiers, is repeatedly reproduced in newspaper reports and pictures of female soldiers. I will describe one picture here as an example, which is included in an article reporting how female soldiers from Military Area Four welcomed new recruits to the compound (Báo Quận khu Bốn, 10 March 2021). The picture shows five male and two female soldiers outside in what appears to be the yard of a military complex. Four of the men are seated on either side of a picnic bench, with newspapers on the table. One of the men is

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam  95 standing next to the bench opposite one of the women, who is handing him a glass of tea. The other woman is handing a glass of tea to a male soldier sitting on the bench. Two other male soldiers already have their drinks on the table before them. Everybody is smiling happily at one another, which gives the impression that the scene was staged for the photographer. The caption to the images describes it as “new soldiers receive refreshments from their sisters”. The activity “water cups on the exercising field” is one of the campaign activities organized by VWU groups and neatly combines the idea of women serving and nurturing the nation by serving men. Following an article about a senior lieutenant, and president of the women’s union at a military school for tank officers, she invented the idea of “water cups on the exercising field” to support recruits on the training field during hot days (Lao Động - Xã Hôi, 10 April 2020). Another newspaper clipping describes female soldiers preparing meals for new recruits to make them feel at home in their new surroundings (Lao Động, 15 March 2021). There are several themes present in these depictions of women as soldiers. We already mentioned the notion of women as caretakers and nurturing mo­thers, which is consonant with official narratives of Vietnamese femininity. Since the 1920s, women have been presented as warriors and mothers of the nation. However, another aspect of this display is that of power relations between people and the state. While women are encouraged to be active in production, and in securing the nation, they must also take part in an important aspect of society that is not provided for in total by the state: Reproductive work. Keeping the idea alive that a happy family relies on the presence of a caring mother who puts her children’s’, husbands’ and parents’ well-being over her career, relieves state institutions of this task. Hy Van Luong (2016) also points to this link in his analysis of gender relations in Vietnam. It also reproduces power-relations that emphasize the higher status of men. However, Vietnam is embedded within the global circulation of goods and ideas, and thus local discourses are shaped by globalized discourses on gender and the military. Since Vietnam is part of the United Nations, participation in global debates on gender mainstreaming has been included in political rhetoric. The idea of including more women in peacekeeping missions builds on the essentializing notion of women as peaceful human beings, somehow less capable of cruelty and exploitation than men (Duncanson and Woodward, 2016). Certainly, this discourse is not new to Vietnam. Any museum in Vietnam dedicated to the hardships of war usually includes exhibits that exemplify the dedication of Vietnamese women who were captured by the enemy and imprisoned under cruel conditions. One kind of exhibit portrays the meticulous needlework that was produced by imprisoned women. Under inhumane conditions, women stitched pictures of children holding hands around a globe with peace doves flying overhead. Two motifs can be found in these exhibits. First, women were able to maintain their femininity, expressed through needlework, even under the most inhumane conditions. Second, their sole thought was directed toward the construction of peace, not revenge or anger. Today, women are sent on peacekeeping missions to fulfill the demands of gender mainstreaming. A newspaper article published in

96  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict 2020 reports on the goal of the Vietnamese government to send more women on United Nation peacekeeping missions (Tuoi Tre News, 28 November 2020). The first female soldier was sent to South Sudan in 2018, and, at the time of the article’s publication, 63 of the Vietnamese United Nations soldiers involved in building health infrastructure tents were women. The accompanying image shows a colonel sewing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Central African Republic. Again, a female soldier is presented holding a rifle, but rather engaged in a feminine task. In 2021, a new activity was initiated by the VWU to celebrate the conclusion of the previous campaign period and the beginning of a new one. A newspaper article invited artists to submit photographs of women in the army (Phụ nữ Việt Nam, 13 May 2021). To exemplify the kinds of works that were expected, a number of high-quality pictures were included, among those the image described above depicting the “water cups on the exercising field” exercise. While images of women in non-combat situations were selected, the pictures also included female soldiers in active duty with weapons. In the comments section, one reader noted: “I did not think women could fight!” What an ironic expression in a country that was once famous for a picture of a woman with a rifle pointed at an American soldier as presented above. To summarize the arguments of this section, it is clear that female fighters’ bodies are continuously constructed as peaceful and caring, although there may be a shift toward more militaristic imagery in recent years. Today, the motivation to join the military in Vietnam cannot be traced to a specific atmosphere to protect the nation. One strong motive that was revealed in informal conversations was the expectation of steady income and welfare benefits. While the number of soldiers was significantly reduced in the 1980s, especially in rural areas and among low skilled men, the military still appears to be a viable career option. On the other hand, men in urban areas, and those who are highly skilled, usually aim at removing themselves from conscription lists. While there is no mandatory conscription for women, the military aims at promoting gender equality in its ranks by openly discussing the low number of female officers in the higher ranks, as well as introducing quotas for female recruits in military schools (Việt Nam Mới, 30 March 2021). Discussion: (Dis)Continuities The goal of our research for this chapter is to understand continuities and discontinuities in discourses about femininity and the military in Vietnam, from the 1940s to today. This not only included public discourses, as represented in newspapers, but also narratives by female veterans who explained how they came to be soldiers. We found an important difference between the period of war and today, namely the “atmosphere to join the front” created through propaganda from the 1940s to 1975, and the immediate threat that war posed to people’s lives. This atmosphere infiltrated people’s everyday lives, and motivated them to actively participate in

Discourses about women, bodies and military combat in Vietnam  97 the national community in order to defend its freedom. As the nation was in the making at that point, war efforts promoted by the Việt Minh, and the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, were not only directed at mobilizing human resources for the fight, but also aimed at constructing the nation. As interviewees reported, this atmosphere was all-embracing and motivated their dedication to voluntarily join the war. Today, there is a need for further research to better understand women’s motives to join the army. However, while pride in the nation, and the willingness to defend it, may have been part of the motivation, expectations of steady income and social security clearly offer further incentives. The continuity we encountered was in the narrative of women defending the nation, embedded in discourses of femininity and the military. The mobilization of people from the 1940s onwards was pervaded by narratives about the Vietnamese people’s matrilineal past, and the ability and will of women to contribute to the cause of national salvation. Examples of this past were found in national heroines, such as the Trưng sisters or Lady Triệu. This view of the past not only motivated women to join the fight, but it also served as a means for differentiating the Vietnamese people from the “invaders”, thus contributing to the community’s identity. While this narrative remains active in discourses about femininity and fighting, the meaning appears to have returned to the original meaning. In the early 1970s, at the height of the fighting, the narrative aimed at motivating women to join the army, as recruitment figures show. Before, women were expected to support the war through local militias in their hometowns, maintaining food production and producing other supplies, while doing care work at home and in the medical corps. The idea of defending the home was used in a more literal sense, as women were expected to stay at home to perform their duties. This interpretation of the narrative extends back to the leading figure of Vietnamese nationalism in the early 20th century, Phan Bội Châu, who acknowledged women’s ability to fight, but emphasized their responsibilities as mothers and wives (Andaya, 2020, p. 268). After 1975, this idea returned to the forefront of public discourse. The VWU emphasizes women’s duties as caregivers and their responsibility to create a “happy family”. Activities by women in the military reproduce the idea of women in the role as nurturers of the nation – in this case, represented through giving food and providing male soldiers and new recruits with the feeling of being at home. In her discussion of gendered symbols of the nation-state in post-conflict settings, Omar (2004, p. 50) concludes that leaders of national struggles for independence, whose success depended on their ability to mobilize fighters, resorted to the “manipulat[ion]” of “female symbols” and connect “women’s concerns with the national agenda”. After liberation, Omar suggests, this form of empowerment was diminished. In Vietnam, however, this national agenda was still in the making, and research suggests that leaders of the communist party were initially impressed by the idea of gender equality. We argue that public discourses about femininity and the military were informed by material aspects as well. The need of bodies for the war effort in the 1960s led to a change in the discourse. Women

98  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict were not only encouraged to be part of the reproductive force in support of the war, but increasingly to join the army. After the end of the war, there was an oversupply of “bodies” or soldiers, but female bodies were still needed in the army. In the 1990s, the legitimation of the CPV was at stake after social welfare was reduced during the economic reforms. Women, reproducing practices of care, read as feminine, were needed to evoke feelings of community during the years of war. At the same time, they fit global discourses of gender mainstreaming and thus represent a modern society. Note 1 Research by Dr. Nguyen Thi Hue is funded by Vietnam National University, Hanoi, under the research project QG, code QG.21.54, “Trading activities of women in rural areas and their impact on the life of households in the Red River Delta” (Case studies in Phu Luu and Dinh Bang villages, Tu Son town of Bac Ninh province).

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100  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Nguyễn, Thị Ngọc Lam (2001) Phụ nữ quân đội trong sự nghiệp kháng chiến chống Mỹ cứu nước [Military women in the cause of anti-American resistance save the country]. Hanoi: People’s Army Publishing House. Nhân dân Điện tử (7 December 2016) Tổng Bí thư Nguyễn Phú Trọng gặp mặt thân mật đại biểu phụ nữ Quân đội tiêu biểu [General secretary Nguyễn Phu Trong personally met with delegates representing the women in the army]. Available at: https://nhandan​ .vn​/tin​-tuc​-su​-kien​/tong​-bi​-thu​-nguyen​-phu​-trong​-gap​-mat​-than​-mat​-dai​-bieu​-phu​-nu​ -quan​-doi​-tieu​-bieu​-279985/ (Accessed: 25 July 2022) Nhân dân online (4 August 2014) “Ba sẵn sàng” trong hồi ức một nữ TNXP Thủ đô [The “Three Ready” campaign in the memory of a female member of the capital’s youth shock brigade]. Available at: https://nhandan​.vn​/ba​-san​-sang​-trong​-hoi​-uc​-mot​ -nu​-tnxp​-thu​-do​-post209885​.html (Accessed: 25 July 2022). Omar, Karima (2004) ‘National symbolism in constructions of gender: Transformed symbols in post-conflict states’, Seton Hall Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 5(1), pp. 49–67. Pettus, Ashley (2003) Between sacrifice and desire: National identity and the governing of femininity in Vietnam. (East Asia History, Politics, Sociology, Culture). New York: Routledge. Phụ nữ Việt Nam (13 May 2021) Cuộc vận động sáng tác và triển lãm ảnh “Tự hào Phụ nữ Quân đội” [Campaign for activities and exhibition “The pride of military women”]. Available at: https://phunuvietnam​.vn​/cuoc​-van​-dong​-sang​-tac​-va​-trien​-lam​-anhtu​-hao​ -phu​-nu​-quan​-doi​-20210512234015084​.htm (Accessed: 25 July 2022). Raffin, Anne (2011) ‘Assessing state and societal functions of the military and the war experience in Doi Moi Vietnam’, Armed Forces & Society, 37(1), pp.  68–94. doi:  https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/0095327X09339901 Resistance Marxist Library (2003) V.I. Lenin: On the emancipation of women. Resistance Books. Available at: https://​​socialist​-alliance​.org​/sites/​​ ​​ default/​​files/​​on_​​the_​​ emancipation_​​of_​​women​.pdf (Accessed: 25 July 2022). Taylor, Keith Weller (2013) A History of the Vietnamese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Teerawichitchainan, Bussarawan (2009) ‘Trends in military service in Northern Vietnam, 1950-1995: A sociodemographic approach’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 4(3), pp. 61–97. doi:  https://doi​.org​/10​.1525​/vs​.2009​.4​.3​.61 Tétreault, Mary Ann (1996) ‘Women and revolution in Vietnam’, in Barry, Kathleen. (ed.) Vietnam’s Women in Transition. (International Political Economy Series). London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 38–57. Thayer, Carlyle A. (2014) ‘The apparatus of authoritarian rule in Vietnam’, in London, Jonathan (ed.) Politics in contemporary Vietnam: Party, state and authority relations. (The critical studies of the Asia Pacific series). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 135–161. Thayer, Carlyle A. (2009) Vietnam People’s Army: Development and modernization. Sultan Haji Bolkiah Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Brunei Darussalam. Thayer, Carlyle A. (2000) ‘The economic and commercial roles of the Vietnam People’s Army’, Asian Perspective, 24(2), pp. 87–120. Tiếng gọi phụ nữ (20 March 1946) Speeches of Women for National Salvation. Tiếng gọi phụ nữ (14 March 1946) Speeches of Women for National Salvation. Tran, Nhung Tuyet (2018) Familial properties: Gender, state, and society in early modern Vietnam, 1463-1778. (Southeast Asia - Politics, Meaning, and Memory, 6). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

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Part 2

Case studies 1 Women in national armed forces

6

Transfer, transformation and use of combat experience inside Nazi concentration camps, 1942–1945 The fight continues after the battle1 Olesia Isaiuk

Introduction According to Nicholas Wachsmann’s pertinent description, when a Nazi concentration camp (Konzentrationslager or KL) is discussed, we usually think of the Holocaust and the most infamous camps, completely disregarding the less visible contexts and lesser-known groups among Nazi victims (Wachsmann, 2015, p. 27). One such group is the Ukrainian women – members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists’ Banderite faction (OUN(B) or Banderites2) and Soviet Red Army Prisoners of War (POWs) – who were prisoners in the KLs and participated in camp resistances. Both of these entities were characterized by military, paramilitary or underground experience that formed specific perceptions of reality and, ultimately, specific behaviors upon being imprisoned in the German concentration camps. The main locations of their resistance experience explored in this research are Auschwitz and Ravensbrück in 1942–1945. Using the Ukrainian example, the main aims of this chapter are to describe and analyze personal reasoning, motivation and resistance mechanisms of female army soldiers or members of underground militarized groups who are in captivity, and to identify the mechanisms by which military and underground experience are transformed into underground activity in the realities of concentration camp conditions. Additionally, the chapter brings the gender perspective into the discussion, which is often silenced in studies on KL resistance. By focusing on female POWs’ activities, the chapter calls into question the so-called male and female qualities in masculine-connotated spaces such as armed combat and survival under violent conditions. It also looks at the female experience in Eastern Europe during World War II in high-threat situations, connected with the possibility of physical and sexual violence3; and at the women’s emotional reactions, motivations and justifications that stimulated them to resist. The relevant literature basically covers three main topics. The first is the concentration camps in the Third Reich and the resistance within them – as exemplified in Eugen Kogon’s classic work (Der SS Staat: Das System der deutschen Kionzentrationslager, 1983) to the latest monograph by Nikolaus Wachsmann (2015). While there is a rich and significant body of work on Auschwitz, their relevance to the present study is limited since those texts did not single out ethnic Ukrainians in their focus on the Jewish victims. DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-8

106  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict The second topic is that of female participation in anti-Nazi resistance – more precisely, female Red Army soldiers and POWs as well as the experience of women from the Ukrainian nationalist underground movement. In both groups, ethnic Ukrainian prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps could be considered as le grand absent. They are usually identified by Western researchers as “Russians” and “Russian POWs” or are subsumed under general categories such as “Ostarbeiter” (Eastern workers), “Red Army prisoners” (Pohl, 2011; Reinhard and Keller, 2020), etc. Ukrainian researchers do not actually differ significantly regarding this delineation either (Slavik, 2015; Lehasova, 2019). Ukrainian prisoners of Auschwitz are divided and dispersed under a variety of social and political categories and groups of prisoners. Resistance is stereotypically perceived as a male endeavor and, in effect, Ukrainian female resistance participants are kept in the background in the literature. This forces researchers to use extrapolation to reconstruct specific ways and means of resistance. On the other hand, female memoirs are a rich source for an analysis of their agency and how they cope with the reality of their situation. It should be noted that most recollections about Auschwitz by male authors do include chapters devoted to women’s experience in the camp, including, for example, Wachsmann’s monograph. The appearance of research by Sarah Helm (2015) and the testimony of a survivor point at the shift in research in recent decades allowing female survivors to recount their own stories. As for the group of Ukrainian POWs at Auschwitz who had been imprisoned due to their individual involvement in anti-Nazi resistance organized by the OUN(B), the only publication is a 1996 monograph in Ukrainian by Mychajlo Marunchak that focuses on Ukrainian political prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, albeit from a male point of view. This research is well complemented by studies about the female experience – namely, that of Ukrainian and Polish participants in nationalistic anti-totalitarian resistance movements – in concentration camps of the GULAG. The most recent, and most complete to date, investigation of this type is Oksana Kis’s 2018 monograph in Ukrainian (English edition, 2021). Nevertheless, in the context of the research on Nazi concentration camps, studies of GULAG prisoner experience are useful primarily as materials for comparison and juxtaposition. The third main topic the literature addresses is the theme of survival and resistance under conditions of chronic threat, including imprisonment in concentration camps. This is analyzed with reference to trauma theory, based on the works of Bruno Bettelheim, Viktor Frankl, Dave Grossman, Judith German and many others (Glinska, 1967, pp. 174–232; Bettelheim, 1986; Craig, 1993; German, 2015; Grossman, 1996). The most important of these is Bettelheim’s concept, as informed by Frankl’s studies, because both were formulated on materials based on the experience of concentration camp survivors. The theoretical considerations include the notion that a totalitarian regime, with its system of force and violence, aims at changing human nature, a view also underlined by Hannah Arendt. This perspective serves as the starting point of this chapter. Its essence is that the main goal of the concentration camps was not to repress political opposition or exploit labor but

Transfer, transformation, combat experience  107 what the totalitarian party activists called “re-education”, imposing a total change of one’s usual picture of the world, priorities, lifestyle, personal connections, group loyalties and so on. The goal of such a transformation was to form a completely new human, endowed with all the desired characteristics. All the other outcomes, such as forced labor and eliminating political opponents, were only a “bonus” from the perspective of the aggressor. According to Bettelheim’s observations, imprisoned persons under this kind of pressure turn psychologically into children. The position of the “parent” in their internal world is occupied by the totalitarian perpetrator, who is personified in the concentration camp guard, and this specific degradation of their personality can be attributed to prisoners perceiving their atavistic (“childish”) behavior as usual and normal, to the deterioration of individuality, and to the loss of planning skills and capabilities (Bettelheim, 1986, pp. 100–102). The perpetrators, embodied here in the SS guards and representatives of the KL administration, transformed all elements of everyday life into elements of the repressive system, aimed at breaking and blurring the prisoners’ personalities. The total impossibility of controlling the guards’ actions served to generate such emotional convictions that everything depended on ensuring their good mood. As a result of such actions, Bettelheim concluded, resistance under concentration camp conditions meant a fight not only for physical survival but also for preserving one’s own autonomy through any means necessary to understand and perceive the world in relation to one’s own experience, as well as the capacity to make decisions and plans for the future without the participation and influence of the totalitarian “parent”. Before analyzing the experience of Ukrainian women at Auschwitz, a brief summary of these women’s political and military activities that led to their imprisonment is necessary. Female Red Army military personnel that were captured as POWs by the Nazis ending up in the concentration camps were mostly in the medical corps. Specifically, a well-known group of female Red Army prisoners, led by Eugenia Klemm, consisted of medics captured in Crimea (Helm, 2015). However, female Soviet military personnel had a variety of military specializations beyond support-oriented ones: pilots, snipers, gunners and others (Kryłowa, 2012, pp. 155–159). The presence of women in the Red Army followed the same logic of the massive mechanization campaigns of the 1930s, when girls and women were encouraged to learn how to operate agricultural machinery: It was to ensure that production levels be maintained if war broke out and men began to be sent to the front en masse. Within the army, before the war, women were assigned either support roles or the female connotated roles such as medicine. However, this changed at the very start of the war due to pressure partly from massive female volunteer enlistment and partly due to the German assault on Russia despite the pact between Hitler and Stalin (Kryłowa, 2012 pp. 114–127). Even though there was partial equality, the career prospects of most of these women did not go beyond junior officer ranks. Based on the limited information available, most of the prisoner cohort of female members of the nationalist underground were urban-born or had lived in urban

108  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict settings for some time, having usually arrived in towns and cities to attend gymnasium school and the university. This education would particularly make them aware of their motivation to fight and would provide deeper reflection and wider social ties beyond their limited localities of origin. Olena Voitovych and Lidiia Ukarma, for example, were arrested while they were studying at German higher education institutions in Berlin, or Daria Hnatkivska who was a student of the Lviv Conservatory in the 1930s. Their marital status varied from unmarried, single girls to married mothers. In the underground, women usually took on support roles: communications, scouts, paramedics and safe house keepers. As a result, the socalled OUN “network” (sitka), which supported UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Ukrayins'ka povstans'ka armiia) combat operations (starting in 1943), was made up mostly of women. In this network, women, including Olena Mostovych, Mariia Kos and Kateryna Zarytska, were able to attain the highest ranks of said “careers”. However, as they climbed the ranks, the level of danger increased too, with the totalitarian special forces redoubling their efforts to eliminate both male and female leaders of the underground. A number of researchers, including Olena Petrenko, regard this division of labor as evidence of misogynistic practices in the Ukrainian nationalist underground, citing gender roles that were characteristic in a traditional society. However, this point of view could be disputed, given that the soldier bearing arms depended most of all on personnel carrying out these duties. The lives and liberties of underground members depended on the communications liaisons (zviazkovi) and safe house keepers (hospodyni); therefore, given this level of interdependence, any affirmation of discrimination against women in role distribution in the underground would be disputable. On the other hand, it could be argued that the division of labor followed the conventional ways of life and gender roles that every member of the underground, without exception, had grown up in. Everyday life in KL as a battlefield According to Bettelheim and similar researchers, the main goal of resistance is to preserve one’s own picture of the world and autonomy of thought and everyday activities, based on one’s needs and worldview. On the other hand, Bettelheim observed that groups in concentration camps, which were united based on strong political or ethical worldview systems and were connected by strong internal emotional connections, had a better chance of survival (Bettelheim, 1986, p. 20). We share this point of view as a touchstone of this chapter. Hence, it follows that the main resistance for female Ukrainian fighters in Nazi concentration camps took place in everyday life, and their main tools were self-organization and daily rituals aimed at resisting the Nazis, exercising what limited freedom was possible in everyday decisions, maintaining their own personal connections, etc. The main motivation was to survive to continue fighting. Although their ideological fundamentals were significantly different, sometimes even antagonistic, the actual mechanism was almost the same. In fact, the main enemy of the OUN(B) were the Soviet Union4 (Mirchuk, 1968, pp. 94–95) and the Red Army, trained to enforce

Transfer, transformation, combat experience  109 Soviet ideology and to spread political domination over the world. Nevertheless, this research does not take into account the aforementioned difference for two reasons. The first one is the fact that, following the observations of Bruno Bettelheim (1986), Viktor Frankl (2007), Craig Howes (1993), Dave Grossman (1996), Anna Glinska (1967, pp. 174–232) and others, there is no specific ideology that serves as a base to form the necessary skills for resistance; rather, the common features seem to include motivation, self-reflection and a conscious personal system of values. The second one is that political differences had no special significance for prisoners, for their collective identity and solidarity were based on remaining steadfast against the concentration camp guards and administration as well as; this is demonstrated in numerous memoirs and confessions written by former prisoners from different countries and having different political preferences. The concept of “resistance in concentration camp” is akin to “survival tactics”, since every day of imprisonment in Nazi concentration camp was really a race for survival. A clear representation of this concept is Krzysztof Dunin-Wąsowicz’s (1983, p. 52) analysis of resistance, in which he identifies three main stages of resistance in concentration camp:

• the struggle for physical survival “from day to day”, which involved helping

the weak and sick, evading attention, redistributing surplus food or medicine, obtaining “positions” (job assignments) or work in special workshops, where the conditions for political prisoners were more or less acceptable; • the struggle for dignity, bolstered by factors such as underground religious life, psychological support and underground cultural events; • deliberate efforts to harm the Nazi system, which entailed sabotage and planning and carrying out escapes. The first stage is, in fact, considered a type of resistance insofar as one of the purposes of the concentration camp detention was the physical destruction of the prisoner. If a prisoner belonged to a “category intended for extermination”, his or her survival constituted a resistance so long as he or she remained alive. Soldier prisoners, both male and female, had an important advantage in the depicted context. Contrary to most other prisoners, they regarded their imprisonment as a continuation of their anti-Nazi fight by other means. They transferred and transformed their own experience into the conditions of imprisonment, which meant that they were aware of the possible risks given their occupation and duties, and whether male or female, they had no doubt at all about who they were and why they were imprisoned in the camp. All these circumstances provided opportunities from the very beginning to form their own view of the situation, to interpret every detail according to their own understanding and, finally, to form their own internal domain over their everyday actions. Moreover, being military personnel instilled in them a survival goal that might otherwise seem irrational: survive to continue to fight. Compared to other Ukrainian groups, the main distinction of the underground anti-Nazi fighters was their ability to establish intrinsic internal mutual aid

110  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict networks; significantly, they were formed on the basis of both ethnic and political convictions. They aimed not merely at physical survival but survival to maintain the struggle for Ukraine’s independence. Thus, imprisonment was understood as the next round of the fight within which the Nazis were positioned as the principal enemy. Such a stance provided the possibility of avoiding psychical destruction and of constructing and preserving one’s own autonomy in assessing one’s situation and deciding on everyday actions. As a result, psychological factors play a role in the process of modifying the tactics familiar to the OUN. First, the main emphasis shifted to preserving one’s individuality as best as possible, minimizing the impact of traumatic factors. This was especially important given the fact that one of the main traumas for prisoners was profound personality change. Modern psychological studies that focus on war and violent trauma have underlined the importance of several characteristics – which are common in military men and women – to avoid trauma and to organize successful resistance against the system of violence. According to a study by Judith German (2015), it is important to establish deep personal contacts inside the group, to maintain contact with a group leader (p. 47), to create possibilities to impact events and to build one’s own picture of the world (pp. 96–98). She concludes that high motivation, ability to communicate, and the presence of an internal sense and logic of situations and events are the principal conditions for the ability to resist. This kind of logic was confirmed by researchers of POWs in later wars. Craig Howes (1993, p. 18) notes that according to collected confessions, younger and less educated soldiers were less resistant; they even expressed readiness to collaborate with the enemy that captured them and their comrades. Describing his own experience of being a POW, one of Howes’s sources indicated that “without disciplined organization, resistance and even survival may be impossible” (p. 24). This does not mean that the rest of the female prisoners of Ukrainian origin did not participate in acts of resistance, but the described groups include only those who had combat experience and specific roles. The next section analyzes and reconstructs, where possible, the ways and means of everyday resistance by Ukrainian female soldiers and demonstrate how the experience of military service and/or underground operations was transformed into a foundation for resistance under conditions of the enemy’s total advantage. Continuing the fight by different means For the general argument of this chapter, the example of the Red Army POWs is more fitting than those from of the OUN(B) because formal military life contains many elements that can be helpful in severe conditions, including in concentration camps or other situations that can be characterized as prolonged mental violence. German observers and authors of memoirs have noted that their first and often strongest impression of female Red Army officers was that they were well-organized and prepared to defend their own rights and to continue to fight in other ways

Transfer, transformation, combat experience  111 (Otto and Keller, 2020, p. 299). An additional factor was the training of young women as fighters for the ideals of the “state of workers and peasants”, which was accomplished by Soviet propaganda before the war. Researcher Anna Kryłowa (2012, pp. 59–60) comments that it was an element of managed social transformation, which included preparing for a future war. This facilitated the formation of an ideal portrait of a Soviet girl as a person who broke with the traditional female roles, which were accused of being “bourgeois” (Kryłowa, 2012, p. 63) and promoted shooting and other training in military skills. Such propaganda positioned girls as warriors for the coming bright future and included a rigid division of the world into “us” and “enemies”. Paradoxical as it may seem, the Communist propaganda had instilled a feeling of belonging and self-identity for women. In line with Bettelheim’s postulate, it had already prepared them to withstand the Nazi ideology and worldview. The situation is more complicated for the female OUN(B) members. These young women had no formal or otherwise military training, but ironically became members of an organization led by former army officers. Thus, the OUN was based on military structures and took its own members as the soldiers of the underground army. A characteristic of the OUN was that the duties of each member of the organization also applied to their daily behavior and activities. These requirements were codified in “12 signs of character in a Ukrainian nationalist” and “44 rules of life for a Ukrainian nationalist” (Mirchuk, 1968, pp. 126–130). In practice, these rules governed the decision-making principles of individual OUN members and the principles that they should be guided by, and both parameters were clearly linked to their “belonging” to the OUN. The basic common organizational structure of the OUN was the “fives”5 – cells of five people. These members communicated only among themselves, and their direct leader maintained contact with the senior commanders in the hierarchy (Mirchuk, 1993, p. 120). With such a grassroots organization and level of conspiracy, intraorganizational communication took place on a hand-to-hand basis. It is often recounted in the memoirs of OUN members of different periods that they were recruited to the underground by older friends or colleagues in training or various clubs and interest groups (Savchyn, 2003, pp. 46–49). Such cells could be organized to perform a specific task, as was the case with the female intelligence group led by Maria Kos (Posivnych, 2010, p. 96). Apart from their specific training, most of these girls and women carried out tasks that were fully compatible with “normal” military activity. For example, Daria Hnatkivska-Lebed was the leader of an intelligence group (Mirchuk, 1968, p. 122), Halyna Platkiv served as a drill sergeant (Orenchuk, 1992, p. 759) and Lidia Ukarma was the “housekeeper” of an underground flat. A strong military element in the training system of the underground organization had the additional effect of promoting the formation of strong motivation, a sense of institutional affiliation and internal discipline. This practice also fostered understanding the importance of their own contribution to the overall reputation of the OUN. It should be noted that in the given context of confinement, the behavior and activities of the female OUN members were not connected to the ideological

112  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict system of the OUN(B), all the more so that in the narrow sense it was constantly evolving. Moreover, the primary motivation of the OUN(B) in that case, was to maintain the solidarity of the prisoners against the Nazis. Evidence for this can be found in the memoirs of members of the Polish underground who describe their interactions with Ukrainians in the Nazi prisons and concentration camps in 1942– 19446 – relations that prior to the war had been fraught with violent interethnic conflict. Recollections of foreigners who remark upon the high level of solidarity among Ukrainians – as well as their solidarity with non-Ukrainians – are documented also by Oksana Kis in her research of the GULAG (Kis, 2021). Moreover, based on GULAG and other, post-Stalin Soviet camp materials, a sizable number of recollections of Jews have been recovered who during their incarceration communicated with imprisoned OUN(B) members, and observed a high level of personal integrity in conjunction with solidarity in the face of a common enemy (Hejfec, 2000). Evidently, the experience of previous imprisonment was crucial in the success of networking by imprisoned members of the OUN(B), although the strategy for behavior in prison was not similar to that in the KL. Nevertheless, this experience shortened the adaptation period and instilled self-organization skills under circumstances of total control. Also, the fairly long period of existence of the OUN made it possible to accumulate a collective experience of resistance based on a set of personal experiences, and to filter out those parts that were unjustifiable or ineffective. However, motivational and ideological differences between the female members of the OUN and those of the Red Army became insignificant in comparison to their common experience of being incarcerated in a concentration camp as women. This experience included, among other aspects, at least a partial difference in their resistance strategies compared to “male” ones. As far as physical survival is concerned, the “male” and “female” tactics were almost identical, with both men and women striving to build assistance networks, providing emotional and moral support and shoring up one’s personal endurance. This involved establishing a certain internal “logical order” that made sense of the incarceration and extremely difficult conditions as an outcome of the ongoing struggle, etc. Ultimately, any formation of a hierarchy of gender roles was virtually non-existent, simply because the men’s and women’s concentration camps and corresponding divisions of mixed concentration camps were strictly segregated. Therefore, the only discernible difference can be in how mutual assistance and perceived benefit were organized, based on social roles that were established before imprisonment. Camp realities, however, prevailed over seemingly gender-specific roles; male prisoners, for instance, were forced to take on looking after minors, including children aged 12–14 (Mirchuk, 1968; Marunchak, 1996). Nevertheless, there was one area that even in the camps remained purely female: infant care and everything concerning the reproductive function. Moreover, women at Auschwitz were under a constant additional threat of forced pseudo-medical experimentation, in particular concerning fertility and sterilization; in the case of the Ukrainians, it is even mentioned in the memoirs of male former prisoners (Mirchuk, 1968). In addition, some women arrived at concentration camps already pregnant or with babes in arms. The infants often met

Transfer, transformation, combat experience  113 with a tragic fate, but starting in 1943, the mothers with children were allocated a separate barrack. Finally, some women were forced to work in the camp brothel, with quite mixed consequences for surviving the KL (Sommer, 2009). However, in the context of Bettelheim’s views and based on women’s experiences in the GULAG as studied by Oksana Kis (2021), we may also conjecture that the traditional female gender role gave women one significant advantage. Women could more quickly and consciously muster the resources (or mechanisms) required to survive, which, in the realities of the concentration camps, was the main battlefield of resistance anyway. In fact, in these same oppressive circumstances, the traditional female role of caregiver transformed rather easily to the role of female warrior – more easily compared to males facing the same challenge. Nevertheless, making such comparisons should be done with caution, for judging by the evidence of recollections, the possibilities of preserving one’s personal autonomy in everyday circumstances were incomparably narrower in the Nazi concentration camps than in the GULAG. Background: How they found each other in the KLs The communities of female Ukrainian prisoners at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück were formed in two different ways. Most of the female OUN(B) members were arrested in 1942, through the activity of a special interrogation Gestapo group under Wilhelm Wirsing, which was established just that autumn. Some of them were students at German high schools in Berlin; for example, Olena Vityk studied at the Berlin Arts Academy, as did Lidia Ukarma and others (Vityk-Voitovych, 1992, p. 787). The precise number of this group of students is unclear, possibly between 10 and 20 (Marunchak, 1996, p. 244). The so-called Lviv group – named after their place of arrest and previous imprisonment before transport to Auschwitz – consisted of girls and young women arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD)7 in the Distrikt Galizien during 1942 and 1943 and accumulated in the notorious “prison on Lontskoho”8 in Lviv. In the autumn of 1943, having beat back the Germans at Stalingrad and begun their westward revanche, when the Soviet troops crossed the Dnipro River and reoccupied Kyiv in November, the Nazi authorities in Western Ukraine started emptying the prisons through the mass transfer of prisoners to German concentration camps (Marunchak, 1996, p. 102). Groups of young women were transported to Birkenau. The Kalendarz wydarzeń w KL Auschwitz, a calendar documenting the full list of Auschwitz operations based on archival documents and confessions, notes that on 28 September 1943 five prisoners were transported from Lviv (Czech, 1992, p. 527) and that on 3 October 239 imprisoned women transported from Lviv were registered at the camp (Czech, 1992, p. 531). The history of the Red Army POWs at Auschwitz, including Ukrainians, started on 27 February 1942, the day of the “transport of the 536” (Otto and Keller,2020, p. 295). Most of these women were doctors and nurse’s aides captured during war action on the Southern Front, mainly in Crimea. A few smaller groups of female Soviet POWs were transported to Ravensbrück during 1943–1944 (Otto and Keller, 2020, pp. 296–302).

114  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Apart from the mentioned groups, it was common to transport forced laborers to Auschwitz and Ravensbrück – the so-called Ostarbeiters, who had fled and were caught. From April until September 1944, there were also Ukrainian Jews from Transcarpathia among the Hungarian Jews who were deported to Auschwitz, because the Ukrainian territory of Transcarpathia was occupied by Hungary during World War II (Slavik, 2015). Facts from the archives: Tracing individual stories Thus, we can observe and analyze the ways in which battle and military experience were transformed into resistance against the KL system, which presumed to change human nature through prolonged physical and mental violence. These women used methods that traditional gender socialization regarded as “female”, and at the same time they organized resistance based on their underground and military experience, which is regarded as more “male” in traditional “female” spheres. For example, they rescued children from the “blood transfusion station” at Auschwitz and cared for the older members of the prison community, or they helped a fellow prisoner who was forced to participate in medical experiments with female fertility and sterilization. The first stage of aiding was finding one another (Ukrainian nashi, “ours”) among newly arrived prisoners and those who were already imprisoned for some time. In the case of imprisoned female OUN(B) members, the most often used “meeting points” were the registration point (Orenchuk-Maruszak, 1992, p. 760) or the barracks: I learned that older Ukrainians were located in the same barracks on a lower floor. The daughter of one of them, Mrs. Hnatkivska, Oda Lebed, Mykola’s wife, was isolated in the so-called “bunker” with her infant daughter. There were Ukrainian students from Berlin, Vienna and Lviv – Lida [Lidia] Ukarma, Olenka [Olena] Wityk, Darka [Daria] Sydir, Mariyka [Maria] Orenchuk, Anna Khorkava, etc. (Eliashevska-Froliak, 1992, p. 766) The arrested women formed a network of mutual aid, aimed at helping ill and older comrades. For example, Lidia Ukrama systematically helped Oleksandra Hnatkivska and Maria Hryhortsiv, Daria Hnatkivska’s mother and aunt (Hantkivska-Lebed, 1992, p. 757). It is a complicated task to identify the leader of the Ravensbrück imprisoned OUN(B) group, but according to mass testimonies, it is possible to deduce that it was Olena Vityk-Vojtovycz. According to the memoirs of survivors, she regularly communicated with the rest of the group members and had contact with Ukrainian women who were imprisoned in other barracks (Orenchuk-Maruszak, 1992, pp. 760–761; Elishevska-Froliak, 1992, pp. 764–765). The Red Army POWs were invariably transported together, in large or small groups. Eugenia Klemm, born in 1900, was older by almost a generation, while the rest were young girls approximately 20 years old. After marching on foot through

Transfer, transformation, combat experience  115 the whole of Ukraine – from Yalta to Kherson to Proskuriv (today Khmelnytskyi) to Równo (Rivne) – they were transported to the Soest camp (Helm, 2015, pp. 253–256).9 There, they were deprived of their status of POWs and the camp administration proclaimed to them that they must work as “regular” prisoners. The whole group rejected this, and the main ideologist of the resistance was Eugenia Klemm. The women appealed to the Geneva Convention about the illegality of losing POW status (Helm, 2015, p. 257).10 Thus, all of them were transported to Ravensbrück for “disobedience” and “sabotage” (Helm, 2015, p. 258). It was wholly reasonable, as Otto and Keller (2020, p. 296) also contend, that one should not have had any expectations of success with this resistance. First, they were in a situation fully controlled by the Nazis, and second, they did not have enough knowledge of international law concerning POWs. Nevertheless, echoing Bettelheim, this resistance act guaranteed all of them three vitally important things: a reference group, a leader whom they could trust, and an awareness of their own agenda and their own picture of the world, marked by collective resistance. They went to Ravensbrück conscious that they were punished unfairly and illegally pursuant to international law, and this circumstance determined their point of view against the Ravensbrück reality and formed their motivation to resist. They organized a newsfeed to the rest (Helm, 2015, p. 263). This was crucial in the face of news blockades and of mass propaganda aimed at the prisoners to change their selfperspective, and it helped to maintain contact with outside reality. The routine of hearing and telling the news formed their own order and preserved a minimum of autonomy in their everyday actions. The third element, as retold by witnesses, was befriending younger girls and providing them moral support. According to Judith German (2015, p. 47), an understanding and trustworthy group leader is one of the most important elements of successful resistance against oppressors. Otto and Keller (2020, p. 307) have observed that information about the female resistance movement is very rare. But when analyzing available confessions, it is possible to observe significant characteristics that reflect Bettelheim’s theory. First, both mentioned female groups consisted of educated women, who were highly conscious of the reasons of their own imprisonment and their own position against the Nazis. Second, they formed their own space through a mutual aid network, where they decided about their own actions for everyday situations and preserved their autonomy over decisions. Above all, they were united by deep personal connections, which were formed long before imprisonment, and at the same time by membership in the same organizations, inside of which everyone had their own place in the hierarchy. Motherhood in the KL: Tragedy or battlefield? Witness evidence has shown that in Auschwitz, while women got opportunities to process their own military experience, they were also plunged into traditionally female roles such as bearing and raising children. Dozens of pregnant women and mothers of newborn babies found themselves in separate barracks at Birkenau, a

116  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict female subcamp of Auschwitz. One of them was Anna Polszczikova (1994, p. 64),11 a former Soviet medical officer and wife of a Soviet infantry officer, Aleksander Polszikov (Polschikow). She avoided capture in the first months of the war, was deported as a “regular” prisoner and arrested for sabotage at the factory where she worked. After a brief imprisonment in Vienna, she was deported to Auschwitz with a large group of female prisoners. Children were also among the prisoners in the concentration camp, as family members or children of women sent to Auschwitz. On rare occasions, women arrived pregnant, and their child was born in a special maternity barrack. Until May 1943, the only possible fate awaiting a pregnant prisoner was death, because every newly arrived woman with clear signs of pregnancy was sent, according to the Auschwitz jargon, “for some gas” after the initial “selection” process (Ciesielska, 2015, p. 78). In May 1943, special maternity barracks were organized with the imprisoned Polish midwife Stanisława Leszczynska becoming the designated obstetrician (Ciesielska, 2015, p. 79). Her helpers were her daughter Sylwia and another doctor called Irena Węgierska (Ciesielska, 2015, p. 79–80). Until spring 1944, one could stay in the special barracks only during the last days of pregnancy and the first weeks of the newborn’s life. After this period, the child was separated from its mother, and the woman was sent back to her “work commando” (Ciesielska, 2015, p. 80). If the newborn died, the mother immediately would be sent back to the general camp. The procedure changed in spring– summer 1944, when it was accepted to leave mothers with newborns for a longer term in the special barracks. None of these arrangements applied to Jewish mothers, whose children were killed shortly after birth. All these circumstances led to some minimally organized level of resistance in the “children’s barracks”. This resistance was concentrated around three goals. The first was to get additional nutrition for mothers and children as well as other necessities; the second was to try to save the lives of children, who often died from poor eating and living conditions; and the third, the more dangerous one, was to save Jewish children by exchanging them with stillborn children of non-Jewish women. Polszczikova (Polschtschikowa) arrived at Auschwitz in August 1944 (Polszczikova, 1994, p. 56) and was placed in the special maternity barracks a few days after her imprisonment; her son Victor was born on 15 October 1944 (Polszczikova, 1994, p. 58). She was a “new number”, which meant healthier and stronger than the rest of her fellow prisoners. Thus, she became a wet nurse, for example, to the son of a French woman, Jeanette (Polszczikova, 1994, p. 61), and to the daughter of a Polish woman, Danuta Kwiatkowska, named Jolanta (Polszczikova, 1994, p. 62). Polszczikova’s case demonstrates two specific characteristics. First was the conscious perception of the camp’s guards and representatives of the camp’s administration as the enemy and as “fascists”. She based her own position in the camp on the dichotomy between “fascists who kill women and children” (Polszczikova, 1994, p. 44) and “me and my friends who try to survive and save our children” (Polszczikova, 1994, p. 61). This enabled her to plan her own actions. Second was a strong will to survive and to save children. She named her newborn son Victor, which is

Transfer, transformation, combat experience  117 rather symbolic since it connected, in her view, two Latin words: vita meaning “life” and victor connected to “victory” (Polszczikova, 1994, p. 59). These saving efforts and networks could not be as strong and well-organized as desired for two reasons: different native languages among the women in the maternity barracks, and the sad fact that a great part of the children died within a short time after birth, which results in the mothers being sent back to the main camp. That being said, women managed to organize, for example, collective nursing, i.e., mothers who had more breast milk fed the children of other women, their comrades in misfortune. According to the memoirs and confessions (Polszczikova, 1994),12 there was one more activity the imprisoned mothers tried to do: They secretly went inside the special barracks with children forced to serve as blood donors in order to feed them and lift their spirits.13 They had better nutrition than the children in the maternity barracks, but they were victims of uncontrolled blood taking. The researcher Maria Ciesielska (2015) identifies the maternity barracks and a separate children’s barracks nearby as no. 15 and no. 16, respectively, though she says nothing about a blood donation station. A more detailed recount comes from the memoirs of the surviving victims, for example, that of Anna Kowal (married Stryzhkova), who now lives in Kyiv.14 She became an Auschwitz prisoner in autumn 1943 and found herself in the special barrack no. 16. The only persons with whom the children had contact were female SS guards and a German military nurse. Stryzhkova’s memoirs describe the latter as a constant appearance in her nightmares for a long time after the war. Also, according to her memoir, adult women prisoners organized a way for night visits in the children’s barracks. They would sneak in, share pieces of food they had saved for the children, tell them stories and sing lullabies in different languages. This “other barracks” that these women came from could only be the maternity barracks, because all the rest of the barracks were situated in the general camp, which was separated from the special barracks by a special net. Polszczikova (1994, p. 49) recounted how once she followed two Polish women prisoners to the next-door barracks and saw healthy, non-starving children, which was very rare in the camp. She wondered why these children were very silent and practically noiseless; they did not play as children would. When she asked about it, the Polish prisoners explained to her that these children were regular blood donors (Polszczikova, 1994, p. 49). Thus, we may surmise that there existed certain practices of using children as medical resource in addition to the well-documented pseudo-medical experiments by Mengele. A real test for the organized women’s resistance was the final defense of the Auschwitz garrison in January 1945. According to Ciesielska’s data (2015, p. 84), 247 pregnant women in late term and 156 newborns were left in the camp. After a few hours sheltering in the barracks, the women organized small groups, which went to the deserted “Kanada” barracks in order to take clothes and toys for the children, and food for the children and themselves (Polszczikova, 1994, pp. 76–78). One of the leaders of this move was Kateryna Schadenko (Russian: Ekaterina Szadenko), also a former Red Army soldier (Polszczikova, 1994, p. 79).

