Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone

Sex, Security, and Post-Conflict Development

Megan H. MacKenzie

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780814744970
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The eleven-year civil war in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002was incomprehensibly brutal—it is estimated that half of allfemale refugees were raped and many thousands were killed.While the publicity surrounding sexual violence helped tocreate a general picture of women and girls as victims of theconflict, there has been little effort to understand female soldiers'involvement in, and experience of, the conflict. FemaleSoldiers in Sierra Leone draws on interviews with 75 formerfemale soldiers and over 20 local experts, providing a rareperspective on both the civil war and post-conflict developmentefforts in the country. Megan MacKenzie argues thatpost-conflict reconstruction is a highly gendered process,demonstrating that a clear recognition and understandingof the roles and experiences of female soldiers are centralto both understanding the conflict and to crafting effectivepolicy for the future.

1
Introduction
Conjugal Order and Insecurity Post-Conflict

One of the most illustrative signifiers of Sierra Leone’s eleven-year civil conflict is an image of a boy, about twelve years old, wearing tattered clothing and a tough expression and holding an AK-47.¹ Variations of this image have been used on countless pamphlets and posters to “raise awareness” about child soldiers, to solicit donations for war-torn African countries, and to advertise the need for research in the areas of peace and post-conflict. This singular image is used to represent “Africa,” or some idea of Africa as a land-mass united by troubled civil wars, corruption, and underdevelopment.² The young boy soldier symbolizes uncomplicated perceptions of “the African” subject. He embodies the constant possibility of chaos in Africa and the perceived need for outside intervention. Likewise, the boy signifies the lost innocence of childhood specifically and of “traditional” Africa more generally. As a child, he evokes the sense that, though his innocence has been corrupted, there remains a possibility for it to be returned. This feeds the perception of “the tragedy of Africa” and the notion that despite the destruction and losses, it is possible—and the West’s “responsibility”—to restore order and peace to this troubled continent.

This boy has become representative of a wider collection of archetypal identities associated with the continent, including the disenfranchised youth, the impoverished citizen, and the uneducated child. When I traveled to Sierra Leone in October 2005, it was clear that this characterization had masked, and somehow eclipsed, other identities. Of these unexplored identities, female soldiers are perhaps one of the most underrepresented categories of “war-affected” citizens. The “official” story of the conflict, reflected in the literature, media accounts, and international nongovernmental organization (INGO) and nongovernmental organization (NGO) reports, largely omits the participation of female soldiers. Furthermore, mainstream narratives recounting the so-called postwar period and the end of armed conflict are reliably mute on the experiences of women and girls. Narratives tend to focus on violent men being disarmed so that society can “return to normal” or can return from anarchy to domesticated order. The chaos and lawlessness that characterized the war period is described as gradually being replaced by peace and structure through the help of development agencies and government intervention. Families reunite, children return to school, and men find new jobs to support their loved ones.

These depictions of conflict and peace in Sierra Leone stood in stark contrast to the narratives of the individuals I interviewed in the country. Local social and aid workers, government officials, volunteers, and leaders of women’s organizations uncovered alternative versions of the war and of the post–armed conflict period; these consistently featured female soldiers. Female soldiers dislocate predictable and simplistic gendered representations of war: they displace the typical characterization of an “African rebel” as well as perceptions about disempowered and victimized African women. The disparate accounts of women’s and girls’ participation in the civil conflict in Sierra Leone evoked several questions: Why, if women participated as soldiers, were they largely ignored in mainstream accounts of the conflict? What where were their stories? How might female soldiers’ depictions of the war and accounts of the postwar period enhance and alter mainstream accounts of Sierra Leone’s civil war? And how might the recognition of female soldiers disrupt the often singular and generalized depictions of conflict in Africa and complicate the use of a young boy with an AK-47 as the symbol of its wars?

In an effort to shed light on these curiosities, it seemed logical to go straight to the source. Through the assistance of several individuals and organizations I was able to conduct interviews with more than seventy-five female soldiers from across the country. The stories, dreams, complaints, and desires recounted by these women challenge prevailing assumptions associated with development, gender and conflict, violent women, and soldiering. A vast gap soon emerged between existing representations of female soldiers and their own accounts of the conflict and their post–armed conflict situations. The female soldiers interviewed made it clear that the depiction of “women and children” as a coherent category of war victims is overly simplistic and ignores the variety of roles women and girls possess during war as well as their agency during this period. Further, their stories problematized the notion of “post-conflict” as a seamless move from war to peace. Finally, these interviews complicate two particular simplistic generalizations about African civil wars, including the presumption that civil wars are initiated by idle young men who commit random violence and contribute to generalized chaos; second, that women and girls are impacted by, or protected from, war but rarely contribute to, or impact, war themselves.

