London Review of Books From LRB Vol 21, No 6 | cover date 18 March 1999<\/p>\n
Letters: Volume 21 Number 6<\/p>\n
Sisters at War<\/p>\n
Rakiya Omaar and Rachel Sevenzo (LRB, 18 February) take a brave stand
\nin the face of worldwide concern about the female victims of war, and
\nits almost universal focus on sexual abuse a consequence, as they
\npoint out, of the revelations of the mass rape of Bosnian women. The
\ncontention that mass rape was a conscious and organised strategy of
\nwar in Bosnia sold a lot of newspapers. I was surprised then, on
\narriving in Sarajevo six months after the end of the war, and in the
\nthree years I have spent in Bosnia since then, to find that this
\ndefining characteristic of the war is never mentioned: no
\ninternational programmes of any size target the problem and the
\nexpected flood of abandoned babies has not materialised.<\/p>\n
The first accounts of mass rape appeared during the Croatian war,
\nwith Serb forces accused of systematic targeting of Croat women in
\nEastern Slavonia. This was a bit of off-the-cuff propaganda from
\nFranjo Tudjman’s Government in Zagreb, but it was instantly seized on
\nby the international press and the feminist movement. And it wasn’t
\nvery difficult to find women who had been raped to back it up. The
\nfollowing year, the beleaguered Bosnian Government repeated the
\nexercise to even greater effect, as part of the further demonisation
\nof the Serbs (as if their real activities weren’t enough), and again
\nrape victims were easily found.<\/p>\n
But there is no evidence of systematic or strategically targeted mass
\nrape. Despite this, the ‘phenomenon’ spawned untold numbers of press
\nreports, several books and a proliferation of seminars. The objective
\nof the mass-rape campaign, as reported, was to alter the ‘ethnic’
\nbalance through the propagation of little Serbs. Since there is no
\nethnic difference between the Serb aggressors and the rape victims,
\nsuch a campaign would have led merely to the propagation of little
\nCroats or little Muslims. This is not to say that rape on a large
\nscale did not happen. It always does in war, particularly in this
\nkind of civil war. But it was not the strategy it was made out to be.<\/p>\n
Robert Bell, Sarajevo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
London Review of Books From LRB Vol 21, No 6 | cover date 18 March 1999 Letters: Volume 21 Number 6 Sisters at War Rakiya Omaar and Rachel Sevenzo (LRB, 18 February) take a brave stand in the face of worldwide concern about the female victims of war, and its almost universal focus on sexual … <\/p>\n