women

General John de Chastelain: Reflections on the introduction of women into combat roles in the Canadian military

June 25, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Joana Cook, Managing Editor, Strife
Interview conducted on 8 May 2014.

Graduating from military college in 1960 with a commission in the Canadian Army, John de Chastelain rose quickly through the ranks. In 1989, he was promoted to General and appointed Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS). During his tenure, the Canadian military was involved in the Oka crisis, as well as the first Gulf War and Somalia. He served as Canada’s Ambassador to the United States in 1993 before being reappointed to the post of CDS from which he retired in 1995. Since then, General de Chastelain has served as Chair of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning in Northern Ireland. He helped forge the Belfast Agreement, the blueprint for peace in Northern Ireland signed on Good Friday, 1998. General de Chastelain was named to the Order of Canada in 1993, and a Companion of Honour in 1999.

* * *

Joana Cook: In your time with the military, were you responsible for any initiatives that focused on increasing the number of women in the Canadian forces? If so, what motivated these changes?

General de Chastelain: When I was Commandant of the Royal Military College (RMC) in Kingston (1977-1980), the government made the decision to change the policy of not having women attend the College – other than in the postgraduate programs. The policy to exclude women had been in effect since the College was founded in 1876. It was felt by the government to be still valid up until 1980 as the majority of graduates from the College were commissioned into the combat or combat support classifications from which women were then excluded. As moves began to open these classifications to women, it was decided to open the College to women officer cadets. I was involved in the selection of the first class of such cadets who came to the College in 1980. Women have been fully involved at the College since that date.

In 1980 after leaving RMC I was appointed Commander of Canada’s 4^th Mechanized Brigade Group in Lahr and Baden-Soellingen, Germany. At the same time a trial was announced by National Defence Headquarters to see how women could operate in “near-combat” roles, Germany being considered an operational area. That meant that women soldiers were employed in the Logistics Battalion and the Field Ambulance unit of the Brigade Group. They filled roles in these units that were normally filled by men and they went on all the exercises and the major Fall manoeuvres along with our NATO allies. At the end of the trial it was established that women should be employed in field combat support units without restriction. It was also felt that the expression “near combat” was a misnomer, since a vehicle technician repairing a fighting vehicle in a forward area was just as exposed to combat as were soldiers in the combat classifications. I believe it was the result of that trial that gradually opened up the role of women in combat classifications, including flying fighter aircraft, serving on fighting ships and in combat and combat support classifications.

The only limitation that was made was that women candidates had to meet physical fitness requirements for combat and combat support classifications as did men. As I recall, there was some debate about the physical differences between males and females with regard to fitness testing, but appropriate tests were established and women were enrolled in the combat and combat support classifications on a voluntary basis.

As to how this came about and who initiated it: I believe it was a combination of circumstances that were a part of the nationwide gradual entry of women into roles traditionally filled by men alone, eg, firefighters, loggers, police, and some emergency services. There was also an in-house (Defence Department) program to look at the benefits of opening up hitherto excluded classifications to women both as a means of expanding the recruiting base of qualified candidates as well as a sense of fairness. As technology played an increasing part in military capability, the need for engineers and science-oriented recruits expanded also, and women were equally capable in these fields.

A benefit many sought in joining the armed forces, was the ability to learn and practice a skill that would be of value after leaving the Service. For this reason there was seldom a shortage of recruits seeking careers in the technical and support classifications, particularly in the Navy and Air Force. While technical ability was equally important in the infantry, armour, artillery, field engineering and communications classifications, the nature of their work under field conditions made them less desirable to many of the men who applied to join the forces and to many of the women as well.

The one exception to all classifications being opened to women when I left the Forces in 1995 was in the submarine service. I believe that has since changed (and I believe it changed in the Royal Navy only this year).*

As to pressure for change, while there was pressure from the media and some politicians to open up hitherto excluded possibilities in the military for women. It was most vocal, I think, in the case of the Military College, which provides a paid-for university education for officer candidates entering the Regular Forces. Why, it was legitimately asked, should women be excluded from such an opportunity?

