Rape as a Weapon of War: Democratic Republic of Congo

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There has been widespread concern about how to explain the occurrence of wartime rape in the years since it has successively been used as a last-resort weapon of war. In the years since the advent of the first instances of war in any civilization, reports of mass rapes have been reported with succession, with feminist scholars, human rights organizations, scientists and even journalists begging to seek a viable solution to this formidable scourge. While some researchers argue that the occurrence of wartime rape, with its frequency, savagery and systematic organization during these times, is inherently entwined with the nature of the conflicts, most of them emphasize that the phenomenon has a timeless ubiquity that can be traced to the times of Homer and the raping of mythological Sabine women (Boehm 15). Researchers throughout history have also been united by the absence of attention in the national and international criminal courts for the perpetrators of these crimes, a serious dereliction of not only the social/moral but also the intellectual rights of those wronged. Most importantly, there is the growing consensus that the only way to try and understand the occurrence of wartime rape as a weapon of war is to understand and appreciate the factors and conditions that promote it. As this paper tries to address, the occurrence of wartime rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo was done purely as a means of increasing the militia’s influence in the warring regions, as a last resort means after every other war tactic had failed to bear fruit. Militias and other warring factions often use rape as a means of demoralizing and degrading their enemies, sneaking back and taking refuge in their already beaten foes.

As it is with most African conflicts, the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo has much to do with the legacy of the nation as well as the political backdrops of colonialism. Since the violent imposition of the Belgian colonial rule in 1885, calling the nation the Congo Free State, there have been many killed in the nation, with most of the murders being so grotesque and monstrous that people have literary lost touch with humanity (chopped limbs and body parts). These conflicts and clashes that were registered in this far too marginalized African country were described as the most monstrous fights in history within the African continent, with registered adversity being so catastrophic that they literary affected the entire spheres (economic, political, social, traditional) of life of the affected people.

The crisis that went down in the DRC was unswervingly linked to the Rwandan genocide and the Interahamwe militias that were in a major way to blame for the genocide just crossed the borders into Congo causing their action there in 1994 and have never left. As time went by, inhabitant rape become a regular thing making instrument to attach the civilians increasing its levels from 20% in 2004 to about 75% registered rape in 2008. It soon became an ordinary thing in different areas especially in the eastern province bearing a nickname for it as “the ground zero of rape” (Boehm 30).

The rape cases increased affecting hundreds of thousands of girls children and women, and the most unfortunate thing is the people that were expected to protect the civilians, as the armed combats, were the ones that were terrorizing the community by assaulting their women. When it come to the point that the law enforcers were the ones assaulting the civilians, rape in Congo was soon declared rape is a weapon of war. New data information suggests that rape by the combatants and other law enforcers was declining mainly in the eastern side of Congo and more commonly in the other areas. As time went by, there was a diverse drift indication that the felonies have distorted their habits all for the worst behaviour. As the figure of resident perpetrators increased rape in the country was seen as more than a problem of warfare.

Speculation has it that the poor rehabilitation and the deprived reintegrated combats are playing a major role in the molestation of women. With men that have left the hostile rebel group, they have secretly continued to perpetrate crime and different kinds of felonies, directing them to the enduring of the war while they were still in the forces. Multiple humanitarian organizations have reported that the number of women exposed and those that give information about their encounter with the military has enormous increased. This does not mean that the civilian rape consequently decreased, unlike the expectations of many it did go up.

During this period of the genocide in DRC, rape had become the main instrument of war, playing the role of a bullet in a gun. Unlike in these days’ wars and battles that the mindset of rape has cooled down, a few years earlier that scenario was like a way of life they had to endure and a memory that never left their mind. It has been realized that one other major reason that there has been an increase in civilian rapes is due to the collapsed social structures that bonded and make the constitution of the community. The war displaced very many leaders demolishing these set configurations that make the society exist in peace. Though it is said that “We hear from both men and women that it’s no longer easy to enforce social mores” (Card 25).

With this large-scale involvement of the Congolese militia, more casualties and even more problems at the local homes were experiencing. The then Congolese President, though he had all the power to put a stop to the suffering, was too arrogant and concerned with his public image, refusing to end the war for fear of reprisal back home. As the pressure to end the war rose, he chose not to run for a second term, essentially handing over the “hot potato” to his successor (Card 25). Top Congolese commander charged with the assault in Congo, General Laurent Nkunda, was faced with the predicament of having in his charge an army full of young men, ready and eager to engage in full combat bloodbaths. However, the enemy did not present a full-frontal attack and as such, the Congolese army men had to lay in wait, hiding in the bushes, hoping to catch some action. As time went by, drugs and other stimulants were made available to the army personnel from some of the local sources and soon, morale in the camps began to fall. Back home, heavy public resistance was mounting as the majority of the citizens did not see any reason for furthering the suffering of both the army personnel and the Congolese locals. By 2006, most of the Congolese militia had been pulled out from the region after the truce negotiated on January 27^th of the same year (Boehm 30). The absence of the US military paved the way for the easy success of the Southern Congolese region over the South. Though official statistics are vague, it is believed that that the war caused the death of about 2.5 million Congolese militia and civilians, with an estimated 900,000 reported cases of rape and caused about 500,000 childbirths from the rapes and 300,000 prostitutes as the rape victims were commonly ostracized from the community (Boehm 30).