This book is premised on the belief that stories of war and peace are nothing but gendered myths if they ignore, silence, or exclude women and girls. Without asking about and listening to the experiences of women and girls as well as men and boys during war, we are left with a limited understanding of war, who is involved, what it means to people, and how they are affected in the short and long term. Current understandings of post-conflict, peace, and reintegration in Sierra Leone are equally gendered, due, in part, to an absence of female soldiers’ own accounts of the war and the “postwar” period. Without recognizing the roles and experiences of female soldiers in Sierra Leone, post-conflict reconstruction policies are bound to be gender blind at best, and restrictive, moralizing, and disciplining at worst.

Drawing largely from interview material, one of the central aims of this book is to show post-conflict reconstruction as a highly gendered process defined and imposed largely from the outside of so-called war-torn communities. Within much of the literature focused on post–armed conflict states, the processes of post-conflict reconstruction and peace building are presupposed to be benign, inclusive, and progressive. The post-conflict period is often defined as a temporary period after a formal cease-fire characterized by increased peace, possibility, and development. Post-conflict organizations and institutions are seen as neutral actors whose roles are to facilitate the transition from insecurity and conflict to peace and social order. Post-conflict policies are largely shaped by patriarchal norms associated with liberal social order rather than by “local” needs, realities, or particularities. Crowding out space for its critique, this idealized imaginary of the post-conflict phase casts external actors as necessary saviors and obviates questions about the kinds of conflicts and insecurities that might continue after formal cease-fire agreements.

Interviews with female soldiers also inspired the conclusion that key concepts connected with both war and peace, such as order, disorder, security, and insecurity, are gendered and largely assume particular gendered orders. Reconstruction, the return to normal, the restoration of order, and reintegration—the central objectives of most post-conflict policies—are not gender neutral but rather assume and require a particular gendered order. As a result, post-conflict policies have the potential to inscribe and enforce exploitative and patriarchal forms of gendered order post–armed conflict.

Specifically, I argue that notions of conjugal order³ shape understandings of security and insecurity and are at the heart of development and post–armed conflict reconstruction policies. The concept of conjugal order refers to the laws and social norms that serve to regulate sexuality, (re)construct the family, and send messages about acceptable and legitimate social relationships. There is no singular form of conjugal order; rather, conjugal order can be used as an analytical tool to detect and examine the laws, regulations, and norms that dominate a particular region or context. Conjugal order is informed by the laws associated with marriage and the family, including marital, paternity, adoption, and inheritance laws as well as broader social norms. For most patriarchal societies these norms include the privileging of heterosexual sex, the assumption that sex within marriage is consensual, and customs dictating legitimate and illegitimate children. Conjugal order is inspired by previous work on the regulation of sexuality. What distinguishes this concept from other theoretical analyses of the family and sexuality is that conjugal order is used specifically to understand the links between sexual regulation and broader notions of order and stability. One of the main contentions of this book is that conjugal order shapes perceptions about security and development and that policies aimed at improving security and development impose, institute, and reinforce particular forms of conjugal order.

Periods of insecurity, such as war, are a privileged time for examining how peace, order, and security are defined. Moreover, the phase of transition between war and the so-called postwar period provides a unique opportunity to examine how social order is literally reconstructed through intervening actors, particularly international organizations and NGOs. Female soldiers in Sierra Leone are an exemplary focus because they represent a problem for most iterations of conjugal order: many of these women achieved positions of power unavailable to them outside of conflict, scores were unmarried or involved in unauthorized relationships, most were separated from their parents or family units, and countless had children as a result of rape or as a result of an “illegitimate” relationship. The ways in which the government and local and international actors described, depicted, categorized, and reconstructed these women and girls reveal a great deal about how Western-liberal forms of conjugal order were reconstructed and imposed in Sierra Leone.

In turn, the concept of conjugal order helps unpack not only the gendered nature of development but also the imperial and regulatory nature of development. Policies that assume particular relationships between mothers and fathers, husbands and wives will be shown to be constructing the liberal family model rather than responding to it. Further, the way “legitimate” beneficiaries of development aid are recognized within post-conflict and development policies serves to construct identities and delineate “normal” relationships and behaviors. Policy makers are neither catering their post–armed conflict responses to “local realities” nor restoring local, “natural” order; rather, most post-conflict development policies impose Western-liberal ideals of conjugal order, which send explicitly moralizing messages to individuals about appropriate identities, behaviors, relationships, and values.

Recasting Post-Conflict Development and Security

Post-conflict development continues to be a major global focus for both policy makers and academics. Further, given the growing conflation of security and development, or the “radicalization of development,” Western nations are increasingly considering international development as directly impacting their own prosperity and security.⁴ As a result, many Western donor governments and Western-based organizations and institutions have taken an active role in overseeing the process of post–armed conflict reconstruction and development. Despite the increased role of international actors in developing nations’ affairs—particularly of INGOs and a plethora of development agencies—there has been insufficient critical investigation of the political and ethical rationalities, the endemic gender biases, and the impacts of these actors on developing nations.

