Dan Snow's History Hit - Rape as a Weapon of War

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

Christina Lamb is Chief Foreign Correspondent at The Sunday Times and one of Britain’s leading foreign journalists. As well as working in combat zones for over thirty years, Christina's also a best selling author, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an honorary fellow of University College, Oxford and was awarded an OBE by the Queen in 2013. So I was thrilled that she could find time to join me on the pod to discuss the topic of her latest book: rape as a weapon of war. Although there is a long and painful history of rape and war, Christina explained how it is increasingly used against thousands of women as part of barbaric military strategy. A warning - this podcast contains harrowing descriptions of sexual violence. But as Christina tells me, if these events are difficult for us to hear, they are far harder for those who have lived them to forget. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I've got a pretty sombre topic on the podcast today. I've got Christina Lamb. She is a multi-award winning British journalist and author. She's the chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times and has written extraordinary stories, particularly the ones most recently I can think of are out of Afghanistan and some of the other world's war zones. She is an extraordinarily brave and remarkable human being. She's just written a new book on rape as a weapon of war, on sexual violence on the battlefield. It's pretty harrowing.

This podcast should come with a trigger warning. Please exercise caution if you want to listen to this podcast. It may reawaken trauma and it may be inappropriate for certain listeners of the History Hit podcast. It is enormously important and it may be inappropriate for certain listeners of the History Hit podcast. It is enormously important, and it turns out, a growing problem in the world's conflict zones. If you wish to go to History Hit TV, it's like Netflix History, you can listen to the entire back catalogue of this podcast. You just go to historyhit.tv, use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, and you get a month for free, and then your first month for just one pound, euro, or dollar.

Thanks so much to all the subscribers out there, And before you do so, here is Christina Lam. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. It's a huge honour having one of the greats of world journalism on the podcast, and now a historian as well. I mean, jeepers, creepers, there's nothing you can't do. Can you tell me why this book feels like it's embedded in the things that you've seen, the places you've visited? Is that the case? Yeah, this book was really important to me. It came about because I think being a foreign correspondent, mostly covering war, I certainly in the early part of my career was always very much in a minority, that was a very male field. But I also felt that the way that wars were covered and written about was very male.

I always tried really hard to write about what happened to women in war. in war and was always much more interested in the life kind of behind the battlefront and how people keep life together how they look after their children how they feed themselves how they protect their families and that was mostly the women doing it so in a way to me that was more interesting than the bang bang although I would say that my editors were more interested in the latter but there's also a dark side and that's what happens to women in war in terms of the brutality and the use of sexual violence and it was something that I have seen more and more and strangely much more in recent years and I couldn't understand why something as terrible as that should be happening so much in the 21st century.

What are your thoughts on why that is the case? I think it's hard to generalise, but the number one problem is lack of justice and impunity. And people will say, rightly, that there's always been rape in war if you go back to the ancient greeks and the romans and the persians they were all abducting women raping them if you look at herodotus history starts off with accounts of abducting women so it's not something new of course but i think there's a big difference between people taking advantage of the chaos of war to rape and pillage, if you like, and people using rape as a weapon of war. And that's something that we seem to be seeing much more in recent years.

So people actually being ordered to rape. in recent years. So people are actually being ordered to rape. Is that because in the book, you mention the war in Bangladesh in the 70s, and the mass rapes there and in Rwanda and in the Balkans in the 90s. Do you think as we see wars between peoples rather than interstate wars of the kind of classic 19th, early 20th century wars of, is because what we're arguing about is sort of ethnicity and identity, that being ordered to rape is this kind of DNA, who we are is the battlefield. Well, sadly, I think that rape is a very effective weapon of war. And if you want to change the ethnic balance, and if you want to change the ethnic balance or if you want to remove people from an area it is extremely effective and very cheap it doesn't cost anything