I’m not aware of what factors, other than personal desire, motivated women in their choice of the military role they wished to play.

In what roles did you see the majority of women take up in the forces? Do you feel that these changed over time?

I don’t know what the situation is in Canada’s Regular Force today. Certainly up until I left it was largely the technical and supporting classifications in all three Services, that attracted more women candidates, while the Navy and Air Force was more attractive to those seeking combat roles. That has perhaps changed. Certainly women have distinguished themselves in army combat roles, commanding units and subunits in the Afghanistan war. The only Canadian woman soldier killed in Afghanistan was an artillery Forward Observation Officer, killed while directing fire from her armoured vehicle.

It is fairly standard practice for someone to change their classification mid-career (or earlier). Not everybody finds they made the right choice at the outset and if a vacancy in another classification is available they may request the change. Those who have experience in combat units are frequently sought by the non-combat classifications, and those who have served in combat roles and look for a skill to get employment after they retire, may ask for such a transfer. In my experience, that was certainly the case for the men in the Forces and I assume it is the same for the women.

In International Military Training Operations (IMTO), what roles have women played?

The Forces have conducted a number of training missions in various countries (most recently, and ongoing, in Afghanistan). Some of these are conducted by Special Forces soldiers and I don’t know if they include women. I can see the advantage of having women soldiers involved in training missions in locations where male contact with female residents would be unacceptable for religious or societal reasons.

In regards to foreign operations, how did having women in the forces impact relations and interactions with both local populations and foreign forces?

During my time in uniform there was little foreign reaction to the role of Canadian women in operational units, as the numbers were then not large. Many national forces don’t have women in combat roles so there may exist a negative reaction among some to what Canada is doing in this regard (especially in societies where women’s roles are restricted – Afghanistan is an example of this), but I have no personal knowledge of it. In Afghanistan I understand Canadian women soldiers were able to play a unique role in contact with Afghan women.

What were some of the challenges you saw facing female military members? This could include operational, logistical, or social for example.

I suspect (but I have no evidence) that there may still be males who cannot accept that women should be in the fighting classifications and this attitude may still be a problem for women who seek such roles. At the Military College women equal or outperform men academically, militarily or athletically and I suspect the same is true of women in operational units. Recent publications in Canada report that sexual assault is a problem and that the hierarchy has been slow in responding to it. I understand assaults against Canadian women soldiers by foreign soldiers serving in the same overseas operational theatres have occurred. This has nothing to do with a woman soldier’s ability to perform their role and everything to do with the need to deal harshly with the offenders and the mentality that causes it.

What lessons do you think Canada could offer to other countries regarding the integration of women in to the military and onto the front lines?

The lesson that Canada can offer is that it has worked for us and is a conscious demonstration of the belief in the equal status of women in Canada. There may still be examples when equality of opportunity and pay is far from perfect in Canada, but in the Canadian Armed Forces the pay is the same for males and females. The glass ceiling may still be a problem for women in industry and business, but there are female General officers in the Canadian Forces. Canadians as a whole supported the efforts of its soldiers in Afghanistan, including the employment of women in combat roles there.

I think the best contribution Canada can make in this regard is to do what it is doing now, opening up security roles to qualified women; ensuring that those who resent or try to resist the policy are side-lined or dealt with; and demonstrating to the world that this is who we are and what we do.

