Woman and Non-Violent Action in Africa: Two stories of success!

Liberia, 2003: Ordinary women end extraordinary violence.

Women Protest In Liberia

The West-African nation of Liberia has a history of fighting for people rights and freedoms. It was founded by freed American slaves and the country’s coat of arms declares, “The love of liberty brought me here.”

Despite this fantastic start for the nation recent decades have been far less hopeful with corrupt government and drug-fueled militias run by warlords raping and killing where ever they pleased without repercussions. This comes after years of imperialist struggle to grab diamonds and other raw materials which has left Liberia 176^th out 179 countries on the United Nation Human Development Index. Hundreds of thousands fled. Others were trapped by the unending violence, unable to flee. As one Liberian woman later remembered, “My children had been hungry and afraid for their entire lives.”

In the first few months of 2003, a group of women decided to try to end the conflict once and for all. Dressed all in white, hundreds of them sat by the roadside, on the route taken daily by President Charles Taylor, rebel leader-turned-president. The president’s motorcade swept past, slowing down only briefly. But the women returned, day after day. In pouring rain and blazing sunshine alike, they danced and prayed. The protests gained momentum; Religious leaders spoke out in support of the women’s demands. Radio stations began reporting sympathetically on the roadside protests. A protest leader, declared in front of the cameras, “We are tired of our children being raped. We are taking this stand because we believe tomorrow our children will ask us: ‘Mama, what was your role during the crisis?’”

Pressed on all sides, Taylor agreed to talk. He met with the women’s leaders in the presidential palace. Peace talks began but it soon became clear that the talks were going nowhere. Even as the warlords basked in the comfort of their luxury hotel, they worked the phones, directing a renewed orgy of violence at home in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. The women decided that enough was enough. Determined to focus on the human cost of the war, they barricaded delegates into the room where the talks were taking place. One of the negotiators, Nigerian General Abdulsalami Abubakar, remembered later: “They said that nobody will come out till that peace agreement was signed.” One warlord tried unsuccessfully to kick his way out of the room. Others tried (and failed) to escape through the windows.

The men with guns agreed to talk seriously at last. A peace deal was struck and Charles Taylor went into exile. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became Liberia’s first peacefully elected president, Africa’s first woman leader. It was ordinary Liberians who reclaimed the country and demanded peace. Even though this movement was never aimed at creating a socialist society, it is a great example of what can be achieved using non-violent action. Non-Violent organizations are needed to work as leaders in these movements, link all struggles around the to build a mass movement which will lead to equality and democracy.

Kenya, 2009: No sex without peace: Women unite in a nationwide bedroom strike.

The Prime Minister's wife even participated in the sex strike.

This is a more recent example of Non-violent action. I am sure that Aristophanes never intended his Lysistrata story to be taken literally. His play was a satire, a way of pressing for an end to the death and destruction of the long-running Peloponnesian War in Greece in the 5th century BCE. The story played with an obviously unthinkable idea: that women, by withholding their consent to sex, could do something to end a brutal conflict. Two thousand years later, Lysistrata has achieved a real-life momentum of its own.

In Kenya in 2009, many feared a renewal of the post-election violence that had brought the country to the brink of catastrophe a year earlier. The relationship between the two main political rivals, Prime Minister Raile Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki, remained dangerously tense. Women’s groups, fearing another descent into violence, urged men to settle their differences and, as they put it, “begin to serve the nation they represent.” To emphasize the point, they announced a sex strike. They were perhaps inspired by a similar action taken in Sudan in 2002, when thousands of women in the South took up the practice of “sexual abandoning” to compel men to end the twenty-year civil war in which an estimated two million people had died.

Rukia Subow, chair of one of the groups in Kenya, argued, “We have seen that sex is the answer. It does not know tribe, it does not have a party, and it happens in the lowest households.” The strike gained widespread support, even the prime minister’s wife, Ida Odinga, declared that she supported it “body and soul.” Women’s groups welcomed the success of the action as Kenyans began talking about issues that are affecting them. And it got the politicians talking.” The women even persuaded some sex workers to join the strike. It ended with a joint prayer session. The prime minister and the president finally agreed to talk.
As with the example of Liberia this movement was never intended to create socialism. It does however serve as a great example to show how unity and creative strike action are effective ways to change society in the interests of the vast majority.

J.Llewellyn
Thanks to Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson and their book , Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity, and Ingenuity Can Change the World © 2010 by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson, Union Square Press, a division of Sterling Publishing Co,. Inc.

A Continuing Struggle Regarding the Status of Women: Pro-democracy Movements in the Middle East

The strong presence of women in recent pro-democracy protests Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt created an atmosphere of excitement regarding the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8 this year. 