118  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict The case of Daria Hnatkivska Daria Hnatkivska’s situation presents a special case. When she was caught in Lviv and imprisoned, she was already an interesting catch for the SD since she had a famous husband, Mykola Lebed, one of the leaders of the OUN(B). Although he lost his own leading position after the Third OUN Great Congress in spring 1943 for “undemocratic and autocratic leadership”, he was still a prominent member of the Ukrainian resistance.15 Hnatkivska herself (1912–1989) was an OUN member from the beginning of 1930s and served as an intelligence agent. Her symbolic significance was also heightened by being among the accused in the Warsaw trial of the mid-1930s, a trial for the OUN cell that killed the Polish internal minister Bronisław Pieracki.16 Hnatkivska was accused of taking part in this political killing by surveilling the victim (Mirchuk, 1968, pp. 390–396). During the trial, her appearance and composed behavior won her popularity even in the Polish press. When she was arrested in 1944 by the Gestapo, Hnatkivska found herself under triple pressure: as the wife of a prominent underground leader, which meant her potential use as an instrument of Nazi blackmail; as mother of a baby daughter Zoya; and as a symbolic figure for numerous female members of the Ukrainian underground. She faced her first violent interrogation in the first hours of her Nazi imprisonment, being questioned about the names of underground activists whose photos the interrogators showed to her. She was beaten for her refusal to identify them (Hnatkivska-Lebed, 1992, p. 755). Furthermore, she was forcibly detained by the Gestapo for the purpose of blackmail. The Gestapo officers planned to provoke Lebed into making an underground visit or trying to liberate his wife and child (Hnatkivska-Lebed, 1992, p. 754). When these attempts failed, Daria and her child were transported to Ravensbrück. The second infliction of violence was when the Nazis blackmailed her with her child’s fate. When she requested for the return of her child after her arrest, the Nazi officer informed her that her 1½-year-old child had been shot (HnatkivskaLebed, 1992, p. 755). When she heard the child’s cry in the prison’s hall, she understood that they only used her child as a bargaining chip. The mother and the child were united after long pleas. The risk of losing her child and total uncertainty of their future were the worst inflictions on her morale: “The worst thing was that I knew that my child is sentenced to death by enemy. But I cannot do anything” (Hnatkivska-Lebed, 1992, p. 755). As such, she realized two important aspects of her situation: She was completely powerless against the perpetrators, and a successful resistance and taking over the enemy was impossible. Therefore, the only mode of resistance left for her was to regard her imprisonment as an actual stage of resistance. She used every opportunity to save her child. When they were transported to Ravensbrück, she tried to give her child to SS-Untersturmführer Wurm for him to pass the child to some civilian person in the street (Hnatkivska-Lebed, 1992, p. 755). When this failed, she used help of another prisoner in Ravensbrück to shelter her daughter from the unwanted gaze of SS guards (Hnatkivska-Lebed,1992, pp. 756–757): Because of her “Nordic” features, her daughter Zoya became an object

Transfer, transformation, combat experience  119 of interest for “racial specialists” and was experimented on a few times in “racial procedures” (Hnatkivska-Lebed, 1992, p. 757). If these measures proved that little Zoya’s features were equal to the “Nordic standard”, then Zoya would become a member (and victim) of the Nazi program for “Germanization” of non-German children with “Nordic” faces and bodies. Hnatkivska and her daughter spent nearly a year in the internal prison at Ravensbrück during the war.17 Art as preservation of the senses A rather rare but specific way of resistance was through underground art. It was also one of the most paradoxical forms of resistance under the conditions of the concentration camps. Considering the horrendous living conditions of the prisoners, art may seem completely unnecessary – not least because it usually entailed a loss of resources needed to survive. However, if one includes the logic of resistance, according to Bettelheim and Frankl, one can consider underground art as an opportunity and means of forming one’s own space, establishing a private authority over one’s own decisions and perceptions (Frankl, 2007, p. 73).18 First, the underground art formed an inviolable space of decisions and tastes, inaccessible to concentration camp guards or the agents of camp administration. The creators and viewers could decide on their own whether they wanted to create the art. They chose the art form from various possibilities, and they formed groups that were connected by personal communications and common goals and motivations. Ultimately, participants in underground art transcended the spaces imposed and regulated by their persecutors. They formed an alternative world with their own rules and were sustained by alternative senses that were chosen according to their own desires and needs. Thus, they formed a space of everyday autonomy within which women could develop their future actions. This position was highly dangerous for the aggressors, who claimed to change the meaning of life, because it led out of a strong utilitarian scheme of survival, and created a longer planning horizon out of the “prisoner–persecutor” duality. Besides, such art was also selftherapy in situations when open action and speech was prohibited. The history of female Ukrainian political prisoners in Nazi concentration camps includes two instances of underground art. First, are the paintings of Ravensbrück by Olena Vityk-Vojtovycz. She was arrested and incarcerated at Ravensbrück as a student of the Berlin Academy of Arts (Vityk-Vojtovycz, 1992, p. 787). During her imprisonment she sketched scenes from Ravensbrück everyday life. All these pictures were completed after liberation and formed a coherent visual series.19 In a later interview she reported making very tiny art pieces from toothbrushes or bread (Bezchlibnyk-Butler, 2021). The second instance of artistic resistance was the editorial work by a group of female Ukrainian prisoners at Auschwitz, arrested in different times and initially imprisoned at the Lviv “prison on Lontskoho”. After months of interrogation, they were transferred to Birkenau, the women’s subcamp of Auschwitz. They faced brutality, hunger and senseless forced labor such as carrying stones to and fro (Klymyshyn, 1987, p. 107). Eyewitnesses of this labor noted after the war that it

120  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict was “aimed at depriving the women, nothing else” (Klymyshyn, 1987, p. 108). Unfortunately, no memoirs have been found by any of the female Ukrainian prisoners at Auschwitz, and researchers are forced to reconstruct their collective resistance based on the memoirs of other persons, including the males of the Ukrainian prisoner community. According to these memoirs, the women were able to contact Ukrainian men at the main Auschwitz camp who were also OUN(B) members. The first result of such contacts was that they sent food from the main camp to the women, using a special method. Every Friday one of SS guards, Untersturmführer Scherpe, transported a medical sterilizer to the prison hospital at Birkenau. He used one of the prisoners who worked in the male hospital to carry the package. The Ukrainian prisoners bribed the guard and arranged for one of the group’s members, Mychajlo Marunchak (1996, p. 126) to put a piece of butter into the sterilizer and take it to Birkenau to one of the female group members (pp. 127–128). Based on their earlier successful cooperation, these women and male Ukrainian prisoners formed a group with the ironic name “Auschwitz editorial board” in 1944 (Kowal, 2016, p. 104). They compiled an underground women’s magazine titled Zhinocha nedolia (Female misfortune) (Kowal, 2016, p. 104). The name was not random; it was a play on the name of the pre-war Ukrainian feminist journal Zhinocha dolia (Female fortune) (Kowal, 2016, p. 105). Zhinocha nedolia contained poetry, sketches and lyrics (Kowal, 2016, p. 105). Although the main share of the work was carried out by male prisoners at the main Auschwitz camp, women distributed copies of the magazine in notebook form among their own network and organized underground readings. The possible identity of the person (or, more likely, two persons) who concealed and smuggled out the journal according to Maria Savchyn’s memoirs, was a girl called Ksenia, imprisoned at Auschwitz, who chose to return to the underground after her own liberation and lifesaving medical treatment: She was small in posture, fragile, with blue eyes and a blond braid and friendly smile … Leaving the camp, Ksenia managed to take with her the magazine “Female Misfortune” secretly edited in the camp by Ukrainian women political prisoners. She passed it to Orlan, and I had the opportunity to review it. The magazine was written by hand, on rough gray paper, in diligent handwriting, with illustrations also made by hand. The tone of the magazine is ironic and humorous. (Savchyn, 2003, pp. 93–94)20 The case of this magazine is actually quite typical, because organizing the publication of books and periodicals, as well as active publicity/propaganda measures, was generally a strong characteristic of the Ukrainian independence movement. Conclusion The analysis of the surviving testimonies allows us to recreate, at least in part, the internal reasoning, motivations, strategies and resistance mechanisms of Ukrainian

Transfer, transformation, combat experience  121 women in Nazi concentration camps. Given the paucity and often fragmentary, or summary, nature of the recollections, coupled with the uneven representation of the different prisoner categories, the possibility of tracing gender aspects of this subject – including the essentially “female” topic of motherhood and childcare – is indeed a remarkable scholarly success. In sum, female Ukrainian combatants imprisoned by the Nazis were able to resist them in various ways, ranging from editing and smuggling an underground paper to organizing help for children imprisoned in a separate block and sentenced to death through forced blood depletion at Auschwitz. They helped victims of pseudo-medical experiments at Ravensbrück and protested the forced labor of POWs. A significant portion of the resistance practiced by the women entailed counteracting the threats that emerged due specifically to their gender roles, including being subject to fertility experiments or forced to work at the camp brothel. Another aspect of the purely female resistance and purely female experience was protecting children, despite the thanklessness of the efforts. Given the number of objective threats to themselves and the children, whatever they did could also have been to preserve their own moral compasses, namely, the possibility of knowing that as carers for their own or others’ children they did everything they could to at least ease the burdens of those children. The descriptions provided here illustrate that both groups of Ukrainian women imprisoned in the Nazi KLs – Red Army POWs and OUN members – successfully utilized their own personal organizational structures to adapt to underground resistance conditions in the concentration camps; interpersonal connections developed in the underground or the army also helped. These two types of connections – the personal or familial and the corporate institutional–hierarchical – came to coexist and coalesced in the KLs and later beyond them, too. Such dualism played a double role in the KLs. On the one hand, personal friendships and the awareness of common experience formed groups, which provided help and moral support. On the other hand, remembering earlier hierarchical relationships helped to form the networks that aimed to render mutual aid faster than they would have without them. Unity of both types of connection formed a personal community that served as a source of moral support and “soft social control” and organized the networks aimed at resistance. Experience of hierarchies in the army or the underground created opportunities to form effective structures in the camps, with precise divisions of responsibility. It should be noted that there were some unexpected results of this study. First, it appears that in forming a resistance within concentration camp conditions, the role of ideology – any ideology – is in effect quite minimal. At most, it contributed to the motivation for survival: In the case of OUN(B) members it was independence for Ukraine and in the case of Red Army POWs it was victory over the fascists. This was primarily because of the exceptionally difficult living conditions in the concentration camps, which did not allow for any resources beyond those occupied with physical survival. Although we know from male recollections that ideological leanings did play a role in forming resistance networks, in the present case, the sources do not really allow one to trace the influence of the same.

122  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict A second surprise is the meticulous attention to recording experiences in the concentration camp, as seen in the example of the underground magazine. Evidently, this aspect of the Ukrainian prisoners’ activity, as is obvious from perusing issues of the journal, applies mostly to the OUN(B) members, given that the Red Army personnel were always subject to relentless Soviet propaganda. In a nutshell: The prewar experience of participation in military and/or paramilitary structures with strong propaganda proved useful for adaptation. Indeed, the main problem of prisoner adaptation in the KLs was not the harsh material conditions but forming a meaningful and internally coherent picture of the world. From the perspectives of former Red Army officers or OUN members, the situation was entirely clear. The arduous and unarmed resistance in the camp represented the continuation, the next stage, of their struggle. Survival did not represent the physical rescue of the individual but was understood as a step toward the continuation of the struggle after liberation. Notes 1 Part of this chapter’s title is a paraphrased version of the title of an essay by Michael Walzer (1969), “Does the fight continue after the battle?” 2 The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was established in 1929 as a merger of nationalist organizations in Western Ukraine with the Ukrainian Military Organization (Ukrainian acronym UVO), aiming to reinstate Ukraine’s independence, which had been destroyed by the Bolsheviks in 1919–1921. The OUN splintered into two parts in 1940 as a result of a prolonged internal conflict; the factions were named for their respective leaders: Andriy Melnyk, “Melnykites” or OUN(M); and Stepan Bandera, “Banderites” or OUN(B). The Banderites preferred the tactics of self-assertion and fait accompli politics toward other nations and states. In the spring of 1941, the OUN(B) established an agreement with the German military command to organize separate military battalions, namely, Nachtigall and Roland; these were intended to be the foundation of a future army for an independent Ukraine. At the same time, the OUN(B) prepared a declaration of Ukrainian independence, which was proclaimed on 30 June 1941. Disregarding it, the Nazis arrested all leading figures of the OUN(B) and imprisoned them in KLs at Auschwitz, Majdanek, Dachau, Mauthausen, etc. 3 Especially in context of Auschwitz; see “Kobiety z bloku 10”; Helm, Sarah, “If This Is a Woman”. 4 See also “Struggle for Independence (1917–1920)” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine. 5 The system of fives (p’iatky), or more rarely called “links” (lanky), was one of the basic principles for maintaining the secrecy of OUN tactics. It entailed forming small cells of OUN members that were assigned specific tasks (for example, intelligence, propaganda) with contact limited to others inside the group only. 6 Lanckorońska Karolina. Wspomnienia wojenne; Smoleń Kazimierz. 7 SD (Sicherheitdienst) was the intelligence agency of the SS (Schutzstaffel) and the Nazi Party NSDAP in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization and was considered to be a sister organization of the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, formed in 1933) through integration of SS members and operational procedures. The SD was administered as an independent SS office between 1933 and 1939, when the SD was transferred to the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA) as one of its seven departments.

Transfer, transformation, combat experience  123 8 The “prison on Lontskoho” was (and today still is, as a memorial museum) situated in Lviv on Łącki Street, today Bandery Street. It housed political prisoners during interwar Polish rule as well as during the Soviet and Nazi occupations. 9 The internment camp for officers Oflag VI A (Offizierslager) was located in Soest, North Rhine-Westfalia. 10 Under the pretext that the Soviet Union had not ratified the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, Russian POWs were extraordinarily maltreated in Nazi camps and prisons. 11 The English transcription from Cyrillic is Polshchikov(a). 12 See Konaszewischtsch Larysa (Larissa), https://ost​-arbeiter​.com​/simonova​-konashevich​ -larisa​-stepanovna​/simonovas/ж Stryzhkowa-Kowal Anna; https://ost​-arbeiter​.com​/ strizhkova​-anna​-mixajlovna/. 13 See https://ost​-arbeiter​.com​/strizhkova​-anna​-mixajlovna/. 14 See https://ost​-arbeiter​.com​/strizhkova​-anna​-mixajlovna/. 15 Mykola Lebed (1909–1998) was the de facto leader of the resistance after the total arrests of OUN(B) members between July and September 1941, and organizer of armed resistance in 1942–1943. After the transfer of underground leadership to the so-called Bureau in summer 1943, Lebed became the leader of the Security Service (Sluzhba Bezpeky, or SB). For a detailed biography and international reception of Lebed, see Rudling (2018). 16 The Pieracki Affair or Warsaw Trial was held from 18 November 1935 to 13 January 1936. 17 She was evacuated to the town of Lehnin (near Potsdam) in November 1944 and escaped with help of the OUN to Italy where she stayed until 1948, then immigrated to New York in 1950 (Bezchlibnyk-Butler, 2021). 18 This effect was partially described on GULAG examples in research by Kis (2021). 19 Some of her paintings are now exhibited at the Memorial Museum Ravensbrück. For examples of the paintings, see https://www​.stiftung​-bg​.de​/fileadmin​/user​_upload​/ Gedenkstaetten​/Ravensbrueck​/Veranstaltungen​/2022​/EK​_Ravensbrueck​.pdf (last access 16.04.2023). 20 Author’s translation.

References Bettelheim, Bruno (1986) The informed heart: A study of the psychological consequences of living under extreme fear and terror. London: Peregrine Books. Bezchlibnyk-Butler, Kalyna (2021) Ukrainian prisoners at Ravensbruck. Available at: http://www​.ucrdc​.org​/Archive​-Textual​_and​_Photo​_Records​-World​_War​_II​_files​/ UKRAINIAN​%20PRISONERS​%20AT​%20RAVENSBRUCK​%20Feb​%202021​.pdf (Accessed: 11 November 2022). Ciesielska, Maria (2015) Szpital obozowy dla kobiet w obozie Auschwitz-Birkenau [Camp hospital for women at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp]. Warszawa: Warszawski Uniwersytet Medyczny. Czech, Danuta (1992) Kalendarz wydarzen w Auschwitz-Birkenau [Calendar of publications at Auschwitz-Birkenau]. Oswiecim. Dunin-Wasowicz, Krzysztof (1983) Ruch oporu w hitlerowskich obozach koncentracyjnych [Resistance movement in Hitler’s concentration camps]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukow. Eliashevska-Froliak, Olga (1992) ‘Ukraїns’ki zhinky v hitlerivs’kykh tiurmakh i kontstaborakh [Ukrainian women in Hitler’s prisons and concentration camps]’, U borot’bi za Ukraїns’ku derzhavu [In struggle for the Ukrainian state] Lviv: Memorial, pp. 793–795.

124  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Frankl, Viktor (2007) ...Trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen [Saying yes to life regardless]. München: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag. Gagen-Torn, Nina Memoria [Memory]. Available at: https://www​.sakharov​-center​.ru​/asfcd​ /auth/​?t​=book​&num​=759 (Accessed: 24 August 2022). German, Judith (2015) Psykholohichna travma ta shliakh do vyduzhannia [Psychological trauma and the path to healing]. Lviv: Vydavnyctvo Staroho Leva. Glinska, Alicja (1967) ‘Moralność więzniów Oświęcimia [Morality of prisoners at Auschwitz], in Etyka, 2, pp. 173–232. https://doi.org/10.14394/etyka.214. Grossman, Dave (1996) On killing: The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society. New York: Back Bay Books. Hejfec, Michail Ukrajinskije (n.d.) siluety [Ukrainian siluets]. Available at: https://www​ .sakharov​-center​.ru​/asfcd​/auth/​?t​=book​&num​=585 (Accessed: 2 November 2022). Helm, Sarah (2015) If this is a woman: Ravensbruck; Hitler’s concentration camp for women. London: Brown Book Group. Hnatkivska-Lebed, Daria (1992) ‘Bachu, iak s’ohodni [I see it like today]’, in U borot’bi za Ukraїns’ku derzhavu [In struggle for the Ukrainian state] Lviv: Memorial, pp. 754–757. Howes, Craig (1993) Voices of the Vietnam POWs: Witnesses to their fight. New York: Oxford University Press. Kis, Oksana (2021) Surviving as victory: Ukrainian women in the GULAG. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Klymyshyn, Mykoła (1987) W pohodi do woli [On the quest to freedom]. 2nd edn. Detroit: Ukraı̈ ns’ka Knyharnja. Kogon, Eugen (1983) SS Staat: Das System der Deutschen Konzentrationslager. München: Heyne. Kowal, Omelian (2016) Spomyny moho zhyttia [Recollections of my life]. Lviv: Halycka Vydavnycha Spilka [Galician Publishing Union]. Kryłowa, Anna (2012) Radzieckie kobiety w walce: Historia przemocy na Froncie Wschodnim [Soviet women in war: A history of violence on the Eastern Front]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Replika. Lehasova, Ljubov Volodymyrivna (ed.) (2019) Konctabir Ausvic - ukraïns’kyj vymi: doslidžennja, dokumenty, svidčennja [Auschwitz concentration camp: The Ukrainian dimension]. Kyiv: National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, Memorial Complex. Marunchak, Mychajlo (1996) Ukraїns’ki politychni v’iazni v natsysts’kykh kontsentratsiinykh taborakh [Ukrainian political prisoners in Nazi concentration camps]. Toronto, Kyiv: Self-Publishing. Mirchuk, Petro (1993) Narys istoriї OUN [Brief history of the OUN]. Lviv: Ukraïns’ka vydavnycha spilka. Orenchuk-Maruszak, Marija (1992) ‘Na dni Tretiogo Reikhu [At the bottom of the Third Reich]’, U borot’bi za Ukraїns’ku derzhavu [In struggle for the Ukrainian state] Lviv: Memorial, pp. 758–761. Otto, Reinhard and Keller, Rolf (2020) Sovetskie voennoplennye v systeme kontslagerei Germanii [Soviet war prisoners in the system of concentration camps of Germany]. Moscow: Aspekt Press. Pohl, Dieter (2011) Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht: Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1944 [The rule of the Wehrmacht: German military occupation and the native population in the Soviet Union 1941–1944]. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.

Transfer, transformation, combat experience  125 Polszczikova, Anna (1994) Deti Os’ventsima [Children of Auschwitz]. Sevastopol: Self-Publishing. Rudling, Per Anders (2018) ‘“Not quite Klaus Barbie, but in that category”: Mykola Lebed, the CIA and the airbrushing of the past’, in Goda, Norman (ed.) Rethinking Holocaust justice: Essays across disciplines. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 158–187. Savchyn (Sawczyn), Maria (2003) Tysiacha dorih [One thousand roads]. Kyiv: Smoloskyp. Slavik (Slawik), Iurii (2015) Shliakh do Aushvitsu: Holokost na Zakarpatti [Trail to Auschwitz: Holocaust in Transcarpathia]. Dnipro: Ukrayins”kyy̆ instytut vyvchennya Holokostu “Tkuma” [Ukrainian Institute for Holocaust Studies]. Stryzhkova, Anna. Available at: https://ost​-arbeiter​.com​/strizhkova​-anna​-mixajlovna/ (Accessed: 3 September 2022). Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2015) KL: History of concentration camp. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Walzer, Michael (1969) ‘Prisoners of war: Does the fight continue after the battle?’, American Political Science Review, 63(3), pp. 777–786. Vityk-Voitovych (Wityk-Wojtowycz), Olena (1992) ‘Z Akademiї mystetstva u tiurmu i kontsentrak [From the Arts Academy to prison and concentration camp]’, in U borot’bi za Ukraїns’ku derzhavu [In struggle for the Ukrainian state] Lviv: Self-publishing, pp. 787–792.

7

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms Protecting the nation on the backstage of war Ayelet Harel

Introduction War plays an important role in the construction of gender and of the social roles of men and women. In this context, recent decades have seen a change in the way women are viewed, no longer solely as victims of conflict and wars but also as agents of change (Yadav, 2021). In parallel, in the current era of what is termed as the “new war”, advanced militaries are moving to what is commonly dubbed the “high-tech war”. In this “new warfare”, which also includes conflicts between state and non-state actors (Miodownik and Barak, 2014; Barak et al., 2020), conventional face-to-face battles are being complemented by “surgical” aids that include drones, technological surveillance and various other techniques that are aimed at evaluating and tracing the “legitimate targets” of wars and armed conflicts (Emery, 2020). Some aspects of these so-called high-tech wars are thus conducted through modern war rooms equipped with highly sophisticated instrumentation. The war room is not a new concept. In the warfare of today, a war room, being a command center that serves as a point of coordination for military activities, may be located either in proximity to the battlefield or at a considerable distance from it. The current chapter focuses on the experiences of women soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), who served in war rooms (also known as operation or situation rooms) located in proximity to the battlefield – in this case, on Israel’s borders and in actual conflict zones. Interviews with these women soldiers revealed that they did not experience remoteness or detachment while serving in such war rooms but, rather, a sense of proximity to the battle and to the combatants on the ground, accompanied by a strong sense of responsibility and involvement in every step of the battle. The role of women soldiers serving in war rooms was eloquently described by Lilly, a female operations officer, in explaining her tasks in a war room located on one of Israel’s borders: The war room is the heart of the war, in which we take care of everything. We see everything that is going on; we make decisions; we order where to shoot and what to do. From ordinary things to emergencies, we do it all … They [combat soldiers] are counting on us to take care of them. At present, women in militaries around the globe serve in a variety of combat and combat support positions. In parallel, new technologies of warfare are transferring DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-9

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms  127 more soldiers from the sidelines into the “new wars” battlefield in roles that are considered combat support positions. In this capacity, sharp thinking, an ability to concentrate and mind skills often replace the physical strength that is needed on the battlefield itself. Accordingly, more women soldiers are becoming significant participants in war by virtue of their assignment to strategic war rooms, some of them as commanders. Even though such women soldiers are not located physically in the battlefield, they do indeed participate in war by promoting “security” for their countries and for their fellow soldiers, and by being responsible for injuring the enemy. The stationing of women in frontline war rooms equipped with the latest technologies that bring the reality of the war zone into the war room thus challenges the traditional concepts of security, war and gender roles. A review of the literature on women soldiers serving in combat or combat support positions revealed that scant attention has been paid to the experiences of women stationed in war rooms. While much has been written about the integration of women into the military (Sasson-Levy, 2003; MacKenzie, 2015; HarelShalev and Daphna-Tekoah, 2020), including their experiences as drone operators (Daggett, 2015; Holz, 2021) and as masters of new technologies in modern warfare (Masters, 2005 and 2008; Manjikian, 2010), very few scholarly works have addressed the experiences women soldiers have in strategic war rooms near the battlefield – experiences, in which women soldiers have begun to take a leading role in “managing war” and in “achieving security” (Harel-Shalev, 2018). The current chapter thus addresses this lacuna in the ever-growing body of knowledge on security, since the narratives of women soldiers in war rooms can assist scholars in exploring and reevaluating different aspects of the concepts of security and war. Such narratives may challenge both the conventional wisdom definitions of war and the binary conceptualization of warfare as an explicitly gendered act, in which men soldiers actively protect allegedly passive and weak women (Shepherd, 2006; Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah, 2020). Women soldiers should not be regarded as a unified group. The experiences of women in the military are diverse and can vary markedly from one soldier to another, depending on roles, locations and level of exposure to trauma (DaphnaTekoah et al., 2021). I therefore sought to position women serving in war rooms on the continuum of military experiences and to investigate how these women soldiers perceive their service in gendered terms. In doing so, I also aimed to shed new light on the role of women in the military by exploring the narratives of women in key positions in frontline war rooms. Thus, with the dual purpose of learning about the everyday experiences and challenges of these soldiers and of exploring new framings for the analysis of the new wars environment, I applied feminist international relations (IR) theories and methodologies for conducting and analyzing personal interviews with 40 Israeli women whose mandatory military service was spent in war rooms. The analysis revealed nuanced narratives of war, intertwining protection, agency, security and insecurity. As mentioned earlier, the current study does not deal with distant, safe command centers but focuses rather on the experiences of women soldiers in the IDF, in war rooms located in proximity to the battlefield. Although “war room” is not

128  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict a new term in war histories, war rooms on the front line may decentralize power structures and represent a relatively new form of battlespace. By examining the narratives of women soldiers serving in war rooms that are located, conceptually and physically, on the border between the home front and the traditional battlefield, one can trace how these women take part in managing wars in this arena. It should be noted that this study was conducted against the background of the ongoing fierce struggle that is taking place in Israel to open more roles to women that are currently regarded as traditionally masculine roles in the IDF. I regard it fitting to conclude the Introduction with quotes from two interviewees that capture the essence of the typical war room scenarios of this study. In describing her role in a war room located on the border between Israel and the West Bank, Shiri, an operations officer, explained: Everything reaches the war room, from the smallest details, such as administrative matters, vehicles that are stuck [in enemy territory] or missing equipment, etc., through issues of wounded soldiers, up to the larger events of an operation … shooting, fighting, etc. … There are many routine ordinary things, but the core activity of war rooms continues to function during battles and emergency situations. Michal, an operations sergeant, further elaborated on the significance of military service in war rooms equipped with visual technologies and the contribution of these technologies to the forces in the battlefield: In the war room, you see everything; you see more than the soldiers in the field see; you see the whole picture … When the men soldiers from my troop were “in” [the battlefield] … they did not see terrorists coming toward them, but … I saw … I had to tell them to step back. Even though women such as Shiri and Michal are not positioned physically in the battlefield, they presented their participation in war as being very significant – as, in fact, it is – and it is this type of participation that raises questions regarding the status of female soldiers in the newly framed battlespace (Manjikian, 2010; HarelShalev, 2018). It is questions of this nature that the current study addresses. Gender and the new wars A better understanding of the active roles played by both women and men in contemporary wars is necessary if their potential for bringing about social change is to be fulfilled. It is thus vital not to embrace the binary narrative that has been damaging to both women and men in past transitions. Instead, the focus must be on understanding and redressing the asymmetrical systems of power that subordinated sections of the population and made them vulnerable to the exercise and abuse of power. (Chinkin et al., 2020, p. 3)

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms  129 Feminist and critical scholars guide us to critically study how militaries are sustained, deployed and utilized (Enloe, 2015; Lomsky-Feder and Sasson-Levy, 2016). They also make us aware of the need for a gendered analysis of the contradictory and insecure construction of masculinity in new wars (Parpart, 2011; Chinkin and Kaldor, 2013). It is this call to arms that led me to pursue the current research on women soldiers in war rooms in the context of new wars. In modern times, the borders of war are blurred both in time and in space: It is often quite difficult to pinpoint where a war starts and where it ends (Gregory, 2011). In addition, in the wars of today, there is a shift from battlefield to battle­space (Garraway, 2011; Dufort, 2013; Rech et al., 2015; Perugini and Gordon, 2017) and, in concert, the character of those who participate in war is changing. In battlespace, many more actors are involved (Garraway, 2011; Dufort, 2013), including women soldiers, civilians and insurgents, in addition to the traditional military (Perugini and Gordon, 2017). Moreover, Chinkin and Kaldor (2013, p. 169) state: New wars have a different logic from old wars, stemming from differences in the type of actors, the goals, the tactics and the forms of finance. In particular, old wars tend to be extreme in the sense of maximizing and totalizing violence, while new wars tend to be persistent and more difficult to end. The context for evaluating battlespaces no longer pertains exclusively to one-on-one conflicts – a state vs. another state or a military vs. another military – but rather to any state that is involved in a military occupation or in any type of military intervention. Military forces act in battlespaces through landscape and terrain (Rech et al., 2015). Today, “terrain” can be both seen and sensed in many ways by combatants in the battlefield, and thus issues of whether and how technological changes impact warfare are becoming crucial in debates centered on critical security studies. With the increased use of high-tech military methods (Peoples and Vaughan-Williams, 2015, pp. 184–185) and the growing importance of military intelligence and the visual elements of war (Mirzoeff, 2012), the ongoing evolvement of battlespace is giving rise to discussion as to whether smart technologies and smart weapons are changing the nature of warfare (Peoples and VaughanWilliams, 2015, p. 186). In parallel, the home front of the new war is bursting with examples of “visualities” and types of surveillance that are routinely deployed in battlespace (Amoore, 2007). It would thus appear that the new technologies of warfare, such as unmanned weaponry and vehicles, could potentially alter both the conduct of warfare itself (McDonald, 2013) and our understanding of war as a gendered activity (Manjikian, 2014). The consequences for gender relations of the entry of new technologies into the military arena are well documented in the literature. According to Masters (2005, p. 123), that differed in the past: The signifier soldier was confined to combatants, in other words, men who actually engaged in physical battle. The fusion of technology and masculinity has significantly blurred this traditional distinction.

130  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict In other words, “reducing the importance of the masculine warrior body as a hierarchal criterion creates conditions for blurring gender differences” (Lomsky-Feder and Sasson-Levy, 2018, p. 54). To complicate this gender blurring even further, new technologies of warfare are enabling more women to be positioned in “protector” roles, without the need for substantial physical effort (Manjikian, 2014; HarelShalev and Daphna-Tekoah, 2020). Chinkin et al. (2020, p. 4) make the following point: A woman may voluntarily join fighting forces for all sorts of reasons, including challenging accepted gender roles or acting in conformity with them by following a male lead. She may be content with traditional “women’s tasks” … or seek leadership and active participation in fighting. In this context, I address the concept of hegemonic masculinity in relation to the new war and the new battlespace. Hutchings (2008, p. 40) cautions us: Framing of contemporary international politics in terms of masculinity logic locks our social scientific imagination into a very familiar world in which we already understand how things work ontologically in terms of value hierarchies. But it also provides a massively efficient short cut for the cognitive tasks of categorization and analysis. Hutchings (2008) also warns us away from using binary oppositions when discussing masculinity and femininity in war. Brown (2012, p. 4) further suggests that understanding how the flux in gender roles is affecting the military requires a more nuanced understanding of masculinity and femininity. In this spirit, I note, that, in practice, the binaries of femininity and masculinity are blurred in the war room and therefore I refrain from speaking about a single “female experience” in war rooms. The current article, therefore, joins the stream of scholarly research that looks at security from different aspects and examines changing definitions of war (Enloe, 2000; Hudson et al., 2009; Zalewski, 2015). In that sense, it calls for an exploration of the issue of protection (Young, 2003): In historical stories, women’s need for protection causes wars, and men are expected to fight those wars as women’s protectors and heroes. These stereotypes legitimate both the social dominance of masculinity and the institution of war. (Sjoberg, 2006, pp. 895–896) Additionally, Tickner (1992, p. 128) calls attention to inequalities in the military and claims that the relationships between protectors and protected deepens gender inequalities, since a militarized version of security privileges the masculine characteristics that elevate men’s status. Specifically, feminists have theorized how the interface between technology and gendered bodies has disturbed the constructs of femininity and masculinity.

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms  131 In this study, I explore the narratives of women soldiers who are not involved in direct combat but nonetheless occupy a substantial part of battlespace by virtue of their service in forward war rooms. Even though women in war rooms are usually not defined by the military as “combatants”, they most definitely do participate in war, promoting security, protecting other soldiers and being responsible for inflicting injury on the “other”, while they themselves might sometimes be “insecure”. In my analysis of the narratives, I sought insight both into the politics of war (Sylvester, 2012; Dufort, 2013) on the front line (beyond the war rooms of the high command) and into the manifestations of the new war being fought in forward war rooms. I thus extend the discussion of women in the military by analyzing women’s experiences in the forward war room and the significance of these experiences for the battlespaces of the present. Method, study design and participants In Israel, military service for women became mandatory soon after the creation of the state in 1948. In recent decades, the IDF, like the militaries of other nations, has created new opportunities for integrating women soldiers into combat and combat support roles (Harel-Shalev, 2021). Unlike conscription for men, women’s service in combat-related roles is voluntary and is thus considered far more prestigious than traditional feminine military roles (Izraeli, 2001; Golan, 2015; Fogiel-Bijaoui, 2022). Combat support roles in the IDF include managing war rooms, working in field intelligence, and executing other security-related and combat-related tasks. Informed by the empirical and theoretical insights gained by feminist scholars who have analyzed various roles of women and gender in conflict and conflict resolution (Sjoberg, 2016; Yadav, 2021), I set out to study women serving in forward war rooms. The inclusion criterion was therefore service in the IDF in a combat support role in frontline war rooms on various borders and in conflict zones. The women participants in this study had served on Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and/or Egypt, and/or the borders with the Occupied Territories (either the West Bank or the Gaza Strip). Some of them had served on more than one front. All the participants were no longer on active military service at the time of the interviews, although some of them were still being called up for reserve duty. The participants had all been inducted into the IDF at the age of about 18 for two to seven years. Some of them served the minimum mandatory period of two years, while others signed up for additional periods of up to seven years. The 40 women participants in this study, aged between 21 and 33, were identified through snowball sampling. A series of personal interviews were held with them between 2014 and 2020, such that the maximum time elapsing between the interviews and the end of the military service or release from reserve duty was ten years. The interviewees, who held different ranks, had served in a variety of roles in different units (intelligence, infantry and navy) during their military service. The factor common to all study participants was that they served in forward war rooms, irrespective of the exact nature of their roles: Some served as lookouts, operations sergeants, officers or radio supervisors; others were in charge of various

132  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict advanced intelligence tools; yet others were responsible for operating unmanned intelligence-gathering vehicles from within a war room. The in-depth semistructured interview with each participant, who was identified by a pseudonym, started with obtaining informed consent. To enable the interviewers (the researcher and trained research assistants) to become acquainted with and reveal the experiences and the dilemmas of these combat support women soldiers, the interviews lasted for approximately one up to two hours. The interviews were held in Hebrew and, with the participant’s consent, were audiotaped and transcribed for subsequent narrative analysis. (The transcripts were later translated into English.) Each interviewee was asked a series of questions, starting with “Please tell me about your military service”. This was followed by “Would you please share your military service experiences in the war room?” Follow-up questions were open-ended to capture the women’s own narration of their experiences. More specific questions were used to clarify the stories as the interviews proceeded. The method of narrative analysis used in this study is intended to enable researchers to appreciate nuances, to explore various narratives in parallel and to be attentive to the way in which individuals make sense of their own experiences (Moss and Al-Hindi, 2008; Wibben, 2011; Shepherd, 2012). Narrative analysis is thus acknowledged to be an important tool in IR (Suganami, 2008; Wibben, 2011), and the analysis of a variety of narratives plays a crucial role in making sense of world politics (Suganami, 2008, p. 329). I have found this approach to be particularly suitable for evaluating women’s perspectives in conflict-ridden situations (Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah, 2020). Findings: Combat support soldiers in action Feminist research regarding the making and fighting of wars has urged scholars of security to broaden the definition of war and to explore women’s multiple roles in conflict, while being attuned to the context of the complex relationships between gender, gender-based stereotypes and political violence (Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015; Sjoberg 2016). The experiences of female combat support soldiers in war rooms assist us to do exactly that. For example, Sharon, a war room commander, stated: In this role, I am actually in charge of the girls [women combat support soldiers] inside the operations war room and … that means that I am the one taking command. Incidents in which I decide what to do, everything is on my shoulders. I am in charge … it is difficult, with a lot of stress … I am in charge of nine girls; the base is 1.5 km from the border; there is “action”. Sharon’s narrative emphasized her sense of responsibility and her understanding of her role in the military – indeed a narrative that may hint at a shake-up of gender roles in the military. Dana continued the theme: The men serving in war rooms often feel “less valuable” than combat men. We [the women] do not feel the same way. I know that I contribute so much to this army, to the country, and I don’t have any doubts whatsoever about

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms  133 the necessity of my role. They [men in the war room] are often driven by ego, and feel less “heroes”. Another important aspect of the context of the interviewees’ military service relates to the differences in the levels of intensity of the conflict on Israel’s various borders. Israel is a country that is involved in violent and armed conflicts on a daily basis, but vast differences were found regarding the experiences of women soldiers in war rooms on the different fronts – Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank – as Miriam, who was in charge of war rooms and intelligencegathering visual systems on two fronts, indicated: There are substantial differences between a “peaceful border” and a “warborder”. On the border with Egypt, it is a “quiet” border because there is peace [between Israel and Egypt] … there is some smuggling and some illegal entries, but the tension levels are different. In Gaza, it is mostly terrorist activity; it is serious; and everybody is alert … it is a matter of life and death. It is completely different [from a peaceful border]. Despite the differences in the interviewees’ experiences, two major themes were common to the narratives – sensing war and fighting war – as discussed next. Sensing war

The current study belongs to a research stream that aims to bring narrative analysis of war experiences into security studies (Wibben, 2011; Shepherd, 2012), in this case by emphasizing how our research participants sensed and felt IR every day (Åhäll, 2018). There are different ways of engaging with and studying war experiences and multiple contested possible conceptualizations of military experiences in the new wars environment (Dyvik and Greenwood, 2016; Åhäll, 2018). In their narratives about their service in forward war rooms, the women soldiers covered a variety of experiences and encounters with war. They described their roles in the war room and their experiences in great detail – how they had experienced battle­ space through seeing, sensing and facing a variety of experiences of armed conflict. For example, Michal said: I served on the border throughout my entire military service, at first as an operations sergeant and then as an operations officer. Those two years felt as if they were my entire life. There were some very intensive periods there … in which you stay in the base and spend many hours in the war room. It comes to the stage at which you know every stone in the area, every blind side. Every incident that happens in your area of operations becomes a part of you, everything becomes personal; every mistake; everything that could have been done differently; every soldier who was killed; every success; every successful incident, [or] prevention of an incident – everything becomes a part of you.

