Women in guerrilla movements

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the second half of the 20th century, women increasingly joined guerrilla movements aimed at overthrowing political systems. Their participation in guerrilla fighting is significantly higher than in state armed forces.

overview

The participation of women in guerrilla activities has increased many times over since the 1960s (zero to 20 percent) and had reached between 25 and 33 percent in the 1980s. In the Nicaraguan Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN; founded 1961), the proportion of women fighters was around 30 percent with a high proportion of women in the military leadership. The Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN; founded 1980) in El Salvador had around 40 percent female members, 30 percent female combatants and 20 percent of the commanders were women. The Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN; founded in 1994) in Chiapas , Mexico recorded around a third of female combatants. The proportion of women in the Cuban guerrilla struggle of 1959 is estimated at 5 percent. In Mozambique , too , women took part in the Frelimo guerrilla warfare in the 1960s and 1970s .

Women were and are also active in Kurdish and Palestinian guerrilla movements.

Studies show that women who join guerrilla movements belong more often to the urban upper class, have a higher level of education and are younger (i.e. free from family responsibilities) than male guerrillas.

Reasons for participating in guerrilla movements

In Latin America in particular, women were seen as voters who, influenced by the Catholic Church, supported conservative candidates. Women had a higher rate of illiteracy than men and were on average more affected by political changes than men. Because of these prerequisites, Latin American women were more willing to support a stable dictatorship than an unstable democracy until the 1950s. The emergence of liberation theology since the 1960s, which provided an alternative to Catholic dogmatism and called for an armed struggle against secular oppression, changed the situation.

Case study: FSLN in Nicaragua

In Nicaragua, women were given the right to vote in 1955 by the dictatorial Somoza family ; In addition, the rulers tried to win the favor of the citizens by repeatedly referring to the value of the family and emphasizing the prominent position of their female family members. This tactic did not work in view of the minor importance of voting rights in an authoritarian-led state and the decades-long exclusion of citizens from political participation.

Structural changes in the church and new guerrilla strategies favored the entry of women into the liberation movement FSLN : The newly emerging liberation theological grassroots groups in the country proclaimed radical countermeasures to the dictatorship. One of the many women who became politicized by Liberation Theology is Dorotea Wilson , who became one of the three female members of the FSLN's national board in the 1990s. In the late 1960s, the FSLN abandoned its previous strategy based on focus theory and focused on mass mobilization . This change in strategy resulted in the widespread entry of people into the FSLN who had previously not been considered for various reasons for armed struggle (e.g. no experience with weapons, too old or too young an age, lack of flexibility in terms of location and time , physical disability). Many women were among the newcomers, most of whom came from the cities. A particularly successful field of recruitment for new guerrilla fighters was the university environment, from which the later Sandinista Health Minister Dora María Téllez was recruited into the ranks of the FSLN.

According to many guerrillas involved, there was no gender hierarchy in the FSLN during the fight against Somoza. Dorotea Wilson reports:

“We shared what we had. We shared the cooking duties, cleaning weapons and the responsibilities in the cadre ... Although there was no gender awareness in the guerrillas, there was incredible solidarity. Everyone, man or woman, could have been killed at any moment. "

- Dorotea Wilson

Another strategic innovation within the FSLN was the transition from a purely military approach to a politico-military strategy that envisaged the inclusion or the establishment of new socio-political sub-groups of the FSLN. In 1977, the Sandinista women's organization AMPRONAC was founded, which was renamed AMNLAE in 1979 .

After the victory of the FSLN in July 1980, the guerrillas integrated themselves into the newly established Nicaraguan State Armed Forces (ESP). In 1980 six percent of the officers were women and 40 percent of the entire corpus.