and it can be a way of rewarding the soldiers at the same time or the fighters but what has changed I think I mean is that the rapes that we're seeing more recently tend to be more by militias and less by state armies or states at war. But that's also a reflection of the kind of wars that we're seeing too. Because if your enemy is the Bosnian Muslims or the Tutsi, you can kill them, but somehow, you know, impregnating their women, is that the ultimate victory? Yeah, it's the ultimate humiliation. You know, I think many of us, when we think about this subject, depending on our age, but people will remember what happened in the 90s in Bosnia and, you know, the outrage that there was at the idea that there were rape

camps in the centre of Europe and people saying never again. But sadly, and I think people think that there was a lot of justice after that war because there was an international tribunal set up for the former Yugoslavia. People were tried for war crimes. The fact is that rape in war is a war crime, but it is rarely prosecuted. And if you go back to, for example, the Second World War, we know that there was a lot of rape by the Russian soldiers in Germany. And Anthony Beaver, for example, has written incredible work on that. for example, has written incredible work on that. And yet when the Nuremberg trials happened at the end of the war, there were no trials for sexual violence. And we're talking about maybe two million German women being raped, and yet there wasn't a single mention or trial about it.

Similarly, the Japanese army that took women as so-called comfort women across Southeast Asia, nobody was tried. And not only that, but there's almost no acknowledgement about it. So I interviewed for my book, some really amazing women in the Philippines, these really dignified old grandmothers in their late 80s who were abducted when they were teenagers, hadn't even started their periods, and forcibly raped over and over again by Japanese soldiers. And their story isn't even acknowledged in their country. And when they managed recently to be able to put up a statue in Manila in honour of the comfort women, it was taken down by the government. statue in Manila in honour of the comfort women. It was taken down by the government.

You have visited all these battlefields over the last 20 or 30 years. I've been to far fewer than you and I've met many survivors of sexual violence but I've always just been completely unable to conduct interviews partly because I'm so aware of my own identity as a man and often I've experienced a reluctance on their part. I mean so when I've met identity as a man. And often I've experienced a reluctance on their part. I mean, so when I've met in the Congo survivors of sexual violence, I look back on it with huge regret because I just feel I've been unable to really talk, listen to their experiences. Because of the fact that you're a woman and often were one of the few women in these war zones, were people much readier to open up to you? For example, these Filipino women in Central Africa more recently?

Yes, I think it is much easier I mean I'm biased anyway I think that people find it easier to speak to women generally so but you can't really generalize like that I mean how this came about though wasn't that I sort of really started going searching for women that had been through this I kept coming across women who had had these terrible things happening to them. So really, I think the first thing that I found so completely shocking was meeting Yazidi women and girls who had been captured by ISIS fighters in 2014 and taken as sex slaves and put in these kind of markets like the Galaxy Cinema where they were separated into whether or not they were ugly or beautiful and then fighters would come through

and touch their breasts, pull their hair, look at them and decide which one they wanted and take them and many of these girls were incredibly young. So I met some of them for the first time in a refugee camp in Greece and the stories that they told, and I met this 16-year-old girl who told me that she'd been taken by a fat ISIS judge who raped her every night and that the worst night of her life was when he brought back a 10-year-old girl and raped her in the room next to her, and she could hear the girl crying for her mother all night.

And I was so heartbroken by these stories. But then, not long after that, I was in northern Nigeria, when you remember the abduction of the Chibok girls six years ago. And I did a lot of work about that that which was more than 200 girls taken from their dormitory in the middle of the night by Boko Haram fighters and taken into the forest and kept by them which became a sort of big international issue but in fact I mean tens of thousands of girls were being taken and that's so terribly sad because not only are they kept forced into these awful ordeals, but sometimes if they are released and rescued by the Nigerian military, they're

raped again. And then when they are put in camps, their families won't take them back because they see them as being solid or maybe dangerous. And so're stigmatized and the only way that they can actually get food and survive is to sleep with camp officials so they're being victimized over and over again and that's one of the problems with this issue that it's not the perpetrators that are suffering at the end of it. It is the victims, the survivors, have not only had this terrible physical and mental ordeal, but their lives are often completely ruined forever. Many of them said to me they would rather have died.