134  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict It is generally held that the practices of war and the skills of men soldiers are built through training and disciplining (McSorley, 2013). This notion is also true for women combat support soldiers serving in war rooms. In their narratives, the women soldiers emphasized the skills that they had acquired through their encounters with violence and war. For example, Tiffany and Shiri, both operations officers, explained how they were trained to function well during long and difficult shifts. In Tiffany’s words: The encounter for the first time with alarms and missiles demands that you get a grip very fast and execute your role as best you can, even when you are terrified … there is a loud BOOM, you see “fireworks” above your head, but you have to continue functioning as usual and manage the operation as if nothing has happened. Under my command, there were six or seven [male] operation sergeants … it brings great satisfaction, you become a professional, and a specialist … I served in a very masculine environment … I was a few meters from the border; there were many missiles and many intrusions. Shiri added: It is a matter of being awake during the night and functioning … it is actually not merely being awake; it is being alert … A very challenging role, intensive, with lots of uncertainties about the schedule … with huge responsibility … Placing girls in this role, it is not obvious. It is not a simple role … Girls at the age of 18, 19, 20 who take huge responsibility … It is not trivial that girls of that age are dealing with such responsibilities, not in our country and not abroad. The visual element of the battlespace was dominant in many narratives. Indeed, research has dealt with the importance of the visual representation of war in various spheres (Guittet and Zevnik, 2015). In war rooms, the visual elements of battlespace are crucial and complex. For example, Galit’s description of the death of one of her comrades in a battle, as she saw from the war room, emphasizes the significance of the “visuality” of battlespace: The thing is that with these screens [in the war rooms], you are on top of everything. You often see movement, track it down and manage to prevent terror attacks and casualties; after that you feel satisfaction and pride. Along with these incidents, there are other incidents in which you see the casualties in front of your eyes, you feel the pain in every part of your body. It is so frustrating. Images of war (Guittet and Zevnik, 2015; Peoples and Vaughan-Williams, 2015) have indeed become a substantial part of battlespace, as presented in the narrative of Moran, an operations sergeant, in describing her routine in the war room:

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms  135 Even to see everything that is ‘on camera’ on these plasma screens or to hear the military radio … [is intense]. I was sitting in the war room during an operation, with the earphones. I heard them [men combatants] from the battlefield, I saw them on camera … You hear “we are being shot at” and this is really difficult … I was stressed out … it is so stressful to see them from the war room like that. Sylvester (2012, p. 502) recommends that to understand the essence of war as an experience of the body, one has “to focus on less abstract and more people-centered elements of war”. The narratives of the interviewees were precisely focused on these elements: The physical proximity to death, the surreal reality of war and devastating scenes were recurring themes in the interviewees’ narratives of “sensing” war. By bringing the reality of the war zone into the war room, technology “obliges” many more noncombatant soldiers to experience battlespace. Even when the combat support soldiers interviewed in this study were not physically on the battlefield, they were in physical danger, under extreme stress and burdened with many responsibilities. In contrast to the distant war rooms of defense secretaries (Jose, 2016) and of drone operators (Daggett, 2015; Holz, 2021), the war rooms described in this article are located in proximity to the battlefield. Not only did the interviewees experience war and witness the death and injury of other soldiers via the visual systems in the war rooms, but they themselves were in danger. Ella, an operations sergeant, in describing a situation in which a missile landed inside the war room, emphasized how the war room is a part of the new battlespace and how it is not necessarily safe. Another interviewee, Jana, described a surreal experience in a war room in which she was very close to being hit by a bullet that had ricocheted off the phone to hit the wall next to her. The narrative theme of sensing war thus included huge responsibility, emotional burden, functioning under stress, exposure to combat, trauma and death, alongside striving for professionalism. Fighting war on the backstage of the battlefield

Until recently, the dominant discourse about war regarded men in combat as the actors “making war”. Women were mentioned in scholarly research mainly as victims of war or as marginal actors. Nonetheless, a debate has been evolving over whether making war is safe for women (Shepherd, 2016) and whether more women should be active participants in war (MacKenzie, 2013). The current findings reveal that women soldiers in war rooms are not merely sensing war and/or being affected by war, but they are – to a large extent – fighting war. The narratives of the interviewees indicate that just as technological devices are an indispensable part of the new battlespace, so too are the women soldiers who manage war rooms. Tamara, an operations officer in the West Bank, explained: There are those who are in the battlefield, and there are those who are behind the scenes. I feel that I did things, but this was always on “the backstage of a war” that is being conducted and managed behind the scenes. The operations

136  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict sergeants are on the backstage of the war, the combatants are in front. But the combatants cannot function without us, the war rooms’ teams. If there is no back-up and assistance from the war room, there will be chaos … [In the war rooms] you prioritize the incidents, you see what is happening, and then you prioritize the operations. Some years ago, Sjoberg (2006, pp. 895–896) summed up the then current thinking on male hegemony in the military: In historical stories, women’s need for protection causes wars, and men are expected to fight those wars as women’s protectors and heroes. These stereotypes legitimate both the social dominance of masculinity and the institution of war. The narratives of the women soldiers indicated how these ideas are changing: They repeatedly mentioned that although they are not considered to be combatants, war room soldiers play a substantial role in making war. The women repeatedly emphasized the crucial nature of their roles and how they protected the combatants, and they, likewise, resisted the notion that their role was marginal. As mentioned earlier, the women interviewees served in various roles in forward war rooms. Each soldier had participated in making war in a different manner. Shani, for example, explained her responsibilities as a lookout: [In the war room] there is no certainty what will happen next; you are fighting with yourself not to blink, not to close your eyes, even for a second. It is about human lives … In a recent operation, a lookout spotted a terrorist squad … This role serves as the “eyes” of the entire state, and the entire army. Advanced military technologies are cast as being “superior in almost every way to the human male body”: Better at information and intelligence gathering, better at “remote sensing”, faster, more responsive and more resilient, such that the “eyes and ears” of the military are no longer at the mercy of human error (Masters, 2005, p. 122; Masters, 2010). The women soldiers who serve in war rooms as operators of visual technologies or unmanned vehicles do indeed serve as the eyes and ears of the military and the state, while at the same time being human rather than a piece of computerized software. But what does it mean to be human in war? What does it mean to be a woman at war? What kind of dilemmas, ethical or otherwise, do women in war rooms face? In some sense, the stationing of women in forward war rooms positions them as major players in modern battlespace, with the parallel potential to cause the militarization of their lives and to expose them to ethical dilemmas. Roni, who served in a war room where she was in charge of operations and radio encryption, shared her dilemmas:

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms  137 There were so many dilemmas there [in the war room] … There was a situation in which we had concrete information about the location of a wanted terrorist, and they wanted to take him down, but on the roof, there were three kids; they put them there to play soccer, and we saw them standing there, and we knew who was inside the building. I remember the brigade commander and the other officers holding their heads, and we had to cope with a serious dilemma … they didn’t know what to do. It was the lives of three kids versus “something” that could save many lives, but in the end, they didn’t do it, they didn’t shoot … I saw with it my own eyes. In the war room, the operations officers see vividly via the advanced technological equipment both “their side” and the “enemy-other”; they see flesh and blood. However, in their narratives about their war experiences, the soldiers referred mainly to their own side of the conflict. They did, however, give voice to some critical stances with regard to state policy. Technology and current battlefields

Technology can be regarded as a productive site of power/knowledge. The insertion of technological elements into today’s battlefields has changed the experience of war for both combatants and noncombatants. Vasquez (2008) argues that while visual technology makes the experience of war more intimate and brings more participants into battlespace, it might also generate a psychological distance between the viewer and the viewed. Moreover, if, in the past, only men who actually engaged in physical battle were a part of the hegemonic masculinity of the military (Masters, 2010), the entry of technology into battlespace has changed the situation. Miriam, who served in a war room as a lookout and later as a visual systems intelligence officer, described: We were initiating operations. If it weren’t for us, incidents would not have been prevented and would have reached the border with Israel. You are providing time for the combat forces to get ready and prepare themselves for battle; you identify things before incidents occur; you collect intelligence; you feel that you are a part of something big. I wanted to serve as a combatant, but it didn’t work out, so I said – if not a combatant, so at least I will serve in the most intense area of operations. Tamara, an operations officer in the West Bank, explained not only how women soldiers were involved in decision-making, but also how influential she herself had been in her area of operations: I remember that the deputy brigade commander called me and asked: “where do you think I should position the forces and what is the best location for each force”? I actually … demonstrated on the map where he should locate each force … He backed me up and implemented what I had suggested.

138  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict The narratives of Miriam and Tamara illustrate, in different ways, how knowledge and expertise are fundamental to various actors in battlespace. Their knowledge was garnered through the technological equipment and visual systems located in the war room and they used this knowledge to assess the safety/danger of their brothers-in-arms. Common to Tamara’s and Miriam’s narratives, then, are the ways in which technology in the military may serve not only to reach beyond the borders but also to blur boundaries and gender roles. Edith further emphasized: I was directing the troops. I was directing them. This gave me a sense of satisfaction. There were [combat] forces that entered the war room before crossing the border and requested of us: “take good care of us”. It is encouraging and [morale] boosting. One may indeed ask how might new technologies reconfigure the gendered aspects of warfare (Manjikian, 2014). Manjikian (2014, p. 60) concludes that the availability of additional war-fighting technology is unlikely to open up additional opportunities for women or to substantially alter the gender configuration of warfare. This view also appears in the research of MacKenzie (2015) regarding the objection to the incorporation of women into masculine roles. Nonetheless, while men are still shaping today’s militaries and wars, one can identify incremental progress in shaking up and reshaping gender roles through the significance of the war room in battlespace. Along with the traditional gender roles, which are still the norm, the entry of women into the strategic war room enables women to position themselves as protectors and men to allow themselves to be protected by women, without a threat to their masculinity. According to Brownson (2014), in some instances, combatants – women and men – unite in a what she terms as a “differentiated solidarity” that recognizes men and women as full group members, while at the same time accepting their differential contribution to combat effectiveness. This idea is reflected in the example of “take good care of us”. That having been said, there were other instances in which the interviewees had been disregarded or marginalized. In some instances, the gender hierarchy was deep-rooted. Edith reported such an incident: I was familiar with MY area of operations … Nevertheless, there were incidents in which I was disregarded … Once I found an intruder. I went to conduct an inspection of a specific post. A [male] combatant was escorting me, and I saw someone passing by, it was completely dark, and I told him: “there is someone here”. He said: “shut up, there is no one here. This is an operational task, just be quiet”. We kept on going and I saw a man standing in front of me. I quietly grabbed the hand of the combat soldier [to signal to him that the intruder was there], and he arrested him. This example clearly emphasizes that male soldiers remain the primary definers of military culture, to which women have to accommodate themselves (King, 2015).

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms  139 Therefore, although the women interviewees understood and interpreted their vital part in battlespace, they were particularly frustrated when men soldiers – and the system itself – did not acknowledge their significant contribution. They faced various conflicts in their attempts to prove themselves as worthy of the immense responsibility endowed upon them. Some of the women soldiers indicated that they coped with additional gendered challenges such as sexist remarks. Such conflicts are clearly not positive events, but the situations created by conflict could become a vehicle for women’s empowerment (Yadav, 2021), particularly since the narratives radiated a strong sense of agency. Another challenge facing women in war rooms was to take on the role as pioneers in certain positions. Lior mentioned that she was happy that she was able to bring up the next generation of women operations sergeants, despite the difficulties she had faced. Paving the way for the younger generation of women soldiers in particular combat-related activities was, however, a substantial battle for some of the interviewees. Ronit, for example, served in war rooms and was the first woman soldier to be in charge of operating an unmanned vehicle. She described how she conducted a daily routine of mechanical maintenance of the unmanned vehicle, how she learned the route that the vehicle was required to follow and how she risked her life many times while she fixed a mechanical problem on the vehicle when it was in enemy territory. She further explained: You might think that I was playing a computer game, but I was actually driving [the vehicle]. I performed an innovative role … I think I contributed a lot … I was the first officer in this role; therefore, I actually established this function; I wrote the entire combat manual, and I have a lot of experience; the entire operation [of unmanned vehicles] is built on things that I created and experienced. Operating unmanned vehicles enables women soldiers to conduct combat-related roles without a substantial physical effort. The requirements for these roles are responsibility, patience, acuity and good reflexes (Manjikian, 2014); in that sense, women are no less professional than men. Indeed, the increased use of new technologies of this type through military service in war rooms could initiate a process that could affect the gender makeup of battlespaces. Michal’s description (at the end of the Introduction) of herself as protecting, warning and instructing men soldiers to abort their mission so as to avoid being harmed represents, to some extent, a shift in gendered constructs of protection: Women in battlespace – in strategic war rooms where they “see” the wider combat picture – have the power to direct men soldiers away from harm in the battlefield (Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah, 2020). These women both experience war and make war. Enloe (2014) indicates that, traditionally, men are supposed to “protect women and children”. The reality of modern war rooms may challenge this concept. Women soldiers in the war room – as another set of eyes – have become the protectors of combatants in the battlefield.

140  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Discussion and conclusion War rooms are located, both physically and conceptually, between the traditional battlefield, which may be termed “war proper” (Sjoberg and Via, 2010; Shepherd, 2016), and activities outside of “war proper”, which are included in battlespaces. In the context of the evolving knowledge about security and new wars, the narratives of women soldiers in war rooms can assist scholars to explore various aspects of new wars. This chapter shows that the narratives of women soldiers serving in forward war rooms may challenge both the traditional definitions of war and the binary conceptualization of warfare as a gendered act in which soldiers (usually men) actively protect allegedly passive women (usually civilians). The current analysis of the narratives of women soldiers serving in war rooms reveals wider processes that are currently evolving in the militaries and battlespaces of today. In terms of cultural and psychological changes in gendered activities, the participants in the current research served in the military and participated in wars in an era in which women are demanding equality in various spheres of life. In particular, these women’s self-perceptions and expectations have been shaped – and are still being shaped – against a rapidly changing domestic and foreign landscape: In this landscape, young Israeli women are struggling for equal participation in the military (Izraeli, 2001) and are demanding that more roles in the IDF be opened to women. Also Israel, as a sovereign state, is shifting from offense toward defense as the preferred way to protect itself in the face of new security threats (Barak et al., 2020). These sociopolitical processes, along with technological advances and their implementation in battlespace, therefore, affect women soldiers’ narratives of war. In parallel to the gradual entry of women into a variety of traditionally masculine roles in society in general and in the military in particular, women soldiers stationed in forward war rooms are taking a more active part in managing war and in instructing troops on how to relocate themselves within the battlefield, if necessary. These women are de facto “fighting war” in a battlespace that lies – physically and conceptually – between the home front and the battlefield. Even though such women are not defined by the military or by society as “combatants”, they do indeed participate in war, promoting security, protecting combatants, being exposed to physical danger and being responsible for injuring the other. Moreover, new technologies of warfare are, to some extent, enabling more women both to be positioned in a protector role, taking charge in both routine activities and emergency situations, and to fulfill their potential outside the traditional gender roles, without the need for substantial physical prowess. The reality of the war room changes the concept of protection, a central theme in security studies (Young, 2003; Eichler, 2015; Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah, 2020), in two main ways: First, women soldiers serving in the war room can function as the eyes and ears of the military and the state, and therefore they are positioned as protectors of the state, while dichotomously being protected by combat soldiers. Second, in a different kind of protection, women combat support soldiers protect combatants and guide them in the battlefield via the war room. Yet, in this context, the meaning of “protection” is nuanced: On the one hand, motherly

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms  141 protection is evident in the women soldiers’ attitudes to men soldiers, while at the same time, their “warrior” capabilities are demonstrated both by their actions in battlespace and by their own insistence that they are taking an active part in warfare. These aspects of protection call into question the meaning of hegemonic masculinity in the military, a meaning that seems to be evolving in new wars and battlespaces. Looking at women serving in war rooms enables us to question the binary nature of masculinity and femininity, while exploring a possible flux in gender roles and changes in the femininity/masculinity divide. The use of advanced technology and various visual devices in war zones, which bring images of war and the reality of the war zone into the war room, are currently shaping the new battlespace. This reality affects how women in war rooms both “experience” and “make” war. In both these activities, women combat support soldiers, who are not present in the battlefield itself and are not directly involved in combat, are being exposed to extreme violence. An analysis of a variety of narratives, such as those presented in the current chapter, can play a crucial role in making sense of new wars and battlespace. The whole range of advanced high-tech weapons, alongside information and communication technologies, brings more women into battlespace and exposes more women soldiers to the surreal and devastating reality of war, while at the same time giving them the tools to make war, to hurt others and to protect combatants. In this study, the women soldiers serving in war rooms understood and internalized their vital roles in battlespace, yet they expressed their frustration at the fact that they did not always receive the requisite acknowledgment for their important work from men soldiers or from the military system at large. The women’s desire for acknowledgment of their contribution to the military was evident in their narratives, as has been found in previous studies (Sasson-Levy, 2003; Lomsky-Feder and Sasson-Levy, 2016). A fascinating theme that emerged from this analysis was the interviewees’ level of involvement in the military, their dedication to the job and their devotion to one another. At the same time, it was evident that most of the narratives made scant references to the other side of the conflict and hardly related to the casualties of the other side. This omission could be related to the fact that these conscripts had been granted the right to serve in combat-related positions in return for obedience and devotion to duty (Sasson-Levy, 2003). Finally, one should remember that soldiers in conflicts and wars mostly tend to be attentive to their “own side of the conflict” (Woodward and Jenkings, 2013). Military service has strong historical ties to masculinity and the transformation of boys into men (Brown, 2012, pp. 3–17). What, then, is military service for women? How do women experience war and make war? Understanding these aspects of war constitutes a significant part of the exploration and understanding of new wars. It may be said that women who serve in war rooms are located on the backstage of war, which is allegedly the “natural” place for women in war. However, the findings of this study indicate that the place of these women is at the heart of the battlespace. Moreover, although objections to the incorporation of women into substantial roles in the military in various countries are still widespread

142  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict (MacKenzie, 2015), the experiences of women soldiers seem to be indicative of an incremental change in gender roles that is occurring in the military: Women soldiers are actually fighting war, in every sense of the term. Feminist scholars tend to conceptualize war and political violence in ideas that are broader than traditional notions (Sjoberg, 2009). In the current chapter, I applied narrative analysis to broaden knowledge about women’s experiences in combatrelated activities, aiming to identify the experiences and dilemmas of women facing the challenging and unusual situations of combat and warfare. Women soldiers in war rooms are shaping the new battlespace and are challenging the traditional concepts of security, war and gender roles. These processes are occurring in parallel to the entry into battlespace of the advanced technology that brings the reality of the war zone into the war room. Taking a critical feminist approach to studying the military can thus contribute to generating a more realistic accounting of gender roles in the military (Enloe, 2015, p. 3) and of the broader processes inherent in the creation of today’s new wars. References Åhäll, Linda (2018) ‘Feeling everyday IR: Embodied, affective, militarising movement as choreography of war’, Cooperation and Conflict, 54(2), pp. 149–166. Amoore, Louise (2007) ‘Vigilant visualities: The watchful politics of the war on terror’, Security Dialogue, 38(2), pp. 215–232. Barak, Oren; Sheniak, Amit and Shapira, Assaf (2020) ‘The shift to defence in Israel’s hybrid military strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/01402390​ .2020​.1770090 Brown, Melissa T. (2012) Enlisting masculinity: The construction of gender in US military recruiting advertising during the all-volunteer force. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brownson, Connie (2014) ‘The battle for equivalency: Female US marines discuss sexuality, physical fitness, and military leadership’, Armed Forces and Society, 40(4), pp. 765–788. Chinkin, Christine and Kaldor, Mary (2013) ‘Gender and new wars’, Journal of International Affairs, 67(1), pp. 167–187. Chinkin, Christine; Kaldor, Mary and Yadav, Punam (2020) ‘Gender and new wars’, Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 9(1), pp. 1–13. Daggett, Cara (2015) ‘Drone disorientations: How ‘unmanned’ weapons queer the experience of killing in war’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17(3), pp. 361–379. Daphna-Tekoah, Shir; Harel-Shalev, Ayelet and Harpaz-Rotem, Ilan (2021) ‘Thank you for hearing my voice: Listening to women combat veterans in the United States and Israeli militaries’, Frontiers in Psychology, 12, pp. 1–16. Dufort, Philippe (2013) ‘Introduction: Experiences and knowledge of war’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 26(4), pp. 611–614. Dyvika, Synne L. and Greenwood, Lauren (2016) ‘Embodying militarism: Exploring the spaces and bodies in-between’, Critical Military Studies, 2(1–2), pp. 1–6. Eichler, Maya (2015) ‘Gender, PMSCs, and the global rescaling of protection’, in Eichler, Maya (ed.) Gender and private security in global politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 55–72. Emery, John R. (2020) ‘Probabilities towards death: Bugsplat, algorithmic assassinations, and ethical due care’, Critical Military Studies, 8(2), pp. 179–197.

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms  143 Enloe, Cynthia (2000) Maneuvers: The international politics of militarizing women’s lives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Enloe, Cynthia (2014) Bananas, beaches, and bases: Making feminist sense of international politics. 2nd edn. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Enloe, Cynthia (2015) ‘The recruiter and the sceptic: A critical feminist approach to military studies’, Critical Military Studies, 1(1), pp. 3–10. Fogiel-Bijaoui, Sylvie (2022) ‘Politics in the Yishuv and Israel’. In The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women - Jewish Women Archive. Available at: https://jwa​.org​/ encyclopedia​/article​/politics​-in​-yishuv​-and​-israel (last access 16 April 2023). Garraway, Charles (2011) ‘The changing character of the participants in war: Civilianization of warfighting and the concept of “direct participation in hostilities”’, International Law Studies, 87(1), pp. 177–186. Gentry, Caron E. and Sjoberg, Laura (2015) Beyond mothers, monsters, whores: Thinking about women’s violence in global politics. London: Zed Books. Golan, Galia (2015) ‘Militarization and gender in Israel’, in Flaherty, Maureen P. et al. (eds.) Gender and peacebuilding: All hands required. Lanham: Lexington Books, pp. 212–228. Gregory, Derek (2011) ‘The everywhere war’, Geographical Journal, 177(3), pp. 238–250. Guittet, Emmanuel-Pierre and Zevnik, Andreja (2015) ‘Exposed images of war’, in Ahäll, Linda and Gregory, Thomas (eds.) Emotions, politics and war. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 192–206. Harel-Shalev, Ayelet (2018) ‘“A room of one’s own(?)” in battlespace: women soldiers in war rooms’, Critical Military Studies, 7(1), pp. 42–60. Harel-Shalev, Ayelet (2021) ‘To be or not to be a combatant? Feminism and gendered considerations in the Israel defense forces’, in Khlebnikova, Luiza (ed.) The role of women in the Jewish World: A collective monograph. Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, pp. 133–154. Harel-Shalev, Ayelet and Daphna-Tekoah, Shir (2020) Breaking the binaries in security studies: A gendered analysis of women in combat. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holz, Jacob (2021) ‘Victimhood and trauma within drone warfare’, Critical Military Studies. Hudson, Valerie M. et al. (2009) ‘The heart of the matter: The security of women and the security of states’, International Security, 33(3), pp. 7–45. Hutchings, Kimberly (2008) ‘Cognitive short cuts’, in Parpart, Jane L. and Zalewski, Marysia (eds.) Rethinking the man question: sex, gender and violence in international relations. London: Zed Books, pp. 23–46. Izraeli, Dafna N. (2001) ‘Paradoxes of women’s service in the Israel defense forces’, in Ben-Ari, Eyal; Maman, Daniel and Rosenhek, Zeev (eds.) Military, state, and society in Israel. New Brunswick, London: Routledge, pp. 203–238. Jose, Betcy (2016) ‘Bin Laden’s targeted killing and emerging norms’, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 10(1), pp. 44–66. King, Anthony C. (2015) ‘Women warriors: Female accession to ground combat’, Armed Forces and Society, 41(2), pp. 379–387. Lomsky-Feder, Edna and Sasson-Levy, Orna (2016) ‘The effects of military service on women’s lives from the narrative perspective’, in Carreiras, Helena; Castro, Celso and Frederic, Sabina (eds.) Researching the military. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 94–106. Lomsky-Feder, Edna and Sasson-Levy, Orna (2018) Women soldiers and citizenship in Israel: Gendered encounters with the state. Oxon: Routledge.

144  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict MacKenzie, Megan H. (2013) ‘Women in combat: Beyond “can they?” or “should they?”: Introduction’, Critical Studies on Security, 1(2), pp. 239–242. MacKenzie, Megan H. (2015) Beyond the band of brothers: The US military and the myth that women can’t fight. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Manjikian, Mary (2010) ‘From global village to virtual battlespace: The colonizing of the internet and the extension of Realpolitik’, International Studies Quarterly, 54(2), pp. 381–401. Manjikian, Mary (2014) ‘Becoming unmanned: The gendering of lethal autonomous warfare technology’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(1), pp. 48–65. Masters, Cristina (2005) ‘Bodies of technology: Cyborg soldiers and militarized masculinities’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 7(1), pp. 112–132. Masters, Cristina (2008) ‘Bodies of technology and the politics of the flesh’, in Parpart, Jane L. and Zalewski, Marysia (eds.) Rethinking the man question: Sex, gender and violence in international relations. London: Zed Books, pp. 87–108. Masters, Cristina (2010) ‘Cyborg soldiers and militarised masculinities’, in Shepherd, Laura J. (ed.) Gender matters in global politics: A feminist introduction to international relations. London: Routledge, pp. 173–186. McDonald, Kevin (2013) ‘Grammars of violence, modes of embodiment and frontiers of the subject’, in McSorley, Kevin (ed.) War and the body: Militarisation, practice and experience. London: Routledge, pp. 138–151. McSorley, Kevin (2013) War and the body: Militarisation, practice and experience. London: Routledge. Miodownik, Dan and Barak, Oren (2014) Nonstate actors in intrastate conflicts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mirzoeff, Nicholas (2012) Watching Babylon: The war in Iraq and global visual culture. London: Routledge. Moss, Pamela and Al-Hindi, Karen Falconer (2008) Feminisms in geography: Rethinking space, place, and knowledges. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Parpart, Jane L. (2011) ‘Masculinity, gender and the new wars’, NORMA, 5(2), pp. 86–99. Peoples, Columba and Vaughan-Williams, Nick (2015) Critical security studies: An introduction. 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Perugini, Nicola and Gordon, Neve (2017) ‘Distinction and the ethics of violence: On the legal construction of liminal subjects and spaces’, Antipode, 49(5), pp. 1385–1405. Rech, Matthew et al. (2015) ‘Geography, military geography, and critical military studies’, Critical Military Studies, 1(1), pp. 47–60. Sasson-Levy, Orna (2003) ‘Feminism and military gender practices: Israeli women soldiers in ‘masculine’ roles’, Sociological Inquiry, 73(3), pp. 440–465. Shepherd, Laura J. (2006) ‘Veiled references: Constructions of gender in the Bush administration discourse on the attacks on Afghanistan post-9/11’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 8(1), pp. 19–41. Shepherd, Laura J. (2012) Critical approaches to security: An introduction to theories and methods. New York: Routledge. Shepherd, Laura J. (2016) ‘Making war safe for women? National action plans and the militarisation of the women, peace and security agenda’, International Political Science Review, 37(3), pp. 324–335. Sjoberg, Laura (2006) ‘Gendered realities of the immunity principle: Why gender analysis needs feminism’, International Studies Quarterly, 50(4), pp. 889–910. Sjoberg, Laura (2009) ‘Introduction to security studies: Feminist contributions’, Security Studies, 18(2), pp. 183–213.

Women soldiers in frontline war rooms  145 Sjoberg, Laura (2016) ‘Feminist reflections on political violence’, in Breen-Smyth, Marie (ed.) The Ashgate research companion to political violence. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 261–281. Sjoberg, Laura and Via, Sandra (2010) ‘Introduction’, in Sjoberg, Laura and Via, Sandra (eds.) Gender, war and militarism: Feminist perspectives. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, pp. 1–16. Suganami, Hidemi (2008) ‘Narrative explanation and international relations: Back to basics’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 37(2), pp. 327–356. Sylvester, Christine (2012) ‘War experiences/war practices/war theory’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 40(3), pp. 483–502. Tickner, J. Ann (1992) Gender in international relations: Feminist perspectives on achieving global security. New York: Columbia University Press. Vasquez, Jose N. (2008) ‘Seeing green: Visual technology, virtual reality, and the experience of war’, Social Analysis, 52(2), pp. 87–105. Wibben, Annick T.R. (2011) Feminist security studies: A narrative approach. New York: Routledge. Woodward, Rachel and Jenkings, K. Neil (2013) ‘“Soldiers” bodies and the contemporary British military memoir’, in McSorley, Kevin (ed.) War and the body: Militarisation, practice and experience. London: Routledge, pp. 152–164. Yadav, Punam (2021) ‘Can women benefit from war? Women’s agency in conflict and postconflict societies’, Journal of Peace Research, 58(3), pp. 449–461. Young, Iris Marion (2003) ‘The logic of masculinist protection: Reflections on the current security state’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 29(1), pp. 1–25. Zalewski, Marysia (2015) ‘Stories of pain and longing: Reflecting on emotion, boundaries and feminism through Carrie Mathison and Carrie White’, in Ahäll, Linda and Gregory, Thomas (eds.) Emotions, politics and war. London: Routledge, pp. 34–44.

8

Women of color in the armed forces of Germany Invisibly exposed? Egzona Gashi and Béatrice Hendrich

Introduction When Ich diene Deutschland (I Serve Germany) by Nariman Hammouti-Reinke was published in 2019, it immediately made it to the German bestseller list. Evidently, the (professionally prepared) autobiographic narrative of a migrantGerman female soldier addressed a fascinating issue in the eyes of the readership.1 This chapter is in a sense an academic approach to the same issue. It discusses forms of intersectionality in the German Federal Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr. This chapter is also about confusion (in migration affairs), hesitation (to tackle discomforting questions), prejudices (toward interlocutors, Germans, migrants, women, militaries, civilians, etc.) and the insistence that there is nothing worth talking about it. The research process and the experiences of the researchers during this process are also made part of this chapter because they help clearly demonstrate the specificity of the issues. The research process also showed that the German case remained hitherto untouched by academia, while similar cases such as the situation of female persons of color (PoC) in the US Army have been tackled already. The chapter, therefore, discusses what we can take from that research and apply to the situation in the Bundeswehr. The chapter outlines the recent history of changes both in German citizenship law and in regulations regarding conscription and serving in the armed forces since these changes constitute the backdrop of the topic. Intersectionality, German nationalism and racism, citizenship, and the significance of (a precarious) language build the theoretical frame of the discussion. The empirical part of the analysis is based on two original qualitative interviews as well as on further published material such as videos, interviews and semiautobiographical books. The interviews were conducted with persons who (1) identified as females; (2) identified as women of color, or were the child of a migrant family, or had acquired German citizenship after birth; and (3) have received basic or extended military training in the Bundeswehr. The guiding question is how PoC women or women from migrant families experience their military service in the Bundeswehr and how they make sense of themselves in this core institution of the nation-state and “hyper-masculine organization” (Lomsky-Feder and Sasson-Levy, 2017, p. 1).

DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-10

Women of color in armed forces of Germany  147 Gender, nationality and the Bundeswehr after 1999 Since the beginning of the new millennium, German citizenship law as well as conscription rules have undergone major changes. It is no coincidence that both areas are part of a long-due reform project that has not yet come to an end. The backdrop is a changing public attitude toward gender roles, the demand by pressure groups to revise the German citizenship concept of ius sanguini, and the end of the 16-yearslong era of political and technical stagnation under chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1998. At the same time, concrete aspects made the revision of both policy areas necessary: The ius sanguinis, which granted German citizenship to families living in the USSR because of their so-called historical roots in the Volksdeutsche (ethnically German people), while rejecting the same right to third-generation families living in Germany, presented not only an outdated understanding of citizenship and nationhood but also – quite rightly – had a smack of racist nationalism. In 1999, the birthright citizenship, “a limited ius soli regulation” (Naujoks, 2009), was introduced. Without going too much into detail of this bill and the following modifications, the most significant change was that from now on, a person born in Germany to a foreign parent, who had resided in Germany lawfully, would automatically be granted German citizenship (Anil, 2005, p. 454). In 2021, the government took the decision to further ease naturalization and allow dual citizenship on a regular basis. The issue of the dual citizenship may appear as a minor question in the general picture; however, the way it is treated in the public discourse in Germany is very telling. The dominant belief that one person cannot hold more than one citizenship (Naujoks, 2009) underlines the persistence of an essentialist concept of nation. In 2000, the European Court of Justice ruled that the hitherto restricted access for women to the Bundeswehr – there had been a total of 117 female military physicians or musicians in 19852 – contradicted the principle of equal treatment of men and women. Tanja Kreil, a trained electronics technician, had applied for a job in the maintenance department; upon being rejected, she filed a lawsuit that she won (Kraus, Kreitenweis and Petzold, 2020, p. 106). In the same decade, the national armed forces had to cope with increasing technological requirements; it needed well-trained specialists instead of a great number of badly prepared civilians.3 Consequently, Germany dissolved4 mandatory military service in 2011. As a result of these two far-reaching reforms, the number and composition of military personnel have changed dramatically. By 2018, the number of persons employed in the Bundeswehr had dropped from half a million to roughly 180,000, 21,000 of whom were female (Frauen bei der Bundeswehr). Therefore, the army had to attract new personnel in direct competition with the general labor market and shrinking numbers of skilled workers due to demographic change. The Bundeswehr launched an advertisement campaign aimed at the now growing segment of naturalized or German-born migrants and PoC, male and female (Fedtke, Hellman and Hörmann, 2013, p. 40). This is how, after 2000, a (unspecified) number of women whose names, religious affiliations or family history shackle the German imagination of national

148  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict homogeneity entered the Bundeswehr and have since been “serving Germany” in support and combat positions. The research process: Looking for the non-existing or the invisible? “Female veterans who are defined as ‘women of color’ and honorably discharged from the armed forces of the US” (Tennessee Department of Revenue, n.d.) can purchase a vehicle plate that includes the words “Women Veterans of Color”. In Germany, a similar situation would be unthinkable for several reasons. The least important reason is the different rules of vehicle plates, which in the US have indeed become pop culture items through which personal or ideological statements can be expressed. The cultural references of the term “veteran” or “women of color” would be lost on German people; they do not carry the same sense of familiarity or recognition in Germany as they do in the US. There is also a tendency among German soldiers to disguise their adherence to the armed forces for fear of negative reaction: “some comrades no longer wear uniforms on their way from home to the barracks … because they do not want to be mobbed”, states Hammouti-Reinke (2019, p. 19) critically. The research process of this chapter has faced several challenges: A dismissive attitude of feminist studies toward research in military affairs, the lack of any previous research on women of color in the Bundeswehr, the distrustful attitude of the armed forces toward researchers from a different professional background and the hesitation of (former) soldiers to talk about their experiences. The insufficient research on women in the military can be attributed, among other things, to the historically close relationship between peace and conflict studies and gender studies in Germany (cf. Dittmer, 2009, p. 11, following Seifert, 2001, pp. 134–135; Leonhard and Werkner, 2005, pp. 14–15). The question of the integration of women in the military therefore remains particularly controversial in circles of feminist scholars. Some more recent publications, however, pay respect to the new reality of the growing number of women soldiers (Dosdall, 2021; Schmidt and Trautwein, 2021; Hendricks, 2020; Kraus, Kreitenweis and Petzold, 2020; Kümmel, 2016). The war against Ukraine is expected to fuel the academic discussion soon.5 While the research on women in the Bundeswehr is meager, research on “migrant female soldiers” does not even exist. Numerous scholarly publications on the situation in other countries, especially in the US and in postcolonial countries have been published. Initially dealing with the situation of Black men in the US Army, the first publications referred to the associated labor market and economic discrimination, exclusion mechanisms, and the intertwining of racist and sexist admission requirements (cf. Enloe, 1980). The articles in Ethnicity, Integration and the Military (Dietz, Elkin and Roumani, 1991) focused on the aspect of national armed forces as a vehicle of social integration in a variety of countries. Ronald Krebs (2006) discussed 20 years later if and how participation in the army can bolster minorities’ claims for a “first-class citizenship” in Israel and the US. Vron Ware (2012) shifted the focus to “military migrants”, recruits from Commonwealth

Women of color in armed forces of Germany  149 countries serving the British Army. These recruits with their peculiar citizenship status are expected to fight for Britain, for their army, not as mercenaries, while being stigmatized inside and outside the barracks as “foreigners”. In Germany, the topic appears in media discourses in the context of “integration or racism debates” and the “self-presentation” of the Bundeswehr as diverse and diversity sensitive. The only academic publications with a specific focus on migration and the Bundeswehr so far are Gerhard Kümmel’s edited volume Die Truppe wird bunter (2012) and Fedtke, Hellmann and Hörmann’s Migration und Militär (2013). An exceptional work is Berger and Römer-Hillebrecht’s Juden und Militär in Deutschland (2009), which discusses the history of Jewish Germans in the armed forces of Germany. The volume shows the inadequacy but also the overlapping zones of categories such as nationality and religious affiliation, and above all the fluidity of these categories. However, a look at the literature on other national armies helps identify critical issues for analysis. Even though the relationship between Black and White soldiers is evidently different, say, in the army of South Africa from that in the Bundeswehr for historical reasons, the challenges that women of color face in different armies are still quite comparable. Vron Ware, for instance, mentions the case of a Caribbean female member of the British Army. The woman was discharged from the army because she had neglected her official duties due to childcare (when she could not find an affordable babysitter). She sued the army, and although she won the case, she was subsequently treated in a discriminatory manner both in the media and through social media. Her will and attempt to equally fulfill her role as the carer for her children and her role within the service was interpreted negatively. As a woman from a poor country with several children, she was seen as having only “pecuniary” intentions – which was why she had become a soldier – and at the same time she was accused of maintaining an immoral lifestyle (Ware, 2012, pp. 195–199). Studies in the US forces show that sexual harassment and other forms of violence affect Black women to a significantly higher degree than White soldiers (Breslin, Daniel and Hylton, 2022). Whatever the particular circumstances, all authors conclude univocally that this situation has to be actively addressed both by the responsible institutions and the academic research design. With reference to the British Army, Ware argues that “the notion that racism could be expunged from the army simply because people were used to obeying orders had been pretty much discredited”. The new “attempt to encourage soldiers to talk about their experience” of discrimination is considered to be much more fruitful (Ware, 2012, p. 194). In their conclusion, Breslin, Daniel and Hylton call for the establishment of an “inclusive systems of sexual harassment prevention … namely, (for) those whose social identity lay at the intersection of multiple categories of inequality” (2022, p. 410). In light of these findings, the complete neglect of intersectionality, both by the Bundeswehr and by research, is thought provoking. When conceptualizing this research, it was self-evident from the beginning that the voices of the soldiers themselves should be heard, by means of qualitative interviews. But this endeavor became another challenge. Attempts were made to find interview partners through private contacts and by directly contacting female

150  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict soldiers already known in the media as well as through official channels. Despite efforts over several months, only two interviews could be conducted. Just one of the soldiers who were contacted privately finally agreed to be interviewed. In this chapter she is called Mirushe. The second interviewee was an active soldier who was contacted because she had previously given interviews with TV programs. From the reactions of the privately contacted veterans and female soldiers who are on active duty, it became clear that there is a general fear of traceability of personal information, since migrants are virtually invisible in the given research context but particularly visible in the Bundeswehr. Due to the particularly sensitive data and for the purpose of protection as well as the avoidance of traceability of personal data, many sociodemographic data (including biographical, professional) and information about the interviewee Mirushe (e.g., the rank, ethnic-cultural positioning, stay abroad) had to be strongly anonymized in the transcript in consultation with her. Thus, excerpts of the interview also had to be deleted entirely. The second interviewee was master sergeant Hülya Süzen, an expert in religious pluralism at the Zentrum Innere Führung (Bundeswehr Center for Leadership Development and Civic Education). She is a highly visible figure in the media and was specifically made available by the institution for the interview. Symbolized by her uniform, she was primarily present in her professional role as a soldier and “representative” of the Bundeswehr. The interview was conducted online; due to the internal regulations of the Bundeswehr regarding dealing with the “public”, the interview was accompanied by a press officer who was not an active participant in the interview. The interviewed female soldier and the press officer had been in contact several times, but saw each other for the first time in the context of the digital interview. The press officer read male and non-migrant. Despite these “barriers to research” and restrictions to the interview, the interviewee reflected and elaborated relatively openly on her experiences. Based on a detailed narrative of biographical key instances, which had taken place inside and outside the army, gender- and ethnocultural-coded experiences and processes of othering were mentioned. The partial effect of dominant narratives in the Bundeswehr, such as the narratives of equality and high performance as a means of success, on the subjectivation process of the interviewee could also be seen. We also approached the Zentrale Ansprechstelle für den Umgang mit Vielfalt (the central point of contact for dealing with diversity). After several months of friendly exchange through emails, including a detailed description of our research and the questions we wanted to ask the women, we were finally allowed to apply for conducting the research. At that point in time, our project as such had almost come to an end, so we refrained from producing further paperwork. Likewise, our initial hope of cooperating fruitfully with Deutscher.Soldat. e.V. (German Soldier Association) was completely frustrated. The association was established in 2011 by soldiers “with migration background” and supporters; its vision is “a Germany of coexistence, in which common values outweigh visible differences. A nation in which those who feel and want to be perceived as such are considered Germans” (Deutscher.Soldat. e.V., n.d.). Nariman Hammouti-Reinke has been a board member of the association for many years and is its main external

Women of color in armed forces of Germany  151 representative. We had supposed that the association would be interested in academic research on topics that it put on the agenda itself; that it would be interested in seeking answers to questions such as, what is it like to serve in the Bundeswehr as a (female) naturalized German or a PoC? What are their personal experiences both inside the institution and in the civilian world? However, we failed to establish trust or contact with possible interviewees. A board member expressed the fear that we would be looking (eagerly) for conflicts inside the Bundeswehr, and exaggerating cases of racism and nationalist attitudes, which are presented and discussed in the media from time to time. Toward the end of our research, we contacted the board one more time, offering to discuss our findings critically, which they declined citing lack of time. Considering our experiences in the research process, we contend that there is a relation between the lack of relevant research and the failure to find interviewees. Gurol and Wetterich (2021) argue that field research, particularly in international relations and security studies, needs careful and detailed preparation. From that perspective, our research design may have been doomed to fail. On the other hand, our questions did not relate to military strategies, political views on the Bundeswehr, weapons systems or similarly sensitive areas. We had believed in the slogan that German soldiers were “citizens in uniform”, which at the same time meant for us that we could talk to the female soldiers about their individual biographies while maintaining the standard data security in the social sciences. Both the lack of other studies and the unwillingness to talk to us could give the impression that we wanted to analyze and problematize something that does not exist. However, this impression is countered by the studies on other armed forces as well as by the academically established knowledge about the specific challenges faced by persons who identify as both female and migrant. This raises the question of whether specific circumstances make it difficult to deal openly with the issue in Germany. Talking about migration: Missing words The study is interested in the experiences and perspectives of persons who (1) identified as females; (2) identified as women of color, or were the child of a migrant family, or had acquired Germany citizenship after birth; and (3) have received a military training in the Bundeswehr. Obviously, the second part of the definition refers to ethnicity and citizenship, but why was it necessary name three subcategories? Academic writing requires clear terminology. Striving for a language that fits with a continually evolving social environment is a constant process and will always be imperfect. With this in mind, the use of categorical terms may only appear to offer clarity. In reality, they might not exactly fit a social context or they might create an illusion of differences that do not really exist. Above all rests the German hesitation to accept migration as an element of the own past and presence.6 The lack of appropriate and established terms (such as the “women veterans of color” mentioned before) is a direct result of this silenced past and present.