* In 2001 General Maurice Baril, Chief of the Defence Staff of Canada, announced that women will serve in submarines

_______________________

Joana Cook is a PhD researcher at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London focusing on the role and agency of women in counterterrorism in Yemen. She is also a Research Affiliate with Public Safety Canada and member of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS). You can follow her on Twitter @Joana_Cook

"On the real terms of equality"

May 30, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Jill S. Russell:

Surveying the landscape of current news stories on women is grim. There were the raped and lynched Indian girls, the stoned pregnant Pakistani woman, Farzana Parveen, a victim of honour killing and the 270 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls. The list continues with threats to lash Iranian actress Leila Hatami; the pregnant Merium Ibrahim, a Sudanese slated for execution for marrying a Christian; Iraqi child brides, everything in Saudi Arabia, the too many women everywhere who are cut,[1] trafficked across the globe for sex, and the question of whether women should serve across all functions in the armed forces of leading Western liberal democracies. Worse than they appear in detail, they seem to share a common thread regarding the place and state of women in the world, which is the assumption that women’s choices can and should be decided for by others. Whether by family, neighbours, society, culture or governance, any aspect of our behaviour, dress, feelings or actions are at the whim of others.

I cannot speak to much of these problems from personal experience, although I hope others will. But in my small corner of the world, I am deeply concerned with the political issues regarding women and military service and what it represents about our place in society and governance. Some will balk at my inclusion of the matter of service in combat roles in this rogue’s roll call, but it is wholly representative of the principle. The presumption being against them, women must argue FOR inclusion, the decision about which will be made by others. On the basis of zero empirical evidence regarding military effectiveness, women were excluded, and now that bizarre historical anomaly has assumed the status of wisdom. Sorry, it’s not, contort yourself all you want. What passes for evidence now too often boils down to the pull-ups and arguments of cohesion that are based in fluff. The fate of the western world will not be decided by a single exercise – to exclude women for the pull-up is so silly on its face I do not understand how it can be argued seriously. More pointedly, the latter hew and cry over cohesion neglects the absolute raw truth that cohesion is forged in shared experience, so true that it almost invariably breaks down every seeming established structure of distrust.[2] There’s more on women in the military, combat, and war, but these are the worst examples of illogic which man the barriers to integration. Of greatest importance, however, the prohibition is odious for its betrayal of the political beliefs of the system we like to hold out to others. We are not all equal under the law. It is both tragic and a bit frightening – if my rights can be constrained in this matter on the basis of my biology, then what is to stop the state in other areas? And if the liberal west cannot throw off the shackles of this moribund ideology of inequality then there is little hope.

None of this is about being against men. I am a woman in military history and contemporary security affairs, I don’t have a problem with men. Quite the contrary, having grown up playing sports with boys, I find men generally rather easy and pleasant to get on with. Throughout my adulthood I have eschewed the title of feminist – on principle I am earnestly and fervently a humanist, we are all the same. I would prefer to keep to my own work in logistics and public order, and out of this debate. But I am well and truly distressed that this sentiment, this assumed sovereignty of one half of the population over the other, because they were born cloven and not cleft,[3] has such vigour in the world.

If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, imagine what happens when she knows military strategy? You only have to take a real look at international security and war studies to see the ladies are on the rise. I’m not certain at what point I would be driven to become She Guevara, and I won’t speak for the rest, but at some point this becomes intolerable. I’m not certain how many more photos of girls hanging from trees or similar I am willing to abide.

As I said, though, I prefer to get on with my own work.

__________________

Jill S. Russell is a regular contributor to Strife, Kings of War and Small Wars. She is currently writing her doctoral dissertation on American military logistics and strategic culture, with a side project in the London Riots of 2011. You can follow her on Twitter @jsargentr.

NOTES

[1] This is the term chosen by a woman who was the subject of what we refer to here as FGM. I shall respect her wishes on how she would like the practice to be described.
[2] This may be the better explanation for Stockholm Syndrome, that the experience of shared dramatic events or time creates cohesion notwithstanding the matter of formal antagonism between individuals.
[3] Paraphrasing my mother, who unleashed ‘had been born cleft and not cloven’ upon a school principal when he mentioned that my sister’s language was not appropriate for a young lady, her point being that she was none too pleased to hear that had her child been a young man he would not have been in trouble. She’s a corporate litigator by profession. You don’t ever want to be deposed by her. Ever.