I've met so many inspiring women who appear to have rebuilt their lives, particularly on a trip to the Congo that I mentioned, and you just can't believe that they could. I mean, have you seen how the trauma endu, is it possible to generalise about people recovering or the lasting nature of the trauma? Are the ones that I'm meeting because I'm out there filming, are they self-selecting as ones that are able to talk about what they've been through in a kind of positive way? For every one of them, is there just a giant reservoir of people whose lives have been totally destroyed? It's such a sensitive subject. The people that I spoke to were self-selecting in a way because I

went through organisations or places, hospitals, therapists and asked people to talk to people to see who would like to tell their story. I certainly didn't sort of go into places and start just randomly questioning people. So these were all people who wanted to speak. I mean, this is a horrible, shocking issue, but the bravery of these women is phenomenal. And the few cases that have actually come to justice have been because of the incredible persistence and courage of some of these women who have had to testify about the worst thing that could possibly happen to them over and over again. I mean, there was a case that was successful in Guatemala of this group of grandmothers who, I mean, they were young girls

when they were taken during the Civil War, but it took them 36 years to get justice. And they had to testify 22 times about what they'd gone through. And you imagine the trauma of having to talk about this over and over again. But the one thing I found was that the times that they had been successful in getting justice, there was always a female judge on the bench or a female prosecutor. And that just seems to make so much difference. I do think that one of the problems about rape in war is that at the end of war, when, not that we seem very good at ending wars anymore,

but when people sit down and try and reach peace settlements, it's usually men sitting together, and they don't think of this as an important issue. They think about the killings and maybe the torture, but they don't think about what happened to the women in terms of sexual violence as being something that they need to do anything about. And I think that's completely wrong. What about you?

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professional life entails i think that i was so in awe of the bravery of these women and so horrified by what they'd been through that I was just really, really determined to tell their stories and give them a platform. The book is very much, there's a lot of women from four different continents and lots of examples because I wanted to show how wide scale it is. And I don't paraphrase them. I tell it as they told it. And that was just really important to me. I mean, one of the women I spoke to, a young girl,

I was so difficult for her telling her story. And I said to her, are you sure that you want to continue telling this? And she said, absolutely absolutely because I do not want people to be able to say that they didn't know I think I felt very much the same what about more generally as a war correspondent my very limited experience of going to war zones is I'm just completely terrified the whole time when I'm there and when the plane takes off I feel euphoric but then within a few days of getting back to the UK I get these very dark urges to return to a place where you feel very alive. Is that something you must, because of course you've done a million times more dangerous things, gone to more places than I have. Is that something that speaks to you?

Well, first of all, I mean, people that say they don't get scared in these things, I don't believe. I think everybody gets scared and it's scary and it would be weird not to be and I don't think I'm particularly brave I'm terrified of spiders for example but I do think that somehow often when I'm packing to go I think why not am I going somewhere where normal people are leaving and we also have to do something these days because it's become more dangerous as a journalist in these war zones we've become more target so we have to fill in these risk assessment forms and give something called a proof of life question and it's quite grim giving sort of what your proof of life question would be in case you're kidnapped because it makes you think about that so sometimes

before going I think why am I doing this? But honestly, once I'm on the plane and thinking about the story, that sort of takes over my interest in what's happening and the desire to know and to find out what's really happening. And to tell people back home and give a voice to people is much stronger than any other feelings. But it is terrifying being in a ditch in Helmand, for example, with people shooting at you. Well, you've written the most extraordinary things. Sadly, you've had plenty of opportunity over the last few years, but all your prize-winning journalism from Afghanistan and elsewhere has been so remarkable. But I've just done a podcast about Mary Kingsley, the late 19th, early 20th century

writer, and Sir Arthur Conan Dorland, their work on the Congo. When you write this book and when you write your pieces, you mentioned that young woman who said they can't say they didn't know. Do you feel that you are contributing through this writing? And if we are going to force action on a global scale on sexual violence, you would have played a part in that. Is that something that sustains you? That's something that I would like to happen.