152  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict In Germany, “foreigner” and later “migrant” had meant, for some decades, “a person with roots in Turkey”, a (male) Turkophone Muslim. However, this stereotypical imagination was never true. There is a long list of countries of origin and specific reasons why people came to settle in Germany (Hanewinkel and Oltmer, 2018), not to mention the 14 million Germans, who left their homeland in Eastern Europe during and after the Second World War, and settled in West Germany to remain foreigners and unwelcomed refugees for decades. However, until the end of the 1990s, the German governments as well as the German population, including the established migrants, simply refused to see this reality. It was bluntly rejected to call Germany a country of migration. Migrants were identified as “foreigners”, an exception in an otherwise homogeneous country. Germany’s “race amnesia” (El-Tayeb, 2016) is stunning, given the long and plural migration history of Germany, including the history of Afro-Germans.7 Since 2000, a tough and tiring discourse has emerged. In this context, conservatives still see migration as something that must be controlled and restricted. The need for skilled workers for the labor force of an aging society rendered the picture more complex. The result of the political and legal decisions is currently an “immigration policy sending conflicting messages” (Hertner, 2022, p. 465). This is the societal and political background that undermined and frustrated the creation of an appropriate language when talking about anything related to migration or ethnic and religious plurality. The more recent use of the term “migrant” instead of “foreigner” seems an improvement but the question “who is a migrant” still begs a clear answer. Are those living in the former USSR Germans based on the ius sanguinis rule, whereas those who migrated to Germany 60 years ago are migrants? Will a shift take place in status with naturalization, or is it related to an ascribed cultural otherness? The term is not only fuzzy in daily use, but it is also not helpful for statistical purposes. It can be used arbitrarily for any political end (Wolter, 2018, p. 35). The term “person with migration background” entered the German language at the end of the second millennium (Will, 2019, p. 541). Since 2005, it has been used as an official category (Will, 2019, p. 544). Its definition by the Federal Statistical Office is as follows: “A person has a migration background if s/he or at least one of his/ her parents did not acquire the German citizenship at birth” (Will, 2019, p. 545). What seems to be a handy term that respects the diversity of migration histories, simultaneously turns these people into persons “not being part of the general population in Germany – even if they are Germans” (Will, 2019, p. 553). No wonder not everybody, who is, by definition, a member of this category identifies with the term. Indeed, in 2019, the Bundeswehr administration had calculated that 12% of the soldiers belong to this category, while only 8.9% of the soldiers had considered themselves having a migration background (Streitkräfteamt, 2022, p. 13).8 Unlike foreigner, migrant, or person with migration background, “people of color (PoC)” is a term of self-empowerment. It does not categorize persons on an alleged ethnic belonging but refers to the common experience of being racialized, discriminated and othered. It is important that it is a non-exclusivist category, affirmative toward diversity, not depending on a person’s phenotype. Being based

Women of color in armed forces of Germany  153 on the rejection of cultural essentialism and on self-reflexivity (Ha, n.d.), it is the subject’s decision how to acquire a PoC consciousness. Notwithstanding occasional discussions of the inclusion of European Union citizens in the Bundeswehr,9 holding German citizenship is the sine qua non condition of becoming a soldier in the Bundeswehr. The common quality of holding German citizenship, of being German, is expected to function as a glue as it was intended to do in the historical beginning of the national armed forces. However, in social reality there exist different categories of being German. From the perspective outside the armed forces, “serving Germany” does not seem to be sufficient evidence of being German. A dark(er)-skinned person in a Bundeswehr uniform still represents an irreconcilable contradiction in the eyes of the White-majority society (HammoutiReinke, 2019, pp. 83–85). But even inside the forces, naturalization can turn into a second-class citizenship, for example, in particularly stressful military situations. Lieutenant Soraya Alekozei, born in Afghanistan, was deployed to Afghanistan as an interpreter and radio reporter. She remembers how she suffered from the mistrust: When German soldiers fell and many of my comrades suddenly perceived me as an Afghan for the first time. When they saw me with different eyes and in their grief were unable to distinguish whether I was a friend or an enemy. (Alekozei, 2014, p. 167) In the experience of Mirushe, one of our interviewees, the Bundeswehr is indeed a mirror of the German society, albeit in a negative sense: I believe that the Bundeswehr is an even more extreme mirror than society already is. I don’t believe that we have a successful integration here [in Germany], that sounds absolutely pessimistic, and all the less in the Bundeswehr. (Mirushe, interview) With all these arguments in mind, the question remains whether it is wiser to endeavor to shape social reality by a normative, homogenizing use of language, arguing that there are only and exactly two categories: Germans and foreigners; or whether the silencing of ruptures or plural perspectives constitutes verbal violence and suppression. Authors such as Fatima El-Tayeb (2016, p. 20) emphatically reject the color-blind approach as reproducing the existing power structure. It is true that in the official rhetoric, the Bundeswehr is no longer color-blind but “colorful” (bunt), meaning diverse. But what does “diversity” refer to? Diversity management in the Bundeswehr: Diversity without intersectionality? In 2022, the Bureau for the Armed Forces10 published in condensed form the results of a study titled “Diversity and inclusion in the Bundeswehr” (Bienert, Dehmel and Koch, 2022). The aim of the study was to produce for the first time relevant data on diversity in all units of the army, including the administration, and to single

154  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict out areas where discrimination takes place and improvement is needed. Diversity is split into “six core dimensions: Gender, age, handicap, ethnic and cultural belonging, religious or spiritual belonging, gender identity and sexual orientation” (Bienert, Dehmel and Koch, 2022, p. 9). The report comes to the conclusion that both disabled persons and women experience more discrimination than others, while having a “migration background” has no statistical impact. This study is one example of the increasing number of studies and publications carried out by the institutions of the Bundeswehr on the matters of integration (of persons with migration background and women), inclusion, equality, diversity, discrimination and racism in the forces. New laws, regulations and offices are considered the basis of this new understanding of the Federal Armed Forces, which are no longer White and male but diverse.11 Notwithstanding that the understanding of gender equality etc. and the concepts applied have changed and developed during the last 20 years (Dosdall, 2021, p. 467), the forces’ dominant approach to diversity falls short of the current academic as well as activist discourse. To begin, there is a hesitation to use the term “diversity” (Diversität) in popular publications for fear that it could be seen too “academic” or “activist” to reach the “general public”. Instead, the publications use the words “plurality” (Vielfalt) and “colorful” (bunt) in the sense of diverse/diversity. It is true that “colorful” instead of “diverse” is widely used in German discourses. It appears to be applicable in a variety of cases, e.g., referring to the colors of the rainbow and queerness, or stressing the difference between a diverse, open society and a “brown”, Fascist one. But unlike diverse/diversity, plurality and colorful(ness) signify everything and nothing; something positive, not disturbing, not challenging, not demanding. In the study by Bienert, Dehmel and Koch quoted earlier, the focus is on the Bundeswehr’s “inclusion” of the “plurality groups” (Vielfaltsgruppen) as an employer. The goal is the elimination of any circumstances inside the forces that may lead to experiencing discrimination because of the employee’s belonging to one of these groups. Obviously, the Bundeswehr applies a managerial approach to equality and diversity (Dosdall, 2021; Schmidt and Trautwein, 2021). Dosdall argues: The Bundeswehr managerializes equality law by adapting institutionalized practices to harness equality law for the purpose of winning future employees … increasingly similar to the way companies make use of equality law for their purposes. (2021, p. 455) He concludes that implementing equality law merely to increase attractiveness as an employer, leads to, among other things, neglecting other areas relevant to equality. It can even lead to a stabilization of discriminatory practices if, for example, sexual harassment is understood as a management problem and not as systematic discrimination (Dosdall, 2021, p. 465). Fiona Schmidt adds that in the public presentation of both the German police and the Bundeswehr, gender diversity appears – exclusively – as a binary system

Women of color in armed forces of Germany  155 (2021, p. 49). In this regard, one can also ask why the “core dimensions” of diversity in the said Bundeswehr study include two separate categories, that of “gender” and that of “gender identity and sexual orientation”. The Bundeswehr and its research institutions appear to be still looking for the appropriate positioning, perhaps also in view of the vociferous anti-gender and anti-diversity discourse that has also taken root in Germany. What renders the Bundeswehr’s approach to diversity highly questionable is the complete absence of intersectionality. The core dimensions are presented as isolated items, unrelated to and not affecting each other. While the concept of diversity helps to see differences and to address their potential in all societal, economic and cultural areas, the concept of intersectionality, as it was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw 1989, allows us to understand the ways oppressive institutions and power relations operate dependently of each other and influence a person’s lived experience. Crenshaw’s critique of the “single-axis framework” in White feminism that does not allow for seeing and addressing marginalized women can be applied to other societal and institutional areas (Emmerich and Hormel, 2013, p. 213), including major state institutions such as the armed forces. The shortcomings of a diversity approach without intersectionality have been discussed extensively in the literature. The significance of masculinity and national identity for a state’s armed forces makes it clear that migrant women and/or women of color occupy a particularly marginalized position in this institution. The categories of “gender” and “natioethno-cultural affiliation”, as well as their relation, are embedded in an institutional context that produces exclusions in a specific way. These persons addressed here not only navigate in social space as “woman” or “ethnic other”, but also in their additional identity as soldier. Situations occur to a female PoC soldier that other soldiers will never experience, exactly because they are tailored to offend or accuse a person who is nonWhite, non-Christian and non-male. A Facebook post depicting a bra made of bacon that was sent to Hammouti-Reinke’s account (Hammouti-Reinke, 2019, p. 89) has its offensive effect only through the intersection of religious and gender discrimination. The so-called Cologne New Year’s Eve of 2015–2016 is another instance where sexism, racism, Islamophobia and White feminism overlapped and blended. During the night, a significantly high number of women who were celebrating in the famous area between the Dom, the railway station and the Rhine side, were sexually assaulted by men. The men were identified by the media as North Africans. In the following days, the assaults became interpreted as Muslim men assaulting German women, and “a cipher for a supposed threat to the nation. It contains sexist as well as racist constructions of enemies and differences” (Schmidt and Trautwein, 2021, p. 56, authors’ translation). People identified as Muslim migrants were expected by the White majority of Germany to distance themselves from the “mentality” of the assaulters explicitly and to apologize for what their “co-religionists” and “country fellows” (Landsleute)12 had done. They themselves became victims of verbal and physical assault. PoCs in exposed positions like Hammouti-Reinke were

156  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict particularly targeted by such accusations and attacks. Therefore, she published a personal statement where she rejected the stereotypical accusations and meaningless categorizations: “My parents came to Germany from Morocco 52 years ago. The consequence was not rape and crime, but six new German children. My siblings work as dance teachers … and I am a German soldier” (Hammouti-Reinke, 2019, p. 90). While many supportive replies were posted, there was no shortage of racist comments, stating that serving the Bundeswehr did not render her German and that her blood would forever be Moroccan (Hammouti-Reinke, 2019, p. 91). The bra-of-pork post was among these reactions. In their analysis of diversity management in both the Federal Police and the Bundeswehr, Schmidt and Trautwein show how “the night” continues to be instrumentalized as an argument in a specific understanding of national security. In an image video, one can see police officers walking across the Dom area, while the voice off-screen comments: “We work for Germany. And for the people in Germany … We are security. We are the Federal Police”. The authors conclude: “To maintain the narrative of security, there needs to be a threat from a counterpart who cannot be part of the ‘we’ which in turn is embodied by the federal police” (Schmidt and Trautwein, 2021, p. 56). This video clipping illustrates not only the intrinsic exclusivist character of national security institutions, but also the powerful persistence of narratives that draw their justification from their referencing to multiple categories of diversity at once, in this case gender, nation(ality) and religious belonging. This leads to greater vulnerability among members of the security forces who are ascribed several categories of difference at once or who self-identify as such. Last but not least, a successful diversity management is based on an effective institutional structure. The distribution of responsibility among various departments of different organizational units makes the implementation of changed policies a tedious affair (Wullers, 2016). Other countries address diversity in the forces far more explicitly. In the UK, Muslim soldiers are organized around the Armed Forces Muslim Organization (https://afma​.org​.uk/). The US at least has arrived at calling out and pointing at racial issues, making them visible by giving them a name – a situation from which Germany is still far away (El-Tayeb, 2016, p. 6). The American Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI) which “envisions a Department of Defense that reflects the face of the Nation” is directly aligned under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense of the US (https://diversity​.defense​.gov/). A proper institutional structure, supported by a continuously developing critical diversity management, would help to prevent new inequalities and minority hierarchies.13 Language matters: The language mediators For business enterprises, diversity management has become a versatile tool with the clear goal of increasing profits. The Bundeswehr can profit from the diversity of its employees in at least two directions. One is to come closer to the requested match between the diversity of the general society and that of the troops to increase

Women of color in armed forces of Germany  157 the social acceptance of the Bundeswehr (Bienert, Dehmel and Koch, 2022, p. 5). Another is the additional language skills or cultural knowledge that can strengthen both communication and military success in foreign deployments or participation in international forces (Wullers, 2016). The PoC soldiers themselves assess their – ascribed or real – additional competencies differently. Interviewee Mirushe was encouraged to apply to the armed forces during a graduate convention because of her “sought-after” language skills. She considered this focus on her so-called native language skills “disappointing”, as she felt primarily recruited for inherited, even innate skills, and not on the basis of her completed studies and the “acquired” skills that came with it. Unlike Mirushe, Hammouti-Reinke considers her additional competencies as “fruits of my childhood and youth” and “my trump card, my gift for the armed forces” (HammoutiReinke, 2019, p. 26). From her experience, the possible impact of these skills is not yet sufficiently recognized nor consistently applied in the work of the Bundeswehr. Despite her positive attitude toward the recognition of additional skills, she also realized a certain narrowing down of her capabilities to the (innate) language skills during her employment interview: “He asked a few more questions here and there, but he was really only interested in one thing: my language skills” (HammoutiReinke, 2019, p. 31). Süzen has experienced that she is successful in her work precisely because she does not conform to the social expectations, either of conservative Muslim migrants, or of men, or of the White-majority society. As a woman and a soldier, a Muslim without a headscarf, a person with a darker skin color,14 and a German with knowledge of Turkish and Kurdish, and with no fear of contact with supposedly such different groups as the Bundeswehr or a Turkish mosque congregation, she is faced with an initial astonishment that then turns into curiosity and acceptance: If the Bundeswehr makes a phone call to a [Turkish] mosque community … in Turkish, the imam at the other end is flabbergasted. Or if the Yazidi community gets a phone call in Kurdish, then the pire at the other side is absolutely amazed. That is totally beautiful and sometimes funny. On the one hand, it helped that I am multilingual and on the other hand, it was also the case that in one of my first performances, that was some kind of event of the different mosque congregations in Koblenz, many people came to me and said, “We are so proud of you”. (Süzen, interview) Thus, the “benefit approach” of migration-related multilingualism on the one hand leads to a strategic recognition of linguistic competencies, but on the other hand, it also functions as an ethnocultural identity marker and differentiation criterion that is associated with experiences of exclusion. The othering associated with the mastery of an “unusual” language is exacerbated when the same language is understood as a culturally pejorative marker in everyday civilian life. Mirushe has learned not to talk too loud in her parents’ language when she is out shopping. Dirim and Mecheril (2016, p. 448) see language as a “central element in producing

158  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict and securing the national ‘we’” and thus also of a “non-we”. Language mediators like Mirushe can find themselves in a double-bind situation, being simultaneously an insider and outsider, German and migrant, included in military activities but as a noncombatant. She describes this paradoxical situation pointedly with the oxymoron of “love-hate”: So, the thing is, this also has to be said, as a language mediator you have such a special position. First of all, it’s a love-hate relationship with you, they depend on you, because they could never do their reconnaissance without you, but actually they don’t want you to be there because you’re from the outside and they’re from one location, they’ve all known each other for ages, and you’re kind of peeking into their little microcosm and maybe you’re finding out things that you shouldn’t see, that they wouldn’t like to show in front of others. (Mirushe, interview) In international operations as well as in the Bundeswehr, the appreciation of soft skills has significantly increased, especially in militarily tense situations (Tomforde, 2012a, p. 248). The literature shows that the appreciation and professional status of good communication skills, sensitivity, professional performance in an international environment and language competencies, however, also depend on gender and ethnocultural belonging of the person in charge. In the case of international peace missions, the mediator is a major position that should be held by a – stereotypically defined – masculine man who is capable of talking to his (male) counterpart in a masculine way and consuming enough alcohol. Related to the hierarchy of racism, the competence to occupy this position ascribed to a woman is related to her ethnocultural belonging, coming from a European country being a clear advantage (Bjertén-Günther, 2020, pp. 46–47). In the Bundeswehr, soft skills are often regarded to be feminine and less prestigious competencies (Tomforde, 2008, p. 74; Dittmer, 2009, p. 214). In this respect, the employment of migrant women as interpreter and cultural mediator underlines once again the paradoxical situation that they are held in esteem because of their specific competencies, while at the same time confronted with unarticulated obstacles of intersectionality in their career, i.e., holding a second-class citizenship, being a specialist of non-prestigious non-(Western)-European languages and cultures, and being a woman. The significance of religious belonging Religion matters in the Bundeswehr in various contexts. It is recognized as one of the core dimensions of diversity; every soldier is entitled to firm protection from discrimination based on religious belonging or conviction (Bienert, Dehmel and Koch, 2022, p. 9). As a result of the specific understanding of secularity in German law, the Bundeswehr is neither a space free of religious symbols or practice, nor is

Women of color in armed forces of Germany  159 it a defender of Christian beliefs. About 56.1% of the soldiers adhere to a Christian church; 38.5% to no religious congregation; and 5.4% identify as a believer of other creeds such as Islam, Judaism and so forth. The approximately 3000 Muslims are the biggest community among those. Military chaplains and rabbis offer their services, while the question of religious support for Muslims remains. Beyond this internal configuration, religion has become a major issue with regard to international security policies and military deployment since the 9/11 attacks. In Germany, Islam has come to be the most important religious other. Parallel to this development, Muslim culture, Islamist militancy and “the Muslim” are among the main topics of military training and strategy. Muslim PoC soldiers such as our interviewees have to deal with all these layers of religion. Being Muslim has never constituted a legal hindrance to employment in the Bundeswehr. However, the army has tacitly expected that the prospective soldier would adapt to the existing circumstances and assimilate. Religiously permissible food, or an adaptation of the conditions of deployment with regard to prayer times or the annual fasting period – insofar as this is at all possible from a military point of view – was not even envisaged for a long time. The matter of appropriate food is not only of significance for Muslims, but also for members of other religions and vegetarians. Food is more than physical nutrition. It is a means of inclusion and exclusion in communities and classes. While sharing the same food practices endorses a common identity, adhering to rules other than the main group’s is perceived by the majority as provocation and is sanctioned accordingly. The matter of pork, which has long been a popular staple of the menu in the Bundeswehr, has constituted a specific challenge to our interviewees. It was not only the lack of any real choice – either eating pork or getting by with salad15 – but also the discriminatory conduct of the institution and the fellow soldiers. Hülya Süzen remembers the uneasiness she felt when she entered the troop kitchen as a very young woman: At that time there was only one dish. That is, when I went into the troop kitchen … a huge hall where two hundred people eat, ‘Muslim food’ was shouted [at me] and then I got my side dish. Everyone stopped eating and stared at me. I was nineteen years old [.] And it made me very uncomfortable; when they looked at me and thought “Ah well, and it’s a woman!” (Süzen, interview) Hammouti-Reinke comments ironically on the serving of pork meat, repeating twice the adjective “large” in relation to the otherizing label on the food container: When we were in training, the food was brought out in big thermos food containers. And on a thermos was then always a large – with a yellow sticker on it – there was then a large ‘Muslim’ on it. […] That’s just not so nice. (Hammouti-Reinke, 2020)

160  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict In Süzen’s eyes (2021), the end of this stigmatizing practice is an improvement: “The Bundeswehr is so diverse today. We have three different dishes to choose from. No one has to notice anymore that you don’t eat pork”. While the options in the troop kitchen have increased, the catering outside the barracks, during training, is still not adjusted to the new diversity. The consumption of alcohol appears in the interviews in two contexts: First, as a tool of religious othering and, second, as ritualized element with masculine connotations aiming to foster a sense of mutual belonging. The Muslimness of Mirushe, who considers herself “not so religious”, was put to the test by a Christian male administrator during their first encounter: The first thing he did to me, I think because he wanted to see … no, that’s absolutely ridiculous, he gave me a shot glass, he got a cognac from his shelf, … filled up a shot glass for me, which the other guys also did, at twelve in the morning … and greeted me and said somehow “Welcome Mirushe” and yes … he probably also thought that I wouldn’t drink it, no. Of course, I have skolled it (laughing). Yes, but do you know what I mean? … So, then something like that also happened with others. (Mirushe, interview) Although Mirushe consumes alcohol in her private life and passed the test on that day, she felt “not German enough” by the way this was requested of her by her comrades, migrants and non-migrants alike. She avoided the social gatherings in the evenings where the consumption of alcohol played a major rule and “the girls” socialized with the male instructors. Muslim female soldiers are also confronted with the peculiar image of Muslim women as passive and silent victims of their religion (Castro, Varela and Dhawan, 2016). This image can have an impact in two ways: on the Muslim female soldiers themselves, and on one’s perception regarding the upcoming mission in an Islamic country and the women one will encounter there. Süzen’s superior was anxious that as a Muslim woman Süzen would not be respected in the mosque congregation and would therefore not be able to fulfill her task. It was super interesting, because all of us, really all of the supervisors, had a real stomachache and said: “Will this be received positively? Then, you don’t wear a headscarf either, no”? For the traditional … maybe that would be an issue or something, and … I don’t want to, I’m not that religious. But it was really interesting that, on the contrary, they perceived it very positively, because they said that even in a weaker position, let’s say, as a woman, to make yourself so strong, that they found fascinating. (Süzen, interview) When deployed in Muslim countries, Muslim female soldiers are expected to be particularly culturally sensitive on the one hand, while on the other hand they themselves seem to be in need of protection from the civilian population by their

Women of color in armed forces of Germany  161 male fellow soldiers (Dittmer, 2009, p. 231). Rules of conduct that are intended to provide protection and security would be taught to the female soldiers during operational training as part of “intercultural awareness (Rücksichtnahme)”, as Dittmer illustrates with the following example: You don’t look a man directly in the eye … I know that in some situations I need a male companion, because as a woman I am not readily accepted as a contact person … But then I know that’s how negotiations work, and I’m prepared (Berghahn, officer, advisor for women’s issues at the Federal Ministry of Defense). (Dittmer, 2009, p. 231, authors’ translation) Gender sensitivity in a military mission is highly required. Overemphasizing women’s oppression in Muslim countries, however, especially combined with a neglect of women’s vulnerability in Europe, constitutes at the same time a central legitimation narrative for the operations. The narrative presumes its own civilizational level and the necessity to civilize the other (Dittmer, 2009, p. 221). Religion matters in the Bundeswehr neither as spiritual empowerment nor as an element of individual identity. Religion is considered a core dimension of diversity, an item that can be managed in order to minimize frictions and enhance a mission’s success. On the other hand, the particularly challenging situation of Muslim migrant female soldiers in the Bundeswehr is explicitly addressed by both the interviewees and Hammouti-Reinke. What Tomforde formulates for Muslim soldiers in general, appears to be particularly valid for Muslim female soldiers: (1) Muslim soldiers tend to behave in a conformist manner, foregoing religious requirements. So far, no official networking has been attempted. (2) The cultural and religious knowledge of Muslim soldiers has not yet been systematically made available for foreign missions. If superiors become aware of these competencies, however, there is a great deal of interest in them for their usefulness in foreign deployments. (3) When soldiers are unwilling to ignore derogatory remarks or place a higher priority on their religious duties, conflicts arise: “In this case the Bundeswehr as an organization is still called upon to facilitate the integration of people of other faiths into daily service routine and to consciously promote interreligious dialogue” (Tomforde, 2012b, p. 106). Conclusion The aim of this chapter was to shed light on the experiences of women of color or women with a so-called migration background serving in the German Federal Forces, the Bundeswehr. This topic has not yet received any critical attention. The present study is based on the analysis of generally accessible audio and video material as well as interviews conducted by the authors. For the evaluation of these materials, it was necessary to discuss various contextual factors. Here, the historical conceptualization of German citizenship as well as the changing recruitment policies of the Bundeswehr proved to shape women’s experiences in both civilian and military contexts.

162  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict No precise figures exist on the percentage of women of color in the German armed forces. Around 13% of all soldiers are women, and between 9% and 12% of all soldiers have a statistically recorded migrant background. This means that the number of female-identified soldiers is significantly below the demographic average, but the number of people with a migration background is approaching the national average. Around 3000 Muslims serve in the Bundeswehr. The number of people of color, who do not necessarily have a migration background, cannot be determined. The unclear figures and the presumably not very high absolute numbers of migrant female soldiers or women of color raise the question of the relevance of dealing with the topic at all. This is countered by various arguments: (1) A relatively small number of affected persons does affect neither the scientific nor the social relevance of a topic. (2) An increase in the group of persons defined here should be expected in the next few years. If this is not the case, it would lead to new research questions. (3) International research on the situation in other armed forces shows the relevance of the topic both for the persons concerned and for the armed forces themselves. (4) Diversity and equality have become prominent issues in the external presentation of the Bundeswehr. Particularly in view of this presentation, which is massively supported by advertising and publications, it is the task of science to take a critical look at the actual situation. The study revealed that there is a strong reluctance to discuss this issue at various levels. Research as well as Bundeswehr institutions, associations and the female soldiers themselves are clearly reluctant to discuss let alone problematize the topic. While the research community has yet not addressed the issue, the Bundeswehr side tends to argue that loyalty and camaraderie as well as modern diversity management will solve any problems that may arise. The female soldiers interviewed have different views on the successful integration of ethnic, religious or gender minorities. It is striking that the Bundeswehr invests a lot of time in its diversity management, but behaves more like a business enterprise that has discovered diversity management as a new tool for improving performance. The Bundeswehr, which itself claims to function as a mirror of society and a place of integration, should question this approach. The intersectional perspective is missing here, as is an awareness of the empowerment of the individual through actual and not just rhetorical support for religious or ethnic difference. An unexpected result of the study was that language is a key term in several regards. On the one hand, we experienced our own lack of appropriate language and terminology, and on the other hand, for the women quoted in this chapter, language skills determined their very specific position in the Bundeswehr. The study was also able to show that PoC soldiers face mutually exclusive expectations. The ascribed special competencies of a linguistic and cultural nature are desired as long as they serve the military project. At the same time, these competencies lead to exclusion, othering and racialization of the same individuals. As shown in other studies, women in the armed forces still face certain forms of discrimination or are always required to perform particularly well in terms of

Women of color in armed forces of Germany  163 tokenism. In the case of women of color, who are particularly often Muslim due to German history, experiences of discrimination of a religious, ethnic and gender nature overlap and multiply. Not only do they face the challenge of navigating the non-Muslim food served in the army as well as alcohol-based rites, they are also observed and tested to see whether they conform to the image of the subjugated Muslim woman, how clearly they distinguish themselves from it, and whether they show “innate” cultural sensitivity as a Muslim woman and the rational behavior of a German soldier that ensures security and respect. It is often argued that, since it is a “mirror of society”, sexism or racism are expected to be present in the Bundeswehr, albeit less so than in the civilian world, and to be better managed. However, the Bundeswehr is also an institution with structures and duties that are not part of the civilian world. After a look at the situation in other countries’ armies, a brave discussion of the aforementioned issues would strengthen not weaken the Bundeswehr. Notes 1 This autobiographic work can be considered one of several autobiographic/autofictional works by (former) female Bundeswehr soldiers who – with the exception of Lira Bajmaraj – joined the Afghanistan mission (Bajmaraj, 2009; Groos, 2009; Alekozej, 2014). 2 These are the numbers of the armed forces of Western Germany. After the German unification in 1989, the forces of Eastern Germany were dissolved and the personnel and material included in the Bundeswehr. This also added to the floated number of soldiers in the 1990s. For the situation of female soldiers in Eastern Germany, see Markus (2020). 3 Henrik Dosdall doubts this version and argues that it was about an early reaction to a pending judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court. The court was expected to revise the conscription law drastically (Dosdall, 2021, p. 462). 4 In the legal sense, mandatory service was not ended but “paused”, since everybody can be drafted in case of general mobilization. 5 As a first example of a paper tackling gender dynamics in this war, see Wojnicka, Mellström and Boise (2022). 6 This hesitation is without a question related to the idea of German fascism of a homogeneous German race and nation. The still only insufficiently solved conflict between the German state and expatriated Nazi victims about regaining their German citizenship (Beucker, Zylbersztajn and Rath [2019]) is a telling proof of this uncanny layer of Germany’s migration discourse. 7 The Chief Music Master Gustav Sabac el Cher, born 1868 in Berlin, was the only Black Prussian soldier of his time. His father had been abducted from Abessinia. His son was missing in action in 1943 as a soldier of the Nazi Reichswehr (Pieken and Kruse, 2008). 8 About 14.1% of Germany’s population is statistically categorized as German with migration background. https://www​.bpb​.de​/kurz​-knapp​/zahlen​-und​-fakten​/soziale​-situation​-in​-deutschland​/61646​/bevoelkerung​-mit​-mig​rati​onsh​inte​rgrund/. 9 See, e.g., the discussion in the German federal parliament in 2016 Zur Möglichkeit eines Militärdienstes von Ausländern und Ausländerinnen in den Streitkräften ausgewählter Staaten: Rechtliche Grundlagen, Einstellungsvoraussetzungen, Anzahl [On the possibility of military service of foreigners in the armed forces of selected countries: Legal basis, recruitment requirements, numbers], in WD 2 – 3000 – 115/16. Deutscher Bundestag, 2016. 10 “Streitkräfteamt”, an office of the federal armed forces.

164  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict 11 Dosdall (2021) and Fedtke, Hellmann and Hörmann (2013) provide lists with relevant publications throughout the last 20 years. The Annual Report 2021 by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces (Wehrbeauftragte Eva Högl) is the most recent and comprehensive official report on the state of the Bundeswehr in all aspects (https:// www​.bundestag​.de​/parlament​/wehrbeauftragter​/jahresberichte), while journals such as Y – Das Magazin der Bundeswehr or Arbeitgeber Bundeswehr: Im Visier approach with a lively design and shorter articles for a general readership inside the forces. 12 The term “country fellow” is amply and often indiscriminately used in German. It does not explicitly state a common nationality or ethnicity of the addressed persons, but without a doubt it is an instrument of othering and de-Germanization. 13 “Single-level conceptualizations of diversity management do not adequately account for power disparities demarcating the interplay between individual choices and structural conditions, or between agentic and structural equality and diversity concerns” (Gotsis and Kortezi, 2015, p. 5). 14 Without a doubt, whether a person is “Black” or “White” is in the eye of the beholder and depends on dominant visual habits. In Germany, the attribution of dark skin color already starts with people of “southern type”. 15 One should be aware that refraining from eating pork is, from the perspective of Jewish and Muslim food prescriptions, only a minimum adjustment. The application of all rules of kosher or halal food would mean something very different.

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166  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict in antiracist self-naming and identity politics], Heinrich Böll Stiftung. Available at: https://heimatkunde​.boell​.de​/2009​/11​/01​/people​-color​-als​-diversity​-ansatz​-der​ -antirassistischen​-selbstbenennungs​-und (Accessed: 16 April 2022). Hammouti-Reinke, Nariman (2020) ‘Im Dienst für Frieden, Vaterland und Integration’ [In the service of peace, fatherland and integration], Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 16 July. Available at: https://www​.deu​tsch​land​funk​kultur​.de​/nariman​-hammouti​-reinke​-im​ -dienst​-fuer​-frieden​-vaterland​-100​.html (Accessed: 3 August 2022). Hammouti-Reinke, Narima and Mendlewitsch, Doris (2019) Ich diene Deutschland: Ein Plädoyer für die Bundeswehr - Und warum sie sich ändern muss [I serve Germany: A plea for the Bundeswehr – And why it needs to change]. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Polaris. Hanewinkel, Vera and Oltmer, Jochen (2018) ‘Historical and current development of migration to and from Germany’, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Available at: https://www​.bpb​.de​/themen​/migration​-integration​/laenderprofile​/english​-version​ -country​-profiles​/262758​/historical​-and​-current​-development​-of​-migration​-to​-and​-from​ -germany/​#node​-content​-title-0 (Accessed: 15 March 2022). Hendricks, Judith (2020) ‘Weibliche Führungskräfte in der Bundeswehr: Zur Geschlechterdifferenzierung weiblicher Offiziere’ [Female leaders in the German armed forces: On the gender differentiation of female officers], Arbeits- und Industriesoziologische Studien 13(2), pp. 45–58. Hertner, Isabelle (2022) ‘Germany as “a country of integration”’? The CDU/CSU’s policies and discourses on immigration during Angela Merkel’s chancellorship’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(2), pp. 461–481. Kraus, Rafaela, Kreitenweis, Tanja and Petzold, Vanessa (2020) ‘Unterstützung von Frauenkarrieren bei der Bundeswehr durch Netzwerke, Mentoren und Karrierevorbilder’ [Support for women’s careers in the Bundeswehr through networks, mentors and career role models], in Kümmel, Gerhard (ed.) Was es (heute) heißt, Soldat zu sein. BadenBaden: Nomos, pp. 105–128. Krebs, Ronald R. (2006) Fighting for rights: Military service and the politics of citizenship. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kümmel, Gerhard (2016) ‘Halb zog man sie, halb sank sie hin … Die Bundeswehr und ihre Öffnung für Frauen’ [Halfway it was pulled, half it sank … The Bundeswehr and its opening for women], in Dörfler-Dierken, Angelika and Kümmel, Gerhard (eds.) Am Puls der Bundeswehr: Militärsoziologie in Deutschland zwischen Wissenschaft, Politik, Bundeswehr und Gesellschaft. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, pp. 277–302. Kümmel, Gerhard (ed.) (2012) Die Truppe wird bunter: Streitkräfte und Minderheiten [The force is becoming more colorful: Armed forces and minorities]. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Leonhard, Nina and Werkner, Ines-Jaqueline (2005) ‘Einleitung: Militär als Gegenstand der Forschung’ [Introduction: Military as an object of research], in Leonhard, Nina and Werkner, Ines-Jaqueline (eds.) Militärsoziologie: Eine Einführung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, pp. 14–21. Lomsky-Feder, Edna and Sasson-Levy, Orna (2017) Women soldiers and citizenship in Israel: Gendered encounters with the state. New York: Routledge. Markus, Uwe (2020) Frauen in der NVA [Women in the NVA]. Berlin: Phalanx. Naujoks, Daniel (2009) ‘Dual citizenship: The discourse on ethnic and political boundarymaking in Germany’, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI). Hamburg (Focus Migration Policy Brief, 14). Available at: https://www​.bpb​.de​/system​/files​/pdf​/ EKQGBO​.pdf (Accessed: 24 August 2022).

Women of color in armed forces of Germany  167 Pieken, Gorch and Kruse, Cornelia (2008) Preußisches Liebesglück: Eine deutsche Familie aus Afrika [Prussian Love: A German family from Africa]. Berlin: List. Schmidt, Fiona and Trautwein, Ray (2021) ‘“Gleich. Ähnlich. Anders”? Zur Rolle von “Vielfalt” in der Eigenwerbung von Bundeswehr und Bundespolizei’ [“Same. Similar. Different”? On the role of “diversity” in the self-advertising of the German Armed Forces and the German Federal Police], in Kleinert, Ann-Christin et al. (eds.) Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur Geschlechterforschung. Repräsentationen, Positionen, Perspektiven. Opladen, Berlin, Toronto: Barbara Budrich, pp. 47–60. Seifert, Ruth (2001) ‘“Militär und Geschlecht” in den deutschen Sozialwissenschaften: Eine Skizzierung der aktuellen Forschungssituation’ [“Military and gender” in the German social sciences: A sketch of the current research situation], L’Homme. Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 1(12), pp. 134–143. Streitkräfteamt (ed.) (2022) Vielfalt und Inklusion in der Bundeswehr [Diversity and inclusion in the armed forces]. Bonn: Zentraldruckerei BAIUDBw. Available at: https:// www​.bmvg​.de​/resource​/blob​/5436732​/977​e514​bf76​3230​e395​a8f9​0cd4e8dd2​/bunt​-in​ -der​-bundeswehr​-data​.pdf (Accessed : 1 July 2022). Süzen, Hülya (2021) ‘naber’ [Video], YouTube, 1 July. Available at: https://www​.youtube​ .com​/watch​?v​=K​_sVahpdfck (Accessed: 24 July 2022). Tennessee Department of Revenue (n.d.) Specialty Plates Gallery, Women Veterans of Color. Available at: https://www​.tn​.gov​/revenue​/title​-and​-registration​/license​-plates​/ available​-license​-plates​/military​-and​-memorial​/women​-veterans​-color​.html. (Accessed: 1 August 2022). Tomforde, Maren (2012a) ‘Mein neuer Stamm? Ein ethnologischer Blick auf die Bundeswehr’ [My new tribe? An ethnological look at the Bundeswehr], in Kümmel, Gerhard (ed.) Die Truppe wird bunter: Streitkräfte und Minderheiten. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 235–256. Tomforde, Maren (2012b) ‘Muslime in der Bundeswehr: Grade der Integration und Anpassungsstrategien’ [Muslims in the German Armed Forces: Degrees of integration and adaptation strategies], in Kümmel, Gerhard (ed.) Die Truppe wird bunter: Streitkräfte und Minderheiten. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 95–110. Tomforde, Maren (2008) ‘Zu viel verlangt? Interkulturelle Kompetenz während der Auslandseinsätze der Bundeswehr’ [Too much to ask? Intercultural competence during Bundeswehr missions abroad], in Kümmel, Gerhard (ed.) Streitkräfte im Einsatz. Zur Soziologie militärischer Interventionen. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 69–86. Ware, Vron (2012) Military migrants: Fighting for YOUR country. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Will, Anne-Kathrin (2019) ‘The German statistical category “migration background”: Historical roots, revisions and shortcomings’, Ethnicities 19(3), pp. 535–557. Wolter, Salih Alexander (2018) ‘Queer and (anti)capitalism. Refusing complicity: A theoretical introduction from an activist perspective’, in Sweetapple, Christopher (ed.) The queer intersectional in contemporary Germany: Essays on racism, capitalism and sexual politics. Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag, pp. 25–65. Wojnicka, Katarzyna, Mellström, Ulf and Boise, Sam de (2022) ‘On war, hegemony and (political) masculinities’, NORMA. International Journal for Masculinity Studies 17(2), pp. 83–87. Wullers, Dominik (2016) ‘Diversity Management: Wie die Bundeswehr bunter und fitter wird’, Bundesakademie für Sicherheitspolitik (Arbeitspapier Sicherheitspolitik, 13). Available at: https://www​.baks​.bund​.de​/de​/dominik​-wullers (Accessed: 1 August 2022).