Iran in particular has seen decades of very public women’s liberation movements, exemplified by the ongoing One Million Signatures Campaign that aims to gain one million signatures to petition for a change in discriminatory laws against women.

A mural painted by the organisers of the One Million Signatures campagin

March 8 signified an opportunity to celebrate recent victories, the newfound unity between Middle Eastern men and women in the fight against oppression and inequality, and to make a public statement about the currently changeable social and political atmosphere. 

In the week leading up to IWD, however, there was a strong reminder that the recent political changes are only one step towards the desired objective of a democratic society unblemished by gender-, race-, or sexuality-based discrimination; the newfound position of Iran on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).  The CSW is a body "dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women," noble a purpose inconsistent with Iran’s horrendous record of upholding the most basic human rights. 

Iran’s election for the 2011-2015 position on the Commission was passed in April 2010, just a week after senior cleric and acting Friday prayer leader of Tehran, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, stated that the wearing of revealing clothes by Iranian women is to blame for the nation’s increasing number of earthquakes. 

“Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,"

Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media; A laughable but serious blow to women across the world who choose the right of self-expression and determination in the face of oppressive religious dogma. 

Understandably, the election of Iran to the CSW was passed despite stark opposition by Iranian activists for women’s rights.  A letter signed by 214 activists and endorsed by over a dozen human rights bodies was written to the UN detailing Iranian laws that demonstrate the nation’s lack of commitment to gender equality:

"Women lack the ability to choose their husbands, have no independent right to education after marriage, no right to divorce, no right to child custody, have no protection from violent treatment in public spaces, are restricted by quotas for women's admission at universities, and are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for peacefully seeking change of such laws.”

 Iran, a country that legalizes the stoning of adulterers, the rape of virgins before execution, sigheh (temporary marriage), and forced wearing of the hijab is now to have a leading voice on global issue affecting women.  Notably, Iran does so despite having signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.  Such incongruence between actions and words of Iran highlights the inability of organisations such as the UN to effect real change whilst working within the constraints of the corrupt bureaucratic system of our current society.   This is just one example of the failure of the UN to act in the interests of the majority of the world’s population. 

Regarding the election of Iran to the CSW, UN defence of its decision rests on geographic principles; the principle of equitable regional representation, UN officials say, must be taken into account when offering membership. 

Acknowledging this, Iranian activists argued one representative from Asian nations, as opposed to the normal two, would be preferable to elevating Iran to the commission in light of the “the highly negative ramifications of Iran’s membership in this international body."  But it seems such recommendations have fallen on deaf ears. 

Sadly, signs of ensuing negative ramifications can already be seen.  Only months after its election to the CSW in 2010, 18-year-old Iranian Navid Mohebbi was arrested with charges of threatening national security, promoting anti-Iran propaganda, and insulting current and former leaders of Iran – a guise for the real ‘crime’ of keeping a blog supporting women’s rights. 

Navid’s crime was to be a friend to women of his country and write the about domestic violence, economic and education inequality, sex trafficking, and forced genital mutilation that is part of Iran’s current social reality. Navid’s 2010 IWD post read:

“For the women of my own country who are being brutally suppressed in the most vicious manner, I wish a society without violence, oppression and without gender-specific violence."

Following his arrest, Navid was subject to interrogation, held in solitary confinement for extended periods of time, denied legal counsel or contact with family; essentially, denied a fair trial. 

Luckily, a petition initiated by A Safe World for Women containing the signatures of 600 Change.org members was successful in suspending Navid’s three year sentence, Navid being released on Christmas Day 2010; A tribute to the effectiveness of non-violent protest in the face of grave oppression. 

It is an anomaly that a body dedicated to advocating and pursuing the advancement of women in society could appoint to its governing board a nation whose government is actively opposed to achieving such a goal. 

Yet such incongruence is to be expected under Capitalism.  Any organisation “committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights”, as the UN states they are, is doomed to fail in a society where the means of production are owned by a special few, production is based on profit not need, and workers are increasingly exploited as a means to obtain ever-increasing profit. True change can never come about in a system where a small majority own most of the world’s wealth and control the lives of the majority.

A fundamental change to the economic state of society is needed to ever achieve equal living standards, full possession of human rights, equal opportunity and a lack of gender-, race- or sexuality-based discrimination. A fundamental change that will never come from the UN is needed to achieve Navid’s dream of an egalitarian, oppression-free society, not just in Iran but across the world.   An economic system in which the means of production are commonly owned and controlled co-operatively based on the needs of society as a whole, where the distribution of wealth serves the interests of society as a whole, is needed for this to be achieved.  That is, socialism is needed. 