Palestinian organizations

DFLP militiamen in West Beirut

In the 1950s and 1960s women also began to become active in Palestinian organizations such as Fatah and the Arab Nationalists Movement . Leila Chaled describes the difficulties they encountered:

“My mother was strictly against the girls in the family taking part in political activities. She didn't mind that Brother Mohammed himself was in the trenches ... or ... that he sometimes disappeared for weeks to do political work. Mohammed was a man ... She added that she wasn't that concerned about her, but what would the neighbors say about 'women in politics'! Mother knew that social ostracism would result if one of us went out of line. My sisters assured her that they were mature enough to take responsibility for themselves. In addition, the men are sensible young men with high principles. None of them would attack a girl, certainly not comrades. But Mother couldn't be convinced. Father was a bit suspicious, but he was more open to our positions, and (...) he and Mohammed successfully persuaded my mother not to interfere with my sisters' political work. Since my sisters had permission to work politically, I knew that I, too, would eventually get permission. "

- Leila Chaled

In 1965 the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW) was founded under the umbrella of the PLO , in which the wives of leading PLO politicians dominated. At first she did not question the social position of women in Arab society. Only after the defeat in the Six Day War did the Palestinian organizations radicalize. From then on, women like Leila Chaled , Amina Dabur or Shadia Abu Ghazala , who died in 1969, also took part in armed actions. Palestinian women trained for armed struggle in special women's camps in Jordan and Lebanon.

“It was a revolutionary act for a Palestinian woman to take an active part in the armed struggle. Guns are a male monopoly. ... By taking up arms against Israel, they also stood up against their own society and its oppressive traditions. "

- Raymonda Tawil

The men in the political organizations, however, assigned the women only limited tasks, in accordance with their patriarchal understanding of the national liberation struggle. Many men in the guerrilla units believed that the contribution of their fellow fighters was to make food and tea. After completing their military training, women were sometimes sent back home. They also ran the risk of losing their “good reputation” in the male-dominated guerrilla units far away from the family. For this reason, some organizations founded all-women units in the 1970s, but these were dissolved after a few months or received no weapons. Therefore, soon only a few women were fighting in the commandos of the DFLP and PFLP . When the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon were threatened, as in the Lebanon war in 1982 or in the Lebanese "War of the Camps" from 1985 to 1987, many women also took up arms.

In 2009, 40 women are said to have participated in the DFLP's military training in the Gaza Strip .

Kurds in Iraq

Since 1975, women in Iraqi Kurdistan have also participated as fighters in the Peshmerga guerrilla movement of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan . Sometimes they had to flee to the Peshmerga before political persecution by the Iraqi secret police and decided to take part in their fight. The leadership of the PUK accepted this rather cautiously. However, they were accepted by their male competitors, as one participant reported:

“These girls tried very hard to prove that they had a right to exist. This base to which we were assigned, we tried to clear the roof when it had snowed ... (There was) a series of heavy work. These girls were trying to do them well, that was to say they could have a base and maintain it on their own. Very often, when it was snowing, peshmerga would come from other houses to help. We refused. We can do that ourselves. ... I had a radio for contact. The fight lasted about ten days. I was sitting on the highest peak of a mountain. ... It was very cold. I took part in this fight as normal. What the peshmerga did, I did. And naturally I played my part. I was nothing less than a boy and I felt that. ... One front was in contact with the other via the radio that was in my hands. Finally I felt when I was in contact with the front and the boys. Very often they seized even more eagerness than they realized, a woman is at the device. And they were happy and interrupted me: "Are you a girl?" "Yes." They were very happy, the Peshmerga. "

- Behar, PUK fighter

In 1996 the PUK set up a regiment consisting exclusively of women, the Hêz-î Pêšmerge-î Jinan . The initiative for this came from the women themselves. As a motive they named the feeling of powerlessness in war-torn Kurdistan:

“There were very often street fights. ... As a woman, I didn't know how to protect myself ... Therefore a woman should learn to defend herself "

- Šîrîn, PUK fighter

Hundreds of women between the ages of 18 and 40 quickly asked to join the battalion. Initially, most of them came from poor and rural backgrounds and were illiterate. Many had also lived in the neighborhood of the Peshmerga. They received quite good pay in the unit as well as military training and political training. Initially, they were used at checkpoints. Over time, more and more urban young women completed basic military training. The participants expressed a greater self-confidence and appeared self-confident in public. The rather inadequate military equipment of the unit with AK-47 machine guns was criticized .