"Chasing Misery." Interview with Kelsey Hoppe

May 6, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Tom Colley, Assistant Editor, Strife.
Interview conducted on 21 April 2014.

Kelsey Hoppe has just released her book, ‘Chasing Misery: an anthology of women working in humanitarian responses’. You can find more details about the book here. Hoppe currently works for the Pakistan Humanitarian Forum (PHF), an organisation of international NGOs providing humanitarian assistance in Pakistan. Previously, she worked in a range of different humanitarian and development roles in a variety of countries, including Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Indonesia, and Ukraine. She was born in California, attended university at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and is currently completing her Masters at Cambridge University. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Tom Colley: First, tell us something about you and your experiences of humanitarian aid?

Kelsey Hope: The term and concept of humanitarian aid is quite tricky. Mostly because we use the word, ‘aid’ to mean a whole bunch of different things. The money we give to foreign governments for budget support or military spending, the money that goes to development work. I use the term ‘humanitarian aid’ quite narrowly meaning the work we do when responding to disasters or conflicts anywhere in the world. My experience in humanitarian aid responses really began with the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia although I had been living and working abroad in development work before that. After Indonesia, I worked in Darfur’s ‘complex emergency’ – the industry’s code word for ‘war’, then in South Sudan and now in Pakistan. In most of these places I’ve either been involved in programme management of aid projects or in coordination of the NGO’s who implement humanitarian programmes.

How did the idea for the book come about and how did it become reality?

When I was working in Darfur I initially had the idea. There were so many fascinating and complex things going on and it wasn’t what you would hear about on the news where everything is portrayed as, ‘here are the goodies, and here are the baddies’. It was difficult to get your mind around what was happening, much less figure out a way to describe it to your friends and family. The same was true in Indonesia and in South Sudan. After I left South Sudan, a friend read some of my blogs and suggested that they would make a good compilation and she mentioned that it would be wonderful to read other people’s experiences too. That’s when I started thinking about it more seriously. I thought about all the amazing stories I’d been told over the years by women friends of mine who work in humanitarian aid so, I asked a few of them to help me and we put out the call for essays.

That was where the real work began – deciding what essays and photos to accept – rounds and rounds of editing, cover design, page design…it went on and on. All told it only took 15 months from conception to publication but it definitely seemed like a lot longer when you’re trying to do that, work, study, and keep up with your life! We are lucky that we were able to self-publish it and even that took some contributions from friends and family but it meant that we got to control the design of the cover, pages, and publication which was absolutely brilliant!

What is the central message of the book?

I don’t know if the book has a central message but I think that some of the themes that run through the book are vulnerability, empathy and compassion. The authors of a number of essays discuss the emotional toll the work takes on them and how they deal with it. Some of them are quite raw. When we see and experience things that are difficult we take those things inside ourselves and we have to process them in some way. You would either have to be incredibly callous or super-human to pretend that you can work with dead and dying people, people who have had their choices in life stripped away by war and disaster, have your friends and colleagues killed, and not have that affect you in some way. To not want to tell that story. Antjie Krog said that ‘we tell stories not to die of life.’ I think that’s true and I think that’s what we’re doing here. We’re telling our stories in order not to die of life.

Chasing Misery focuses specifically on the role of women in humanitarian responses. Why focus specifically on women?

I get asked this question a lot and I do really believe that men have contributed as much as women in humanitarian aid work. I also think, and wish, that more research had been done on the number of women involved in aid work. It’s a huge number. I’m guessing it’s well over half of those doing the work. Everyone brings something unique to what they do and I think women have a particular way of seeing and describing things. That is what I wanted to capture.

What are the unique challenges women face as humanitarian workers? Is being a woman advantageous in some situations?