The struggle for women continues, most notably at this point in history in the Middle East.  Actions greater than what diplomatic organisations such as the UN can provide are needed for true progress.  The key to ending all oppression is through the self-emancipation of the working class.  We need to create active non-violent organisations to lead the struggle. 

R.L.Bradley

A Step Towards Peace in Afghanistan

On the 22nd of June Barack Obama declared victory in Afghanistan. He promised to remove American Troops after a ten year occupation that has achieve little more than the death of thousands of civilians, a few thousand troops, and the waste of more than one trillion dollars. This follows a comment a few weeks prior from General Petraeus, leader of the US forces in Afghanistan, who said “We have managed to reverse some of the Taliban’s momentum,” as if this was a huge accomplishment for the world largest and most well funded army after ten years of killing. He also mentioned that all of the gains made by the US were “fragile and reversible”, a quote that needless to say did not made it into any headlines.

The last ten years in  Afghanistan
After 9/11, US president George Bush, British Prime-minister Tony Blair, along with other Western leaders, claimed the Taliban in Afghanistan, a former US ally, were giving Al Qaida a safe haven. To sell a war to the public the US promoted this alongside the idea that they were going to “Liberate” the people of Afghanistan from the Taliban’s oppression. The Taliban’s treatment of women was spun as a reason to go to war. Laura Bush, George Bush’s wife, and Cherie Blair took to wearing a piece of fabric torn from a burka to symbolise the fight for women’s freedom in Afghanistan. It is true that the Taliban’s treatment of woman was oppressive but it soon became clear that the US were not out to change this when the largest woman’s rights group in Afghanistan, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), talked out against the US invasion and demanded the Western forces leave. They have expressed on may occasions that the conditions woman are subject to are no better, if not worse than was before the invasion; thousands of innocent people have died; there is wider spread corruption than before; and the country’s infrastructure is far worse due to regular bombing raids that have destroyed homes, hospitals, mosques and farms.    

The liberation of the Afghani people was never the aim of the US and NATO. After eight years of US aggression under the banner of “war on terror”, they empowered the most brutal terrorists of the Northern Alliance as well as former Russian puppets and by relying on them, the US imposed a puppet government on the Afghan people. Hamid Karzai, the head of this puppet regime is well known to be deeply corrupt and just works in the interest of the US and former members of the Northern alliance, not for the needs of the Afghan people.

After ten years, 140,000 NATO troops, the vast majority of them from the US, are still in occupation; different commanders-in-chief and imperialist strategies, from troops surge to counter-insurgency,have come and gone; and the Taliban now controls more of the country than it did five years ago. The much-vaunted aim of women’s liberation is rarely mentioned today and violence against women is rife. Twenty girls’ schools were firebombed or destroyed in just six months last year and Karzai recently attempted to push through laws to legalise rape in marriage. This would have also meant women could not leave their homes without their husband’s permission. It is estimated that in Afghanistan there are 1.5 million people suffering from immediate starvation, as well as 7.5 million suffering as a result of the country’s dire situation.



The Stats: Huge numbers of civilian deaths are the result of the US invasion


New Zealand’s Role
The New Zealand Government has played a role in the last ten years of Afghanistan’s history as it has supported the US in is brutal war. This may not be something that you would expect from a country that was ranked one of the world’s most peaceful in the 2010 Global Peace Index (GPI), a publication developed by an international panel of peace experts and published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The New Zealand government sent troops to support the US-led invasion of Afghanistan immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Just like the US, the NZ government uses rhetoric about “security” and “fighting terrorism” as a justification for the continued involvement of the NZDF (Defense Force). The language used by the government creates the image of altruistic action by the military. Soldiers are “peacekeepers” sent to do “reconstruction”—which obscures the reality that the Afghani government was installed by the US for economic reasons. If the New Zealand government wanted to do reconstruction work they would send builders, plumbers and engineers, not people trained to kill with guns. In the same way the term “peacekeeping troop” is an oxymoron- guns create the opposite of peace. It was only after the media revealed that the NZSAS (Special Air Service) was there that the government admitted to their involvement. They loudly trumpet the “reconstruction team” as “humanitarian aid” when in fact they are there to prop up the US military occupation.

Research by investigative journalist Nicky Hager makes it clear that the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) have been heavily focused on supporting the US War on Terror since September 11, 2001. When the US switched it’s attention to Iraq, so did we. It seems while New Zealand sits happy at number one on the GPI, our own tax dollars are funding an intelligence operation that supports the very same wars we once condemned.  NZ serves as cog in the war in Afghanistan. Not something you would expect from a “Peaceful Nation”.

 Two examples of the horrific effects of coalition bombing on civilians. On the left, a child who was injured– he is better than many. On the right—many graves are dug after bombs hit.