I mean, I guess I wanted to be a foreign correspondent part in that is that something that sustains you that's something that i would like to happen i mean i guess you know i wanted to be a foreign correspondent because i wanted to kind of expose injustice and try and change things it's frustrating because a lot of the time you write about terrible things and nothing changes you see the same mistakes being made over and over again in wars and you write about it and yet the same thing happens so that actually is the thing I find in a way hardest to deal with but I do feel incredibly strongly that people need to acknowledge women's roles much more both as what's happening to them in terms of things like the sexual violence in conflict, but also in negotiations at the end of war. I mean, study after study has

shown that peace tends to be longer lasting if women are involved in the negotiations. And yet, in so many places, they're not. And I think that one of the things that would reduce sexual violence in conflict would be having more women represented in the military, because there does tend to still be a sort of laddish culture in a lot of the military groups that can lead to some of these things. Just on the history of it, because you've delved into the history as well, the deeper history. some of these things. Just on the history of it, because you've delved into the history as well, the deeper history, I never quite know whether it is, as you say, a 20th and sadly now a very much 21st century phenomenon, this kind of gigantic organised sexual assault, and whether that's a product of nationalism, it's a product of mistaken ideas about Darwinism and racial theory, or whether in the 30 Years' War with Gustavus Adolphus's army, or when the Russians get marched

on Germany in the Seven Years' War, whether there's been mass sexual assaults as well but they were just almost unchronicled because no one cared about women and it was just overlooked what's your sense from looking at the sources I think you know one of the problems with this issue is it's very difficult for people to talk about it because there is this stigma so so few women came forward in Germany and spoke about it. In fact, there was a woman who wrote a book, which was then anonymously, which was then taken out of publication, is subsequently now been published. And, you know, Franco's war in Spain, that also, there was horrific things that happened to women, lots of sexual violence and mutilation of women's breasts and people were told in that case to do this. But when I said earlier

it's difficult to generalise, I mean I was really particularly looking at cases where people were ordered to do it and it was used as a weapon and sometimes that can be for ideological reasons so ISIS for example when they took the Yazidi girls they were told that the Yazidis are devil worshippers and that it's your duty to go and rape them which was quite similar to what Pakistani soldiers in Bangladesh had been told it was their religious duty to go and defile Bengali women. So then you also have cases, for example, in the Congo, which is very rich in minerals and militias want to control areas so that they can get their hands on those minerals. Often things we need, such as cobalt for batteries in electric cars or minerals that we use in iPhones and laptops. So these things are worth

an awful lot of money and an easy way to clear an area and take control of the territory is to go in and start raping the women and terrifying everybody. In a way, Congo, DRC, I found the hardest of all the places that I reported from on this issue, because there you're seeing babies being raped as well. And it's just really difficult to get your head round. I was in this hospital in eastern Congo and a four-year-old girl and a six-month-old baby were brought in who'd been raped by militias and it's just so unimaginable why anybody would do something like that. You've also met and embedded with and talked to lots of groups who are the perpetrators of this kind of rape. They're not born evil. What's happening? What does it say about men? What's

it say about I'm very drawn to hierarchy, to obeying orders, to indoctrination, to groupthink. What are the things that you've noticed about these groups that are carrying out these crimes? Of course, writing something like that, it's something that you think about all the time. How could men do something like this? What possible enjoyment could you get? I mean, the Rohingya, for example, taken by the Burmese army, tied to banana trees and gang raped over and over by soldiers in front of their children. How can that possibly be enjoyable to anybody? I mean, it's something

that actually I spoke to Anthony Beaver about, you know, and he says that he wondered, it made him feel whether there's sort of a dark side to men that if you were in this situation that somehow you would also do this but I wouldn't like to think that that was the case in fact in my book some of the heroes actually are men some of the people who risked their life to rescue the Yazidi women one of the doctors in Congo who has had his life threatened over and over again and has treated 55,000 women at his hospital and goes around the world talking about it, Dr. Dennis Mukwege. I mean, these are just really absolutely incredible people. So I do think, you know, it is difficult to generalise. It's difficult to generalise.

