The world wars of the last century brought new heights of savagery and destruction. They also brought significant advances for women, who entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers and produced the armaments used on most fronts. Some women served near those fronts. After the wars, in victorious countries, discontent with traditional roles was plain, portending change in the sixties and afterward. In defeated lands, male authority was weakened. The MacArthur shogunate of postwar Japan enfranchised women in the expectation that they would counter any return to militarism.
The Middle East has been at war for several years now and will continue to be for many more. Though the scale of fighting and domestic mobilization have thus far not come anywhere near the levels of the world wars, the conflicts are having discernible effects on the prospects for social change, even in more traditional parts of the region. A feminist revolution isn’t at hand, but discontent with traditional patterns is beginning.
Women at arms
Early in the Libyan Revolution, women served as couriers, hid weapons, and sometimes fought in the rapidly assembled militias that wore down Col Qaddafi’s armed forces and brought down his regime. The country has broken down into three or more regions and women feel they have earned the right to help shape all of them. (See “Libya’s War-Tested Women Hope to Keep New Power,” NY Times, 13 Sep 2011.)
The ISIL War in Iraq and Syria have not entailed significant numbers of indigenous troops. Sunni states have adroitly used diplomacy and purchases to convince western powers to take on most of the fighting. However, a woman pilot from the Emirates has been touted in regional media.
Kurdish women have contributed the most. They have served ably in militias in northern Syria and suffered horrific deaths upon capture by ISIL. One Kurdish woman, Mayssa Abdo, was a local commander in the defense of Kobane – the site of ISIL’s first defeat. Another woman, Arin Mirkan, detonated a bomb concealed on her person, killing a number of ISIL fighters.
Historically, war service has led to the extension of rights. Max Weber noted long ago, “The basis of democratization is everywhere purely military in character” (General Economic History, p. 24). The process goes back to ancient times but a more recent example can be found during the Vietnam War, when the right to vote was extended to eighteen-year-olds who were subject to conscription. Some of them, men and women, served in the war. Governments in Kurdish lands are extending rights to women for the first time and women throughout the region are taking note. (See “Kurdish women fight for equality in Syria,” Reuters, 22 Jan 2014.)
Western influences in Afghanistan
After ousting the Taliban in 2001, the occupying powers made every effort to extend rights and opportunities to women. They now serve in the state, army, security forces; they own shops and other businesses. Perhaps most significantly, girls attend school, though for this they are subject to attack.
Western policy may have been driven by more than the occupying powers’ social beliefs. The rise of independent women may make it more difficult for the Taliban to re-exert control in areas outside their homelands in the Pashtun south and east. The Taliban ensure that traditional strictures still prevail there, and much of the south and east will remain under their control as part of any peace deal.
The accomplishments of Afghan women nonetheless are being seen around the Islamic world, at least in urban areas. However, the example is unlikely to spread into the surrounding areas of Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan where traditional patterns will remain strong.
Internecine war
From the perspectives of urban areas and battlefields and refugee camps, women face the consequences of warfare. The killing has lost any relation to military necessity and become slaughter for its own sake, though it is based on the apocalyptic passages in the Quran and hadiths. In war zones, women face far more oppression than elsewhere. They are sold, raped, and murdered.
Some women, however, make efforts to take part in Islamist movements; they take up arms or strap on belt bombs or flee their homes to be the wives of jihadis. Other women see this effort to restore greatness as only bringing ruin to the region, profounder oppression for all, and grave danger to themselves and their children. (See “The tragedy giving hope to Syria’s women,” BBC, 5 July 2015.)
They ask what they owe to an aberrant interpretation of their religion, to the men who teach it, and to the leaders who are failing to fight it. Such is the view from urban areas and battlefields and refugee camps across the Islamic world, and it will benefit a region on the verge of self-immolation in the name of an apocalyptic vision.
©2015 Brian M Downing