Part 3

Case studies 2 The gender of sacrifice and agency

9

Gendered resistance Self-portrayals of female suicide bombers in Palestine Britt Ziolkowski

Introduction1 In the course of the Second Intifada, between 2000 and 2005, there was a widespread outbreak of violence in which Palestinian anger was directed toward the State of Israel, its military and its citizens. This period was marked by countless suicide bombings carried out under the aegis of different Palestinian militant groups. Most of the suicide bombers were men who detonated explosives in public places in Israel, usually on buses and in restaurants, but also at Israeli checkpoints. In this respect, the Second Intifada was an uprising of men.2 At times, however, the fundamentally male character of the Second Intifada was disrupted. There were 10 women among the more than 100 Palestinian suicide bombers (UTA, 2006). In addition, a number of women were apprehended and arrested before they could carry out their attacks. There is a long tradition of female involvement in wars and conflicts in Palestine (Peteet, 1991) and the Islamic world. Even in the early period of Islam, i.e., the seventh century, Islamic sources attest to the fact that women also participated in battles (Al Hibri, 1982, p. 210; Allen, 2005, p. 319). In the 1950s and 1960s, they fought alongside men in the Algerian War (Bouatta, 1994, p. 19). Moreover, in Lebanon, organizations such as the Syrian Socialist National Party and Hezbollah utilized women as suicide bombers as early as the 1980s. Besides, this kind of female participation is not limited to the Islamic world. Similar evidence can be found in societies around the globe, such as the Russian Narodnaya Volya in the 19th century, the Irish Public Army, or the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s (Bloom, 2007, p. 94). Despite all these historical and contemporary examples, the myth of the peaceful woman persists.3 This myth is supported by patriarchal structures and thought patterns, i.e., a relational construct in which the man has a privileged position and the woman must be subordinated. While the Palestinian society is still strongly patriarchal,4 developments have taken place in other countries that led to the disempowerment of this construct to some extent. Nonetheless, the latter cannot quite reconcile with the concomitance of femininity and outward violence either. A current example of this is the treatment of women who have joined the Islamic State (IS): Attributions such as “the IS bride” (BBC, 2022) or “the IS girl” (Zeit-Online, 2021) negate and even mock women’s responsibility in having consciously joined such organizations. In this respect, it is certainly no exaggeration to say that the DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-12

172  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Palestinian female suicide bombers of the Second Intifada challenged not only the norms of the Palestinian society but also the stereotypes that are prevalent globally. Much has been written about the female suicide bombers in Palestine over the past 20 years. Some works focus on the motives of the women (Victor, 2005; Berko and Erez, 2007), while others deal with the perception and the reception of the phenomenon of female suicide bombers in Palestine (Hasso, 2005; Franke, 2015). Other publications examine the visual language of women (Straub, 2021). This chapter, however, will investigate the voices of women and how much of a role gender plays in them. The analysis is based on three case studies selected to represent a range of women and forms of representation. The women’s last wills, as well as photos and videos, are taken into account in order to analyze their selfrepresentations. Thus, this article is about the voices of women that come through texts and pictures. Since the analysis brings together the concepts of gender and resistance in the Palestinian context, something should be said about the terminology. “Gender” is a term that describes people’s social roles as they are constructed and attributed with reference to the perceived biological sex of a person. As an analytical category, gender aims to reveal the power relations among the subjects of predefined gender identities. In societies that are structured around gender binaries, gender norms indicate what the roles of men and women are and should be in a specific social context. Furthermore, in this chapter, I also use terms such as femininity and masculinity, which are complex constructions of culturally shaped attributions. What gets to be defined as feminine or masculine differs based on social factors such as religion, class and national culture. In addition, “resistance” is the term used by both militant organizations and the bombers themselves to frame suicide bombings in the Palestinian territories. Moreover, both the term “resistance” and the description of the female suicide bombers as “Palestinian” reflect the self-perceptions of the women. All female suicide bombers came from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, which used to form a political unit at the beginning of the 2000s.5 The women considered themselves as Palestinians and defined their attacks as acts for the Palestinian cause. All the women felt closely connected to the Palestinian resistance, “the Palestinian national struggle” (Berko and Erez, 2007, p. 500). Case studies The examples analyzed in this chapter include the cases of three women bombers: Darin Abu Aisha, Mirfat Masud and Reem Riyashi. Their attacks were claimed by three different Palestinian organizations: the Fatah-linked Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades,6 the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)-linked Quds Brigades,7 and the Hamas-linked Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.8 While they agree on the need for armed resistance against the Israeli occupation, the organizations differ fundamentally from one another in their goals and ideologies. The Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, for example, are considered secular, while the other two organizations pursue an Islamic agenda. As the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades subordinate religious beliefs and

Gendered resistance  173 goals, it seems consistent that it was the first organization to open itself to the use of women as suicide bombers. The organization claimed the attacks of five women in total. After several years, the other two organizations followed. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility for the acts of two women and the Quds Brigades used three female suicide bombers. Unlike Fatah, Hamas and PIJ pursue a gender ideology based on rigid religious beliefs. Like all Islamists, Hamas and PIJ strive for an Islamic society that is built on the idea of a moral family. This point is important in understanding why these organizations have had a harder time recruiting female suicide bombers. From their perspective, the conditions surrounding a suicide attack hardly allow for a woman to become a suicide bomber. It is highly difficult to maintain the gender segregation, which these organizations strictly demand in all areas of life, during the preparation of the attack and the attack itself. The attitude of the Palestinian militant organizations toward the issue of female suicide bombers is not the subject of this chapter. Nevertheless, a brief digression on this topic is worthwhile. Indeed, tension characterizes the organizations’ stance on this matter, for the general attitude on the question of whether women should be allowed to carry out suicide attacks is not in sync with the reactions to female suicide bombers who have perished in the course of their actions. None of the organizations have really expressed unreserved views on female suicide bombers publicly. In many cases, there are divergent voices within one organization. In some other cases, the official position has changed within weeks (Ziolkowski, 2011, p. 96). When organizations publicly opposed women’s participation in suicide bombings, they did not just cite the aforementioned gender segregation argument (Victor, 2005, p. 45). Sometimes they claimed that there were enough male volunteers and that the use of women was unnecessary (Issacharoff, 2006, p. 48). They also posited that men work more efficiently than women. In this context, they additionally asserted that men are psychologically more stable than women (Victor, 2005, p. 222). However, this basic attitude is at odds with the tributes that female suicide bombers and respectively their families received in the form of certificates and martyrologies. The women are referred to as “martyrs” and “heroes” in these documents (Ziolkowski, 2011, p. 80). This area of tension is certainly of interest to my research question, especially in terms of the ways in which the female suicide bombers relate to it. Before I present the case studies, I will make a few preliminary remarks about the documents analyzed in this chapter. In principle, the data available to me is of highly variable quality and coverage. For example, in only one case did I have access to the entire video testament. Another one differs from the others because I was able to interview the family of the female suicide bomber, which gave me a great deal of contextual knowledge about this woman.9 As such, my insight into each case comes with different presuppositions. This in turn affects what I hear through their voices and how I interpret what I hear. In addition, we must bear in mind that the suicide bombers’ last wills are contract-like texts that follow a certain form. As a rule, these documents consist of three parts: an announcement of the attack, its legitimization and appeals to the readers. Additionally, a Qur’anic verse is often found at the very beginning of the

174  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict last will. Within this framework, however, the authors set individual priorities. This chapter thus tries to extract the individual women’s voices from the standard form. The visual documents were mostly made by the Palestinian militant organizations. It was common, for example, for suicide bombers to be filmed reading their last wills. The internet also offers photos that appear to be excerpts from the video wills. In addition to these videos and photos, there are photo montages. For example, one montage shows all ten Palestinian female suicide bombers (al-Istishhadiyat, 2013). Such montages are not included in this study, as the self-determination of the women is central to my inclusion and consideration of documents. Accordingly, I will only discuss photos and videos that the women were aware of having been made and the contexts of which can be reconstructed. Darin Abu Aisha

Darin Abu Aisha was born in 1981 in Nablus, West Bank. She lived there with her parents until she executed her suicide attack. Like her entire family, Abu Aisha sympathized with Hamas. While at university, she was involved with the student wing of the organization.10 She carried out her attack, in which she killed herself and injured several Israeli soldiers, on 26 February 2002. Previously she had asked the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, to support her in her plan. The organization refused, as they were not willing to turn a woman into a suicide bomber.11 Consequently, for pragmatic reasons, the young woman turned to the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which had previously claimed responsibility for an attack committed by a woman. Abu Aisha, who was single and had no children, was the second female suicide bomber of the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. Last will: “The role of Palestinian Muslim women is no less significant than the role of our mujahidun brothers”

Abu Aisha’s written testament (FDS, 2017) is full of gender-related references. At the beginning, directly following a Qur’anic verse, she states that “the role of the Palestinian Muslim women is no less significant than the role – in terms of rank and prestige – of our mujahidun12 brothers”.13 She later defines the role of women as “not limited to weeping for the husband, brother or father”. Rather, Abu Aisha emphasizes that women, in addition to giving birth to “an army of martyrs”, become “human bombs” with their bodies. In the past, this statement has been interpreted as a possible criticism of the Hamas leadership. It seems plausible that Abu Aisha is referring directly to Ahmad Yassin, who was the spiritual leader of the organization at the time. Shortly before Abu Aisha’s suicide bombing, Yassin had defined the role of the Palestinian woman in the resistance along the lines of tasks that he attributed to the “second line of defense in the resistance to the occupation: She shelters the fugitive, loses the son, husband, and brother, bears the consequences of this, and faces starvation and blockade” (quoted in Hasso, 2005, p. 31). Abu Aisha’s message can be read as a direct reaction to this: She counters Yassin’s attribution of passive roles to women with the possibility of active participation in the resistance.

Gendered resistance  175 In the testament, Abu Aisha explains why she believes that men and women should fight side by side in the Palestinian resistance. Overall, the document offers three arguments. First, she sees herself in the tradition of women who are and have been a part of the Palestinian resistance. Thus, she writes that “Muslim Palestinian women have occupied and continue to occupy a position of primacy in the path of jihad against injustice.” However, over whom they have this primacy is not explained: The other Muslim women of the Middle East? Or the Palestinian men? Nevertheless, it seems that Abu Aisha wants to emphasize the long-standing tradition of women’s participation in the resistance and in jihad.14 She presents this participation as a matter of course, as something that has been the case for a long time and as something that should continue. In her appeal, she addresses “all [her] sisters” and calls on them “to continue on this path [of jihad]”. It becomes clear that Abu Aisha even sees herself and her attack as following in the footsteps of a specific woman when she writes: “[I have] decided to become the second female martyr who completes the path and the way that the martyr Wafa Idris began”. Wafa Idris is considered to be the first Palestinian female suicide bomber. Even though it is sometimes suggested that Idris’s act in January 2002 was an accident,15 Abu Aisha ’s words indicate that she believed the act to be self-determined and that it motivated her own. Second, in addition to invoking a tradition of female resistance, Abu Aisha cites the influence that she, as a woman, can achieve with her deed. With great selfconfidence, she presents her attack as an act of revenge: For the severed limbs of our martyr brothers and sisters … for the inviolability of our religion and our mosques … for the inviolability of the Aqsa Mosque and the houses of God, which have been turned into bars practicing what God has forbidden, violating our religion and despising the message of our prophets. Abu Aisha therefore considered her suicide bombing to be an act of great political, religious and moral significance, as well as a potentially influential one. She believed that with her attack she would avenge the Palestinians killed by the Israeli military and the attacks on Islam (that is, what she perceived as such). Moreover, she sees the suicide bombing as a contribution to “destroying the Zionists and destroying the legend of the chosen people of God”.16 Third, Abu Aisha argues that her act will be rewarded by God. For example, she introduces her testament with Sura 3/195: And their Lord responded to them, “Never will I allow to be lost the work of [any] worker among you, whether male or female; you are of one another. So those who emigrated or were evicted from their homes or were harmed in My cause or fought or were killed – I will surely remove from them their misdeeds, and I will surely admit them to gardens beneath which rivers flow as reward from Allah, and Allah has with Him the best reward”.17

176  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict By referring to a Qur’anic verse that speaks explicitly about both men and women, Abu Aisha emphasizes that her deed receives recognition from God. The Qur’anic verse refers to Muhammad’s emigration to Medina, but she applies its message to the Palestinian resistance: she stresses that she, like male suicide bombers, will gain access to paradise because of her participation in the jihad. It can be assumed that Abu Aisha was aware of breaking gender norms, precisely because she presents her act as something self-evident. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain the apologetic statements. Moreover, they only seem logical if we consider the setting of the attack: Abu Aisha, who was closely associated with Hamas, found no support for her action from this organization. Instead, she had to turn to a rival, secular organization, which had already taken responsibility for the act of an earlier female suicide bomber. In this respect, her written last will is testimony to her attempt to convince Hamas (and all others who have excluded women from jihad) that women are able to and should carry out suicide bombings. Visual testimonies: Political mimicry as means to an end

Before Abu Aisha’s attack, the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades recorded a video of her reading her last will. Sequences of the video are shown in an Iranian documentary on Palestinian women martyrs (KFS, n.d.).18 Since the entire recording is not available, it is not possible to verify definitively whether the text Abu Aisha reads out in the video fully matches her written last will.19 She wears a dark coat and a white hijab20 in this video. In the background, symbols of the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Fatah dominate. A map of Israel and Palestine as a unified territory is printed on a large white cloth. In the middle of the cloth there is a masked head; only the eyes are visible. Alongside the head, which has no body, is a hand holding a gun. Below it there is a green grenade. The words “al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Fatah” appear underneath it. On one side of the white cloth hangs a kufiya.21 On the other side is the emblem of Fatah. Farther down “Revolution until victory” is written. Rifles and grenades are painted in the middle. Abu Aisha is briefly seen reading her last will. At another moment in the video, she can be seen holding a pistol in one hand and looking at the camera. With the other hand, she holds up a Qur’an. There is another visual document of Abu Aisha in addition to this video: an undated photo that was distributed by the family after the attack (FDS, 2017). One of Abu Aisha’s sisters reported that the photo was taken at an uncle’s house, but her family was not present at that occasion. Afterward, when they saw the photo, they asked Abu Aisha about it. She allegedly answered that she had prayed with her cousins at the uncle’s house and said that the photo was taken for “entertainment”.22 The temporal link between the day the photo was taken and the day Abu Aisha executed her attack remains unclear. Nevertheless, the photo is relevant to this chapter’s discussion. Abu Aisha can be seen standing in front of a white wall. Behind her hangs a green flag with the emblem of Hamas clearly visible. Abu Aisha herself is wearing a wide, gray coat and underneath it a white pullover. She is dressed in a white hijab and a green headband bearing the inscription “Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades”. A green scarf, which is decorated with the Palestinian flag on one side

Gendered resistance  177 and the emblem of Hamas on the other, hangs around her shoulder. She is slightly smiling. Her right hand is raised and clenched into a fist. Only the index finger extends upward, symbolizing the tauhid sign that expresses the oneness of Allah, the most fundamental tenet of Islam. In her left hand she holds a kind of a dagger that she points at her body. When we compare the two documents, what stands out the most is the difference in how Abu Aisha’s desire to participate in the resistance is framed. The self-portrayal in the video presents the agenda of Fatah and the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades as being a struggle for a nation, i.e., a struggle that is territorially limited. The symbolic power of nationalism, for example, is displayed in the map of the region, on which Israel and the Palestinian territories are merged into one large Palestine. The kufiya can also be considered a national symbol. However, with the intertwinement of religious and national symbols, the image staged by Abu Aisha in her uncle’s house is in line with Hamas’s agenda. The Palestinian national flag printed on Abu Aisha’s scarf is an example of a national symbol, while the tauhid sign is an example of a religious one. The green color of the scarf and the flag on the wall also have a religious character. The hand with the dagger pointed at one’s own body, especially in combination with the tauhid sign, symbolizes the desire for martyrdom in the name of faith, in the name of the one God. These differences propose a stronger significance when evaluated in terms of how the photo was staged by Abu Aisha herself, whereas the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades were responsible for the video. It can, therefore, be assumed that the symbols in the photo correspond more to Abu Aisha’s attitudes than the presentation in the video does, especially since it is known that she sympathized with Hamas and was involved with its student association. The video probably highlights Abu Aisha’s pragmatic alignment with the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and their agenda, in whose name she carried out her suicide bombing. In terms of gender elements, the two visual documents scarcely differ. First, it should be noted that Abu Aisha’s dress follows the Palestinian customs. She does not deviate from what is considered acceptable for a woman. However, in combination with the other symbols, especially the grenade, the rifle and the dagger, the documents are also a testimony of gender transgression. Although there is a long tradition of women’s participation in political violence in Palestine, female involvement in such acts is still not fully recognized by the society. This lack of recognition is also the case in many other social contexts even 20 years after Abu Aisha’s act. The journalistic attributions to women who have joined the IS attests to this neglect. Thus, Abu Aisha and the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades challenge and undermine not only Palestinian but also global gender norms. Mirfat Masud

Mirfat Masud was born in 1988 and lived in the Gaza Strip her entire life. She carried out her suicide bombing on 6 November 2006 in Beit Hanoun, near a group of Israeli soldiers (SQ, n.d.-a). She killed herself and injured one soldier. The Quds Brigades, which is the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), claimed

178  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict responsibility for the attack. Masud was the third female suicide bomber from the ranks of the Quds Brigades. She was single and had no children. Last will: “I am a daughter of the Quds Brigades”

There are women suicide bombers who express very personal views in their last wills, yet hardly any gender reference can be found in their self-portrayal. Masud is one such case. In her written last will (SQ, n.d.-a), we find the obligatory passages dealing with the announcement of the attack, its legitimization and the appeals to her readers. Unlike Abu Aisha, Masud does not seem to feel the need to justify her attack specifically as the deed of a woman. Although she announces her deed as that of “a daughter of the Quds Brigades”, the self-attribution ibna (daughter) is merely the feminine form of the term ibn (son), which is a common expression in the region for belonging to a family or an organization.23 Similar to Abu Aisha, Masud legitimizes her act by saying that she wants to take revenge “for all the massacres of the occupation, and most recently the massacre of Huda Ghaliya’s family”. Huda Ghaliya was a girl whose family was killed in an explosion on a Gaza beach in 2006.24 Responsibility for the explosion was never conclusively assigned, and the Israeli military cleared itself of responsibility for it. However, Palestinian organizations, such as the PIJ, instrumentalized the event as an example of Israel’s actions on Palestinian soil and against Palestinian citizens. In the martyrology of Masud, the Quds Brigades point out that she was “very touched” by the story about Huda Ghaliya (SQ, n.d.-a). In addition, Masud justifies her act by saying that it is legitimate in the eyes of God. At one point she writes that she carries out her attack “with God’s permission”. Likewise, there are references in various places to the fact that she expects to be rewarded after death. At the beginning of her testament, for example, she cites Sura 29/69: “And those who strive (jahadu) for Us – We will surely guide them to Our ways. And indeed, Allah is with the doers of good”. The Arabic verb jahadu in this Qur’anic verse is related to the object “for our cause”. The verse can be understood both in a non-violent way and as endorsing violence. However, the use of the generic masculine (alladhina jahadu) is of greater importance for my research question. The verse addresses both men and women but without explicitly referring to women. Rather, women are corepresented. Yet, Masud makes the reward she expects also clear, when in the context of the appeal to her mother she writes: “We will meet in the highest paradise”. Unlike Abu Aisha, Masud explicitly addresses her appeals to a diverse group of people: First to her family in general, then to her mother, then to her uncles and aunts, and finally to the Palestinian people and the mujahidun in the Islamic world (“from Iraq to Chechnya”). She urges her family several times to lead a life that conforms to Islam. For example, she writes: “My beloved family, I advise you to fear God and work to meet Him”. Her father receives the least attention compared to the other addressees: Masud only asks him for forgiveness. To her uncles and aunts, she declares that parting from them pains her greatly. Addressing her mother, she calls on her to be patient and to ask God to reward her daughter. The message to the

Gendered resistance  179 Palestinian people seems ambivalent. On the one hand, she calls on them to “keep on the path you are on, this type of resistance”. On the other hand, she asks elsewhere: “Why are our cheap souls not with the cause of this homeland?” As such, it is not entirely clear whether she thinks that the Palestinian people are sufficiently engaged in the resistance or whether she demands from them more participation in it. The voice of Masud, speaking through her written last will, calls for a life that conforms to Islam and advocates the struggle for Palestine. However, she seems to see herself as a building block for the resistance as a whole. The palpable anger that comes through in her text is directed against the State of Israel, not against Palestinian gender norms. We also need to take into account the timing of Masud’s attack. She carried out her act in 2006, four years after the bombings of Abu Aisha and Wafa Idris. Even if the total number of female suicide bombers has remained low since then, it is possible that this phenomenon was socially accepted to some extent at the time Masud executed her attack. This would mean that there was no special need to justify her act as that of a woman. Masud’s written last will, however, also sheds light on the question of authenticity in the sense of personal originality: To what extent is what is said congruent with the speaker herself? To what extent does the voice fit with the values, attitudes and motives of the women (Jongman-Sereno and Leary, 2019)? Related to the case examined here: Does what we read come from Masud herself? Do the motives for the suicide bombing mentioned in the text coincide with Masud’s actual motives? To what extent was it important that the motivating factors were not mentioned? Or is the document a pure propaganda of the PIJ? Visual testimonies: From phallic symbol to symbolic power

No video of Masud reading her last will has been found. However, there are several photos of her available online that seem to come from a video testament (SQ, n.d.-a; DW, 2006). What is striking about the photos is the dominance of the color black. Both Masud’s clothes and the background are in this color. Masud is wearing an abaya,25 a hijab and a baseball cap. Behind her is a large cloth imprinted with the Islamic creed. A Qur’an lies on the table in front of Masud. She herself holds a Kalashnikov and looks confidently into the camera. In these photos it is obvious that the act is framed in religious terms. This emphasis is indicated by several symbols: the Qur’an, the Islamic creed and the color black. The Qur’an symbolizes God’s word, while Muslims traditionally use the color black as a sign of rebellion against outrageous rulers (Heine, 2018, p. 167). In addition, the documents are striking from a gender perspective. Although Masud’s clothing can be considered largely gender conforming, the baseball cap, which is mainly worn by boys and men in Palestine, stands out as an outlier. Furthermore, the visibly staged long gun stands for violence and resistance. As such, these photos essentially fit into the Palestinian visual language: Weapons are one of the most widely used symbols in Palestine. In terms of resistance, they have a military and mobilizing effect on both men and women. The rifle is omnipresent in

180  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict everyday life and a frequently culturally staged motif (Peteet, 1991, p. 107). At the same time, these images create a field of tension, for in contexts like these, weapons are repeatedly interpreted as phallic symbols (Heringer, 2015, p. 129). The weapon symbolizes the phallus that advances in the hostile terrain. Moreover, socially recognized masculine qualities are associated with this portrayal: The weapon stands for courage, defense and fighting strength (Dittmer, 2014). Consequently, a tension arises from the fact that the weapon, originally associated with masculinity, is in the hands of a woman. The social attributions of masculinity and femininity are challenged in this way, as the image defies the patriarchal logic of gender labels. Even though the photograph is merely representative (for Masud carried out her act with an explosive belt), the weapon gives symbolic power to the woman holding it. However, are such images an expression of empowerment in order to overcome oppression? From Masud’s perspective, and especially because she looks so confidently into the camera, this question could well be answered with a yes. From her perspective, the attack gives her agency. It enables her to act within the framework of the Israel–Palestine conflict, which has been going on for a very long time and is seen by many as unsolvable. At the same time, the act enables her to break from the rigid gender norms of Palestinian society. The pictorial representation of Masud has an important function in this defiance: It enables the narrative of empowerment – as the overcoming of (perceived) political and social oppression – to persist. Reem Riyashi

Reem Riyashi was born in the Gaza Strip in 1981 and lived there all her life. Her attack on 14 January 2004 took place at the Israeli border checkpoint Erez in the Gaza Strip. In addition to herself, she killed four people, and several others were injured. Both the Qassam Brigades and the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for her act, as it was a joint operation. Riyashi was the first female suicide bomber of the Qassam Brigades. She was married and had two children; the younger one was one and a half years old at the time of the attack (KSIDQ, n.d.-a; IW, n.d.). Hamas had been the organization with the fewest female suicide bombers and the case of Riyashi underscores Hamas’s highly cautious stance on the question of whether women should be allowed to carry out suicide attacks. The biographical details that are unique to the two Hamas suicide bombers are crucial to the discussion on their position: They were married and had children.26 All the other female suicide bombers of the Second Intifada were single. In fact, these biographical distinctions match statements made by Hamas’s political leadership. For example, as early as 2002, Abd al-Aziz ar-Rantisi said that women would be allowed to carry out suicide attacks, if they fulfilled their demographic role – that is, if they had given children to the Palestinian society and thus contributed to the continuation of the collective. Clearly, as an organization with an Islamic agenda, it was exceedingly important for Hamas that women fulfill their primary duty as mothers and wives before carrying out a suicide bombing.

Gendered resistance  181 Last will: “Halfmen have led the ummah to subservience and exposure”

Even 20 years after Riyashi’s suicide bombing, her video testament can be found on the official homepage of the Qassam Brigades (KSIDQ, n.d.-a). Similar to Masud’s will, the speech does not contain any gender-specific features. Riyashi announces her suicide attack as the act of a “daughter” of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and as a “joint operation” of Hamas and the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. She legitimizes her act by referring to Sura 9/111: Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties, [in exchange] for which they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, so they kill and are killed. [It is] a true promise [binding] upon Him in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur’an. And who is truer to his covenant than Allah? So rejoice in your transaction which you have contracted. And it is that which is the great attainment. Like Masud’s last will, Riyashi’s testament contains a Qur’anic verse that uses the generic masculine. The message of the verse can be summarized as follows: in exchange for their lives and possessions and as a reward for their willingness to fight, believers gain access to paradise. The verse does not exclude women; they are corepresented. Furthermore, Riyashi, like Masud and Abu Aisha, refers to taking revenge for “the army of occupation’s crimes in Nablus, Jenin and Rafah”. Riyashi’s case is particularly special, because in addition to her official one, another testament by her is available on the internet. However, this second one is not on any official Hamas homepage (IW, n.d.). The second, written testament differs fundamentally from the first one especially along the lines of gender references. In this second one, Riyashi addresses the document’s readers and notes that they do not include men: “For I see no more men in our ummah27 except for a remnant in Palestine and Iraq, for you are the remaining hope for this ummah after it is free of men”. Instead of men, she says, there are only the “halfmen” (ashbah ar-rijal). She accuses them of having led the ummah into “subservience and exposure”. Riyashi describes these halfmen as sages, scholars and intellectuals, self-appointed elites who “have set their banners at half-mast”. The term “halfmen” thus seems to refer primarily to Muslim politicians and rulers who, Riyashi implies, lack qualities of leadership. The accusation of having led the ummah into “subservience” could mean subservience to Israel. She clearly chooses words of displeasure for the politicians who were at that time (and still are) mainly male in the Muslim world. On the other hand, she notes that in Palestine and Iraq, at least, there are still a number of real men.28 She probably means the mujahidun. She appeals first to the so-called halfmen and then to the women. Addressing the halfmen, she advises them to disentangle themselves from the kind of speech that no longer makes one fat and is of no use to hunger. I urge them to rid themselves of deception and hypocrisy … And I urge them to withdraw from their pulpits to which they have dedicated themselves, for they do not belong there.

182  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Accordingly, she calls for an end to their politics and demands their removal from the political stage. The women, on the other hand, she encourages: “And to women I advise that they attach the nun an-niswa29 to their attributes and their names, and the ta at-tanith30 to their deeds, for they are entitled to it and are worthy of it”. Women should be proud of themselves. They should stand by their femininity and recognize that they can do a great deal on behalf of the resistance. In this way, Riyashi elevates women above the halfmen who do not live up to their masculinity. Yet, it should be noted that at no point does Riyashi formulate what “femininity” and “masculinity” mean to her and/or where the boundary between the two concepts lies. At the least, her statements leave a great deal of room for interpretation. Like Abu Aisha, Riyashi also addresses the role of women as mothers: “From your wombs, O you women, shall come forth the children who will bring back the glory of this ummah, writing it with their blood and with their severed limbs”. This can certainly be understood as an appeal. She sees women as having a responsibility to give birth to children. However, not just any children. The phrase “to write with blood and severed limbs” (which is often used in martyrs’ wills) alludes to future mujahidun and martyrs. So, for Riyashi, jihad is the way to bring back glory to the ummah. Last, she addresses an appeal to the then president of France, Jacques Chirac, “who wants to ban the hijab for Muslims in France”. She is referring to his efforts to ban religious symbols from the schools at the time, such as the Jewish kippa, large crosses and Muslim headscarves. The bill passed France’s national legislature and was signed into law by Chirac in early 2004, the year Riyashi carried out her suicide bombing. Contrary to what one might assume, Riyashi does not renounce this ban. Instead, she calls on Jacques Chirac: Make [the hijab] compulsory for Muslim men, starting with the rulers. And … make it equally obligatory for them to cover their submissive faces, because it is shameful and they should not be allowed to be seen, not in the East and not in the West. However, this message leaves certain questions unanswered, such as Riyashi’s views on the acceptability of the niqab, the face veil. It seems that she views the niqab as a garment that is being used to keep women in their subordinated position. What this means exactly remains unclear. Is she criticizing the niqab as a dress style? Or does her statement indicate the acceptance of the niqab as a means of hiding women who are reprehensible? The latter interpretation certainly coincides with Hamas’s Islamic agenda. Like all Islamists, women are seen as a potential source of fitna (sedition, temptation) in the Hamas context. It is women, according to this mode of thinking, who render men weak and careless, from which the need for strict gender segregation in society is derived. The hijab and niqab are means to implement this demand.31 Furthermore, Riyashi anticipates the criticism she might receive for her decision to commit a suicide bombing attack: some might say that she is “on the path to ruin herself”, that it is “a suicide”, that it is “stupid” and that she “abandoned her

Gendered resistance  183 children and did not preserve the sanctity of her husband and her family”. In her defense against such commentary, she says, “I am a believer, in that my provider and the provider of my children after my death is my Lord, who rules me and carries on the upbringing of my children after my death”. The reference to her children is gender specific in that Riyashi was the first mother during the Second Intifada to perform a “martyrdom operation”. Male activists who carried out such attacks were, with few exceptions, childless singles (UTA, 2006). In a patriarchal society such as that of Palestine, the father is the linchpin of the family, but the responsibility for the children lies primarily with the mother. By citing God as the to-be provider for her children, Riyashi counters the expected accusation that she is neglecting them. The reference to incurring damage on the “sanctity of her husband and her people” also has a gender-specific connotation. Riyashi was aware that she was breaking gender norms. Suicide bombers were usually not allowed to let their families in on their plans. Moreover, in preparation for the act, they were also alone with people who were not part of the family. For female suicide bombers, this configuration meant that they had to violate Palestine’s culturally rooted norms of gender segregation. Consequently, in order to preempt accusations of immorality, she emphasizes that she is a devout Muslim and that her act is permitted and guided by God. The gender-specific elements of this written testament can thus be summarized as follows. First, the document testifies to a two-layered dichotomous representation of role models. On the one hand, it contrasts the “good men” (mujahidun in her words) with the “bad” ones (halfmen). On the other hand, the halfmen have to compete with women. The subtext of her message questions gender roles and gender expectations: What is expected of men and women? How are masculinity and femininity defined? Do the men and women Riyashi deals with correspond to these attributions? What is also striking is the apparent fervent anger that comes through in Riyashi’s document. She is downright derogatory about those men who, in her view, do not act in a masculine manner. Only the mujahidun are spared her wrath. In contrast, she implicitly calls on women to be proud of what they have achieved as women in the resistance. Second, Riyashi makes it clear in the document that she is aware that she is subverting gender norms. She anticipates that many Palestinians might resent her decision to perform a suicide bombing attack as a wife and a mother. At the same time, she insists that this resentment is misplaced, for, once again, she sees herself as a devout Muslim and her act as desired by God. In this way, she keeps accusations of child neglect and immorality at arm’s length. Visual testimonies: The mother, her child and the rocket

In the video of Riyashi reading her last will that is produced by the Qassam Brigades, the Palestinian woman is seen sitting at the table. The dominant color in the video is green. Riyashi wears a camouflage suit, a hijab and a waistcoat. She wears the Islamic creed both on a headband over her hijab and on a sash on her upper body. She holds a Kalashnikov. On the table, which is covered with a Hamas flag, are grenades and rockets, as well as a Qur’an from which Riyashi recites the Qur’anic verse. In the background is a large green flag on which the Islamic creed

184  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict is printed. The green color – the color of Islam and Hamas – alongside the Qur’an and the oversized representation of the Islamic creed in the background symbolize the religious framing of the attack. Once again, the weapons play a major role in the framing of the testament in terms of gender representation. Riyashi holds the Kalashnikov in a way similar to Masud and thus maintains the phallic symbol usually associated with men and masculinity. Compared to the photos of Masud, in Riyashi’s video a larger number of weapons can be seen. Riyashi also sets herself apart from Masud and Abu Aisha through her choice of clothing. She wears a camouflage suit that evokes various associations. Symbolizing uniformity, it is meant to show that Riyashi is part of the group, i.e., the Qassam Brigades. It is suggestive of an involvement in military combat. However, it is important to mention that for women to wear a camouflage suit in Palestine is extremely unusual. Like the Kalashnikov, then, the suit is merely a means of staging: It is unlikely that Riyashi was wearing it (at least not in plain sight) when she committed her attack. In addition to the video testament, a number of photos that show Riyashi with her children are available. These photos may have been taken at the same time as the video testament was made, since Riyashi wears the camouflage suit in them as well. One photo shows Riyashi and one of her children in front of the backdrop that is seen in the video testament. Both are waving at the camera and the child is holding a rocket. Another photo shows her with her two children sitting on her lap, in a more domestic setting, possibly the children’s room. Looking at these photos, a tension arises, a “macabre refraction” (Straub, 2021, p. 196). On the one hand, her behavior toward the children can be described as caring and intimate; on the other hand, her military dress and weapons stand for violence and aggression. Riyashi’s visual representation intertwines the concepts of motherhood, as a central aspect of femininity, and jihad, as a primarily masculine domain. In the Palestinian context, the two concepts are considered compatible traditionally only in a specific setting that can be summed up in the term “martyr’s mother”. The phenomenon of the martyr’s mother dates to the 1930s, when the Arab population revolted in an armed uprising against the British Mandate rule. Many Arab men died during the conflict. Their mothers refused condolence and instead even showed pride and joy at the martyrdom of their sons (Peteet, 1991, p. 50). As a fighting mother, Riyashi transcends this traditional attribution. Her self-representation (and her suicide bombing itself) underscores the severity of the Palestinian plight and the ubiquity of the national struggle, while symbolizing the sacrificial dimension of motherhood. At the same time, such imagery leads men to feel ashamed of the necessity of women’s commitment in the struggle. Such a setup thus invites the question of whether the Qassam Brigades staged the motif of the fighting mother in order to call the men to jihad (Peteet, 1991, p. 107). Conclusion It was not always possible to prove beyond reasonable doubt which of the voices presented in this study were the authentic ones of Palestinian female suicide

Gendered resistance  185 bombers. Whose values and motives have we been presented with? Who speaks through the documents? Is it the female suicide bomber, or are the videos and testaments propaganda? The documents of Darin Abu Aisha and Reem Riyashi point to this area of tension. In the case of Abu Aisha, we could see that in her video testament she pragmatically adopted the symbols of the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades for herself and her actions, even though in reality she stood for other political values. We are more likely to find answers to the questions of who Abu Aisha was and what her message said by looking at the photo she took in the house of her cousin. For Riyashi, on the other hand, there are two last wills. One is available on the homepage of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades as a video recording and serves as an official document. The other, less official one is available on internet forums. The messages conveyed by the two documents could not be more different. Against the background of these dualities, Mirfat Masud’s position can be mentioned as well: It seems probable that in her case, too, her written last will is not (completely) congruent to her values and motives. In any case, it is noteworthy that all three women’s voices present significant gender-related concerns within the Palestinian resistance. In the case of the written last wills, we can assume that the aspects they mention reflect each woman’s personal agendas. Abu Aisha’s will, for example, can be read as an apologetic treatise on her decision to commit a suicide bombing attack as a woman. She apparently felt compelled to justify herself in this way after Hamas, with which she was associated throughout her life, rejected her desire to carry out a suicide attack in their name. Riyashi went beyond the apologetic portrayal and vented her views on the distribution of roles between men and women: Muslim rulers were devalued as “halfmen”, while Palestinian women were praised as women. Both Riyashi and Abu Aisha were aware that their attacks transgressed gender norms, but at the same time they presented their deeds as willed by God, and in that sense not out of the ordinary, thus avoiding potential accusations of immorality. Furthermore, both Riyashi and Abu Aisha ascribe great importance to the Palestinian women in the context of the resistance, particularly as mothers of the future jihad generation. This attribution assigns a special status to women, because anyone can become a suicide bomber but only women can give birth. In Abu Aisha’s case, moreover, we could see a reference to the statements made by the Hamas leadership. The organization refused her wish to be a suicide bomber, because she was a woman. Leaders, including Ahmad Yassin, had repeatedly confirmed this stance publicly. Abu Aisha obviously could not accept this without comment. In her will, she made it clear to the entire Hamas leadership and, in principle, to the entire world, where she places women in the Palestinian resistance: not in the second line of defense but in the front line. This case therefore also shows that women of course do not live in isolation but are influenced by a variety of discourses surrounding them. In the case of the visual documents, it appears that gender has become a key part of the representation. The audience experiences a sense of rupture in viewing the visual documents, even if they do not come from a conservative-traditional society like the Palestinian one. Rather, the depiction of a woman – and even more disturbingly, a mother – with a gun and in camouflage challenges the widespread myth of the peaceful woman. Since outward violence is

186  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict usually attributed more to men than to women, the presented symbolically charged images and videos subvert expectations and render female capacities for violent resistance more self-evident than they are. Riyashi’s visual self-representation also presents a peculiarity and points to a field of tension. On the one hand, she fits into the possibility of reading of martyrdom as the ultimate fulfillment of patriarchal motherhood, based on attributions such as self-denial and self-sacrifice (Bloom, 2007, p. 102). On the other hand, it can be assumed that the photos of Riyashi and her children were taken and published primarily for one purpose: To urge men to do their duty, that is, to perform the task for which Riyashi was exceptionally assigned. In summary, however, it must be stated that the three women discussed in this chapter set out to perform suicide attacks consciously and in a self-determined manner. Their self-determination as such is clearly indicated not only in their testaments but also by their self-confident attitudes in the videos and photos. The women were eager to make an active contribution to the Palestinian resistance. For them, sacrificing their lives seems to have been a matter of course. At the same time, they felt that they had to be seen “morally on the right side”: they were taking righteous revenge for what they perceived as crimes of the Israeli occupying power and believed that God approved of their actions. However, the documents also shed light on the challenge of dealing with and evaluating alleged self-representations: Which voices are authentic? Who was censored, and how? And above all, what are the voices and messages that we do not hear? Such questions will always be with us when we examine the kinds of data presented in this chapter.