Being a woman is certainly advantageous in certain circumstances and also a disadvantage in others. There are times and cultures in which a senior tribal elder just doesn’t want to talk to a young, white, woman to make decisions about his community’s future. Fair enough. I think we should respect that and not take it personally. If I was the Mayor of New York and half of the city was underwater and Japan sent me a huge amount of money and some 20-somethings with very little experience to fix it I would probably tell them to go get me some grown-up engineers. That said, it’s an incredible advantage at other times – especially in those same communities where men just can’t, or aren’t able, or don’t want to talk to women to get their perspective and hear their story.

What do you see as the most significant barriers humanitarian agencies face in mitigating the problems in places that they work?

This is a tough one because it’s different in every place. And even in the same location it can vary from organisation to organisation. I would say overall though it’s the politicisation of humanitarian aid. It’s tying politics to alleviating suffering. When almost all the money that aid organisations receive is from a government with specific national interests toward another government it’s very hard to say the money isn’t tied to the interests of that first government or isn’t going to be manipulated by the interests of the recipient government. I think that humanitarian aid has tried very hard to stick to the principles of neutrality and independence in conflict and disaster but, as they say, ‘life is politics’. And politics makes aid dangerous for those who deliver it.

Who are the contributors and how did you recruit them?

We weren’t terribly savvy in how we went about getting the essays. We just tried to put out the call through social media and our own personal networks as broadly as possible. In some ways the stories are limited by that. They’re limited to those who knew us, or heard about this – meaning they have good access to internet and could write in English. That said, I think that most people who work in aid work will read the book and find that it resonates with them…even if it doesn’t capture every perspective that exists on the work.

Are there any lessons that can be learnt from the book from a policy perspective, either for governments or NGO’s themselves?

One of the things which came through very clearly to me is the need for us to consider how we care for the caretakers. It’s one of the reasons why we decided to give 10% of the royalties are going to the Headington Institute. It’s one thing to say that we should be responding in Syria, or Iraq, or Afghanistan and it’s quite another to put resources behind preparing and caring for the people who do that. It’s one thing for a government to give billions in humanitarian response, and for their department for foreign aid to give that to UN Agencies and NGOs to implement programmes; but it’s something else to make sure some of that money goes to taking care of the people who do the work. Some NGOs don’t do it. Some governments won’t pay for it. But, in my opinion, things like insurances, psycho-social support, trauma care should be standard in UN Agencies and NGO – otherwise they shouldn’t get the funding.

What do you see as the future of humanitarian aid? Is there anything that you would change?

Another tricky question! I think that humanitarian aid is evolving. It’s a relatively new concept actually – less than a hundred years old – so it’s actually something which is just finding its feet. It’s also changed a lot since it was originally conceived and a huge number of things have come to be thought of as ‘humanitarian aid’ including a lot of development work and a lot of charity work. I think these things should be separated out a bit more so the parameters of humanitarian aid can remain intact and we can get rid of this idea that humanitarian aid is ‘charity’ – giving to poor people because we have more and they have less. In my view, this is a warped interpretation. We don’t do humanitarian aid work because we want to ease our conscience about our middle class lifestyle. We don’t do aid work because there’s poverty. We do humanitarian aid because a war or disaster has overwhelmed a community’s ability to deal with that and, as fellow human beings, we’re not going to leave them to suffer the consequences alone. We can help and so we will help, just as they would do the same for us if our community was overwhelmed. This might sound simplistic and naive and I don’t think for a moment that it’s that simple but I think this is the basis that humanitarian aid should stick to.

Thank you very much.

________________________

Additional links:
Website: www.chasingmisery.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/chasingmisery1
Twitter: @chasing_misery
Paperback and Kindle editions available on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1ncaNBZ

‘It’s the brotherhood, stupid.’ Values and the Arab Spring

March 27, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Jill S. Russell:

I attended last week a very interesting panel discussion on the Arab Spring [1], its meanings and the response it deserves. A theme that was shared across the panel was that the West [2] owed the movement its support because the latter was promoting the values held to be sacred by the former.

