Old Emails: 2004 Liberia

Monrovia, Liberia
March 14, 2004

Please excuse the group format – I decided that it is much easier to write an email on my computer in my room at night than it is to start writing only to have the electricity go out on the computer right as I’m about to hit send. I’m currently in Monrovia , Liberia . I spent one week in Sierra Leone and landed in Monrovia yesterday. It was not as exciting as my previous trips to Sierra Leone . Sometimes I think its more fun to travel alone because then you get in more scrapes that make more interesting stories.

I did finally get to fly on a helicopter. If you remember from my previous Sierra Leone adventure, my biggest disappointment was that the helicopters were all grounded and I had to take the ferry. Well this time, I got on the helicopter. It was a little anticlimactic. It’s loud, smells like helicopter fuel, and the seats are basically bench seats along the sides of the helicopter so there are no backs. It’s not so bad for the 10-minute flight from the airport to the hotel but for the hour-long trip to the provinces, it’s not that great. They give you headphones to wear to block the noise so you can’t talk to any of your neighbors. I have discovered (something that Alec already knew) that I can pretty much sleep anywhere – on a helicopter, in a train station, in a bumping car on a back highway in Haiti. Closing your eyes and napping is a very useful alternative to nausea, which is my other option. On the last part of the helicopter trip there was a big to do as they loaded up the helicopter with fresh supplies for some of the troops. As our “onboard snack” we were able to help ourselves to the tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbages that were stacked between our feet. As I was the only woman on the flight, I was also blessed with the only earplugs that they had.

We’ve been using the UN military helicopters and planes and in general, the Ukrainian and Russian pilots are very chivalrous and help me into and out of the helicopters. I felt sort of like a movie star on Friday. The Bangladeshi troops stationed at the Bo Airport asked if they could have their picture taken with me. It could be sweet and innocent but I know better of what those guys are capable of doing. There are probably disgusting things being done with my photo as we speak. That’s the flip side to the chivalry.

Colleague is teaching me to drink single malt scotch and I am teaching him how to hear the beat in music so he can eventually learn how to dance. We have argued a couple of times about gender issues -in criticizing anything about the military, are you ignoring the fact that the soldiers may die at some point fighting to protect the civilians.  I argue, the military are supposed to protect the citizens – particularly the women and children – not rape them. It’s so disturbing the things that you hear in this job. I heard about a gang of Bangladeshi soldiers gang raping a 10 year old. Some man also raped and gave an STI to a 3-½ month old baby. These people are usually never punished. They can often make monetary payments to the victim and get off scott free. Anyway, I’m trying to expose it all in the bulletins that we’re writing so maybe I can embarrass the UN more to take this stuff more seriously and punish these guys.

Surprisingly though, I am not opposed to the military or to the presence of UN peacekeepers. They are in general, very good. You see them playing with the kids in refugee camps, they organized volleyball games with the Sierra Leone kids out in the wilderness outside of Kenema. They are usually fathers who have young children at home and they keep the pictures of their children with them. I met a very nice and enthusiastic young Pakistani man who has three kids. He talks about them fondly and how overwhelmed his wife is and how he wants to go home so he can play with them and let her rest for a while. It’s sweet. Of course, I haven’t really met the Nigerians, Ghanaians, or other African troops. They are supposed to have thousands of girlfriends and leave behind lots of babies as they pull out of the country. This is no new revelation, this has been happening since the beginning of time but it’s scary and sad that absolutely no progress has happened on this issue.

We stayed in Bo at the house of one of the UNHCR staff one night. He was American and had satellite tv so we had a good time watching MTV and talking about Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, and old Saturday Night Live skits (in particular the one about Strom Thurmond during the Clarence Thomas hearings). Unfortunately, there was no electricity after 11pm and it is the middle of the dry season. That means it’s hot as hell and there is no breeze at night. The next day was a relative paradise compared to that. We stayed with the Pakistani Battalion in the field near Kenema. They put me up in the VIP “container” – it’s a former shipping container that has a bathroom and an air conditioner. I even had my own “room attendant”. The food was out of this world! A huge buffet of several kinds of curry. The Pakistanis treated us like royalty.

Liberia looks a lot better than it did the last time I was here. The restaurant at the hotel we are staying in has instituted a delicious Lebanese style brunch that we indulged in this morning. It was a nice change from the nonstop diet of Barracuda that I had adopted in Sierra Leone . I’ve been trying to avoid dairy, salads, uncooked foods, and anything other than bottled water. So all I eat is barracuda and rice.

The air conditioners are working; we have running water with pretty good water pressure, and CNN. In fact, we were watching CNN yesterday afternoon talking about work and suddenly – Ken Bacon, our boss, appeared on the screen! He was being interviewed live about the Sudan . What a small world. There we sat in Liberia, watching our boss in Washington , talk about the Sudan . We were finally able to get on email today so I am feeling a little less cut off from the world. It looks like there is a lot of construction going on. I am looking forward to getting out of the city. We are going to try to ride along on a patrol of the UN peacekeepers. Perhaps I’ll get my picture on a tank a la Dukakis.