Notes 1 This chapter follows up on a study published by the author in 2011 (see Ziolkowski, 2011). 2 In this respect, the Second Intifada was fundamentally different from the First Intifada, in which the general population, including men and women, young and old, played an important role (Kuttab and Johnson, 2001, p. 30). 3 On the myth of the peaceful woman and the perception of female violence, see Künzel (2009). 4 On patriarchal social structures in Palestine and their impact on the situation of women, see PASSIA (2015). 5 In 2007, a bipolar political system emerged: in the West Bank, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority continued to govern, while Hamas ruled the Gaza Strip from then on (Bröning and Meyer, 2010). 6 Fatah is a secular political group founded in the 1950s, whereas the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (Kataib Shuhada al-Aqsa) first appeared in 2000. For a long time, the links between the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Fatah were unclear. Since the mid-2000s, however, experts have seen strong evidence of an organizational link. 7 The Quds Brigades (Saraya al-Quds) are the military arm of the PIJ, an organization founded in the 1980s. PIJ’s ideology comprises of Palestinian nationalism and fragments from the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as other Islamic groups in Egypt. In addition, the revolutionary ideas and statements of Ayatollah Khomeini have been incorporated. Such an incorporation of ideas is what makes the ideology of the PIJ distinct,

Gendered resistance  187 since the movement is made up of Sunni Muslims but Khomeini was a Shiite cleric. Compared to Hamas and the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the organization has less followers and is therefore considered a revolutionary vanguard. 8 The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (Kataib ash-shahid Izz ad-Din al-Qassam) is the armed wing of Hamas. The Islamic Resistance Organization Hamas, which was founded in 1987, is a mass organization, and like the PIJ, a splinter from the Muslim Brotherhood. The organization’s program embraces both pan-Arab and Islamic ideals and Palestinian nationalism. An important distinguishing feature of Hamas from the other two organizations is its charity work, which is believed to be a major part of its activities. 9 Interviews with the family members were conducted in 2009, 2010 and 2013 for a book project on Palestinian female suicide bombers (see footnote 1) and a study on women’s participation in Hamas (Ziolkowski, 2016). 10 I conducted the interviews with the mother on 30 July 2009. 11 In a martyrology published by Hamas about Darin Abu Aisha, the organization explains the context of the rejection. For example, the text says that the person who turned down the young woman’s plan was not someone who represented the right political and religious viewpoint. In this way, the organization externalizes the responsibility for the decision, which in retrospect is presented as being wrong (RITI, 2009). 12 Mujahidun is the plural form of the Arabic term mujahid, which refers to a male person who engages in jihad. 13 Unless stated otherwise, the translations of the Arabic texts are mine. 14 On women’s participation in the Palestinian resistance, see Peteet (1991). 15 The explosion occurred when she tugged at her bag, which was caught on the door, as she was leaving a store (Victor, 2005, p. 37). Therefore, it has been suggested that her act was more likely an accident (Schneiders, 2006, p. 110). 16 Darin Abu Aisha uses the term “Zionist” synonymously with “Israelis” and “Jews”. 17 I used the Saheeh International translation for the English Qur’anic verses. 18 The documentary was acquired in 2008 at the Martyrs Museum in Tehran during an exhibition on Palestinian women suicide bombers. 19 The family could not provide the video because it was lost when the house was demolished. Moreover, notably, the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, unlike the other two organizations, does not have a homepage. Therefore, there is no official digital platform for the publication of documents. 20 A hijab is a woman’s headscarf. 21 A kufiya is a checkered black-and-white scarf that is usually worn around the neck or the head. 22 I conducted the interview with the sister on 3 May 2010 in Ramallah. 23 There is ample evidence on the Quds Brigades’s website that the designations ibn (singular; son) or abna (plural; sons) are used for male members of the organization; see, as an example, SQ (n.d.-b). 24 On the explosion on the beach of the Gaza Strip and Huda Ghaliya, see McGreal (2006). 25 An abaya is a simple, loose overgarment worn by Muslim women in Palestine. 26 The second female suicide bomber of the Qassam Brigades was Fatima Najjar. At the time of her attack, Najjar was already over 50 years old, a mother and a grandmother (KSIDQ, n.d.-b; Erlanger, 2006). 27 Ummah is the Arabic word meaning “community”. In the context of Riyashi’s last will, it refers to the community of all Muslims. 28 She seems to be referring to the occupation of Iraq by US forces between 2003 and 2011. 29 The Arabic letter “nun” is the initial letter of the Arabic word niswa (women). The nun an-niswa is the feminine plural form of verbs. 30 The Arabic letter “ta” is the initial letter of the word tanith (femininity). The ta at-tanith is the feminine form of nouns. 31 On the sexual dimension of patriarchy in the Islamist context, see Ziolkowski (2021).

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Gendered resistance  189 Issacharoff, Avi (2006) ‘The Palestinian and Israeli media on female suicide terrorists‘, in Schweitzer, Yoram (ed.) Female suicide bombers: Dying for equality? Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, pp. 43–50. IW (Ikhwan Wiki) (n.d.) ‘Reem ar-Riyashi’. Available at: https://www​.ikhwanwiki​.com​/ index​.php​?title=​%D8​%B1​%D9​%8A​%D9​%85_​%D8​%A7​%D9​%84​%D8​%B1​%D9​ %8A​%D8​%A7​%D8​%B4​%D9​%8A (Accessed: 24 April 2022). Jongman-Sereno, Katrina and Leary, Mark (2019) ‘The enigma of being yourself: A critical examination of the concept of authenticity’, Review of General Psychology, 23(1), pp. 133–142. https://doi​.org​/10​.1037​%2Fgpr0000157 KFS (Komitey-e farhangi-ye setad-e pashdasht-e shohada-ye nahdat-e jahani-ye eslam) (n.d.) Dokhtaran-e Zaitun [Olive daughters] [CD]. Teheran. KSIDQ (Kataib ash-Shahid Izz ad-Din al-Qassam) (n.d.-a) ‘al-istishhadiya al-qassamiya / Reem ar-Riyashi’ [The Qassam martyr Reem ar-Riyashi], Available at: https://www​ .alqassam​.ps​/arabic/​%D8​%B4​%D9​%87​%D8​%AF​%D8​%A7​%D8​%A1-​%D8​%A7​%D9​ %84​%D9​%82​%D8​%B3​%D8​%A7​%D9​%85​/229/​%D8​%B1​%D9​%8A​%D9​%85-​%D8​ %B5​%D8​%A7​%D9​%84​%D8​%AD-​%D8​%A7​%D9​%84​%D8​%B1​%D9​%8A​%D8​%A7​ %D8​%B4​%D9​%8A (Accessed: 24 April 2022). KSIDQ (Kataib ash-Shahid Izz ad-Din al-Qassam) (n.d.-b) ‘amaliyat al-istishhadiyat Fatima an-Najjar – Umm al-Fidaiyat’ [The martyrdom operation of Fatima an-Najjar: Mother of the Fedayeen], Available at: https://www​.alqassam​.ps​/arabic/​%D9​%85​%D8​%B9​%D8​ %A7​%D8​%B1​%D9​%83-​%D8​%B9​%D9​%85​%D9​%84​%D9​%8A​%D8​%A7​%D8​%AA-​ %D8​%A7​%D9​%84​%D9​%82​%D8​%B3​%D8​%A7​%D9​%85​/1/​%D8​%B9​%D9​%85​%D9​ %84​%D9​%8A​%D8​%A9-​%D8​%A7​%D9​%84​%D8​%A7​%D8​%B3​%D8​%AA​%D8​%B4​ %D9​%87​%D8​%A7​%D8​%AF​%D9​%8A​%D8​%A9-​%D9​%81​%D8​%A7​%D8​%B7​%D9​ %85​%D8​%A9-​%D8​%A7​%D9​%84​%D9​%86​%D8​%AC​%D8​%A7​%D8​%B1-​%D8​%A3​ %D9​%85-​%D8​%A7​%D9​%84​%D9​%81​%D8​%AF​%D8​%A7​%D8​%A6​%D9​%8A​%D8​ %A7​%D8​%AA (Accessed: 24 April 2022). Künzel, Christine (2009) ‘Gewalt/Macht’ [Violence/Power], in von Braun, Christina and Stephan, Inge (eds.) Gender@Wissen: Ein Handbuch der Gender-Theorien. 2nd edn. Köln: UTB, pp. 140–160. Kuttab, Eileen and Johnson, Penny (2001) ‘Where have all the women (and men) gone? Reflections on gender and the second Palestinian intifada’, Feminist Review, 69, pp. 21–43. McGreal, Chris (2006) ‘The battle of Huda Ghalia: Who really killed girl’s family on Gaza beach’, The Guardian, 17 June. Available at: https://www​.theguardian​.com​/world​/2006​/ jun​/17​/israel (Accessed: 24 April 2022). PASSIA (Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs) (2015) Palestinian women’s bulletin. Jerusalem: PASSIA. Peteet, Julie (1991) Gender in crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement. New York: Columbia University Press. RITI (Rukn Ikhwat Tarik al-Islam) (2009) ‘ah-Shahida Darin Abu Aisha [The martyr Darin Abu Aisha]’, 16 May. Available at: https://akhawat​.islamway​.net​/forum​/topic​/212098-​ %D8​%A7​%D9​%84​%D8​%B4​%D9​%87​%D9​%8A​%D8​%AF​%D8​%A9-​%D8​%AF​%D8​ %A7​%D8​%B1​%D9​%8A​%D9​%86-​%D8​%A7​%D8​%A8​%D9​%88-​%D8​%B9​%D9​%8A​ %D8​%B4​%D8​%A9/​?tab​=comments​#comment​-2436995 (Accessed: 24 April 2022). Schneiders, Thorsten Gerald (2006) Heute sprenge ich mich in die Luft: Suizidanschläge im israelisch-palästinensischen Konflikt [Today I am going to blow myself up: Suicide bombings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict]. Berlin: LIT.

190  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict SQ (Saraya al-Quds) (n.d.-a) ‘al-Istishhadiya al-mujahida: Mirfat Amin Masud’ [The martyr: Mirfat Amin Masud]. Available at: https://saraya​.ps​/martyr​/1282/​%D8​%A7​%D9​%84​ %D8​%A7​%D8​%B3​%D8​%AA​%D8​%B4​%D9​%87​%D8​%A7​%D8​%AF​%D9​%8A​%D8​ %A9-​%D8​%A7​%D9​%84​%D9​%85​%D8​%AC​%D8​%A7​%D9​%87​%D8​%AF​%D8​%A9-​ %D9​%85​%D9​%8A​%D8​%B1​%D9​%81​%D8​%AA-​%D8​%A3​%D9​%85​%D9​%8A​%D9​ %86-​%D9​%85​%D8​%B3​%D8​%B9​%D9​%88​%D8​%AF (Accessed: 24 April 2022). SQ (Saraya al-Quds) (n.d.-b) ‘al-Istishhady al-mujahid: Raghib Ahmad Jaradat’ [The martyr: Raghib Ahmad Jaradat]. Available at: https://saraya​.ps​/martyr​/735/ (Accessed: 24 April 2022). Straub, Verena (2021) Das Selbstmordattentat im Bild: Aktualität und Geschichte von Märtyrerzeugnissen [The image of suicide bombing: Topicality and history of martyrdom testimonials]. Bielefeld: Transkript. UTA (University of Texas at Austin, National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa) (2006) Palestinian suicide bombers data. Available at: [no longer available] http://www​.laits​.utexas​.edu​/tiger​/psb​-20060901​.xls (Accessed: 10 July 2010). Victor, Barbara (2005) Shahidas: Die Töchter des Terrors [Shahidas: Daughters of terror]. München: Droemer Knaur. Zeit-Online (2021) ‘Prozess gegen IS-Mädchen Leonora beginnt im Januar in Halle’ [Trial of IS-girl Leonora begins in Halle in January], 30 November. Available at: https://www​ .zeit​.de​/news​/2021​-11​/30​/prozess​-gegen​-is​-maedchen​-leonora​-beginnt​-im​-januar​-in​ -halle (Accessed: 22 May 2022). Ziolkowski, Britt (2021) ‘Sexualität im islamischen Fundamentalismus’ [Sexuality and Islamic fundamentalism], Sexuologie, 28(2), pp. 115–122. Ziolkowski, Britt (2016) Die Aktivistinnen der Hamas: Zur Rolle der Frauen in einer islamistischen Bewegung [Hamas women activists: On the role of women in an Islamist movement]. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz. Ziolkowski, Britt (2011) Palästinensische Märtyrerinnen: Selbstdarstellung und innerislamische Wahrnehmung weiblicher Selbstmordattentäter [Palestinian female martyrs: Self-representation and intra-Islamic perceptions of female suicide bombers]. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz.

10 Jihad with a woman’s face Boko Haram female fighters in Cameroon Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo

Introduction In both public discourse and the literature on war, women as combatants have been ignored or considered taboo until recent times. Even when, in the context of “totalization of war” and the indistinction between battlefield and home front (Holeindre, 2018), women pay the “blood tax” (Cabanes, 2018), their role is very often forgotten. Moreover, women themselves speak very little about their war experience (Alexievitch, 2016). This may be because, at least in part, despite the discourses and practices of feminization in modern armies, the gender barrier is watertight when it comes to the question of access to combat (Audouin-Rouzeau, 2020). Paradoxically, it is within some jihadist groups, which are considered very conservative on the issue of the distribution of gender roles, that gendered war norms are transgressed. This chapter draws on the case of Boko Haram,1 a jihadist insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin, to examine the forms and modalities of the transgression of gendered norms of war through the participation of women in war violence in an insurgency and jihadist context and where national armies have not engaged any women in the various combat units fighting on the front lines against the insurgents. It also deals with their motivations and their recruitment process.2 This chapter’s anthropological and sociohistorical approach has made it possible to put into perspective the mobilization of women by Boko Haram as part of its combatant actions. Because the gendered norms of war result from social and historical constructions, particular circumstances allow questioning of “natural” tendencies within societies that are known to be conservative on gendered representations and social practices. In the Lake Chad Basin, this dynamic has allowed a growing mobilization, instrumental or not, of women in the hypermale combat role and intelligence and support activities. There are two concurrent processes: Women’s direct participation in combat and the sexual division of military work, with specific forms of gender juxtaposition. While most of Boko Haram’s female fighters perform tasks deemed feminine and require “naturally” feminine skills, some have been engaged in combat under extreme conditions in Cameroon, thus showing skills regarded as masculine. This chapter also highlights the dynamic of the weaponization of female bodies by Boko Haram. It emancipates itself from theoretical frameworks developed within primarily Western cultures that often carry DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-13

192  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict the mental maps of their community (Balzacq, 2016), and it gives voice to female Boko Haram fighters who explain the why and how of their commitment. Gender and war: A historical and theoretical perspective Considering the “cultural” (learned and socially transmitted behavior) and the diachronic dimension of women’s participation in warfare makes it possible to put into perspective the current dynamic of the growing mobilization of women in contemporary jihadist groups. Historical and anthropological perspectives

The conventional view of male and female identities with regard to collective violence considers the former as warriors and the latter as noncombatants (Carreiras, 2006). There are also norms associated with manliness when it comes to war, such as protection, bravery and self-sacrifice, and others related to womanliness, such as innocence and fragility (Sjoberg, Cooke and Neal, 2011). Indeed, in most societies, the idea that “war is made for women3 and not by them” has been profoundly internalized (Roberts, 2018). Therefore, a certain gender determinism assigns specific roles to the man and the woman: The former would ensure the defense of the group and the latter the offspring (Fouchard, 2015). In most local societies within Cameroon, a woman represents fecundity and is the source of security and strength. The man is characterized by virility (Richard, 1977). The Cameroonian woman carries the image of a mother, who ensures biological reproduction and plays the role of mediator, through exogamous marriage, in the context of intercommunity exchanges. In some societies of Northern Cameroon, among the Fali, for example, despite the spectacular practices that seem to suggest a weak position for the woman, she reigns over the home while the man is the master of relations external to the home (Barbier, 1985). This gendered distribution of roles may explain that when women are involved in professions associated with masculinity, they are often identified by their sex, while the profession’s name identifies those associated with femininity. It may be the reason why we talk of female fighters, not female nurses, for example (Sjoberg, Cooke and Neal, 2011). Until recently, and particularly in national armies, women have been denied the right to fight and lead wars, except for a few war heroines and mythological figures.4 However, anthropologists have shown that excluding women from war is more of a matter of male domination over the mastery of tools and technology than a gender difference (Tabet, 1979). Moreover, the relationship of gender to the warrior function is socially determined by conventions (Cuchet, 2013). The First and Second World Wars are full of examples of women breaking war stereotypes and fighting (German, 2013). However, these remain as isolated examples. In other words, the conceptualization of women as noncombatant figures is still prevalent, despite timid feminization initiatives (Forrest, 2018). In Africa, women played a prominent role during nationalist struggles. For example, during the Eritrean liberation war, women acted as fighters within the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) (Hale, 2001). Women’s participation in nationalist struggles in Africa

Jihad with a woman’s face  193 consisted of their role in support functions, notably the mobilization of troops, intelligence operations, nursing, transport and supply (Adugna, 2001). Despite the gradual “feminization”5 in national armies, the physical, physiological and psychological differences between men and women (perceived or real) still strongly structure the gendered distribution of military work. The same idea is embedded in most cultures, foremost among which are androcentric traditions and practices and a gendered division of war-related tasks (Weber, 2015). The situation is even more problematic in Africa. Low representation of women in the army is one of the few things that unite the African countries, which are quite diverse in their experiences and histories in every other aspect. The Cameroonian army, for example, experiences cosmetic feminization, and the military phallocracy (Ondoua, 2013) is still significant. The place of women in the military and their relation to warfare was defined by the long-time minister for defense, Sadou Daoudou: “In case of mobilization, boys and girls will not play the same role. The boys will be used as fighters while girls will be used as secretaries, nurses, and intelligence officers, with more talent than boys”.6 It is probably why, despite the government’s discourse on feminization in the Cameroonian army, there are no women in the various fighting units engaged on the front line of the fight against Boko Haram. On the other side, terrorism, in general, is deemed a gendered activity. But terrorist groups exploit rigid stereotypes of masculinity and femininity (Ndung’u and Shadung, 2017). Thus, in the Cameroonian context, Boko Haram has shaken up the gendered rules of war. Nevertheless, women’s involvement in terrorist activities seems to be an oxymoron because women are associated with peacefulness, nurturing and care rather than violence in the collective psyche (Sjoberg, Cooke and Neal, 2011). Their presence in violent groups “falls outside these ideal-typical understandings of what it means to be a woman” (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007). On the question of women’s involvement in Boko Haram’s suicide bombings, Saïbou Issa (2021), a prominent specialist on this group, highlights the contrast between the acts they take and their attitude in the demobilization camps: “I wonder how young women with such soft speech, with the maternal fiber, thus displayed, worrying about the future of their very young children and reunification with their husbands, have they gone to extremes”. Even in contemporary jihadi networks, militarized masculinities inform armed conflict (Duriesmith and Ismail, 2019). Female members of terror groups used to assume supporting roles such as logisticians and recruiters. However, since the 1970s, with the rise of left-wing terrorist groups such as the Red Army Faction, they have actively participated in combat roles. The dynamic also concerns nationalist groups such as Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) and jihadi groups (Raghavan and Balasubramaniyan, 2014). Surprisingly, the dynamic of feminization also concerns Islamist terror groups.7 Salafist movements are generally very conservative concerning the status of women. For them, a woman’s role is to stay at home and “carry the children of the mujahideen and not an explosive belt” (Trévidic, 2014). In the Lake Chad Basin particularly, the arrival of Wahhabism8 in the 2000s has impacted the social and political field. Above all, it has influenced gendered representations and social practices

194  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict that, at best, value women in their maternal role. The arrival of women in the jihadist terrorist field stems from an appeal launched in 2009 by Umayma Hassan Ahmed, the wife of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s late leader. In a letter, she legitimized women’s participation in jihad by references to the life of the Prophet.9 In the same vein, jihadi group leaders such as Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin, who was also the spiritual leader and one of the cofounders of Hamas, have issued a fatwa (a non-binding legal decision in Islam) “that gave permission to women to participate in suicide attacks as well as listing the rewards in ‘Paradise’ that these female martyrs would receive upon their deaths” (Shirazi, 2010). This recourse to women points at the doctrinal changes within Salafist jihadist movements. Since 2016, Boko Haram has split into two factions: the JAS and ISWAP. The first faction allows women to engage in violence, while the second condemns it (Bryson and Bukarti, 2018). Thus, these two current factions within the jihadist movement in the Lake Chad Basin do not agree on the gendered division of war labor. According to testimony from a defector interviewed by Crisis Group: Islamic State told [Shekau, former Boko Haram leader] that an amaliya [a suicide attack by a girl or a young woman] can happen only when you are surrounded and have no exit. Then, maybe, a girl can decide to sacrifice her life. But you cannot put a jacket [rigged with explosives] on a girl and send her to attack civilians. (Foucher, 2020) Despite this doctrinal debate, the group currently holds the record for the number of women and girls mobilized for suicide bombings. A study of the modalities of these “transgressions” of gendered war norms (Teboul, 2015) by Boko Haram allows one to measure its scope. This mobilization confirms that male and female roles are less biological than the fruit of cultural and historical constructions. As such, they are changeable. Methodology

Women’s increased presence in terrorist organizations for kinetic and supporting roles is a great challenge for academic analysts, policy makers and counterterrorism professionals (Howard, 2011) for several reasons. The main methodological and ethical issue this present study faces was the secrecy that lies at the heart of the organizations where it was necessary to conduct investigations on Boko Haram’s female fighters. Boko Haram is first and foremost a sect, even before being a jihadist movement. Therefore, it cultivates and operates through secrecy. In addition, because of pressure from the national armies of the Chad Basin, the sect has made concealment and clandestine action an essential element of its strategy. The second methodological pitfall relates to conducting research on the military, where speech is reputed to be rare and at least disciplined (Deschaux-Beaume, 2011). The mastery of some “access codes” to the different fields allowed me to overcome the secrecy-related difficulties. The selection of the “correct” gatekeepers, who would

Jihad with a woman’s face  195 ensure that the researcher had access to the pertinent resources, for example, was decisive in conducting this research. Ensuring the anonymity of the participants was also paramount. Another methodological and ethical challenge of this research has been the global perception of Boko Haram. In effect, the perception of this type of movement is often clouded by the hatred people feel for the acts and values it embodies. As a result, traditional approaches consider “terrorism” as an illegitimate mode of action and, therefore, the researcher should not question those who implement this modus operandi because their discourse would be unhealthy and erroneous (Balzacq, 2016, p. 142). As far as this is concerned, this work is part of critical approaches to the study of terrorism as it gives a voice to the actors of the insurrection. The author’s view is that the frequentation of its object of analysis does not disturb, under normal conditions, the results of the scientific observation of the phenomenon. To understand the mentality of those considered terrorists, when possible, the researcher must meet them to collect much more than their speech. Burgat (2007, p. 16) noticed that “the unsaid is sometimes more important than the explicit, the allusive more significant than the statement”. Furthermore, at this level, the researcher must make the first effort over himself, especially if he belongs to a society that is a victim of terrorist acts. The challenge for the researcher on Boko Haram consists in what Audouin-Rouzeau (2020) calls “the prior rejection of any demonization”. One may argue that a male researcher, who identify himself as Christian, may have legitimacy issues when it comes to writing about the experience of female fighters within an Islamic context. Historically, men’s narrative of female violence is usually demeaning, misogynistic or ambivalent. Therefore, the challenge for this research is to talk about women “who do not use speech as their primary mode of expression” in a context where stories about them often define them (Ashby, 2011). Moreover, as Alexievich (2016) points out, women must be more present in war narratives: They must defend their history, which would not be a female history of war: “Everything we know, however, about war, has been told to us by men. We are prisoners of ‘masculine’ images and ‘masculine’ sensations of wars”. However, this research is coming from a scientific framework and is based on firsthand experience and narratives of some of these female fighters themselves. It is a question of honoring the dialogical contract between myself as the researcher and those who agreed to speak. This chapter relies on primary sources, including interviews in prison with prominent counterinsurgency actors and eight former suicide bombers arrested before or during the attacks. A dozen “demobilized Boko Haram fighters” who benefit from the voluntary return program initiated by the Cameroonian authorities were also interviewed. After analyzing the various contents, the obtained data were cross-checked during surveys with local communities and through the consultation of some administrative and military archives in Cameroon between 2014 and 2021. The various biases that might arise from the status of the certain sources mobilized have also been considered. There are certain limitations of this research. First, the people interviewed as part of this research do not constitute a representative sample of the female

196  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict fighters and “human bombs” mobilized in the context of Boko Haram operations in Cameroon. Moreover, their narratives may be biased, because, as “losers” whose action has failed, their reasonings are probably different from those whose attacks succeeded due to luck or their more persistent determination (Pedahzur, 2005, p. 138). However, those women remain a source of firsthand and first-rate information, provided that the researcher considers the possible biases that their status may induce. Thus, some of these women may represent themselves as victims because of their imprisonment, following a process of disempowerment highlighted by Mats Utas (2005) through his concept of “victimcy”.10 From an ethical standpoint, the interviews were voluntary, and anonymity was guaranteed to the informants. In addition, no form of compensation was offered to the contacts to ensure that their participation remains voluntary and not clouded by any material gain. Theoretical perspective

Feminist conceptualizations of violence strongly influence this chapter, as they offer a good perspective by observing and connecting the micro and the macro level of violence production. Traditionally, there are four general and not mutually exclusive approaches to gendered terrorism: The positivist approach addresses the composition rather than the motivation and considers gender as a variable among others. Another is the instrumentalist approach, which assesses the impact of traditional gender norms on the role of women and men in terrorist organizations. The third approach is related to gendered motivations, particularly the ideological, cultural, economic and social factors that influence women’s involvement in terrorist groups. The fourth is the feminist methodology, which focuses on the structural factors within societies (Phelan, 2020). This research, however, emancipates itself from hegemonic feminism (Spivak, 1985) and the “universalism” of White and Western feminism (Dechaufour, 2008). It is part of a postcolonial approach to feminism that, among others, applied by such people as Fatima Mernissi (1975) or Deniz Kandiyoti (1996), deconstructs the orientalist vision of Muslim women perceived as total victims of the patriarchal order. However, above all, this work differs from the criminalizing, disempowering, infantilizing and victimizing approaches to the mobilization of women in jihadist groups. Indeed, the contempt and hatred of terrorists lead to not considering their modes of action as part of the war and, consequently, denying them the status of soldiers (Lynn, 2018). It is thus a question of denying them the privilege of combatant and the protection of the Fourth Geneva Convention (Baudrillard and Derrida, 2015). Following this logic, combatant status is rarely recognized for women who act within non-state armed groups. Female suicide bombers’ involvement in suicide bombing is usually regarded as abnormal. Most studies on this phenomenon are based on the Western, patriarchal, orientalist and Western feminist cultural and theoretical approach, which labels the concerned women as victims. Women’s participation in warfare and terrorism is perceived as a disruption to their stereotypical representations (Sjoberg, Cooke and Neal, 2011). Humanitarian

Jihad with a woman’s face  197 discourse highlights women’s vulnerability in conflict, obscuring deeper dynamics and diminishing opportunities for action (Kinne, 2015). This work is also emancipated from approaches that focus on women’s mental state, their physicality, their sexuality and their victimization by “backward” cultures. These approaches insist on their desire for revenge when male family members are drafted into the military, killed or arrested (Shirazi, 2010). These approaches undermine these women’s vital roles and, paradoxically, overlook their identity as violent actors (Editorial Note, 2017). Women’s motivations are generally seen as personal, whereas men’s are political and ideological since they are dedicated to a cause (Banks, 2019). In contrast, terror groups tend to project those women as mythical heroes (Rajan, 2011). This work does not exclude the hypothesis of mobilization of Boko Haram’s female fighters as a joint contribution to the struggle for an Islamic state in Northern Nigeria, for example. In some ways, taking up arms allows women to show real courage on an equal footing with men. Historically, and regardless of the space considered, women have shown that they can wield violence that most civilizations attribute to men. Some of these women could have affirmed, weapons in hand, that they have their place in the war fights whose stakes concern their entire society. This mobilization can constitute, in many ways, a refusal of subordination. Women and Boko Haram’s strategy in Cameroon Women’s participation in terrorist organizations is usually classified into two categories: Primarily, they are propagandists, recruiters, fighters and suicide bombers. They also play secondary roles as mothers and wives (Editorial Note, 2017). Seran de Leede (2018) noted that women play a complementary role to men. Their involvement is not a new phenomenon, but since the 2000s, with the rise of jihadi groups such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State, their numbers have increased on various battlefields. An analysis of the trajectories and personal histories of Boko Haram’s members in Cameroon shows a gender division of jihadi work. Boko Haram’s female fighters

Zenn and Pearson (2014) suggest that “Boko Haram’s ideology casts men in hypermasculine combat roles”. For Hilary Matfess (2017), “female fighters are not a defining feature of Boko Haram”, even though she admits having noticed “apocryphal tales” of women fighting for Boko Haram. The norm is the involvement of women in Boko Haram’s terror campaign. However, the reality from the Cameroonian field of the insurgency is that women and teenagers have participated in major Boko Haram attacks on army posts. They have been used sometimes as human shields. It was the case in October 2014 when Boko Haram tried to take over the military post of Ashigashia. The jihadists had put in front of them women and children.11 Women played a more active role in an ambush against a convoy of Cameroonian army liaison vehicles between Amchidé and Limani on 17 December 2014. During this operation,

198  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict women and children were shouting as a way of demoralizing the opponent, and the primary maneuver of the insurgents was supported by two armored vehicles that had remained in retreat. Some women participated directly in the fighting, while others were tasked with picking up the wounded and bodies of deceased fighters.12 It should be noted that the women were trained in firearms and archery (Abatan and Sangaré, 2021). Boko Haram’s female fighters also took part in the attack against the Rapid Intervention Battalion barracks in Limani and Amchidé. Those who were not armed were responsible for collecting the wounded and the dead, because one of the characteristics of insurgent war physicality is that the body of the mujahidun is not left on the battlefield, except in cases of force majeure. Other women were also tasked with picking up weapons from dead or wounded fighters, whether insurgents or Cameroonian soldiers. Women and support service for Boko Haram

Historically, women in jihad mainly assume supportive roles. They work on propagating jihadist ideology; recruiting; raising funds; and transporting goods, messages and weapons. But some plan and execute suicide attacks, for example (De Leede, 2018). Women’s involvement in Boko Haram operations in Cameroon stems from operational imperatives, including ensuring some logistics and the passage of checkpoints for operational purposes. Indeed, a conservative and traditional conception of the distribution of roles between the sexes facilitates the infiltration of women perceived as less dangerous (Bourgois and Hewlett, 2012). They can therefore hide weapons and explosives under their garments (Warner and Matfess, 2017) and in bags of corn flour. However, the part of logistics where they are most active is the supply of food that they buy in local markets for Boko Haram fighters. Their presence in the supply chain is due to their comparative ease with mobility, especially when men are at risk of arrest whereas women are not due to their perceived lack of danger. Women supply Boko Haram with loincloths, shoes, drugs, kitchen utensils, salt, rice, oil and shoes. After purchasing, they deliver or bury them at a specific place they indicate to the sponsors. These sponsors then pick up the goods in the middle of the night.13 Yata was one of Boko Haram’s female logisticians. She spent eight years within Boko Haram with her husband. After he died, she remained with Boko Haram and settled in Djimini. She had become one of the many women who worked to supply Boko Haram. She was arrested in 2016 by the Cameroonian army. In addition to supplies, women are essential in concealing goods looted by Boko Haram, such as goats, mattresses and motorcycles. The two activities are linked because the sales proceeds are used to buy food and fuel for the insurgents. One of these women interviewed in prison says that until September 2016, she would refuel in black markets, the most famous of which was a night market located in a vast field of onions. They mainly bought plates, goats, mattresses, motorcycles, millet and beans. The insurgency has thus strengthened a parallel economy of the concealment of looting products.

Jihad with a woman’s face  199 The lure of profit and the difficulties of daily life also forced women to become logisticians of the Islamist sect from whom they received money to make purchases, thus drawing subsidies to feed their families. The attraction was even more significant as the sect bought the produce intended for its fighters at high prices. In the same vein, women gradually play a leading role in acquiring chemical precursors and batteries for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) such as fertilizers. They often deliver the products to Boko Haram on the farms, but sometimes the insurgents collect their purchases at night in the villages by bike. However, the primary delivery method is to leave early in the morning, around 5 a.m., when the soldiers leave the checkpoints to pass the baton to the vigilance committees.14 In recent months, many women have emerged from the underground, very often at the request of their husbands with whom they keep in touch. The network of some local telephone operators goes beyond the borders, and the women oversee buying phone credit for their relatives. The Cameroonian army has become aware of women’s roles in surrendering their husbands.15 Therefore, they play an essential role in the DDR program (disarmament, demobilization and reintegration) as intermediaries. Boko Haram’s suicide bombings: The weaponization of female bodies

Within jihadist groups, the primary combat function performed by women is to become human bombs (Horne, 2018). Warfare has two dimensions: the physical and the psychological (which Clausewitz calls “moral factors”). One of the common places of women’s participation in warfare is that they are deemed to compensate for their physical weakness with their moral abilities. Before the split between JAS and ISWAP, one of the main specialties of Boko Haram was its use of women and children as suicide bombers. Indeed, the Islamist sect holds to date the world record of the group that has deployed the most women for suicide attacks. The leadership of the Islamist sect has undeniably subverted the norms relating to women’s struggle: The context is precisely favorable to this instrumental use of women (Warner and Matfess, 2017). In Cameroon, between 2015 and 2020, Boko Haram perpetrated 162 suicide attacks, with 463 dead and 669 wounded. Women and girls under 13 carried out at least 104 attacks, killing 263 people and injuring 565.16 This participation of women could be more significant since the authorities could not identify the gender of 29 suicide bombers because of bodily damage caused by the explosions. On 30 July 2015, in a village called Makalingay, the Cameroonian army arrested two female suicide bombers, Zena and Maryam, aged 23 and 19, respectively. Between 2015 and 2021, the army and the vigilante groups arrested many other females suicide bombers. Beyond women, Boko Haram regularly mobilizes teenagers for its suicide operations. A 2016 UNICEF Report (2016) revealed that one-fifth of the sect’s suicide bombers were children, three-quarters of whom were girls. Boko Haram extensively uses young children in suicide bombings to the extent that the local population has sometimes killed children suspected of wearing an explosive belt (Markovic, 2018). The latter mainly target civilian infrastructures.

200  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict For example, on 31 October 2017, a girl blew herself up in the middle of a group of children playing, killing five and injuring two others. Also, a teenage girl tried to attack the Rapid Intervention Battalion camp in Waza, in the department of Logone-et-Chari, in 2015. Post-attack analyses make it possible to account for those suicide bombers, acting very often in pairs or trios. After arriving in the selected town, they would move around the target and choose the ideal timing. In the case of the Fotokol attack in 2015, the main target seems to have been a bar where Cameroonian and Chadian police, gendarmes and the military used to drink. The absence of the military at this bar, called Quartier Général, had pushed the two to review their plan. After consulting with her partner, the first suicide bomber blew up her charge at a mall. The second one activated her explosive charge at the entrance of the Rapid Intervention Battalion base. The two explosions killed 14 people: 10 civilians, 2 soldiers (a Cameroonian and a Chadian) and the 2 suicide bombers themselves. There were also 14 wounded: 7 military personnel and 7 civilians. In addition to being human bombs, women are vital in preparing for attacks, first as psychological trainers and second as spies gathering intelligence. Women also play an essential role in intelligence and recognition of targets. Tchellou, for example, was responsible for receiving the suicide bombers in Djimini, helping them recognize their targets in Kolofata and the surrounding area before they committed action. Tchellou says she was trained as a suicide bomber during her third year in Sambisa, Boko Haram’s main sanctuary, until 2016. She joined the sect in 2011 with her entire family. When she was about to complete her training, she expressed the wish to raise her children. Her request granted, and she was instructed to move to the Nigerian border village of Djimini, where she was to receive the suicide bombers and transport them into Cameroon. The why and the how: Women’s own accounts on their careers in Boko Haram The interviews with women Boko Haram fighters focus on the arrangements for joining the jihadist group and the reasons for their mobilization in armed military action. The arrangements for entry into radicality

Interviews with former Boko Haram members in prison and in communities in Cameroon reveal voluntary recruitment cases as well as numerous forced recruitments. Most of the female fighters and logisticians of Boko Haram I interviewed were forced to join the Islamic sect. It was the case of three women abducted by Boko Haram during the Bama attack. One of them was the wife of a soldier deployed in Maiduguri at the time of the insurgent attack. She had to convert to Islam during her stay in Sambisa, where she was married to a Boko Haram zone commander with whom she had a child. She was trained in weapons and took part in Boko Haram’s attacks in Nigeria and Cameroon after the death of her husband.