Before going any further, I have to confess here that I am an unrepentant Kennanist and have a hard time letting go of his standard that interest and not values (or the morals which sustain them) must drive foreign policy. His summary of the essential problem for such a policy framework assays the fullness of the issue, and I think it a wise explication of the flaws and worth quoting here at length:

But at the heart of [a foreign policy based on morality] would lie the effort to distinguish at all times between the true substance and the mere appearance of moral behaviour. In an age when a number of influences…all tend to exalt the image over the essential reality to which that image is taken to relate, in such an age there is a real danger that we may lose altogether our ability to distinguish between the real and the unreal, and, in doing so, lose both the credibility of true moral behaviour and the great force such behaviour is, admittedly, capable of exerting. To do this would be foolish, unnecessary and self-defeating. There may have been times when the United States could afford such frivolity. This present age, unfortunately, is not one of them. [3]

Functionally I cannot argue with his formula that values abroad do not necessarily serve the responsibilities of the government in either domestic or foreign policy. Nor can I ignore the ghastly spectre of how such a basis for foreign policy could be horribly perverted. But I am willing for the sake of argument to live briefly in a world where Kennan might be wrong. [4]

Even in that world, I am troubled that the values of the Arab Spring on the ground, and in the swelling centres of grass-roots power, do not match my own. As it is a question of my support, not of the movement’s legitimacy, my values matter.

As the beacon of this piece, let us first consider the Muslim Brotherhood and its rise and – has it fallen or is this just ‘rise interrupted’? – in Egypt. How can you expect me to believe this group shares my values? From the outset the name excludes me. Insofar as they accept women, that role has been marginalised by the imposition of restraints based in the recourse to a traditional culture which define a woman’s role in public life. Even as women are even now on the front lines of the political struggle against the military junta [5], one worries (expects) that this sacrifice will be forgotten in the case of victory. Seriously, Egypt has been past such strictures upon women for decades. So whose culture is this? And if the Muslim Brotherhood is in fact the legitimate heir to Egyptian political culture it becomes extremely difficult to argue that my values are represented.

Moving abroad from Egypt, I worry even more that the conflict in Syria has been terminally overtaken by fundamentalists [6], and that should they oust Assad the future for women in Syria will be unpleasant. The status quo ante was brutal, but as far as women are concerned what could come next might be even worse, with political, legal, and social repression a distinct possibility. This would be the same perversion as in Egypt, where the service of women in the struggle will not translate to real power in the aftermath. I am reminded of the similar bait and switch played upon the African slaves who served honorably in the American War for Independence -8 years a soldier and a slave came well before 12 years a slave.

Finally, what of the initial Tunisian protest that has been enshrined as the spark of this movement? What of the revelations that the fateful act, the offending slap that is said to have driven Mohamed Buazzizi to self immolation in protest, never occurred that day in Tunisia? What if it was not a rejection of tyranny but a man angry at a woman in a position of authority, the police officer Fedia Hamdi? [7] If the latter were true, then what would this change in its origins mean for the terms of this revolution? What if the heart of the rebellion is really aimed at secular norms and not corruption? It is certainly the case that the rise of the Taliban was in part the result of their reversal of corrupt practices in governance. But that was only a small part of what they sought to ‘reform’. Nevertheless, and quite importantly, even as this information on the event has been in the public domain for nearly three years, the apocryphal slap remains in the legend. An indictment of the former system’s corruption does not require this detail, so why does it figure so prominently in the retelling still?

And so, as I sat in the audience, one of only a handful of women, and part of an even smaller group that eschewed a head scarf, I felt distinctly odd. I am not unused to the predominance of men in my professional life. Nor am I unfamiliar with men who think I should not be there. I do not begrudge them their dislike of me. But in the West, the accepted value is that legal sanction based on gender is not an option. The Arab world, across its broad political and religious spectrum, does not fully hold to this belief. And it is important, if the question is whether to support the Arab Spring on the matter of values, to recognize that these are also our values, and they are what make ‘democracy’ something more than tyranny by vote.