I think that's probably the subject for another book about perpetrators, maybe written by a man, because my attempts to talk to some of the male perpetrators about rape did not really elucidate very much information. But, you know, I come back to the justice question. As long as people are not being brought to justice for this, I think it's going to continue. And I think that we have a big role in the international community to try and put pressure on leaderships of countries where this is happening on a wide scale to do something.

But also the International Criminal Court, which was set up 20 years ago, has only convicted one person for sexual violence, which was just in November of last year. I remember being out in Syria when Barack Obama was busy assassinating loads of people via drones in the Sahel for lots of things. And I remember thinking, why don't we just have like a transparent system for perpetrators of sexual crimes? You just try them in their absence and then you drone kill them. I mean, know if barack obama's killing all these people anyway because weirdly i remember being in the congo and they were all very keen to tell me that they weren't recruiting child soldiers and i kept saying why are they all telling me about

child soldiers and the fixer because that is the thing that at the moment they think they're going to get nailed for by the international criminal court. And I was like, well, how interesting. So that it does matter, does reach into these groups that we think are beyond communication. But they do, they are aware of these things. I'm sure you've discovered it. I was very struck by the fact they all kept saying to me, we don't recruit children. Yeah, well, I'm not sure you need to go as far as using drone attacks, but definitely, you know, just making it an issue, raising it as an issue in places and you know the UK gives aid to a lot of these countries I think we should be withholding aid if they're not because we've actually set ourselves up as a country that cares about this issue and has a

department in the foreign office which other countries don't do but you know we should practice what we preach and actually withhold aid if people are doing something about it but rape is always difficult to get justice for in the UK last year we had the lowest level of convictions on record so imagine in a country where the people who are carrying out the rape are people running the country or people who have the weapons and terrorising your community. The idea that you could try and get justice is, you know, really, sadly, very, very difficult. Yeah, that's a terrifying thought. I mean, thank you so much, this really disturbing podcast. And it is disturbing as a man, as Anthony Beaver says,

it always makes me question my own sort of personality and makeup and wonder that if I'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time whether I would be one of those men it's very very difficult to talk about so thank you for forcing me to do that and I hope everyone reads your book especially men and what's it called it's called our bodies their battlefield and it is uncomfortable but I don't think that because something's uncomfortable that we should ignore it. These women have been very brave to tell their stories and they need to be heard so that we can try and do something about it. Just generally from you everyone's looking forward to

the end of lockdown so we can send you back out to the dangerous places where we're too scared to go. Your determination undimmed by this period of staying at home? Yeah, it's been frustrating. It's the longest period, I think, even when I had a baby, I didn't stay at home as long as this. And so I also feel that, you know, the world hasn't stopped. There's things going on and sadly, terrible things going on. I mean, the UN Secretary General called for a kind of global ceasefire at the beginning of the pandemic. But sadly, we haven't seen that. And you're seeing

more fighting in Afghanistan, in Libya and Yemen and various other places. And I hope that people don't forget what's going on in the rest of the world and countries that are much less able to deal with coronavirus than we are. Well, thanks to your writing, I'm sure it won't be forgotten and overlooked. So good luck when you next get back out there and good luck with the book. And thank you for talking to me. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask.

I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there,

and I need all the fire support I can get so that will boost it up the charts it's so tiresome but if you could do it i'd be very very grateful thank you