Introduction to Geopolitics

janjaweed
,
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or “devil’s on horseback,” widely believed to be doing the bidding of the government,
though this is denied by officials in Khartoum. The UN investigation of the attacks has
highlighted the use of rape as a weapon by the 
janjaweed
. The reported incidents are
numerous, but to give a sense of the horror one attack in March 2004 involved the rape
of 16 girls by 150 soldiers and 
janjaweed
. It is alleged that girls as young as 10 years
old have been raped.
The geopolitical implications of rape as a weapon of war are discussed in Box 8.1.
Here the topic of multiple geopolitical structures is illustrated by a February 11, 2005
article from the 
New York Time
s that reported on the difficult future of the babies that
are being born as an outcome of systematic rape in Darfur. Fatouma, a 16-year-old
mother and rape victim, identifies her baby as a 
janjaweed
. “When people see her light
skin and her soft hair, they will know she is a 
janjaweed
” (Polgreen, 2005, p. 191). For
now, the baby is being raised and protected, but the future for both mother and baby is
uncertain given the deep cultural taboos regarding rape and, in the Muslim tradition,
identity is passed from father to son. The article continues by quoting the village sheik’s
thoughts toward the baby:
She will stay with us for now . . . We will treat her like our own. But we will
watch carefully when she grows up, to see if she becomes like a 
janjaweed
. If
she behaves like a 
janjaweed
, she cannot stay among us.
Ethnic identities of them and us, as well as the position of women in a patriarchal and
traditional society interplay to make the future for women such as Fatouma and her
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Figure 8.1
Child soldiers.

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Box 8.1 Rape as a weapon of war
Rape is increasingly used as weapon of war: It “routinely serves as a strategic
function in war and acts as an integral tool for achieving particular military
objectives” (Ramet, 1999, p. 206). Recent and ongoing conflicts in the former
Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Darfur/Sudan, Burma/Myanmar, Jammu and Kashmir have
all involved systematic rape. Rape is an effective weapon because it has an impact
upon a number of geopolitical structures and, hence, is disruptive in many ways.
For example, Allen’s (1996) discussion of rape in the former Yugoslavia points
to the ability of systematic rape to change the perception of place; after public
rapes of Bosnians and Croats had demonstrated the danger of remaining, people
would leave their established homes and leave the vacated town for occupation
by Serbs. Rape had changed a place from a traditional site of community to a
venue of fear, and so facilitated the brutal redrawing of the ethnic geography of
former Yugoslavia.
Rape in warfare is also a means of enforcing pregnancy “and thus poisoning
the womb of the enemy” (Crossette, 1998). From this perspective the target of
the rapists is at the individual scale of the mother and the offspring. The woman
becomes “damaged goods in a patriarchal system that defines woman as man’s
possession and virgin woman as his most valuable asset” (Allen, 1996, p. 96). As
one Rwandan rape victim said: “We are not protected against anything . . . We
become crazy. We aggravate people with our problems. We are the living dead”
(Human Rights Watch, 1999, p. 73). Rape victims are unable to find husbands
and bear other children, and hence become rejected by their families and commun-
ities. The target of the rapist in war is also the child in a context in which
membership of one ethnic community is vital and children born from rape can be
seen, for example, as infusing Serbian blood into other ethnic groups and
producing “little Chetniks” or “Serb soldier-heroes” (Allen, 1996, p. 96). Rape
destroys the life of the individual and disrupts the identity and cohesion of the
community and the ethnic group.
Key to understanding the ability to motivate soldiers to rape as well as the
disruption of communities is the notion of patriarchy. The ability to violate and
harm women, to see rape as an acceptable form of combat, requires soldiers to
be socialized within structures that see the domination and control of women as
a norm. The strategic understanding that rape victims will be rejected by their
communities and families also rests upon the patriarchal view of women as “prop-
erty” that cannot be married off or produce wanted children after rape.
Understanding the power of patriarchy is crucial in making sense of the impact
of systematic rape, and hence its adoption in war. In a nationalist or ethnic conflict,
when it would appear that group identity is the dominant geopolitical factor, a
daughter attacked by the enemy group does not receive the sympathy and help of
their own community. Patriarchal values trump communal solidarity. In the former 

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Yugoslavia, for example, women feared that they would be shunned by family
and friends (Allen, 1996, p. 70), and the victims’ trauma was “exacerbated by
cultural taboos associated with rape” (Human Rights Watch, 1999). In Jammu and
Kashmir, Pandit and Muslim women who suffered rape in the conflict were taunted
by their neighbors (of their own cultural group) and sometimes outcast by their
families. After rapes committed by the Indian security forces in 1991, “women
had been deserted by their husbands . . . a seventy year old woman had been
thrown out by her son . . . [and] girls . . . were teased even by the village men”
(Chhachhi, 2002, p. 200). National and community solidarity in the face of conflict
took second place to embedded views of the status of women. However, the very
rejection of women rape victims by their own communities disrupts societies and
cultures, and so is seen as an effective weapon of war.
The final geopolitical structure I will introduce in this discussion is the state.
The case of Myanmar/Burma is especially indicative, though certainly not the 
only case, in which the government is active in promoting its soldiers as rapists.
Systematic rape by the army is based upon a patriarchal society, with “many indi-
cators of male predominance and female subordination throughout Burmese
society” (Apple, 1998, p. 26). Also, the army is alleged to “recruit” teenagers by
kidnap, and one argument is that systematic rape by Burmese soldiers is indica-
tive of the abuse they have suffered themselves (Bernstein and Kean, 1998, p. 3).
The Burmese government uses the army in its attempt to dominate minority ethnic
groups. Similar to other conflicts, rape in Burma is used to illustrate the power 
of the state over ethnic minorities, to instill fear, and nullify any plans for rebel-
lion (Women’s Organization from Burma, 2000, p. 27). Furthermore, Burmese
soldiers are taught that by impregnating women from ethnic minorities they 
will be leaving Burmese blood in the villages, which will end the rebellion.
Perhaps unique to the case of Burma, and indicative of the combined domination
of state apparatus and patriarchy is the belief that rape provides the opportunity
for soldiers to give women “pleasure” and so persuade them into a marriage that
would diffuse Burmese “blood” and diminish the minority population (Apple,
1998, p. 44).
Rape as a weapon of war is an important topic to discuss because of its illus-
tration of the manner of fighting in the civil and ethnic wars that are most common
today. Theoretically, the issue of rape in warfare illustrates that geopolitical
agency is often very aware of the multitude of geopolitical structures and their
interrelationships. By targeting relatively weak individuals, an army can disrupt
communities and cultures. However, such belief in the strategy, and its chances
of success, are made possible by existing patriarchal structures that view women
in particular and subordinate roles.

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offspring bleak. Fatouma’s goals are clear: “One day I hope I will be married . . . I hope
I find a husband who will love me and my daughter” (p. A2). The structures of reli-
gious and ethnic tradition and honor make the accomplishment of these goals
problematic. In the