Current Struggles to Create Peace
This equating of winning a war with “progress” is never questioned by our media or our society. It is simply an implicit part of being involved. If we’re killing more of the enemy than they are of us, it is progress; if we’re not, then we need to try harder to kill more. War as a method of progress is never questioned, just its ‘success’ rate. Progress is in the eye of the war wager. As outlined above this war has not brought progress of any kind. It has only destroyed what progress had been made, and set Afghanistan back for decades to come.

With money and offers of official posts, the US and its Afghan agents have bought many Afghan intellectuals, writers and poets. As a result the media, instead of raising people’s awareness and mobilizing them for pro-independence, pro-democracy and anti-fundamentalism struggle, inflames and fuels ethnic, sectarian and lingual tensions among Afghan people. Any writer in Afghanistan who does not fit with this line, at the least does not get employed, and at the worst is killed. Almost all Western media shows story after story of poor young soldiers who innocently went off to fight and got killed while ignoring the deaths of civilians. But despite what the media is saying inside and outside of Afghanistan people are starting to organize and rise up to demand better lives, free from US imperialism, the Taliban and other warlords. The removal of US troops can only make this easier for them.

Left:  The perfect way to dress for construction work… it looks like this equipment would be much more useful for destruction rather than construction.     Right: So called “Peace-Keeping”

 A couple of these movements have been shown on American news but only ones with small minority extremist movements with guns as this helps to push the US governments agenda - Only groups that are shooting at American troops are shown as the US can use this to justify why they are there and why they shoot people. They neglect to show peaceful movements that are starting to form. A couple of weeks ago the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers marched through Kabul, to the UN headquarters, bearing a banner with a contrary message, “Peace is the prerequisite for any progress”. The alternatives to the great loudness, speed and force of the military is the quiet, slow, patient, painstaking work of relationship building, work which the AYPVs are doing internationally through Global Days of Listening, and locally through letters, the Bamiyan Peace Park, and other creative initiatives. For example, they made mobile phone pouches out of scrap leather, embroidered the word “peace” on them, and sent them with messages of love to students at schools in Kandahar in the south. The rarity of such action was underscored by the incredulous responses they received, such as, “I can’t believe such a love is possible.” One of the inspiring things about the AYPV’s march is that it didn’t just proclaim a different way, it embodied it. As we’ve all seen in the last few years, protests in Afghanistan typically end in violence and often deaths. Yet the presence of riot police didn’t intimidate or incite these young people to retaliate or flee in fear – instead they responded with active love. “Be alive and happy!” they called to police through beaming smiles.

Other peace movements are also starting to gain traction. The National Peace Jirga (assembly) has organized a series of peace assemblies in recent months, drawing thousands of people. The meetings often feature fiery speakers who condemn international forces for killing civilians – but who also criticize the Taliban. This movement is supported by many Afghan run political groups and other non-government organizations such as “Awakened youth” and various women’s rights groups.

Towards a Better Future
Despite the strengths of Afghan peace groups, most are also beset by weaknesses, says Habibullah Rafeh, a political analyst with the Afghanistan Academy of the Sciences. "A lot of these parties are organized along ethnic or tribal lines," he says. The Awakened Youth and the National Peace Jirga, for instance, consist mostly of Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group. But these groups are just the start. In order to gain a society in Afghanistan that insures that people are equal and get the resources and opportunities that they need, a grassroots movement that exists and operates across tribal lines must be built. The people of Afghanistan, whether they are being controlled and oppressed  by the US, the Taliban or other tribal leaders, are exploited in the same way as any other lower class around the world- in a system of control and profit making rather than equality and sharing of resources. To create equality, and in doing so peace, they must unite across ethnic and tribal lines and work together to overcome their oppressors. They must organise together through political groups and trade-unions dedicated to non-violent action. This must be done not just in Afghanistan but around the world. “Mountain cannot reach mountain,” goes the Afghan proverb, “only human can reach human.”  This is what real progress looks like – progress for humans to become more humane, more compassionate, more connected. This will not happen through the use of violence as it dehumanizes others and stops relationships building.

Slogans about restoring peace, security, democracy and women’s rights will be empty and amplified claims, as long as Afghanistan has not gained its independence; the Taliban and the Northern Alliance killers are not removed from their positions of power so that true democracy can be instilled; and the billions of dollars they have pillaged from people are not taken back from them. The benchmark to judge if any individual or organization is progressive in the current situation is their struggle in against US occupation, the Taliban and the US in the “National Front”.

Obama speech claiming victory are false, nobody has emerged victorious. But the removal of US forces can be nothing but good for the people of Afghanistan.

J.Llewellyn