Anyway, nothing too exciting has come out the trip to Liberia yet. We did run into the waiter that was working here the last time I was here. He remembered me because we had a memorable evening doing fancy napkin folds and teaching each other different kinds. He bought me a drink. Unfortunately, it led us to open up the bottle of Scotch that we bought in the Paris duty-free and start drinking while listening to Johnny Cash on colleague's Ipod. I decided it would be fun to stay up to 2:30am and dance in my hotel room to Haitian music. Amazingly, Scotch doesn’t really give you a hangover like wine does! A monster may have been born. We’ve spent today just writing up bulletins and trying to outline a larger document we want to write and put out when we return. I get more work done here than I ever do in DC.

Rape in Iraq

I am so angry. I don't know when I've been this angry - maybe when I first learned about sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers. I suspected there was a problem in Iraq that was not being addressed. In the past two days, I've read two extremely disturbing reports.

The first article, a new report by Madre, a group like RI for women's issues: entitled "Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq" - talks about the extreme problem of rape of Iraqi women (by Iraqi men). To me, it smacks of Darfur - get back at your enemy and humiliate them by raping their women. It's shocking and horrifying and I hope it gets the attention it deserves. According to my friend Sayre, who attended the briefing about it, "Even a quick look at it shows how much information we’re missing in US media about the war in Iraq. Gender-based violence is a top priority of Iraq’s Islamists. The U.S. plan to support the Iraqi death squads is called the “Salvador Option,” from 1980s US policy in Central America, to train militias. The military isn’t even ashamed to use that term?!? I also didn’t know about the most popular TV show in Iraq, “Terrorists in the Hands of Justice.” (See Part VI: Gender-Based Violence Against Men.) This report argues that this show is like Radio Mille Collines.” (The notorious radio station that encouraged the genocidaires to kill the Tutsis during the Genocide in Rwanda). I for one, will be forwarding it to all the people on the hill that I have met through my work at Refugees International.

The second article, an article on Salon.com, entitled "The Private War of Women Soldiers " that chronicles the stories of US women soldiers who have been raped and sexually assaulted by their comrades-in-arms. It's outrageous. To read it, click on the link. My login is dmartin, my password is alysonhowell (I don't mind sharing because although Salon.com used to be my favorite online magazine, they have recently become quite lazy. It appears they have fired all their editors and they consistently try to sex up article by giving them salacious illustrations or using the word sex in the title. Just check out the 'debate' they are allowing in the letters section. You would think you were on an IMDB.com chat room with a bunch of imbeciles rather than on a prominent liberal journal like The Nation or Mother Jones.).

Anyway, I'm certainly not suprised to hear that this is happening. As I wrote in my report on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in the UN Peacekeeping system - this happens in all militaries. I don't know what it is but something about the military correlates with higher rates of rape. Is it that learning how to kill someone when ordered that completely violates the internal human moral code so that it degrades the soldiers to the point where they stop seeing women as human beings? I don't think its a natural state of being. Men are not naturally rapists. Or if they are, all the men I know are doing a good job of hiding it from me.

My father is a retired air force sergeant who served from the 50's through the 70's and he would be horrified to hear about this. He and I have talked about violence against women in the 'good ole days'. he told me stories of seeing men he served with hauling off and punching their wives when they got a few too many drinks under their belts. He was horrified, noting it almost always seemed to be big tough guys with small petite wives. But - he noted - it was seen as a family problem, a personal problem - something you didn't get involved with.
Rapists don't belong in the military. they belong in prisons. The fact is that nothing will happen to fix this until women scream out and threaten to vote out all the politicians who don't demand that the military deal with this.

A colleague of mine that I respect immensely once said "Do you think it was the US government that decided one day to make it illegal to beat your wife until she died? No, it was the feminist women's movement screaming out until the US government took notice." And we still aren't there.

Today, in honor of tomorrow's International Women's Day, I spoke at the DC Bar Association about Justice for Rape Survivors in Darfur. Afterwards, the debate (amongst all women, of course) was lively. I spoke with two women who were in their fifties who told me about the 'bad old days'. We need another s trong women's movement. We need to support the women in the US military who are there because feminists in the 70s fought to get us equality. They are choosing to risk their lives in Iraq (for a war I DO NOT agree with - but still, I support their rights to fight there if they choose). We must now keep up with the work that got them there and fight to make sure that they have full protection of the law and the military code of justice to keep them from being harmed by their fellow soldiers.

So - if you are as outraged as I am - pick up the phone and call your congressional representatives and ask them to call a hearing on this. Or, if you live in DC, call your parents and ask them to do it!

Humanitarians with Guns?

Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the NYTimes that I admire, just wrote an article on "Humanitarian Workers with Guns" (It's on Times Select so you have to pay to get it but I'll illegally post it at the bottom here)

This article really bothers me because it totally blurs the role of the military with the role of humanitarian workers. Humanitarian workers must rely on maintaining neutrality in order not to be seen as supporting one side or the other. When this is confused, humanitarian workers become, in the minds of combatants, legitimate targets who 'support the other side'.