Jihad with a woman’s face  201 Apart from this example, the forced recruitment of women has sometimes followed intimidation campaigns, including beheadings, burning of villages and targeted killings. Many teenagers who were kidnapped during the Boko Haram attacks on Cameroonian villages later committed suicide attacks. The children who were mobilized in suicide attacks in Cameroon were, for the most part, abducted and then indoctrinated. The Sun reports on the case of a teenager named Amina who was kidnapped and indoctrinated, then sent to the field to commit a suicide attack with another teenager by Boko Haram. They were given 20 Naira (about 64 cents) for a meal: “They said if we press the button, the bomb will explode and we will automatically go to heaven” (Warner and Matfess, 2017, p. 24). In addition to these forced recruitments, Cameroonian parents sometimes received money from Boko Haram recruiters to send their children to jihad. In addition to these paid recruitments, donating children for jihad was one modality of allegiance for families or villages. In case of refusal, the said village was burned, and the averters were murdered (Cohen, 2015, p. 83). Some women were recruited while wandering, following raids on their villages. Zeinab, for example, had fled following a Boko Haram attack. After several days of wandering, she was picked up by a Boko Haram imam living in a village called Iza.17 This imam housed and fed her for three months. After receiving ideological training, she was turned into a human bomb and was deployed for a suicide attack in Cameroon in July 2015. The Cameroonian army arrested her with her partner, Maryam, in Makalingay. While most of the women within Boko Haram were there involuntarily and by force, there were a few who joined ranks of their own volition. Unlike Zeinab, Maryam, for instance, joined Boko Haram voluntarily. As with some women interviewed, her enlistment was a deliberate and rational choice. Maryam, 18, decided to join Boko Haram in Kelani, in the Sambissa forest, to conduct Quranic studies after the death of her husband.18 The Quranic teacher who trained Maryam was the same one who trained Zeinab in Iza. Voluntary commitment is usually associated with virtues such as courage, resolve, endurance, fidelity and a sense of sacrifice. Unlike the mercenary who fights not to starve to death and sells himself to the highest bidder, the volunteer asserts his free will, his desire to dominate his destiny rather than suffer it. He also affirms attachment to the nation and his contempt for death (Mazural, 2018). Thus, in the Lake Chad Basin, few women have chosen voluntary enlistment as a gift of their person for the triumph of the cause defended by Boko Haram. Their action is a gift of self for others: “To sacrifice oneself before the object of one’s self-denial and to ‘consecrate’ one’s life to it, at one’s expense, an attitude that forces admiration and sacralizes it” (Nicolas, 1996, p. 116). The description of the selection processes of Boko Haram suicide bombers highlights the voluntary dimension of the act of self-giving for some women. In Sambisa, for example, after the daily sermons, Boko Haram’s chief imam used to ask the audience if there were volunteers to “go to heaven doing God’s work”.19 The volunteers had to be healthy and look good. Successful candidates were separated from the group and received additional training that emphasized the virtues of jihad

202  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict and martyrdom. They also received rudimentary training in French and English to interact with the police or army forces at checkpoints. Moreover, this ability to adapt to the local context conditioned their selection for attacks in Cameroon. Beyond voluntary enlistment, many of the women interviewed, whether logisticians or human bombs, joined the insurgents through the bonds of marriage. For example, Fadi, a Boko Haram logistician, was given in marriage by her grandmother to a Boko Haram fighter in Goshe in 2015. Another woman I interviewed in Kolofata in July 2016 said: I met my husband in Blamadéri ten years ago. We had three children, and while I was pregnant with the fourth two years ago, he fled and went to Kumshe to join another woman. A year later, he came and forcibly took me to Kumshe with the children. He came alone on a motorcycle and with a weapon. Family is one of the main reasons that led to the enlistment of many women in Boko Haram. This is the case in the following example: A family, where the wife was responsible for conditioning the suicide bombers, her husband had been assigned to the chore of firewood and her sons had been killed in combat. In addition, the family’s two daughters had married Boko Haram fighters. Some women arrested by the Cameroonian army had a long history in the sect. Yata, for example, joined the insurgents eight years ago at the beginning of the movement. After her husband’s death, she remained in Boko Haram and moved to Djimini, providing Boko Haram’s logistics to feed her children. She had become one of the many women who worked to supply and collect the proceeds of Boko Haram’s looting. In September 2014, for example, three women, one of whom was pregnant, were attacked by the local population in Fotokol, who accused them of supplying the Boko Haram cell in Gambaru with food.20 The reasons for their involvement in suicide bombing

Some governments and scholars explain women’s involvement in terrorist organizations not by structural problems but by individual reasons (Sjoberg, Cooke and Neal, 2011). Women are perceived as victims whom Islamic terrorists exploit for strategic and tactical purposes (Editorial Note, 2017). Recently, some academic research has questioned that conclusion, arguing that women’s motivations are not entirely different from those of their male relatives (Sjoberg, Cooke and Neal, 2011). Women’s involvement in a terrorist group is part of the agency, the way they navigate their social environment by adopting various tactics and potentially thriving in that environment (Wood, 2019). Gentry and Sjoberg (2016) have shown that women terrorists act “inside a matrix of constraints, social expectations, and political pressures which are a part of the constitution of their decisionmaking process, rather than just an influence on it”. Not all women’s experiences relating to Boko Haram are victimizing and traumatizing; some see the insurgency as a means of advancing their agenda. As noted by Matfess (2017), portraying

Jihad with a woman’s face  203 women as only passive victims of Boko Haram rob them of their agency. Some of them joined Boko Haram, Matfess maintains, because of the systemic structural violence of the Nigerian state against women and as a means of gaining some “benefits”. Logistical and operational considerations generally explain the mobilization of women for Boko Haram’s activities in a context marked by restrictions on the mobility of people and goods, the state of emergency, the mobilization of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) as well as the massive arrest of men during cordon-and-search operations (Zenn and Pearson, 2014). Other works, such as those of Bloom and Matfess (2016), Warner and Matfess (2017) and Markovic (2018), are focused on the aspect of “victimization” in the involvement of women and girls in Boko Haram suicide attacks mainly in Nigeria. Markovic, for example, sees the attacks as a way for women to escape rape or forced marriage (Markovic, 2018). There is some truth to each of these explanations. However, monocausal explanations do not consider or articulate the strategic, tactical, social and sometimes individual aspects of mobilizing women for Boko Haram attacks. At the individual level, women’s involvement covers extremely diverse realities, ranging from self-sacrifice and reaffirming the faith, to the logic of spousal homicide. On this last aspect, there are few cases where a man sends his wife to blow herself up in a suicide attack. In the same vein, beyond the few cases of voluntary recruitment, women who are usually presented as “martyrs” by the jihadists are victims of forced recruitment, indoctrination, use of narcotics and esoteric practices, and bowing down to authority. On a social level, female involvement in Boko Haram’s suicide bombing covers some constraints linked to life under the yoke of a sect and the double brutalization of the concerned societies, social conditions and the social glorification of martyrdom. On the strategic level, finally, the practice of female suicide bombing can be seen, in certain aspects, as valuing women in a context of joint contribution to the struggle (Sumo Tayo, 2021) and a modality of contesting the state matrix of the warfare and the rejection of the “western way of war” (Hanson, 2009). Some of the women interviewed made it clear that it was their own acceptance that made it possible to carry out attacks. This acceptance was tied to the idea of self-sacrifice for the triumph of the cause defended or of offering one’s life as a testimony to one’s faith. The conviction of some of the interviewed women that they were carrying out the will of God was clear during the interviews. One of them claims to have accepted the mission to defend and spread Islam: “I accepted this mission to allow Islam to grow”.21 For another, it is a question of “killing disbelievers who refuse Allah”.22 Beyond the conviction of doing the divine will, most women interviewed hoped for postmortem benefits. One of them said bluntly: “When you shed blood for religion, it is a good thing, and you go straight to heaven”. These people are therefore more likely to commit these acts because they believe in the benefits attached to their actions. In some ways, the contribution of these women is a gift of self for others.23 It is a solid but banal political relationship in which a member of a community sacrifices his life for the survival of his group. The martyrdom of women, in this context, is part of what Guy Nicolas (1996)

204  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict considers a “founding political gesture”, which is part of “ultimate nation-building mobilizations”. A historical analysis of Boko Haram’s female suicide bombers in Cameroon shows that the first generation, between 2014 and 2015, was ideologically well trained. They were very determined and did not need to be supervised by a sniper to act. The female human bomb was equipped with a switch she had to operate herself. She was the one to determine the choice of target and the timing of the explosion. In the end, only the determined and highly motivated women exploded their charges. However, since 2016, women have been almost systematically supervised by snipers responsible for shooting them if they do not act themselves. Quite regularly, however, these women manage to surrender to the Cameroonian military. The willingness to please their mentor emerges from many of the interviews carried out with these women. Based on Zeinab’s account, for example, one can see in her decision to take action as a sign of devotion and gratitude to her Quranic teacher: “I did not refuse to accomplish this mission because it is the work of God that we are going to do and I could not disobey Mallam Ibrahim because he teaches me the Quran, lodges me and feeds me”.24 Thus, in addition to being presented as an act of devotion, the mobilization of some women for the Boko Haram suicide attacks in Cameroon may derive from a logic of obedience to the authority of the mentor, the Quranic teacher or simply a benefactor whose order and words legitimize women’s actions. For some women, their precarious marital status contributes to their martyrdom. One case reported by the Cameroonian press in 2016 illustrates this situation. Kaka Gaza, a Cameroonian native of Kerawa, was married to a Boko Haram emir in Goshe. She was responsible for preparing and transporting suicide bombers in Cameroonian territory, including Mozogo, Ashigashia and Kolofata. Her husband was the head of the leading suicide preparation center, which had a hundred “students”. Kaka Gaza’s fate changed the day her husband fell in love with a suicide candidate and married her. She then lost her status as a favorite; worse yet, her husband enjoined sending her to blow herself up in Cameroon. She was sent with another woman. Dropped off at night in the targeted location, she initially pretended to be sick and surrendered to the local self-defense group members. Her accomplice fled but was later caught after she threw away the charge she was carrying.25 Thus, the mobilization of some women for the suicide attacks of Boko Haram hides the logic of spousal homicide. Conclusion This chapter focused on female fighters in Boko Haram, the forms and modalities of their participation in warfare, their motivations and the recruitment process. The results show two concurrent processes: Women’s direct participation in combat and the sexual division of military work, with specific forms of gender juxtaposition. By taking part, under extreme conditions, in significant attacks against army posts in Cameroon, Boko Haram’s female fighters have performed hypermale combat roles, thus showing skills usually perceived as masculine. They are also

Jihad with a woman’s face  205 involved in intelligence and support activities, tasks connoted as feminine, requiring supposed feminine skills. This chapter also highlighted the weaponization of female bodies by Boko Haram. The chapter has shown that even in highly conservative groups that have rigidly gendered representations and social practices, strategic, social and individual considerations influence women’s participation in warfare. Therefore, it is less the sex than the context favoring the gendered division of war labor. Giving a voice to the concerned women can make it possible to emancipate oneself from victimizing or glorifying discourses on their mobilization for violent action. Boko Haram included women into their folds to weaponize their femininity. But there are also a few cases where women choose to self-sacrifice for the survival of their communities or for the triumph of the cause they defend. Some of them are victims, but others are perpetrators of violence. Policy makers should therefore consider this dimension to deal with women’s participation in warfare. Notes 1 Boko Haram is a jihadist group of Nigerian origin that is also present in other countries of the Lake Chad Basin, including Cameroon, Niger and Chad. The official name of this Islamist group is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad (JAS), which means “Sunni group for preaching and jihad”. However, state actors and the media have given it the name “Boko Haram”, which is usually translated as “Western education is a sin”. Since 2016, this jihadist movement has been divided into two groups: The historic channel, which has kept the name JAS, and the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP). Today, the Boko Haram label is a conceptual shortcut that hosts extremely diverse realities. But for practical reasons and unless otherwise indicated, I will use the name Boko Haram to refer to the jihadist movement in the Lake Chad Basin and the dynamics that derive from it. 2 This work does not claim to be exhaustive and avoids generalizations, and it deals with the cases of a few women interviewed. 3 During the European antiquity, women were at the center of wars as causes, stakes and victims (Fabre-Serris and Keith, 2015). 4 There is a global phenomenon of excluding women from warfare, and even when they were included, as in the case of the ancient Greek Amazons, it was with a price: Removing a breast, which could be read as metaphorically removing a part of their femininity (Boulogne, 2008; Poirson, 2016). In Africa, the Amazons of the king of Abomey in present-day Benin constituted an elite army of several thousand women who had opposed the French conquest of their territory between 1892 and 1894 (Porte, 2015). 5 Feminization is understood here as a process of integration of women and gradual reduction of male strongholds within the armies. At the institutional level, it is reflected, among other things, in the promotion of professional equality between men and women and the integration of women into combat functions (Boutron and Weber, 2022). 6 Agence camerounaise de presse (ACAP), Yaoundé, n° du 10 Novembre 1969, p. 12. 7 The chapters by Charlotte Mei Yee Chin (Chapter 11) and Britt Ziolkowski (Chapter 9) in this volume demonstrate further aspects of this issue with regard to jihadist groups in the Philippines and Palestine, respectively. 8 Within Islam, the Sunni movement is divided into several Muslim law schools that recognize each other as truthful. The most rigorous of these is the Hanbali school, which is based on a literal reading of the Qur’an. Wahhabism is part of the Hanbali school. This view constitutes a new modality of the successive radicalization of the Hanbali school. Wahhabism thus bears the original authorship of the Salafist doctrine, which advocates

206  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict a rigorous vision of Islam and the return of the original Islam, redacted from the bidaa, innovations that, from their point of view, pervert the religion (Migaux, 2008). This religious view has spread throughout the world, supported by petrodollars. It promotes, among other things, a criminal law based on corporal punishment and rigorism in social relations. Salafist movements are generally very conservative on the issue of the status of women. 9 In classical Islamic literature, there are records of women who fought during early Islamic battles. It is the case with Umm Ummarah, for example, who fought at the battle of Uhud and at least five other battles (De Leede, 2018). 10 “Victimcy” refers to a form of self-representation by which women reveal a tactical agency to survive under disempowering circumstances. It consists of self-staging oneself as a war victim. 11 Interviews with officers of the Rapid Intervention Battalion, Maroua and Kolofata, June 2015. 12 Ministry of Defense, Report on the attack on a Cameroonian army convoy. 13 Interview with Gosheda Paul, former Boko Haram bombmaker, Kolofata, August 2021. 14 Interview with Abbakura, former Boko Haram area commander (Munzir), Kolofata, August 2021. 15 The reasons for their surrender are multiple and complex. They could be the subject of another paper, which would have little to do with the problem of this chapter. It is more of a paradigm shift: Women from warriors to peacemakers. 16 These figures come from a personal database of incidents involving Boko Haram since 2013. It is regularly updated with data from security sources and the local press. 17 Interviews with soldiers who requested anonymity, Maroua, July 2017. This information was confirmed by the person concerned during the hearings at the Yaoundé military court. 18 Interviews with soldiers who conducted her interrogation, Maroua, July 2018. 19 Interviews with former Boko Haram captives, Maroua, March 2015. This information was confirmed by security sources and two former Boko Haram suicide bombers interviewed in prison in Maroua in March and June 2017. 20 Cameroonian army unclassified report, October 15, 2014. 21 Interviews with a former suicide bomber, Maroua prison, July and August 2018. 22 Interviews with a former suicide bomber, Maroua prison, July and August 2018. 23 This idea of murder for the survival of her group of belonging is also present in the Book of Judith, in which this woman beheads Holofernes, a general of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and saves Israel from an invasion. She poses what she describes as “an action whose memory will reach the sons of our race, from generation to generation” (Book of Judith, 8:32). The idea here is of saving her people by using her charms. Even within Islam, martyrdom is an act of devotion and sacrifice. It refers to the idea of testimony: Shaheed is someone who testifies his faith by the gift of his life (de Courcelles, 2010). 24 This statement was made by the person concerned during the hearings at the Yaoundé military court. 25 Le Jour, February 3, 2016.

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210  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict Roberts, Marie Louise (2018) ‘La guerre est-elle seulement une affaire d’hommes?’ [Is war only a matter of men?], in Cabanes, Bruno (ed.) Une histoire de la guerre: Du xixe siècle à nos jours. Paris: Seuil, pp. 316–326. Shirazi, Faegheh (2010) Muslim women in war and crisis: Representation and reality. Austin: University of Texas Press. Sjoberg, Laura and Gentry, Caron E. (2007) Mothers, monsters, whores: Women’s violence in global politics. London: Zed Books. Sjoberg, Laura, Cooke, Grace and Neal, Stacy Reiter (2011) ‘Introduction: Women, gender and terrorism’, in Sjoberg, Laura and Caron E. Gentry (eds.) Women, gender, and terrorism. Athens/London: University of Georgia Press, pp. 1–25. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1985) ‘The Rani of Sirmur: An essay in reading the archives’, History and Theory, 24(3), pp. 247–272. Sumo Tayo, Aimé Raoul (2021) ‘Sous le masque du martyr: Femmes et violences autosacrificielles de Boko Haram au Cameroun’ [Under the mask of martyrdom: Women and self-sacrificial violence of Boko Haram in Cameroon], Réliogiologiques, 41, pp. 89–120. Tabet, Paola (1979) ‘Les mains, les outils, les armes’ [Hands, tools, weapons], L’Homme, 19, pp. 3–4. Teboul, James (2015) ‘Un choix professionnel ‘atypique’? Étude du parcours biographique de quelques jeunes femmes candidates à l’engagement militaire’ [An “atypical” professional choice?: A study of the biographical journey of a few young women candidates for military enlistment], in Weber, Claude (ed.) Les femmes militaires. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes (PUR), p. 69. Trévidic, Marc (2014) Terrorisme: Les 7 piliers de la déraison [Terrorism: The 7 pillars of unreason]. Paris: JC Lattès. Utas, Mats (2005) ‘Victimcy, girlfriending, soldiering: Tactic agency in a young woman’s social navigation of the Liberian war zone’. Anthropological Quarterly, 78(2), pp. 403–430. Warner, J. and Matfess, Hilary (2017) Exploding stereotypes: The unexpected operational and demographic characteristics of Boko Haram’s suicide bombers. West Point: Report, Combatting Terrorism Center, West Point, United States Military Academy. Weber, Claude (2015) Les femmes militaires [Military women]. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes (PUR). Wood, Reed M. (2019) Female fighters: Why rebel groups recruit women for war. New York: Columbia University Press. Zenn, Jacob and Pearson, Elizabeth (2014) ‘Women, gender and the evolving tactics of Boko Haram’, Contemporary Voices: St Andrews Journal of International Relations, 5(1). http://doi​.org​/10​.15664​/jtr​.828

11 Demythifying the caliphate Asymmetrical dependencies of radicalized women in jihadist groups in the Philippines Charlotte Mei Yee Chin

Introduction Although Daesh has continuously lost territory in the Middle East, the group gained immense global relevance and has massively increased its influence in Southeast Asia, particularly in Mindanao, the southern part of the Philippines. Southeast Asia is of great interest to the group due to its geopolitical position and the quarter of the world’s Muslim population living in the region. However, despite a growing number of women in Southeast Asia taking on crucial roles in jihadist groups as well as in armed conflict, there has been little systematic research on the role of female fighters in Southeast Asia to date. Therefore, this chapter analyzes dependencies of radicalized women in jihadist groups in the Philippines and focuses on the social context from which women “depart” to join these groups by addressing the highly topical question: Which asymmetrical dependencies and agency do women experience and exert in joining jihadist groups in the Philippines?1 Violent extremism in the Philippines is tightly linked to the country’s colonial history, which in turn informs the historical continuities of political Islam. While most of the Filipinos and Filipinas were converted to Christianity during this time, the Bangsamoro population, who lived mainly in Mindanao and were Muslim, did not convert; they resisted the Spanish and American colonial powers and were therefore affected by diverse forms of discrimination and marginalization, which persist to this day. This social, political and economic marginalization has not only resulted in violent conflicts, but it has also simultaneously served as breeding ground for radicalization of Daesh as well as other jihadist actors. The first section of the chapter gives a brief overview of the historical background of the country and subsequently describes the contemporary political situation focusing on peace processes between the Philippine nation-state and the two separatist groups, namely, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)2 and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).3 Today, various jihadist groups, partial successors of the MILF, are of particular importance thwarting peace efforts in Mindanao and rejecting the peace treaties between the Philippine government and MNLF/MILF. The danger these groups pose to the region is also illustrated by statistics, such as from the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), which ranked the Philippines among the top ten countries in the world for incidence of terrorist violence in 2020 (IEP, 2020, p. 8; Lao and Santiago Oreta, 2009, pp. 28–30; Liljas 2016). An increasing number of DOI:  10.4324/9781003326359-14

212  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict terrorist attacks in the previous years can be traced back to (trans)national cooperation with Daesh, the influence of female jihadis and migration flows of Daesh combatants to the Philippines. The chapter, hence, embeds local jihadist groups in the national context and shows how Daesh manifested itself in the region. A particular focus is placed on Daesh’s inclusion of women into their fold. Through an analysis of the siege of Marawi in 2017, it can be seen how Daesh has gained a strong foothold in the region, particularly through female fighters taking on various functions in these groups. The chapter describes Daesh’s growing influence in Mindanao and thereby examines the situation on the ground after the recapturing of the city by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Although the siege of Marawi would have been impossible without the massive influence of women, female jihadis are often seen as passive victims with no agency of their own and are thus often excluded from official discourses and narratives, which results in failure to see women as a security risk (Sandoval 2021). The chapter therefore elaborates on the roles and functions of women in Daesh as well as narratives based on gendered ideologies that have been employed to recruit women not only on social media platforms but also in the actual world on an unprecedented scale. While radicalization processes, motivations and reasons for women joining jihadist groups are manifold and must be analyzed individually, common push and pull factors are pointed out in the chapter. Subsequently, the focus is directed to the women in Mindanao and their incentives to join radical Islamist groups in the region. Especially the intersectional marginalization of Muslim women in the predominantly Christian Philippines on an individual and collective level has enforced marginalization and vulnerability, which have been instrumentalized by Daesh in return. Drawing on already existing patriarchal gender norms and promising women security from violence, the group has successfully generated broad female support in the Philippines, which also massively facilitated the group’s access to the region. In this respect, the chapter illustrates that the group’s ideology is enduring and (re)radicalization is possible as long as the corresponding push and pull factors are not efficiently eliminated, and that the background of female jihadists must, therefore, be analyzed accordingly. Despite all this, there has been little systematic research examining the role, motivations and participation of women in Daesh and its splinter groups in Southeast Asia. Especially in countries where little information on (former) female Daesh supporters is currently available, such as the Philippines, it is crucial to minimize this research gap. The chapter follows up and systematically elaborates on the motivations and participation of women in Daesh and its splinter groups while embedding radicalization processes in the historical, political and religious context of Islam in the Philippines. In doing so, it contributes to the development of strategies for evaluating Daesh and reaches a wide academic audience that can build on the expanded body of knowledge. The Bangsamoro Conflict in the (post)colonial Philippines The Philippines is marked by its multiplicity of conflicts in the South, particularly by the Bangsamoro-led conflict, which is one of the longest-running secessionist

Demythifying the caliphate  213 armed conflicts in the world and the most violent in the country since its independence in 1946 (Husin, 2009, p. 149). The origins of the conflict can be traced to the 16th century where the native Bangsamoro population resisted first the Spanish colonizers and later the American colonial power; the conflict is further exacerbated by the fact that the Bangsamoro people maintained their religious beliefs, namely Islam, contrary to most Filipinos who converted to Catholicism during this time (Liljas 2016; Vivod, n.d., p. 1). Resisting multiple colonial forces for nearly 400 years, the Bangsamoro population has faced marginalization at various levels; violent displacements, legalized land grabbing and laws furthering the discrimination of the Bangsamoro people resulted in the strong distrust between the Christian and the Bangsamoro/Lumad4 communities lasting to this day (Lao and Santiago Oreta, 2009, pp. 28–29; Ramakrishna, 2020, pp. 8–11; Vivod, n.d., p. 4). Moreover, after the country’s independence, discriminatory legislations once imposed by the US administration were seamlessly adopted and implemented by the postcolonial Philippine nation-state (Lao and Santiago Oreta, 2009, p. 29). According to the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, the Muslims and indigenous people of Mindanao were dispossessed, displaced and disempowered by the mid-20th century (2006). The marginalization of the Bangsamoro people today is further solidified by foreign multinational industries expanding their control of Mindanao’s economy sectors. Focusing on the production for global export rather than on local needs, the Bangsamoro’s practices of subsistence production were interrupted, massively expanding the income gap with the Christian settlers and pushing the Bangsamoro community to the “economic periphery” (Ramakrishna, 2020, p. 12). Struggling with the Christian-dominated state and economic as well as political discrimination for centuries eventually culminated with the Bangsamoro people demanding self-governance resulting in various militarized groups fighting over identity, land and cultural as well as economic factors. In the course of this, the MNLF was established in the 1960s (Lao and Santiago Oreta, 2009, p. 29; Brown, Toros and Parashar 2020, p. 34; Gloria, 2018; Melang, 2009, p. 143; Ramakrishna, 2020, p. 7). The long-lasting conflict resulted in the establishment of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in 1989 and a formal acceptance of the 1996 Final Peace Accord between the government and the MNLF. However, since the rebellion was mainly led by ethnonationalist secular leaders, a group of MNLF members fighting for an independent Islamic state arguing that Mindanao should not be governed in a way that is contrary to Islam, rejected the agreement and established the MILF in 1984 (Brown, Toros and Parashar, 2020, pp. 34–36; Acharya and Singh, 2009). There have been numerous attacks in Mindanao following the foundation of the MILF, for which the group has taken responsibility. Trying to address the internal armed conflict in Mindanao, the Philippine government initiated peace efforts with the MILF. The negotiations resulted in the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro5 (2014) and the passing of the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL)6 in 2018. While the ARRM7 was replaced by

214  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), the MNLF and MILF have become central actors in the implementation of the peace agreement (Banlaoi, 2020b, p. 105; CISAC 2019; Ramakrishna, 2020, pp. 37–44). Daesh in the Philippines Despite peace agreements between the Philippine government and MNLF/MILF, various splinter groups of the MILF have rejected the existing peace treaties and have demanded the establishment of a Southeast Asian wilayah8 instead (Brown, Toros and Parashar, 2020, p. 35; Duriesmith, 2020, p. 20). This clearly highlights that although various political, economic and military strategies have been employed to solve conflicts in the Bangsamoro region, the structural roots, specifically the contemporary marginalization of the Moro population, seem to go unaddressed. Since the region is additionally characterized by weak governance structures and a lack of state services, the country has been subject to various terrorist attacks throughout history (Lao and Santiago Oreta, p. 30; Gavilan, 2017; Ramakrishna, 2020, p. 12). Jihadist actors in Mindanao

The siege of Marawi in 2017 revealed the extent of the increasing jihadist and violent extremist activities in the region in the previous decades (CISAC 2019; Ramakrishna, 2020, p. 12; Reed and Piercey 2018). As Raghavan (2009, p. 21) states: In fact, it has been asserted that the threat posed by Asian groups is likely to grow significantly in the coming decade. In territorial Asia, as well as within its migrant and diaspora population, there are segments that sympathize with and support violence. In terms of scale, size and influence, they will be comparable to the Middle East threat groups in the degree of violence they perpetrate. Leading jihadist organizations in the Philippines, such as the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and the Maute group, as well as other Daesh-inspired actors, who have split from the MILF in the past, pose a security risk to the Philippines today. These groups range from large, organized and territorially bound organizations, such as the ASG, to small family-based groups of fighters, such as the Maute group formerly led by the matriarch Farhana Maute9 (Brown, Toros and Parashar, 2020, p. 35; Duriesmith, 2020, p. 20). In 2015, representatives of those groups swore a “unified” pledge of allegiance to Daesh and declared the southern Philippines a wilayah for Daesh, Daulah Islamiyah Wilayatul Mashriq10 (Banlaoi, 2020b, p. 108; Boyd, Henkin and Martin, 2020). The allegiance, coupled with massive migration flows of Daesh combatants to the Philippines and Daesh claiming credit for sieges of several towns as well as attacks carried out in Mindanao, highlight the group’s massive influence in the region (Cook and Vale, 2018, p. 38; Duriesmith, 2020, p. 20; Rumiyah, 2017a;

Demythifying the caliphate  215 Rumiyah, 2017b). Linking the groups’ local cultural and structural grievances to its global jihadist narrative, Daesh has successfully unified ethnically diverse groups in Western and Central Mindanao (Gunaratna, 2017, p. 3). By tying local issues – such as displacement, land dispossession, economic and political deprivation, and military abuse – to a worldwide struggle against “disbelief”, Daesh supposedly generated “solutions” at the collective level and successfully portrayed the Philippine government as the “oppressor of the Bangsamoro people” (Duriesmith, 2020, p. 22; Gunaratna, 2016). This significantly accelerated the group’s access to the region while at the same time solidifying the impression that jihadist actors only demand redress for the wrongs committed, which has, in return, legitimized the violence exercised as well as the presence of the groups in the region to broad parts of the population today (Banlaoi, 2020b, p. 108; Duriesmith, 2020, pp. 20–22; Melang, 2009, p. 143). The fight for Marawi The capture of Marawi city by Daesh-affiliated groups in May 2017 represented a massive setback for the country. Attempting to establish an “East Asia Wilayah” in the region, Marawi was the first city outside the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region to fall to Daesh (Ramakrishna, 2020, p. 46). However, political scientists, including Rommel C. Banlaoi (2020a), have argued that the occupation was also enabled by the Philippine government, which had neglected the presence of the group as well as the massive influence of women in the region despite clear warning signs over years. Groups such as al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) had already built capabilities for jihadist actors in the 1990s, and the Philippines faced increasing terrorist violence in the past decades as well as rising recruitment efforts of Daesh-inspired terrorist groups at a national scale (Banlaoi, 2020a, p. 1; Gunaratna, 2016; Santos, 2019a). Since 2014, it has become more pronounced that jihadist actors had recruited huge numbers of Filipinas and Filipinos through social media, madrasas, high schools and local universities. Besides recruiting a great number of fighters nationally, Daesh also disseminated propaganda material referring to the Philippines as a “new land of jihad” asking fighters to make hijra11 to Marawi, enabling massive migration flows from Daesh affiliates from all over the world to Mindanao (Allard, 2017; Banlaoi, 2020b, p. 118; Ingram, 2019; Ruiz, 2017). The aftermath of the siege of Marawi

The siege – involving local and international Daesh combatants, male and female, as well as the AFP – resulted in a death toll of more than 1000 individuals and the displacement of 350,000 people. Although the city was officially declared “liberated” in October 2017, the martial law imposed for the entire island of Mindanao by President Rodrigo Duterte was only lifted at the end of 2020 (Aspinwall, 2020; ‘Duterte declares’, 2017; ICG, 2018). While several factors contributed to the weakening of the jihadist groups in the region, such as the killing of Isnilon Hapilon,12 the leadership of the Maute group and several hundred other

216  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict insurgents, Daesh Philippines has not yet been fully dissolved. Consequently, remnants of the group continue to pose a significant security risk to the region, also in the post-Marawi period (Brown, Toros and Parashar, 2020, p. 38; Clamor, 2018, p. 1; Reed and Piercey 2018). Still staging terrorist activities and recruiting combatants for Daesh, radical Islamist groups – such as the ASG, BIFF and the Maute group – can undermine the implementation of the Bangsamoro Organic Law, which then may result in the inability to establish long-lasting peace in Mindanao (Banlaoi, 2020a, p. 3). Additionally, unresolved underlying grievances of displaced people (such as deaths of relatives; massive displacement; and prolonged challenges of reconstruction, recovery and rehabilitation) or violent state responses can further promote radicalization and serve as breeding grounds for violent extremist groups (Brown, Toros and Parashar, 2020, p. 38; Clamor, 2018, pp. 2–8). This underscores that recapturing Marawi does neither hinder the radicalization of local populations nor prevent the emergence of future jihadist actors. Women’s roles and function in Daesh Women have taken on significant roles, such as fighters, recruiters and logisticians in Daesh itself as well as in local Daesh-affiliated groups in the Philippines. Prevailing stereotypes of female jihadis, such as being apolitical and passive actors lacking any agency, have excluded them from governmental and media discourses and have made female jihadis the “perfect candidates to become suicide bombers” in radical Islamist groups (Santos, 2019a). This is based on the assumption, often prevalent in Western-oriented countries, that Islam is a woman-oppressing religion and that women with a Muslim background cannot have or pursue their own political interests (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2008, p. 114; Moghadam, 2002, pp. 1135–1136; Tønnessen, 2014, p. 2). This, however, has given advantages to jihadist groups, such as al-Qaeda, which already tactically engaged females suicide bombers in the 2000s. The role of women in covert operations or on the front lines of violent conflicts has since gained enormous relevance, especially with the establishment of Daesh (Pearson, 2016, p. 17). Although women were initially mainly located in private and domestic spheres and excluded from combat, their roles changed over time. Female jihadis have thereby challenged jihadi gender norms and have taken on more active and public roles in the group (Margolin and Winter, 2017, p. 25; Nuraniyah, 2018, p. 2). Especially with the dissolution of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria and the weakening of various jihadist groups, in Daesh entities in Southeast Asia as well, Daesh started mobilizing women and used them in armed struggle as fighters and suicide bombers. The transnational growing influence of female jihadis

Daesh differs significantly from other jihadist groups, such as al-Qaeda, since, unlike these groups, it attempts to establish a functioning transnational caliphate at a global scale. Drawing women and especially families to the caliphate – for

Demythifying the caliphate  217 instance by representing it as a place where pious women/families could belong – was of great importance to the so-called Islamic State to create a physical and social infrastructure. The hijra of thousands of women to Daesh heightened the visibility of women in public perception (Pearson and Winterbotham, 2017, pp. 60–62). While women were in fact prohibited from getting involved in acts of violence in the beginning, their role changed with Daesh’s territorial losses in Syria and Iraq (Dwyer and Rhoads, 2018, p. 12). In 2016, Daesh called on women to “engage in defensive” and to “take up arms in combative jihad”; by late 2017, the group had already made “jihad against the enemies” obligatory for females in its local newsletter An-Nab (Caravaggio and Davis, 2020, p. 3; Cook and Vale, 2018, p. 54; Margolin and Winter, 2017, pp. 24–27). Other internal Daesh documents – such as the online magazines Rumiyah and Dabiq – have glorified female combatants. These ideological apparatuses disseminated stories of women such as Sally Jones (alias Ummu Hussain al-Britani) and Umm Khalid al-Finlandiyya who provided inspiration and justification for female combatants, and they created support from like-minded individuals at the same time (Nuraniyah, 2018, p. 4; Santos, 2020). In addition to instrumentalizing female jihadis to recruit a greater number of women, schools – such as the Al-Zawra school – were established, which “prepare sisters for the battlefields for jihad” and particularly addressed women “interested in explosive belt and suicide bombing more than a white dress or a castle or clothing or furniture” (‘Cooking and killing’, 2018). While women received education and combat training – for instance, as snipers and suicide bombers – they were also trained in domestic work, first aid, Islam and Sharia law, social media, and computer programs for editing and designing propaganda materials (Kulze and Shiloach, 2014). The diversity of women’s roles in the caliphate consequently resulted in the proliferation of different occupations for women, such as recruiters, logisticians, propagandists, fundraisers and moral officers. Women were also responsible for strengthening transnational relations, for instance, through (re)marriages and being actively engaged in armed combat. In this respect, women were not only indispensable to Daesh’s state-building processes, but they also contributed massively to Daesh’s expansion efforts at an international level (Barrett, 2017, p. 22; Caravaggio and Davis, 2020, p. 5; Cook and Vale, 2018, p. 5; Duriesmith, 2020, p. 17). The exclusion from governmental and media discourses as well as a genuine underestimation of women as a security risk contributed to female jihadists assuming supporting roles even after the dissolution of the caliphate in the Middle East. For instance, by recruiting other females and transferring learned skills to them and/or to their children, the ideology and legacy of Daesh is continuously carried forward. Therefore, an increasing presence and influence of women in jihadist organizations is to be expected in future as well (Cook and Vale, 2018, pp. 27–55; Europol Public Information, 2020, p. 5; Harders, 2011, p. 144). Fostering women’s radicalization in virtual spaces

Daesh has recruited women to an unprecedented extent and has specifically targeted women online. The usage of modern communications technology and social

218  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict media platforms enabled women to overcome traditional barriers to join the group. This includes overcoming a lack of information, the official process of joining jihadist networks and the publicized roles of women. While women, for example, did not have to leave their domestic sphere to gain access to the group, they could escape gender segregations of real-world Islamist engagement. Also, the lengthy radicalization processes in the real world have been shortened by possible self-radicalization on the internet (Caravaggio and Davis, 2020, p. 3; Pearson, 2016, p. 17). Hence, the internet served as an important entry point and new space for female voices reaching new audiences at a global scale. Since female recruiters usually come from the same backgrounds as those they are targeting, they also understand the arguments that are most likely to appeal to them. This resulted in a radicalization of women and in the mobilization of females with no prior jihadi background and no knowledge about Islam (Nuraniyah, 2018, p. 4). Daesh narratives and recruiting material in the virtual space clearly assign gender-based roles and responsibilities that are portrayed as divine and unchangeable. For instance, while women were presented as weak, passive and helpless before the dissolution of the caliphate, men were portrayed as strong and powerful protectors. The humiliation, abuse and rape of Muslim women by Western “crusaders” and national armed forces is an especially reiterated element in Daesh’s discourses and metanarratives. While the image of the “aggressive male” produces the idea of a threatened passive “femininity”, it also conveys the impression that women’s virtue, religion and modesty need to be protected. Hence, faithful women imprisoned by “infidel governments” should be liberated (Harders, 2011, p. 141; Ingram, 2019). Men not participating in jihad are therefore depicted as unmanly and irreligious, which goes to show that feminization and gender performance are used to (1) push men to join jihadist groups and to take up arms, and (2) shame male deserters or inactive men (back) into armed jihad. Hence, gendered recruitment discourses – such as associating manhood with violence to strengthen male insecurities – have been instrumentalized and utilized by Daesh (Harders, 2011, p. 141; Ingram, 2019; Margolin and Winter, 2017, p. 25; The Carter Center, 2017, p. 2). Moreover, Muslims and Muslimas living in “Westernized” countries and not performing hijra are portrayed as infidels. Since they are strangers in these lands, migrating from dar al-harb to dar al-Islam to find refuge and support is regarded as the only way to practice Islam freely (Cliff and Naciri, 2020, p. VI; Europol Public Information, 2020, pp. 5–9). Additionally, Daesh’s female-targeted messaging has produced archetypes deployed as examples of how women should/should not behave as well as of how other women need to be understood. While roles such as supporters, mothers, sisters, wives and fighters were assigned to Daesh’s ingroup, the archetypes of corruptor and victim were associated with the out-group. Set in direct contrast to the corruptor, the supporter is the most common positive archetype. While the corruptor, being selfish, promiscuous and deceiving, represents women not fulfilling Daesh’s expectations of a “true” Muslim woman, the supporter performs hijra to Daesh-controlled territories to live under Daesh’s rule (Abdalla, 2018, pp. 31–35; Ingram, 2019). Creating hopes and “new perspectives”, the caliphate is depicted as a multinational community held together by Salafist

Demythifying the caliphate  219 Islam. Committing violence to reach dar al-Islam is therefore justified (Cliff and Naciri, 2020, p. VI). Likening the hijra to Prophet Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina during a time of prosecution has also revived the image of the early mujahidah, i.e., female combatants engaging in jihad. Women who physically fought alongside the prophet in those days are now used as symbols and role models for female jihadis. From 2015 onward, women began discussing online whether they were allowed to perform terror operations, thereby alluding to Daesh statements (Europol Public Information, 2020, p. 4; Margolin and Winter, 2017, pp. 24–26; Nuraniyah, 2018, p. 16). Coupling the example of the mujahidah with advantages, such as free access to education or positions – which have not been accessible for females in their respective communities – has conveyed a sense of female empowerment. At the same time, Daesh has portrayed itself as protector of women against defiling enemies and thereby successfully capitalized on feelings of marginalization, generating broad female support in the region of Southeast Asia (Caravaggio and Davis, 2020, pp. 6–7; True, 2020, p. 78). Female radicalization in the Philippines Southeast Asian societies are known for being less rigorously stratified with regard to gender relations, family arrangements and descent compared to countries of the Middle East. However, in the last decades – due to rising Islamization paired with the increase of conservative values – women’s agency has successively been limited in the sociopolitical and public spheres (Großmann, 2013; Schröter, 2013). Although the Philippines was ranked 17th out of 156 in the Global Gender Gap Report of 2021 and therefore represents a ray of hope considering the status of women in the region, the situation in Mindanao, and particularly in BARMM,13 deviates massively from the rest of the country (World Economic Forum, 2021, p. 18). Women of minority groups, such as Muslim women in the predominantly Christian Philippines, are especially affected by violent conflicts in the region. The intersectional oppression – in this case gender, religious belief and social discrimination – has led to marginalization, economic distress, human rights abuses and violence. Resulting feelings of political powerlessness, social uncertainty, and physical and mental health problems have entrenched marginalization and vulnerability in return (True, 2020). Daesh has drawn on these discriminatory patriarchal gender norms and promised women security from violence. In this regard, the group has manipulated and built upon existing gender stereotypes constructing new gendered narratives to further their own cause (Cliff and Naciri, 2020, p. VI). Incentives for females to join jihadist groups

Despite the general academic consensus that the individual motivation, context and length of radicalization vary, one can talk about four main phases: cognitive

220  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict opening, religious seeking, frame alignment and socialization. However, as radicalization processes differ for each individual and cannot be predicted by one variable alone, it is necessary to analyze these processes context-specifically (Nuraniyah, 2018, pp. 2–6). Although some gender-based factors of radicalization overlap, there are additional factors that may be particularly contributory to women’s radicalization. While Bloom (2015) describes these motives as “five Rs” (revenge, redemption, relationship, respect and rape), Cook and Vale (2018) analyze the main constituents in promoting radicalization of women by focusing on an intersection of various push factors reaching from grievances to foreign policy to feelings of discrimination and not belonging to a society. Here, they highlight that radicalization processes can be reinforced by pull factors, such as individual motivation, disappointment with moderate or rival extremist groups, and seeking independence and/ or adventures, as well as showing support for family members who are members of Daesh and/or other extremist groups (Bloom, 2015, p. 51; Cook and Vale, 2018, p. 26). Moreover, Wiktorowicz (2005) underlines the importance of a variety of psychological and community-based motivation, such as peer pressure. He elaborates that seekers usually join extremist groups through members of their social networks who are already in it. This makes it clear that radicalization needs to be analyzed and addressed accordingly at the corresponding regional, national and city levels (Wiktorowicz, 2005, p. 245). Drawing attention to the fact that social, political and economic marginalization of women as well as sexual and genderbased violence (SGBV) serve as incentives to join extremist groups, True’s and Pauls’s works complement the aforementioned findings (Pauls, 2020, pp. 9–15; True, 2020, p. 78). Consequently, radicalization of women happens over time and is an outcome of a combination of factors, including but not limited to political motivation, religious seeking, experience of discrimination, personal crisis, and socioeconomic and political grievances. However, revenge and other personal motives are particularly strong in conflict areas where whole societies suffer from violent oppression. The close link between the high number of terrorist attacks and an increasing number of cases of gender-based violence in Mindanao confirms these assumptions (Ingram, 2019; True, 2020, p. 91). Daesh has successfully presented itself as an alternative to the status quo, attracting especially women who are unable to change their circumstances by articulating protest or by solely exiting it. Promising these women protection and group support, offering them positions (in the military and police, for instance) and remunerating them, and thus supposedly conveying feelings of acceptance and reinforcing a sense of self-empowerment at the same time, radical Islamist actors instrumentalized women’s vulnerability and marginalization in the region to their advantage (Ingram, 2019; True, 2020, p. 78). Intersectional marginalization of Mindanao’s women

Individual forms of social bondage of marginalized women in the Philippines reflect the intersection of multiple forms of discrimination linked to the individual as well as

Demythifying the caliphate  221 to a collective level. While the personal level comprises factors such as gender, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and education, marginalization at the collective level is closely linked to the history, culture and religion of the Bangsamoro population (Banlaoi, 2020b; Dwyer and Rhoads, 2018, p. 6; Melang, 2009; Santos, 2019a). Since local jihadist groups base their struggle on the (post)colonial nationstate’s centuries-long structural marginalization of the Bangsamoro population – resulting in land dispossession, political and economic marginalization, discrimination, and suppression of cultural heritage – they successfully generated great influence in Mindanao (Banlaoi, 2020b, p. 108; Melang, 2009, p. 143). Daesh in particular has taken advantage of the sense of victimization and/or loss of identity combining the discrimination of the Bangsamoro population with its global narrative of sufferings of Muslims in war zones and a global oppression of the umma by “Western” states. As such, political recruitment messages have often used depictions portraying the aftermath of Western attacks affecting Muslim civilians, say, in Iraq, Palestine and the Philippines (Peason, 2016, pp. 10–15). Portraying diverse contemporary conflicts as part of a broader historical attack against Islam, a necessity to defend the honor of the umma and the promotion of the community are illustrated provoking politicizing and emotional responses. Promising a return to Islam’s perceived glorious past by establishing a global caliphate, Daesh has presented itself as credible alternative to the status quo calling for women and families to participate in the “state-building” process (Banlaoi, 2020b, p. 108; Europol Public Information, 2020, pp. 7–8; Melang, 2009, p. 143). This idea of being part of the state-building process informs women who have been involved in Daesh activities. Besides facing marginalization at a collective level, women are additionally affected by other forms of structural violence – such as massive gender inequalities as well as SGBV – at an individual level (BrechtDrouart, 2013; Rasul-Bernardo, 2013; Schröter, 2013). Since women are furthermore denied access to power and resources, changing the situation is made more difficult, if not impossible. Consequently, many female fighters are motivated by the opportunity to join a cause and contribute to the building of a wilayah in Mindanao in which they are assigned crucial roles inaccessible in their initial communities. This sense of empowerment was additionally strengthened by images of female fighters/suicide bombers and Daesh online magazines. While women were promised an ideal way of life under Daesh reign in which they were safe from gendered harm and had access to better livelihoods, serving the group was not only portrayed as a religious duty but also an honor (Harders, 2011, p. 136; Ingram, 2019). For instance, in an issue of Dabiq (2016, p. 38), Umm Khalid al-Finlandiyya expresses her views as follows: It is such a blessing from Allah to be able to live under the caliphate. … Of course, when you come to the caliphate, after sacrificing everything for the sake of Allah, you’ll continue to be tested. You’re going to see hardships and trials, but every day you’re thankful to Allah for allowing you to perform hijra and to live under the Sharia. Life in the Islamic State is such a blessing.