As the war wore on and the Congolese army feared that they would not be able to win, systematic rape and sexual violence against women was often used as a weapon in a bid to ostracize them from society thus creating disunity and conflicts within the families and making it easier for the United States army to conquer them. The terms wartime rape, commonly used interchangeably with mass wartime rape, is used to describe a mass increase in the number of rapes, perpetrated by soldiers, in levels that are not consistent with those witnessed during times of peace. According to General Laurent Nkunda, “there would unquestionably be some raping,” (Boehm 30) where rape was by the army GIs (informally General Infantry) was seen as a standard operating procedure (SOP). On being questioned by a reporter about the occurrence of the rapes in the Congolese Eastern region of Buni, the 34^th platoon squad leader said that “That’s an everyday affair… you can nail just about everybody on that–at least once” (Boehm 32). Another GI testifying to the Winter Soldier Investigation said that “This wasn’t just one incident; this was the first one I can remember. I know of 10 or 15 such incidents at least,” (Boehm 34) a clear indication of the level of rapes that occurred in the region during those few years. In the words of a Congolese civilian (Boehm 30),

“When we fought in earnest, with lethal weapons, we went to the help of our friends also. We burnt houses, slashed banana trees, tore the aprons of women off and raped them, axed big pigs, broke down fences; we did everything. We carried on until the place was empty of resources…. When we left our women behind and went out to fight, they were in danger. Men came to find them…”

Even in all this, very few GIs were arrested for the rapes that they committed in the region. Even though rape is seen as a crime both in the eyes of the international law (under the Geneva Convention) and the Congolese Uniform Code of Military Justice, the perpetrators were rarely tried and, according to writer Susan Brownmiller in the book Against Our Will, only fifty-eight per cent of those tried got serious convictions (Brownmiller 17). There are varied justifications for the occurrence of rape during any war. The feminist theory, that explains the existence of wartime rapes as being a source of the need for men to exert their dominance over women as opposed to being crimes of sexual passion (Gottschall 130). Thus, according to the theory, the war rapists themselves are victims of “irresistible biological imperatives” that force them to vent out their frustrations, fears and insecurities on the most vulnerable of their kind (Guttschall 130). The theory explains the existence of misogynistic pressure building up in virtually all men, conditioning them to distrust, despise and need to dominate women they come across.

According to writer Jacqueline E. Lawson in her book, The Misogyny of the Vietnam War, “Raping a Congolese woman during the war became a hallmark of the guerrilla phase of the war” (Lawson 17). According to the writer, “young Congolese males, intent on asserting their superiority, their potency, their manhood, (and by extension their country’s)… raping a woman in a combat zone is something a man ‘has’ to do, ‘needs’ to do, has the ‘right’ to do” (Lawson p.18). The writer explicitly states that it is especially in the Congolese culture of the men to have a natural predisposition to misogyny and to want to express their control and dominance of women citing that, for the most part, the rapes that took place in the DRC were “part of war because rape is a part of male-centered culture” (Brownmiller 33). It is worth noting that most of the sources of information into the context of the rapes that occurred during the war were not the victims, as most of them were murdered post-rape, but instead, it is the Congolese men who are the representatives of a hegemonic culture of misogyny and dominance.

DRC’s cases of rape as conducted by the Congolese militia were a clear display of violence, subjugation and male sexual desire-motivations requisite of the feminist theory of wartime rape explanations. In the 1986 James Henry’s novel, The DRC Story, based on the true story of a Congolese soldier, who at one time holds up a gun in the air and tells his platoon members

“This is my weapon [raising his gun]
This is my gun [clutching his crotch]
This is for fighting[gun],
This is for fun [crotch]” (Henry 34).

However, the very fact that the Congolese were losing the war and thus necessitating a change in fighting tactics suggests a diversion from a total conclusion of the feminist theory. The actions of sexual violence depicted by the Congolese soldiers can highly be attributed to the soldier’s failure to discriminate sexuality from gender. Their misogynistic and other main depreciation acts against all the Congolese women that help in protecting them and are sturdily reflective of a culture that is in a position to enjoy masculinity and a scheme in which they appreciate the male gender dominating the rest of the community (Brownmiller 38). These approaches however are not fundamentally a result of the mere biological distinction that exists between the female and the male in society. Rather, misogyny is a socially and culturally cultivated reflection of a society that dictates the lives of both men and women. The feminist theory is based on the misogynistic attitudes of men and their willful attempts to exert their dominance against women under the chaotic conditions of war. Thus to prevent a future repeat of similar events, peer education into the equality of men and women, especially amongst the Western cultures, should be encouraged thus diffusing some of the potent dominance traits possessed by the soldiers (Brownmiller 39). There is also the need to view any sexual acts against women not merely as sexual offences but as crimes directed towards the entire gender.

The term wartime rape, as it is employed in literature, does not indicate the isolated examples of rape of the individual warring fighters that are involved in the factions involved in the fights. Rather, it is interchangeably used with Mass wartime rape that is used to indicate the distinct patterns of the occurrence of rape by individual soldiers and militia, at rates that are typically increased in comparison to those that prevail during peacetime. As there are typically no prevailing available statistics that provide this information, with regards to the reluctance of the informants to come forward, there is an excepted increase in the numbers and their prevalence.

Works cited

Boehm, Charles. Hierarchy in the forest: The evolution of egalitarian behaviour. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Print.

Brownmiller, Samson. Against Our Will: Men, Women Rape. New York, NY; Simon and Schuster. 2004.

Card, Timothy. Rape as a Weapon of War. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Guttschall, John. Explaining Wartime Rape. The Journal of Sex Research. Research Library Core, 2004, p.129-136.

Henry, James. The DRC Story. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin Publishing Co., 2009.

Lawson, Jones. The Misogyny of the Vietnam War. Mahwah: University of Iowa Press, 2010.

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Rape as a Weapon of War: Democratic Republic of Congo

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