Abstract
War has never been men’s work. Women are always part of wars. Women fight and die in wars, women protest and resist wars. Nothing is predictable, however, about how women join war or how war joins them. Since the Vietnam War, the catchphrase “women and children first” has no longer simply ear-marked those passive bystanders and innocent victims of war, if it ever did. Women are also the enemy to be met on the battlefield and destroyed. Still, the victim–enemy duality remains, as the ideological buildup to the invasion of Afghanistan so clearly illustrates. On November 17, 2001, Laura Bush held her first radio conference to frame the impending U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as righteous support for the rights of women. “Women’s rights” in 2001 galvanized invasion, massive air bombings, and the indiscriminate use of depleted uranium. Yet Afghan women were wholly absent from the official body count of these bombings, house raids, incarceration rapes, and imprisonment. They were innocent victims only when they faced violence from Afghan men. When “women’s rights” are the human right to be avenged through military force, the quality and content of solidarities between women’s organizations, feminist activists, and their allies around the world gain central importance.
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© 2006 Robin L. Riley and Naeem Inayatullah
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Armstrong, E., Prashad, V. (2006). Bandung Women: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Necessary Risks of Solidarity. In: Riley, R.L., Inayatullah, N. (eds) Interrogating Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601710_2
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