In 2003, the battalion participated in Kirkuk and Khanaqin on the Operation Iraqi Freedom in part. Today they are part of the regular armed forces of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region and have 600 members. They participate in the training of police and border troops and offer further training opportunities for their members.

See also

literature

  • Karen Kampwirth: Women in Guerrilla Movements. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-271-02185-3 .
  • Karen Kampwirth: Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas , Center for International Studies, Ohio University, 2004, ISBN 0-89680-239-6 .
  • Linda L. Reif: Women in Latin American Guerrilla Movements. A Comparative Perspective. In: Comparative Politics 18, 2 (January 1986), pp. 147-169.
  • Valentine Moghadam: Is the Future of Revolutions Feminist? Reviewing 'Gender and Revolutions' for a Globalizing World. In: John Foran (Ed.): The Future of Revolutions. Rethinking Radical Change in the Age of Globalization , London: Zed Books, 2003, pp. 159-168, ISBN 9781842770337 .
  • Kumari Jayawardena: Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World , London: Zed Books, 1986, ISBN 9788175332577 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Timothy Wickham-Crowley: Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America. A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes since 1956. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, p. 21.
  2. ↑ For the entire paragraph: Karen Kampwirth: Women in Guerrilla Movements. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, pp. 2-3.
  3. ^ Karen Kampwirth: Women in Guerrilla Movements. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, pp. 43 and 120-122.
  4. ^ Karen Kampwirth: Women in Guerrilla Movements. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, p. 22.
  5. ↑ a b c d Karen Kampwirth: Women in Guerrilla Movements. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, p. 23.
  6. ^ Karen Kampwirth: Women in Guerrilla Movements. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, p. 30.
  7. ^ Karen Kampwirth: Women in Guerrilla Movements. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, p. 31.
  8. ^ Karen Kampwirth: Women in Guerrilla Movements. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, p. 32.
  9. ^ A b Karen Kampwirth: Women in Guerrilla Movements. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, p. 33.
  10. ^ Karen Kampwirth: Women in Guerrilla Movements. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, p. 34.
  11. ↑ Katherine Isbester: Still Fighting. The Nicaraguan Women's Movement 1977-2000. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000, p. 55.
  12. ↑ a b c Gerrit Hoekmann, Between Olive Branch and Kalashnikov, History and Politics of the Palestinian Left , Münster 1999, ISBN 3-928300-88-1 , pp. 149ff.
  13. ^ DIE ZEIT, archive, Zeitspiegel 27/1969
  14. ↑ Resistance and Revolution as Lived Daily Experience: An Interview with Leila Khaled (Part 3) , Jadaliyya, September 26, 2011 (Eng.)
  15. ↑ Manar Faraj: Women in Palestinian Refugee Camps: Case Studies from Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine , International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR), June 2015, pdf, pp. 5–7 ( Memento des Originals from 23. November 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / icsr.info
  16. ↑ Abed Rahim Khatib, photojournalist, demotix.com ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.demotix.com
  17. ↑ a b Andrea Fischer-Tahir: "We gave many martyrs". Resistance and collective identity formation in Iraqi Kurdistan , ISBN 978-3-89771-015-3 , Münster 2003 digitized
  18. ↑ Andrea Fischer-Tahir: "We gave many martyrs". Resistance and collective identity formation in Iraqi Kurdistan , ISBN 978-3-89771-015-3 , Münster 2003, p. 229
  19. ↑ Peshmerga Women's Forces celebrate their 17th anniversary , PUKmedia, official website of the PUK, November 12, 2013, engl.