Looking only at this one issue it becomes clear that selling the Arab Spring on a perversion of Western values merely for the sake of gaining the latter’s support will not, in the end, serve the cause. Attracting the West on the basis of interest – mutual interest – is the approach that will best serve both sides. That it has been defined as crass, and demonized as selfish, is unfortunate and serves no ultimate purpose.

Jill S. Russell is a regular contributor to Strife, Kings of War and Small Wars. She is currently a doctoral candidate at King’s College London, researching military history.

______________

Notes

[1] I had a long discussion with colleagues as to the validity or usefulness of the collection of these many events under a single banner. I absolutely take their point that events on the ground in each theatre must be addressed singly, specifically and uniquely. And while I am likely in agreement that no single name could describe the individual events well, it is certainly the case that there now exists, in the world’s consciousness, an idea, an event, known as ‘the Arab Spring’. It could aptly be considered as the foreign policy/diplomatic international face of the movement. It packages the ideals, broad message and news to the world.
[2] And here we have more problems with mass or meta categories. The matter of what constituted “the West” arose, and for the purposes of that evening’s discussion the understanding was that it was meant to denote the states of the EU, North America, and the Anglophone Pacific.
[3] George Kenann, ‘Morality and Policy’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Winter, 1985), pp. 205-218.
[4] At the worst extremes of the moral spectrum I am happy to ignore Kennan completely. I am not a monster.
[5] Enas Hamed, ‘Egypt’s ‘Muslim Sisterhood’ moves from social work to politics‘, AL Monitor, 20 November 2013; Bulletin of the Oppression of Women, “Muslim Brotherhood” Category . Also worth a view, Mona Eltahawy’s appearance on Al Jazeera’s program, ‘Head to Head: Do Arab Men Hate Women?‘
[6] Let us be clear, I am no fan of Christian fundamentalism. This is not about Islam or Muslims, it is about extremism.
[7] Elizabeth Day, ‘The Slap That Sparked a Revolution’, The Observer, 15 May 2011.

Believing in the Strength of a Woman: Can Central African Republic (CAR) finally be saved?

March 14, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Patricia Nangiro:

a-nova-presidente-interina- — Catherine Samba-Panza is sworn in as interim President of the Central African Republic, 24 January 2014.

Gone are the days when the thought of a woman in public leadership sent doubt signals to men and women alike. More so, in a conflict-affected context like Central African Republic (CAR), her capacity to lead and make critical decisions on behalf of the people would automatically be put to question or dismissed. But when Ms. Catherine Samba-Panza was announced interim President of CAR in January 2014, following the resignation of President Micheal Djotodia who took over power after Islamist Seleka rebels staged a coup against Francois Bozize in March 2013, many people expressed hope and relief, but importantly thought it right, in time of crisis for a woman to lead the war ravaged country to peace and stability. Samba-Panza becomes the third African woman to become head of state during a critical moment in the evolving security of the country.

According to the Guardian,[1] many people within, and outside of CAR share a belief that ‘it’s a step in the right direction to move away from people who seized political power through the gun to someone with popular support’. But it’s left to be seen if Samba-Panza can deliver lasting peace to CAR, if she can mend the broken communities and help them rise above the heavy weight of recurring grievance. As things currently stand, a great deal of hope rests in her as the interim President to not only restore a measure of sanity to CAR, but also deliver it to peaceful elections in February 2015, less than a year away.

While the organisation of free and fair elections is part of the solution to the leadership crisis in CAR, the question of the feasibility of this deadline is something up for discussion. For a country that has jumped from one brutal government to another, with no chance for a meaningful conversation between leaders and their people on governance processes, resource allocation and access to justice, the restoration of peace, stability and the institution of new leadership is not a one year affair. CAR has experienced diverse patterns of political crises and conflicts dating back to its independence. It has seen a series of autocratic rulers who sought to consolidate power through violent force, with long periods of military dictatorship, self-styled emperors, and rebel movements from within, and neighbouring Niger and Northern Nigeria destabilising (mostly) the north of the country. The situation is also made worse by the havoc the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels from Uganda are causing, coupled with ethno-religious political rivalries, among others. The crisis has not only resulted in nearly 2,000 deaths, but also in the displacement of over one million people within the country and as refugees. This presents a complex set of realities that must be dealt with if peace and stability is to prevail.