222  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict You face difficulties and hardship, you’re not used to the food or the change of life, you may not know the local language, you hear bombing and the children may get scared, but none of that takes away from the gratitude you have towards Allah for allowing you to be here. … Here you’re living a pure life and your children are being raised with plenty of good influence around them. Such examples illustrate how life under the caliphate is or can be. Additionally, recruiters, like Umm Khalid al-Finlandiyya, have used political stagnation, marginalization and vulnerability to mobilize additional individuals as well as entire families to join Daesh. Dissatisfaction with the local conditions of poor governance, and the social stagnation in Mindanao coupled with assumed possibilities of self-betterment, achieving freedom from discrimination/injustice and individual fulfillment have also served as fruitful breeding ground for the recruitment of women in the Philippines (Barrett, 2017, pp. 6–7). Female combatants in the Philippines Female jihadists of various extremist groups taking on crucial roles in the Philippines is not a recent development. Women, such as Farhana Maute, were instrumental in recruiting, financing and planning terrorist attacks, for instance, before the siege of Marawi. Other women established kinship ties, entered tactical as well as transnational (re)marriages and were directly involved as female fighters at the forefront of violent conflicts (Caravaggio and Davis, 2020, p. 3; Ingram, 2019). Once taking on roles in the domestic sphere by marrying jihadists and establishing families in the sense of Daesh, working as couriers, and sheltering fugitives, the influence of women in jihadist groups in the Philippines has increased in recent years. Their involvement as fighters at the front lines is advantageous because it is completely opposite to their traditional roles and to what is traditionally expected of them: “You really wouldn’t suspect women because their roles were traditional – wives, caregivers. When you think of a terrorist, you think of a man”, a senior military officer stated (Santos, 2020).14 Being overlooked in counterterrorism efforts, female fighters were capable of bypassing security checks and evading military surveillance, which enabled them to plan and carry out terrorist attacks. As shown earlier, this was also the case during the siege of Marawi whose infiltration through fighters of Daesh would not have been possible without the massive influence of jihadi women. However, even after the fight for Marawi, women have continued to assume influential roles, for instance, by planning and carrying out other terrorist attacks, especially in Mindanao (Allard, 2017; Banlaoi, 2020b, p. 118; Ingram, 2019; Ruiz, 2017). This is supported by further research, which shows that particularly the Abu Sayyaf’s Sawadjaan faction has actively pursued suicide bombing as a tactic in the Philippines since 2019. While most of the attacks were planned and carried out by foreigners in 2019, female suicide bombers were especially used from 2020 onward, many of them being widows of killed ASG members (Yaoren, 2021,

Demythifying the caliphate  223 pp. 4–5). One example to highlight this is the Jolo “twin bombing attack” in 2020, which killed at least 14 people, wounded 75 others, and is considered to be the deadliest militant attack in the region. The attack generated great attention, because both bombers were widows of former ASG and pro-Islamic State fighters (‘Army says’, 2020; ‘Suicide bombers’, 2020). Moreover, female suicide bombing in the Philippines and the trend of family radicalization go hand in hand in the region. On January 27, 2019, Mindanao experienced its first suicide bombing attack, namely the Jolo Cathedral Bombing during a Sunday mass service, killing 27 and injuring more than 100 civilians. The attack was carried out by the Indonesian couple Rullie Rian Zeke and Ulfah Handayani, both members of the Abu Sayyaf (Sulu) fraction. Saleh was the first woman to take part in a suicide bombing in the Philippines (Sandoval 2021; Santos, 2019b; Yaoren, 2021, pp. 4–5; Zenn 2020). Two years later, their daughter Rezky Fantasya Rullie (alias Nini Isarani and Cici) was arrested for preparing a suicide bombing mission. During her interrogation, she claimed that her parents had convinced her to join the Islamic State group and that she was forced into marriage to the suicide bomber Andi Baso (‘Philippine commander’, 2021; Santos, 2019b). These cases portray the security risk radicalized women and families pose, and how manifold radicalization processes can be, and they lay bare the significance of women and families in furthering the activities of Daesh in their desire for state-building (Sandoval 2021; Zenn 2020). Underestimating women’s influence in jihadist groups Despite female jihadi taking on influential roles in Daesh’s entities at a global scale, both virtually and in reality, official discourses have downplayed women’s level of involvement over the years (Nuraniyah, 2018, p. 3). For instance, international media narratives classifying female jihadis in the category “women and children” or referring to them as “ISIS Wives” or “Jihadi brides” falling for preying recruiters, created the impression that women’s actions in jihadist groups could hardly be politically motivated. Instead, the radicalization of women has often been portrayed as an interplay of romance and religion (jihad-nikkah, or “marriage for jihad purposes”), achieving social status through an association with male mujahidins. Female jihadis were genuinely portrayed as passive and helpless spectators of a power struggle between men (Caravaggio and Davis, 2020, pp. 1–4; El-Bushra, Myrttinen and Naujoks, 2014; Margolin and Winter, 2017, p. 25; Pearson and Winterbotham, 2017, p. 62; Santos, 2019a; The Carter Center, 2017, p. 1). However, “It is a mistake to think that a woman’s participation in jihad is dependent on her relationship with a man”, Jones, the director of IPAC, said. “The decision to engage in a terrorist act was already there without reference to a man” (Santos, 2019a). The depiction of women as passive, peaceful and apolitical entities, and their exclusion from official discourses and narratives, disregarded women joining Daesh to actively support the group and its principles. Consequently, women were often classified as lower security risks compared to men, which, in return, has

224  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict strengthened Daesh-affiliated groups (El-Bushra, Myrttinen and Naujoks, 2014; Europol Public Information, 2020, p. 5; Pearson, 2016, p. 12). While women were already utilized to thwart security checks, and enter peace zones and urban areas by al-Qaeda, Daesh in particular began using women in violent roles whenever necessary, for instance, for propaganda purposes and a lack of male recruits. Highlighting the “demasculinization” of men in last will and testament videos, several female jihadis claimed how they had to carry out the martyrdom operations (amaliyat istishhadiyya) themselves shaming men into action and motivating further women to participate in violent jihad (Bloom, 2015, p. 48). Female jihadis executing collective violence in Daesh’s totalitarian systems – sharing similar motives, interests and potential in contributing and maintaining violent conflicts as their male counterparts – have therefore also strengthened militarized masculinities (Cook and Vale, 2018, p. 26; Harders, 2011, p.144). Also, Bermingham, Conway, McInerney, O’Hare and Smeaton (2009) found that jihadist women demonstrated higher sympathy to political violence in declaring their willingness to carry out attacks. This indicates that political motivations in joining Daesh are common to both men and women, however, the motives and functions of women joining the group are only marginally explored compared to men (Bermingham et al., 2009, pp. 231–236; Pearson, 2016, p. 17; Pearson and Winterbotham, 2017, pp. 61–62). Conclusion In modern history, no terrorist organization has had greater international influence and cross-border appeal and has taken greater advantage of female jihadis than Daesh. With over 4300 attacks in 29 countries, the group has become a significant global security threat (Cook and Vale, 2018, p. 5). The strong presence of Daesh in the Philippines and examples such as the siege of Marawi illustrate that the group’s ideology endures, and that radicalization of women is possible as long as the corresponding push and pull factors are not efficiently eliminated. The Philippine government has long underestimated the threat of violent extremism from jihadist groups and the influence of female fighters in Mindanao, but it must now acknowledge the security risk these actors pose, and it needs to raise public awareness of threats of terrorism in the country. As this chapter has demonstrated, women have taken on crucial roles in the armed conflict, and they continue to pose a significant security risk to the region. According to the Carter Center (2017, p. 2), “Women are offered an alternate vision of freedom and empowerment and a perceived chance to become part of a community where they can practice their faith unapologetically and feel a sense of belonging and sisterhood”. While this highlights the importance of an analysis of the roles, motivations and participation of female jihadis in Southeast Asia, it also becomes clear that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)15 as well as its member states must address the intergenerational recruitment as well as the transmission of Daesh ideologies, both nationally and globally.

Demythifying the caliphate  225 This chapter also aimed to fill the gap in research on the agency of women in Daesh and its splinter groups in Southeast Asia, and has therefore elaborated the roles and function of women in combat, the establishment of transnational ties, and the support of state-building processes. This makes clear that radicalization factors must be addressed context-specifically and individually. Besides analyzing and addressing radicalization constituents, community-based approaches must be developed and grievances of the local population must be addressed, especially in the aftermath of Marawi. As the chapter indicates, this can, for example be achieved, in the joint reconstruction of the city with the local population and by effectively countering Daesh narratives. Analyzing radicalization processes, narratives and incentives of women to join Daesh and its affiliated groups, the chapter has highlighted that all genders can equally be driven by grievance, belief in ideologies, power and money. Women, therefore, can have as much interest in escalating and maintaining violent conflicts as men. While motives of radicalization can be overlapping, it must also be acknowledged that certain motives and radicalization factors are gender specific. These include gender inequalities; SGBV; and a limited access to public, social, economic and political spheres for women in Mindanao. To avoid a further radicalization of women, SGBV especially needs to be considered as a strong indicator for (re)radicalization and terrorist violence. Thus, perpetrators of conflict-related sexual and SGBV must be prosecuted, and victims must be provided with justice, reparation and rehabilitation. Furthermore, individual violence needs to be understood as a product of genderspecific social processes and interactions. Since power relations, narratives and myths also influence the choices of men and women to engage with violent groups; shape their action; and explain the functioning, identities, beliefs and causes of the groups, the corresponding gender ideologies and narratives must be analyzed and addressed at the specific regional and national level. The chapter further argues that gender inequalities must be reduced, and women must be involved in all stages of decision-making and solution processes. Particularly in the BARMM economic, social and political perspectives, enhancing civil participation and strengthening democratic local institutions at all levels must be offered. Besides analyzing and addressing gender-specific connections between different types of violence and levels of escalation, the chapter has also demonstrated that the social and cultural background of female jihadists as well as their experiences of multidimensional asymmetrical dependencies must be considered to analyze the motives of radicalized women. A holistic understanding of the initial conditions of radicalization is essential to minimize female radicalization and to prevent other women from joining jihadist groups in the future. Contrary to radicalization theories, which focus mainly on ameliorating socioeconomic conditions of the individual, group narratives facilitating radicalization processes must additionally be addressed, which can be integrated in the development of effective strategies to evaluate and combat Daesh. Finally, due to Mindanao’s geographic location, combating Daesh is not only of greatest relevance for the Philippines but also for its neighboring countries Malaysia and Indonesia, which can easily be affected by violent conflicts in the region. There

226  Female Fighters in Armed Conflict is currently only little information on (former) female Daesh-affiliated supporters in the Philippines. Hence, it is crucial to alleviate this research gap and develop effective and common strategies to examine Daesh and its gender narratives, not only in the Philippines but in the entire region of Southeast Asia. Notes 1 “Everything has its time / a time for joy / a time of silence / a time of pain and sorrow / a time of grateful memories.” I want to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to the people who have supported, shaped and accompanied me in the most diverse ways! In eternal love and gratitude I remember: Johannes Langhorst, Hermine Langhorst and Müslim Kaymaz. –Charlotte Mei Yee Chin 2 The Moro National Liberation Front was founded as political organization in 1972 and led the Moro separatist movement until the 1996 Final Peace Agreement between the MNLF and the Philippine government (CISAC, 2019). 3 The Moro Islamic Liberation Front was established in 1977 and is the largest militant movement in the Philippines (CISAC, 2019). 4 The Lumad are a group of indigenous people living in the south of Mindanao. 5 The Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro grants greater autonomy to Mindanao and established the self-governing Bangsamoro region. 6 The Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) provides for the establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). 7 ARRM stands for Autonomous Region of the Philippines and consists of the five predominantly Muslim provinces, namely, Lanano del Sur, Tawi-Tawi, Maguindanao, Basilan and Sulu (Southeast Asian Region Countries Law, 2022). 8 Wilayah means “province” and is referred to as wilayat in the plural (Beevor and Berger, 2020). 9 Farhane Maute leads the Maute group, which was tried for illegal possession of firearms, rebellion, kidnapping and serious illegal detention with murder, and for being involved in the Davao night market bombing in 2016. Coming from the well-respected Romato clan in central Mindanao, she had good political connections, social capital and the economic resources to establish various business ventures. This enabled her to provide logistical support and financial resources to the actions of her sons, leaders of the Maute group, who took on central roles during the siege of Marawi (Fonbuena, 2017; Inton, Wu and Scarr, 2017; Santos, 2019). 10 Daulah Islamiyah Wilayatul Mashriq, Islamic State Province East Asia. 11 Sacred migration from dar al-harb (where Muslims cannot freely practice their religion) to dar al-Islam (areas under Islamic rule). 12 Former head of Daesh Daulah Islamiyah Wilayatul Mashriq. 13 BARMM is the acronym for Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. 14 “Hindi mo talaga pagkakamalan ang babae kasi traditional ang mga gawa – asawa, tigaaalaga. Ang tingin talaga sa terrorista, lalaki.” 15 The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is an intergovernmental organization that was founded by Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand in 1967 in Bangkok. Today it unites ten member states: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ASEAN promotes collaboration and cooperation as well as economic growth and stability in the region of Southeast Asia (CFR​.or​g, 2022).

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Index

Page numbers in italics mark photos. abductions, of women 62–63 abortions, forced 70–71, 74n14 Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) 216 agency 13–14, 141, 205 Aisha, Darin Abu 174, 176–79, 187 al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades 14, 174–76, 178–79, 187, 188n6, 189n19 al-Finlandiyya, Umm Khalid 223–24 al-Quds Brigades 174–75, 179–80, 188n7, see also Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) alcoholic drinks 162, 165 Alekozei, Soraya 155 Alexievich, Svetlana A. 197 Algerian War 173 Altinay, Ayşe Gül 40, 49, 52, 53n14 Amina 203 Anatolian women 11 anti-Nazi resistance 106 ar-Rantisi, Abd al-Aziz 182 Arendt, Hannah 106 armed conflicts: and social change 68–69; women’s participation in 61, 66, 73, see also specific conflicts or types of conflict; wars armed forces, women’s exclusion from 11 art, as resistance 119–20 Ashigashia attack 199 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 228n15 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 39, 42, 51, 53n2 Au Co 83 Audouin-Rouzeau, Stéphane 197 Auschwitz 105–06, 113–14, 116–17, 119– 20, see also concentration camps aviation 47 Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 35 Bai, Jhalkari 35

Bajmaraj, Lira 165n1 Baker, Catherine 15n6, 80 Bandera, Stepan 12 Banderites 12, 105, 110–14, 121, 122n2, 122n5; and the Soviet Union 109 Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) 216 Banlaoi, Rommel C. 217 battlespace 131–33, 136–42 Bay Amcaya göre 46 Bekir, Latife 42 Belli, Gioconda 71–72 Bermingham, Adam 226 Bettelheim, Bruno 106–09, 111, 113, 115, 119 Bibighar massacre (1857) 23, 25 Bienert, Andrea 156 Birkenau 113, 115, 119, see also concentration camps black market, in Cameroon 200 blood donations, in concentration camps 117 Bloom, Mia 205, 222 bodies: militarization of 80, 89–90; and war 137 Boko Haram 13–14, 193, 196, 207n1; gendered division of 193, 200; ISWAP 196, 201; JAS 196, 201; recruitment practices 202–03; suicide bombings 195–96, 201, 203–06; using women as shields 199 Boko Haram female fighters 200, 206–07; and combatants 6; forced 202–03, 205–06; modes of expression 4; voluntary 203, 205, see also suicide bombings Boko Haram study 196–99 Bolívar, Simón 62–63 Bolivia, and Cuban guerillas 66–67

234 Index Book of Judith 208n23 borders, differing conditions on 135 Bordo, Susan 12 Bose, Subhas Chandra 11, 21, 31–34, 36 Bosnia 4 Breslin, Rachel A. 151 British Armed Forces 2, 150–51, 158 British Indian Army 32 Brown, Melissa T. 132 Brownson, Connie 140 Bundeswehr. see German armed forces Bunke, Hayde (Haydée) Tamara 66–67, 73 Butler, Judith 60 Çakmak, Marshal Fevzi 51 Cameroon, gender stereotypes in 194 Cameroonian army 195 camp followers 61, 63, 70 care work, Lenin on 94 Carter Center 226 Castro, Fidel 65 censorship 93–94 Chauhan, Subhadra Kumari 21, 30–31, 36 Cher, Gustav Sabac el 165n7 children, as suicide bombers 201–03 Chin, Charlotte Mei Yee 13–14, 213–28 Chinkin, Christine 131–32 Chirac, Jacques 184 Ciesielska, Maria 117 civil defense 6 class struggles, vs. gender 66 Coddington, Kate 4–5 Cohn, Carol 15n2 Cold War 65 Cologne New Year’s Eve (2015–2016) 157–58 Colombia 68, 70; Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19) 68–69 combat positions: blurring with non combat positions 6–7; and technology 141; women’s exclusion from 6, 193–94, 207n4 combatants: definitions of 6–7; legal safeguards of 6, 198; and war rooms 133, 138 communication, women’s roles in 60–61 concentration camps 12, 121; art in 119–20; and gender roles 112–14, 121; goals of 107, 115; medical experiments in 113–14, 117–19, 121; and motherhood 113–14, 116–19; and pregnancy 116; psychological impacts of 107, 115; resistance in 107–10, 114–18, 121–22; survival in 106–07, 109, 112–13, 117,

121–22, see also Konzentrationslager; specific camps Confucianism 83–85 conscription: in Germany 13, 149, 165n3–4; in Israel 133; in Turkey 39–40; in Vietnam 92 Conway, Maura 226 Cook, Joana 222 COVID-19 96; study impacts of 8, 14 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 1–2, 157 Croissant, Aurel 93 Cuba, and guerilla fighters 65–68 Cultural Support Teams 6, 15n3 Cumhuriyet 44 Daesh 216–17, 226–28; documents of 219; suicide bombings 219, 224–25; women’s roles in 218–20, 224, see also Islamic State; Philippines Dalhousie, Lord 23 Dana 134–35 Daniel, Samantha 151 Daoudou, Sadou 195 Daphna-Tekoah, Shir 4 de Santander, Francisco 62 Dehmel, Dirk 156 “dependency theory” 67–68 Derin Tarih (Deep history) 39 Dersim Harekati 48–51 Deutscher Soldat eV 152–53 Devi, Sheili 26 Die Truppe wird bunter (Kümmel) 151 differentiated solidarity 140 Dirim, İnci 159–60 Dittmer, Cordula 163 diversity 155–58, 164 “Diversity and Inclusion in the Bundeswehr” study 155–58 diversity management 158–59, 164 Dosdall, Henrik 156 Drummond, Lisa Barbara Welch 93 Dunin-Wasowicz, Krzysztof 109 Duong Thị Vịn 90–91 Durakbasa, Ayse 40 Durga Dal 26 Duterte, Rodrigo Hapilon, Isnilon East India Company 23, 25 Edith 140 Eisner, Rivka Syd 82 El-Tayeb, Fatima 155 Ella 137 embodiment, need for more discussion of 3–4

Index  235 Enloe, Cynthia 3, 79, 82, 141 equality law 156 Eritrean liberation war 194 Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) 194 Ethnicity, Integration and the Military 150–51 European Court of Justice 149 Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) 195 Fadi 204 Fatah 178–79, 188n6 Female Engagement Teams 6 female fighters 129; additional dangers to 2; in Africa 194–95, 207n4; forced 73n2; Guevara on 66; healthcare needs of 2, 15n1; high-tech warfare increasing 129; idealization of 11; lack of acknowledgement of 140–41, 143, 193; and motherhood 70; motivations of 5, 60, 64–65, 68, 97, 132, 199, 205, 207, 222–23; as protectors 140–43; “scientific” arguments for/against 46; in Vietnam 78–79, see also specific organizations or individuals female guerrilla fighters: Cuban 65–68; and gender equality 68, 70, 72–73; idealization of 60; in the M-19 69; and motherhood 70–71, 73; and torture 70; Vietnamese 81–82, 91 female jihadists: perceptions of 225–26, see also Boko Haram; Palestinian suicide bombers; Philippines femininity 174, 184, 186 feminism: international feminist movement 43; tied to nationalism 41; in Turkey 41, 43, 47, 53n7; in Vietnam 84–85 feminist research: dismissive attitudes of 150; in Germany 150; qualities of 2–3 feminist research ethics 2–3 feminist security studies (FSS) 3; Eurocentrism of 7–10 feminists: different perspectives of 9, see also feminism field studies 4 food 161–62, 165, 166n15 Forbes, Geraldine 32 Fotokol attack (2015) 202 France 184 Frankl, Viktor 106, 109, 119 Freire, Paulo 68 Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN, Sandinistas) 68–70 Fuhrmann, Eva 4, 11, 78–98

Gandhi, Mahatma 31 Gashi, Egzona 13, 148–66 Gaza, Kaka 206 gender: and Daesh recruitment 220; defining 174; and earnings 5–6; fighting for equality 68, 70, 72; and militarism 40–41; and nationalism studies 40–41; and the new warfare 130–33, 141–42; and stereotypes 5–6, 61, 67, 73, 95, 138, 173–74, 187–88, 195–96, 221; vs. class struggles 66 gender equality: and guerilla fighters 68, 70, 72–73; in Vietnam 80, 83–85 gender roles 61; and Boko Haram 193, 200; in Cameroon 194, 200; and concentration camps 112–14, 121; and Daesh 221; and double standards 70; in Germany 149; in the IDF 133–34; masculinization/ feminization of 69, 193; problems of 60, 74n16; and the Red Army (USSR) 111; reversed 140–43; and technology 132, 139–40; transgressing 62, 64–65, 72, 79, 179, 185, 193; in the UPA 108; and wars 132, 140–43; and women fighters 65, 67, 72, 94–95, 140–41 gender segregation 175, 185, 220 gender trouble 60–61, 73 Geneva Conventions 6, 115, 123n10, 198 Gentry, Caron 204 German armed forces 13, 148, 165n2; and citizenship 155; and conscription 13, 149, 165n3–4; and diversity/ intersectionality 155–58, 164; on interviews 152; and language skills 159–60, 164; Muslims in 161–63, 165; narratives of 152, 158; and persons with migration backgrounds 154–56; and religion 160–63; studies of 151–53; women in 149, 164; and women of colour 9, 13, 149, 163–64 German, Judith 106, 110, 115 Germany: citizenship laws in 13, 148–49, 154, 165n6; Cologne New Year’s Eve (2015-2016) 157–58; feminist scholarship in 150; gender roles in 149; and migrants 153–55, 165n8; Nazi 122–23n7; and religion 160–63 Ghaliya, Huda 180 Glinska, Anna 109 Global South, exclusion from studies 7–8 Gökçen, Sabiha 48–52, 54n18 Gottschang Turner, Karen 82 Grabe, Vera 68–71, 74n14 Grossman, Dave 106, 109

236 Index Guevara, Ernesto “Che” 65–68 GULAG 106, 112–13 Gurol, Julia 153 Hakkarainen, Minna 84 halfmen 183–85 Halkin Sesi 44 Hamas 14, 175, 182, 187, 189n8, 196 Hammouti-Reinke, Nariman 148, 150, 152–53, 157–59, 163 Handayani, Ulfah 225 Harel, Ayelet 4, 12–13, 128–44 Harel-Shalev, Ayelet 4 Helm, Sarah 106 Hendrich, Béatrice 1–15, 39–54 heroines 52 Herzog, Richard 9–10, 21–36 Hezbollah 173 hijab 184, 189n20 Hinduism, and myths 25–26 historiography: male dominance of 4; and women’s voices 4–5 Hlatky, Stéfanie von 6 Hnatkivska-Lebed, Daria 108, 111, 118–19 Hnatkivska-Lebed, Zoya 118–19 Hnatkivska, Oleksandra 114 Ho Chi Minh 85, 88 Hoàng Thị T. 90 Holofernes 208n23 Howes, Craig 109–10 Hryhortsiv, Maria 114 Hürkuş, Eribe 48 Hutchings, Kimberly 132 Hylton, Kimberly 151 Ibrahim, Mallam 206 Ich diene Deutschland (Hammouti-Reinke) 148 Idris, Wafa 181 illness, female fighters’ experiences with 91 Ilyasoglu, Aynur 40 India 4, 10–11, 24; 1857 massacre in Kanpur 23, 25; Azad Hind government 33; Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 35; Dalits 35; Gwalior 25, 30; Jhansi 21, 23, 24, 26; legend of the Rani 21, 25–28, 29, 30–35; and myths 25–26; nationalist movements in 28–34; Rashtra Sevika Samiti (RSS) 35; “Viranganas” 35, see also Lakshmibai Indian National Army 31–32; Rani of Jhansi Regiment 9–11, 21, 32–34

Indian women 31–35 Indochinese war 81–82, 85–92, 96–97 insurgent forces 12; becoming national forces 2, 5, see also specific groups internal conflicts (Latin America) 62; Nicaragua 71–72, 74n15; Peru (1830’s) 63–64, see also Colombia; wars of independence (Latin America) intersectionality 1–2, 13, 60, 148, 151, 155–58, 164 interviews 4–5; German armed forces 148, 151–52; IDF study 134 Iraq, United States in 6 Irish Public Army 173 Islamic history 207–08n8; female fighters in 173, 208n9, 221 Islamic State (IS) 14, 219; overview 213–14; women joining 9, 173, 179, see also Daesh Islamist terror groups 195, see also specific groups; suicide bombings Israel 135, 142, 150; compulsory military service in 133; and war rooms 128, 133, see also war rooms Israeli female soldiers 7, 12–13; as protectors 12–13; training for 136 Issa, Saïbou 195 ius sanguinis (Germany) 149, 154 Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades 174–76, 182, 186–87, 189n8 Jamieson, Neil 86 Jana 137 The Jeanne D’Arc of India (White) 27–28 “Jhansi ki Raani” (The Queen of Jhansi, Chauhan) 21, 30–31 Jhansi ki Rani (The Queen of Jhansi, Varma) 28–30 Jhansi Sansthanchya Maharani Lakshmibaisaheb Yanche Charitra (A biography of Queen Lakshmibai of Jhansi, Parasnis) 30 jihadist groups: and women in combat 193–94, see also Boko Haram Juden und Militär in Deutschland (Berger and Römer-Hillebrecht) 151 Kaldor, Mary 131 Kandiyoti, Deniz 198 Kelley, Liam 84 Kis, Oksana 106, 112–13 Klemm, Eugenia 107, 114

Index  237 Koch, Tobias 156 Kogon, Eugen 105 Konzentrationslager 105, see also concentration camps Kos, Maria 108, 111 Kowal, Anna 117 Krebs, Ronald 150 Kreil, Tanja 149 Krulišová, Katerina 8 Kruse, Volker 79 Kryłowa, Anna 111 Ksenia 120 Kuwait, United States in 6 Lady Triệu 83, 97 Lake Chad Basin 193, 195–96, 203, 207n1 Lakshmibai 10, 21, 27, 29; biography 22–23, 25; British views of 25, 27–28; mythologisation of 21, 25–28, 29, 30–35; as role model 22, 35–36; writings by 22–23, 25; written records about 21, see also India last wills, and Palestinian suicide bombers 174–77, 180–81, 183–85 Latin America 67–68; guerilla groups in 69 Latin American conflicts: and class differences 61–63; Peru (1830’s) 63–64 Lausanne Peace Treaty (1923) 39 Lebanon 173 Lebed, Mykola 118, 123n15 Lebra-Chapman, Joyce 26 Leszczynska, Stanislawa 116 LGBTQ+ soldiers 1 Lilly 128 Lior 141 logistics, women’s roles in 60–61 looting 200 Luong, Hy Van 95 Lviv prison 114,118–19, 123n8 McClintock, Anne 78 machismo 61 McInerney, Lisa 226 MacKenzie, Megan H. 140 Makalingay (Cameroon) 201, 203 Manjikian, Mary 140 Manus, Rosa 53n10 Marawi siege (2017) 214, 216, 224, 227 Markovic, Vesna 205 Martin, T.A. 23 martyr’s mothers 186 Marunchak, Mychajlo 106, 120 Maryam 201, 203

masculinity 143, 174, 182, 184, 186; and the armed forces 157; and the new warfare 131–32, 139–42 Masters, Cristina 131–32 Masud, Mirfat 174, 179–82, 187 Matfess, Hilary 199, 204–05 matriarchal societies 83–84 Mats Utas, 197 Maute, Farhane 228n9 Maute group 216–18, 228n9 Mecheril, Paul 159–60 mediators 160 “Memoirs of a woman who saved the country” 86–87 menstruation, and female fighters 46–47, 54n16 Mernissi, Fatima 198 Mexican Revolution 61, 64–65, 74n10 Michal 130, 135, 141 Midnight’s Children (Rushdie) 35 “migrant soldiers” 150–51; in the German armed forces study 153 Migration und Militär (Fedtke, Hellmann and Hörmann) 151 militarism 40–41, 47; of Vietnam 79–80 military history, male dominance of 4 Miriam 135, 139–40 Mirushe 152, 155, 159–60, 162 Moran 136–37 Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) 213, 215–16, 228n3 Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) 213, 215–16, 228n2 Mostovych, Olena 108 motherhood: and concentration camps 115–17; and suicide bombers 185–88; Vietnamese 82; vs. fighting 70–71, 73, 74n14 Muhiddin, Nezihe 43, 53n8 Mundar 26 Muslim women: as soldiers 161–63, 165; Western conceptions of 13, 162, 198, 218, 225–26, see also women narrative analysis 134 national heroes, and the wars of independence (Latin America) 62 nationalism 179 nations 30, 78, 97 NATO, women in the military 40 Nguyễn Phú Trọng 94 Nguyễn Thị Ðịnh 91 Nguyen, Thi Hue 4, 8, 11, 78–98

238 Index Nguyễn Thị Kim Lai 88–89 Nicolas, Guy 205–06 niqab 184 Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) 12; and female fighters 7, see also specific groups O’Hare, Neil 226 Omar, Karima 97 Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN(B)). see Banderites Ortega, Daniel 74n15 O’Sullivan, Míla 8 Ottoman Empire: education in 44; stories of women in 40, see also Turkey Palancares, Jesusa 64, 73 Palestine, patriarchal nature of 173, 185 Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) 14, 174–75, 180, 188–89n7, see also al-Quds Brigades Palestinian resistance. see Aisha, Darin Abu; Masud, Mirfat; Riyashi, Reem Palestinian suicide bombers 14, 173, 185; documentary sources 175–77, 180–86; recruiting women as 175 Palestinian suicide bombers, and religion 177–78, 180 Palestinian suicide bombers: women’s motivations 174, 180–81, 187, see also Aisha, Darin Abu; Masud, Mirfat; Riyashi, Reem paramilitary activities 6 peacekeeping missions 95–96 Pearson, Elizabeth 199 “Pedagogy of Liberation” 68 people of color 154–55 Peru, 1830’s civil war 63–64 Petrenko, Olena 108 Phạm Lê Thị Trung 86 Phạm Thị H. 89 Phan Bội Châu 97 Philippines 221, 226; Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) 215–16, 228n7; Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) 216, 221, 228n6; Bangsamoro Conflict 214–16; Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL, 2018) 215, 218; Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (2014) 215, 228n5; Jolo bombing 225; Marawi siege (2017) 214, 216–18; suicide bombings in 219, 224–25; terrorism

in 213–14; violent extremism in 213; women’s marginalization in 222–24 Pieracki, Bronislaw 118 Polish underground 112 Polszczikova, Anna 116–17 Polszikov, Aleksander 116 postcolonial studies 9–10 Potthast, Barbara 11, 60–74 prisoners of war (POWs) 6; importance of being 115; studies and sources about 106, see also Banderites; concentration camps; Red Army (USSR) POWs; Ukrainian POWs public vs. private spheres 4 Qassam Brigades. see Izz ad-Din al Qassam Brigades The Queen’s Desire (Nisbet) 27 racism 151 Raffin, Anne 79, 92 Rag, Pankaj 27 Raghavan, Vasantha 216 The Rane: A Legend of the Indian Mutiny (Gilean) 27 Rani, Nanhi 26 Rao, Damodar 23, 26 Rashtra Sevika Samiti (RSS) 35 Ravensbrück 105, 113–15, 118–19, see also concentration camps Red Army Faction 195 Red Army Faction (Germany) 173 Red Army (USSR) 12; and combatants 6; female roles in 48, 107–08, 110; Şeviki on 46 Red Army (USSR) POWs 105, 107, 110, 113–114, 121–22; at Auschwitz 114; and Ukrainian POWs 109, 112; women as 107–08 religion: and the German armed forces 160–63; and nationalism 178–79; and suicide bombers 177–78, 180–81, 183, 185–86, 205 resistance 174; stereotypes of 106 “Rich and intellectual women in the movement for women’s liberation” 87 Rivas, Nelly 69 Riyashi, Reem 174, 182–88 Riza, Seyit 50–51, 54n25 Robinson, William Andrew 88 role models: Lakshmibai as 22, 35–36; need for 35–36 Roni 138–39

Index  239 Ronit 141 Rose, Sir Hugh 25 Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) 67 Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security (Gentry, Shepherd and Sjoberg) 3 Rullie, Rezky Fantasya 225 Sâdi, Saime 50 Sáenz, Manuela 62–63, 74n6 safe houses 5–6, 108 Sahgal, Lakshmi 22, 32–33, 36 Sahib, Nana 22, 25, 31 Saleh 225 Sánchez de Thompson, Mariquita 62 Sandinista Revolution 72 Sasson-Levy, Orna 13 Savchyn, Maria 120 Schadenko, Kateryna 117 Schmidt, Fiona 156–58 Schubart, Rikke 52 Scott, Joan 60 Second Intifada 14, 173, 188n2 Second World War. see World War II security sensitivity 4 security studies 4; Eurocentrism of 7–9 Seeta (Taylor) 27–28 self-reflection 3 Sen, Chandi Charan 28 Şevki, Mehmet 46–47, 54n15 sexual abuse: Cologne New Year’s Eve (2015-2016) 157–58; and the Latin American conflicts 62–64, 70; as war strategy 70 sexual harassment 151 sexuality 70 Shani 138 Sharon 134 Shiri 130, 136 Sjoberg, Laura 2, 5, 138, 204 Smeaton, Alan F. 226 Socialism 83 Soest camp 115 soldaderas 65, 74n8 soldiers, in Vietnam 79 Son Posta 44 South Africa 151 Southeast Asia 213, 221, 227–28 Soviet Union 123n10 “Speech of Women for National Salvation” 87 spies 5–6 spousal homicide 206

status, and female fighters 5 suicide bombings 173; Boko Haram 195–96, 201–06; by children 201–03; Daesh 219, 224–25 suicide bombings, and religion 177–78, 180–81, 183, 185–86, 205 suicide bombings: women recruited for 175, 196, 201–05, see also Aisha, Darin Abu; Masud, Mirfat; Riyashi, Reem Sumo, Aimé Raoul 4, 13–14, 193–208 Sundar 26 Süzen, Hülya 152, 159, 161–62 Sylvester, Christine 137 Syrian Socialist National Party 173 Taarnala, Elisa 15n2 Tamara 137–40 Tania “la Guerrillera” 66–67, 73 Tchellou 202 technology: and combat positions 141; impacts on gender roles 132, 139–40; and warfare 128–29, 131, 138–39 Teerawichitchainan, Bussarawan 81 terrorism 195; defining 2; in the Phillipines 213–14; researching 197; and violence against women 222; women’s involvement increasing 196, 199, 224; women’s motivations for 204–05, 222, see also Boko Haram; Daesh; Islamist terror groups; Palestinian suicide bombers; specific individuals; suicide bombings; Thayer, Carlyle A. 92 “Theology of Liberation” 68 Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA) 10 Thoan, Phan 88 Thoan, Phanm 89 Thomas, Mandy 93 Tiffany 136 “To be a soldier, one needs bravery” (Devriş) 47 tokenism 5–6, 164–65 Tomforde, Maren 163 Tope, Tatya 22, 29, 31 Torres, Camillo 68 torture, of female guerilla fighters 70 Tran, Nhung Tuyet 78, 83–84 Transcarpathia 114 trauma, studies of 110 trauma theory 106 Trautwein, Ray 158 Tristan, Flora 63–65

240 Index Trung Sisters 83, 85, 87, 97 Turkey: conscription in 39–40; and the Dersim Harekati 48–51; education in 44–46, 52; feminism in 41, 43, 47, 53n7; “High Kemalism” 42–43; Law 3225 (1937) 45; militarism in 40–41, 43; Republic Day 48; Republican People’s Party (RPP) 41–43; stories of women in 40; voting rights in 39, 42, 52; women in the military 40–42, 44–46, 51–53; and World War II 11, 52 Turkish Bird organization 11, 45, 47–49 Turkish military, women’s participation in 40–42, 44–46 Turkish War of Liberation (1919–1922) 5, 11, 46 Turkish Women’s Union 42–43, 53n8 Ukarma, Lidia 108, 111, 113–14 Ukraine, Russian invasion of 14 Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) 108 Ukrainian POWs 121–22; Lviv group 113–14; resistance by 108–10, see also concentration camps unfit equipment 2 United States: diversity in 158; in Iraq 6; in Kuwait 6; and the Phillipines 215; and Vietnam 81, 88; women of color in 151; women of color veterans in 150 unmanned vehicles 138, 141 Üstel, Füsun 44 Vale, Gina 222 Vasquez, Jose N. 139 Vásquez, María Eugenia 69–71 vehicle plates 150 Verel, Oktay 49 “victimcy” 197, 208n10 victims: blurred distinctions of 73n2, 202–03; women portrayed as 60, 128, 137–38, 204–05, 214 Vietnam 80–81, 95–97; censorship in 93– 94; Communist Party 12, 79, 81, 85, 88, 93–94; compulsory military service 92; demobilization 92; Directive No. 67/QP 88; female fighters in 78–79, 88–89, 91, 95–96; female guerrilla fighters in 81–82, 91; femininity in 93–95; feminism in 84–85; fighting for independence in 12, 80–81; Indochinese war 81–82, 85–92, 96–97; militarization of 79–80, 89–90; and peacekeeping missions 95–96; stories of women in 78, 82–83; terms for fighters

in 79; and the United States 81, 88; views of women in 78, 82–84, 87, 94–95; wars of independence 80–81, 85–92 Vietnam Studies 82 Vietnam War 81–83, 85–92, 96–97 Vietnamese military 11–12, 78 Vietnamese People’s Army 12, 81–82, 87–89, 91, 93 Vietnamese Women’s Union 12, 81, 85, 88–89, 93–94, 96–97 Vietnamese Youth Shock Brigades 5, 81–82, 88, 91 Vietnam’s Women in Transition (Barry) 82 violence 227; feminist conceptualizations of 198; and gender stereotypes 61, 194; by women 64, 197, 199 violence against women: and terrorism 222–24, 227; and wars 60, 64, 70 “Viranganas” 35 Viswanath, Gita 33 Vityk, Olena 113 Vityk-Vojtovycz, Olena 114, 119 Voitovych, Olena 108 volunteers, women as 5 Volya, Narodnaya 173 Vũ, Thị Thúy Hiền 82–83 Wachsmann, Nicholas 105–06 “war proper” 142 war rooms 128–30, 137, 142; and combatants 133; dilemmas in 138–39; Israeli 7, 12, 135–36; roles in 133–34, 138; women in 6, 133, 135–36, 138, 142–43, see also battlespace; Israel Ware, Vron 150–51 warfare 201 Warner, J. 205 wars 7; and gender 128, 132, 140–42; hightech 128, 131; sensing 137; studying 135; and violence against women 60, 64; visual representations of 136, see also technology wars of independence 9; Vietnam 80–81, 85–92, 96–97 wars of independence (Latin America) 62, see also internal conflicts (Latin America) weapons: denied to women 2; as symbols 181–82, 185–86 Weather Underground 67 Werner, Jayne 82 Wetterich, Cita 153 Wiktorowicz, Quintan 222 Wirsing, Wilhelm 113

Index  241 women: of the Dersim region 51; and male violence 1, 223–24; motivations for fighting 5, 60, 64–65, 68, 97, 132, 199, 205, 207, 222–23; and peacekeeping missions 95–96; portrayed as victims 60, 128, 137–38, 204–05, 214; and public vs. private spheres 4; radicalization of 219–23, 226–27; Vietnamese views of 78, 82–84, 87, 94–95, see also gender roles; Muslim women Women and War (Cohn) 3 women’s voices 4 World Congress of the International Alliance of Women (IAW, 1935) 39, 43, 52 World War II: Rani of Jhansi Regiment (India) 21, 32; and Turkey 11, 52; and Vietnam 80–81, see also concentration camps

Yassin, Ahmad 187, 196 Yata 200, 204 Yu, Insun 84 Yugoslavia 15n6 Yuval-Davis, Nira 3 Zapatistas 69 Zarytska, Kateryna 108 Zeinab 203, 206 Zeke, Rullie Rian 225 Zena 201 Zenn, Jacob 199 Zentrale Ansprechstelle für den Umgang mit Vielfalt 152 Zhinocha nedolia 120 Ziolkowski, Britt 7, 13–14, 173–89