In Afghanistan, there was a huge outcry when the US army created PRTs (Provincial Reconstruction Teams) and MSF withdrew from the country after five of its workers were killed. The use of mixed military and civilian workers under the command of the military lead to accusations that humanitarian agencies were complicit with the military. MSF, which had operated in Afghanistan without incident since 1985, providing needed medical services announced "It is with outrage and bitterness that we take the decision to abandon them. But we simply cannot sacrifice the security of our volunteers while warring parties seek to target and kill humanitarian workers. Ultimately it is the sick and destitute that suffer."

There has been a rise in attacks on humanitarian workers in the last few years. In January in Darfur, there was an attack on Accion contre le faim - a well respected french aid group. One of the international women was raped. This was shocking to the humanitarian community because in general - internationals are spared. It's the local hires who take the brunt of the violence. (For more info - see this article on the killing of Sri Lankan assistance workers).

There is a legitimate role for the military in a post-conflict countries. They should take on the work that humanitarian agencies cannot - such as disarming and demobilizing armed forces and training national police and armies. The US has not done a lot of work in these areas in the countries that I'm most familiar with - DR Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Why don't they focus on the areas they are needed?

Article: Aid Workers With Guns By NICHOLAS
D. KRISTOF
Published: March 4, 2007
CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti

The U.S. has built a little-known military
base here that represents one of our best strategies to fight terrorism in the
coming years: The aim is to build things rather than blow them up.

This base in Africa, established in 2003, sits at the entrance to the Red Sea in the small Muslim country of Djibouti, next to Somalia. Security is as tight as the sun is
hot, with lots of bomb shelters, but the most apparent threats are distinctly,
well, African.

“We’ve got two hyenas out there,” said Cmdr. Darryl Centanni of the Navy,
executive officer of Camp Lemonier, pointing to a jogging trail on which troops
were running through the semidesert. “So the running gets pretty
interesting.”

He added that a pack of wild dogs also speeds up joggers but that the dogs
mostly get food by catching fish in the sea. (I’m not sure I trust military
intelligence on that one.)

After 9/11, the focus of America’s response to terrorism has been mostly on
using military force to destroy possible threats in places like Iraq and
intimidate just about everyone. The ethos was borrowed from the ancient Romans:
“Oderint, dum metuant” — “Let them hate, so long as they fear.”

Yet all in all, that strategy has backfired catastrophically, particularly
in Iraq, and turned us into Al Qaeda’s best recruiter.

So that’s why the softer touch in Centcom’s strategy here is so welcome. It
aims to help bring stability to northeastern Africa and to address humanitarian
needs — knowing that humanitarian involvement will make us safer as
well.

“The U.S. started to realize that there’s more to counterterrorism than
capture-kill kinetics,” said Capt. Patrick Myers of the Navy, director of plans
and policy here. “Our mission is 95 percent at least civil affairs. ... It’s
trying to get at the root causes of why people want to take on the
U.S.”

One humanitarian mission for which the U.S. military is superbly prepared
is responding to natural disasters. While the U.S. has spent vast sums
broadcasting propaganda to the Muslim world, the two most successful efforts at
winning good will both involved the military. One was the dispatch of soldiers
to help Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami, and the other was the use of U.S.
forces to help Pakistan after the Kashmir earthquake.

The 1,800 troops here do serve a traditional military purpose, for the base
was used to support operations against terrorists in Somalia recently and is
available to reach Sudan, Yemen or other hot spots. But the forces here spend
much of their time drilling wells or building hospitals; they rushed to respond
when a building collapsed in Kenya and when a passenger ferry capsized in
Djibouti.

Rear Adm. James Hart, commander of the task force at Camp Lemonier,
suggested that if people in nearby countries feel they have opportunities to
improve their lives, then “the chance of extremism being welcomed greatly, if
not completely, diminishes.”

The U.S. announced last month that it would form a new Africa Command,
aimed partly at blocking the rise of ungoverned spaces that nurture terrorism.
The new command offers tremendous humanitarian potential as well, for in some
poor countries the most useful “aid workers” are the ones in camouflage carrying
guns.

In the Central African Republic in September I visited a town with a lovely
new hospital built as a foreign aid project. But the hospital was an empty
shell, gutted by militias rampaging through the area. In places like that,
there’s no point in building schools or clinics unless you also help with
security.

Some of the most successful aid projects in Africa have been the dispatch
of armed peacekeepers to Mozambique and British troops to Sierra Leone. In both
places, troops brought what the besieged population most desperately needed —
order — and laid the groundwork for recovery. We should be far more aggressive
about dispatching small numbers of troops to impose a no-fly zone over Darfur or
to destroy Sudanese militias that invade Chad and the Central African
Republic.

We can also do far more to train armies in Africa. The deal we offer
African presidents should be along these lines: You run a country cleanly and
tolerate dissent, and we’ll help ensure that no brutal rebel force comes out of
the jungle to create chaos and overthrow you.

Helping fragile countries with security is just as important as helping them with education and medical care. So let’s hope that this new base in Africa is the start of a broad new policy that doesn’t aim to make us hated or feared, but respected.