Like many other African countries, CAR represents a real situation of disconnect between abundance of natural resources and poverty. The country lacks basic services and infrastructure leaving many people to engage in isolated banditry and rebellious activity. Government accountability structures are either non-functional or non-existent. Such conditions, which induce desperation and violence are the result of governance failure and bad leadership. It will take a positive measure of the exercise of political power to restore systems that work for the common good.

The active presence of France in this country since its independence, in place mostly to protect French interests, aggravates the situation further. As a primary donor for both military and development aid, France plays a key role in the country’s political governance and leadership processes. In fact, it is believed that there is no change of government in CAR happening without the consent or the direct involvement of the French government, be it through elections, rebel activity or a a coup d’état. This has direct influence on the peace and security discourse in this country and may consequently determine key priorities the interim president will focus on.

While Samba-Panza is to ensure lasting peace and organise the country to meet the challenge of peaceful presidential elections in 2015, it largely depends on the level and type of conversations the interim leader, the warring parties and the people of CAR can engage in as the dust settles. Like most other conflicts in Africa, the challenge is that the civilians who should have formed the locus of support for change have become the focus of violence, the weapons of war. It therefore becomes even more difficult to engage communities in meaningful conversations for peace and stability.

Clearly, the most immediate task is to put an end to the ongoing killings and promote avenues to unite the Seleka rebels and anti-Balaka militias who continue to sustain the war. The interim government should initiate peace negotiations with the warring groups scattered all over the country to hear their side of the story. The discussions should dig deeper into understanding the cleavages between governance and leadership which initiated the conflicts in first place, analyse their recurrence, and overcome them; then, governance and leadership should together come up with and develop strategies to end the conflict.

While the interim president promises to ensure those involved in the killings are brought to justice, the contestation remains on how far and deep this justice will go to translate into sustainable peace. Real justice in any form has been missing in CAR for decades, which probably explains the unending relapse into conflict. Frameworks to deal with divisions resulting from killings, human rights abuses and violations must be set. Many crimes have been committed against ordinary people and mending these communities requires truth, reconciliation and reparation. Justice must be seen to be done, otherwise a lamenting population will emerge which is a threat to peace and security.

For CAR, a woman governing to restore peace and security breathes fresh air into an environment tensed by violent autocratic leadership. The freshness of the air may be constrained by the same institutions and interests that have hindered peace in the past. Change in this country will take time even with Samba-Panza’s total dedication to restoring peace and stability. Samba-Panza, as part of a political leadership system that failed to transform institutions to be able to deal with grievances without degenerating into conflict, has to shed a leaf or two from the previous governance and leadership regimes to succeed.

CAR has broken communities whose cohesion has been shattered by recurring conflicts. These communities must first heal before they can effectively determine who can lead them as President in the upcoming elections. Otherwise, the anticipated elections may do nothing to change the conflict context.

Patricia Nangiro is currently a fellow at the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London, where she is undertaking Post Graduate Training in Peace, Security and Development. She has worked with the International Rescue Committee and Refugee Law Project in a number of community development and human rights projects in Uganda.
The African Leadership Centre is located in Nairobi and within Kings College London – http://africanleadershipcentre.org/ – The ALC is a Pan African centre of excellence on peace, security and development in Africa. It trains and mentors young Africans with the potential to lead and to enable innovative change in their communities and in the region.

___________________
NOTES
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/23/catherine-samba-panza-sworn-in-central-african-republic

women

Footer

Contact

Recent Posts

Tags