Given the tendency of international organizations and development organizations to create and reuse “models”⁵ for development projects, investigating and critiquing these models—specifically how women are “processed” through and envisioned by them—is essential. In particular, in a highly securitized moment such as the so-called transition from war to peace, the gendered ordering that takes place in the name of “reconstruction” and “rehabilitation” must be explored. Moreover, identifying the ways in which the “post-conflict” transition in Sierra Leone has been gendered might allow us to locate important sites of resistance and possibilities for change.

This book draws from and contributes to scholarship within the fields of security, development, and gender studies. The work of Mark Duffield and his approach to humanitarianism, development, and post-conflict reconstruction have been particularly inspiring.⁶ In Global Governance and the New Wars, Duffield coined the phrase “the radicalization of development,” in reference to what he sees as the merging of development and security. Duffield argues that, as a result of the radicalization of development, those in the business of development are no longer simply securing the post-conflict environment; their recent mandates include transforming entire societies through the inculcation of “liberal peace.”⁷ Duffield explains that the coupling of “liberal” and “peace” has meant that liberal policies and structures are correlated with stability: “Liberal values and institutions have been vested with ameliorative and harmonizing powers.”⁸

One consequence of this forced marriage between “liberal” and “peace” has been that aid not only is aimed at emergency relief but also is concerned with “conflict resolution, reconstructing social networks, strengthening civil and representative institutions, and security sector reform in the context of a functioning market economy.”⁹ In other words, the liberal project of development is about radical societal transformation. This conflation of development and security has pushed aid agencies and NGOs operating development programs from the role of distributors of philanthropic donations to political directors and governors, or, the organizers of society characterized by liberal democracy and liberal political economy. Duffield summarizes this idea: “Aid is no substitute for political action because it is the political action. It is now a tool of international regulation and is embedded in the networks and strategic complexes that make up liberal peace.”¹⁰

This book focuses specifically on the ways in which the radicalization of development has affected ideas about post–armed conflict reconstruction and reintegration. Reconstruction and reintegration tend to be viewed as neutral concepts, which signify a “return to normal” post–armed conflict. There is little research that considers the genealogy of the concept of reintegration and its multiple meanings in post-conflict discourses. The term “reintegration” is rooted within criminology literature; the most basic definition given in criminology is “a process intended to reduce recidivism after a criminal’s release from prison.”¹¹ In this context, two facets of reintegration are described. First, reintegration is seen as a process: “Reintegration (or ‘reentry’ as it is sometimes called) is both an event and a process…. re-entry is also a long-term process, one that actually starts prior to release and continues well afterwards.”¹² The second dynamic of reintegration is associated with “correction,” “rehabilitation,” and “treatment” and is aimed at preparing criminals to be successful citizens.¹³ What is implied by these definitions is that criminals have deviated from societal norms and must be transformed or molded in such a way as to ensure that they can return to and function “normally” in society.

Within literature looking at the disarmament process, reintegration is defined generally as “the process which allows ex-combatants and their families to adapt economically and socially to productive civilian life.”¹⁴ In this sense, reintegration in the “post-conflict” context is conceived in a similar way to reintegration within criminology. Both assume a desistance of criminal or combat behavior, “reentry” into community or civilian life, and rehabilitation or an adaptation of behavior to discourage recidivism. When reviewing the reintegration policies associated with Sierra Leone’s disarmament process, these similarities become clear. For example, the National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (NCDDR) declared that reintegration policies were designed to support “resettlement into normal society.”¹⁵

There is a growing body of research that examines the gendered power dynamics associated with reintegration, as well as “post-conflict” in general. Susan McKay and Dyan Mazurana’s text Where Are the Girls? Girls in Fighting Forces in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique: Their Lives during and after War, is a well-known example of a gendered analysis of reintegration programs.¹⁶ This literature has shown that while women typically take on different roles during conflict, this does not necessarily translate into po...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword: The New Feminist International Relations Christine Sylvester
• 1. Introduction: Conjugal Order and Insecurity Post-Conflict
• 2. The History of Sex, Order, and Conflict in Sierra Leone
• 3. Defining Soldiers
• 4. Empowerment Boom or Bust? Assessing Women’s Post–Armed Conflict Empowerment Initiatives
• 5. Securitization and Desecuritization: Female Soldiers and the Reconstruction of Women
• 6. Securitizing Sex? Rethinking Wartime Sexual Violence
• 7. Loving Your Enemy: Rape, Sex, Childbirth, and Politics Post–Armed Conflict
• 8. Conclusion: Displacing War Mythology and Developmental Logic
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author