I have finally arrived....

I have finally arrived - and some would argue miraculously so in many ways!!! ;-)  It is the beginning of winter here. The air is crisp and clear. Hills in the distance promise this African vastness and beauty I love. It will get colder soon. Dipping into the minuses. 

I bought a map. To fuel my obsession with maps - and to orient myself. And to have something visual in my office. To scout out potential future road trips. In my head. They help me dream (maps do this kind of thing to me!!) I opened a bank account. I have a cell phone. I actually text!!! I must be South African now!!! ?

Finding a heater and getting toilet paper have become initial main priorities. Also getting a backpack. I need a light. And warme Strumpfhosen. Transportation remains an issue. Walking is possible (it's about 3 km from my house to campus), but could potentially become a bit unsafe. Riding a bike equally has turned out not to be a good idea. Trust the locals!! My housemates are AWESOME!! And awesome (capitalized) is defined in my life as: kind. generous. very very smart. And I am happy to re-affirm:  Getting lost is good. Asking for help is VERY helpful. And being kind never fails. Because people have big hearts. Apparently everywhere. It always amazes me. It's such a stunningly universal thing.  

And So What??

On a more academic note: So far I envision my project for my one-year stay here at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa centering on the following thought process: 
Within the realms of International Politics, Security Studies, Foreign Policy, International Political Economy – all these pillars that create and shape the world of International Relations in one way or another - sexual violence has always been bypassed as a global low-priority; an accepted by-product of conflict (nationally, regionally; globally) ; a national non-agenda item.  However, increasing evidence indicates: it matters greatly to a country’s prosperity and potential –its political, economic and social viability – if 50 percent of its population (women and girls) live in constant insecurity; feel unsafe and threatened in their public and private spaces; are marginalized politically and economically by the terror of rape; are robbed of their potential as fully-functioning and producing  actors within in a state;  are effectively and consistently abandoned by structural authority and parameters of power.

Sexual violence in South Africa reveals an intriguing complexity: a synthesis of grave historical, political, economic and social legacies and dynamics that today stretches its core as a functioning state to the limits. In South Africa every 17 seconds a woman is being raped. The country continuous to experience a sexual violence crisis of an immeasurable scope - and of dire social and political consequences. This crisis cripples the country’s potential for economic and political prosperity; full democracy; its potential to emerge as a vibrant 21^st century economic engine on the continent – as a key global actor within today's  international community. This blog will explore the intersection of sexual violence and the state in South Africa, how it connects to political oppression, power and conflict. And why it so deeply matters. 

Maybe. Maybe not.

I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, these sentences. I’ve seen these images before. Men clustered on a hill, standing in line, their heads bowed, waiting. For their hair to be shorn. Like animals. Fathers and brothers taken to concentration camps. Mothers chased across a mine field. Their daughters systematically raped. For days. Screams and wails lingering in the air, coming from a police station. Thousands of people packed into boxcars, then later forced for three days and nights to march across a non-man’s land. Emaciated men behind barbed-wire. An entire village population evacuated. Into an 18-car train. Hundreds of men on the floor of cattle sheds. This is not the Holocaust. Not World War II. Not Germany in 1940. This was Manjaca, Brezovo Polje Slavonski Samac, Tuzla. Bosnia-Herzegovina, the cruel summer of 1992. The end of the Cold War and its false prophecy of a perpetual peace. A cliché again comes to mind: Does history really repeat itself? Or is it sometimes just a fluke of the most cruel kind? The infamous vicious cycle. Or a time warp that one can overcome. Bend back. Make straight. And good again?   
   I’ve just finished copying and pasting from excerpts from the 1992 Human Rights Watch/Helsinki watch report about the Bosnian conflict. And as I read on I know I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, similar sentences before. I’ve seen these images. Over and over again. The report “speaks” of the atrocities committed at the “refugee” camps by Serbian soldiers, of deteriorating conditions at the camps. The frustration of UN workers being paralyzed to act according to rules and regulations, according to senseless UN bureaucracy. And an international community seemingly oblivious of the medieval slaughter that is unfolding in the heart of a modern Europe – at the end of the 20th century. “Our frustration arises from our inability to do anything other than write reports and stand-by since UNPROPFOR has no operational responsibilities across the border.” In one of the memos a UN staffer begged for a minibus to help carry escapees “to safety since UN vehicles are not to be used for humanitarian purposes.” To no avail.
   I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, similar sentences. I’ve seen these images. The Holocaust. Trains and ships packed with people fleeing to borders, to the safety of other countries, just to be refused, turned around, pushed back into hell.
   You’d think after all these second chances we would be a better people. So let me throw out a seemingly unrelated and in comparison innocent and trivial event. Twenty years fast forward, along comes the Euro Crisis. And Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski being quoted of saying in November 2011 “I fear German’s power less than German’s inaction.” This makes him the first foreign minister in his country’s history of making such remarks. Poland, today one of the junior members of the EU, a country which has been over and over again invaded, captured and left for dead throughout history by its brutal neighbors. For me, this quote, hearing it on the radio, came as an indicator as to how we – possibly - can overcome the curse of history. Maybe. Maybe not. Or how we construct our own signs and our own destiny?
   The concept of the EU, in general, as a confederation/association of states, independent yet interdependent (to me) is an effective mechanism that deters war and fosters peace. And the concept of the monetary union, in particular, (to me) is a sign of a commitment for us to finally abandoning the bloody battlefields of our ancestors and to see each other collectively rather than insular. This is (for me) why the EU and the Euro cannot fail. In addition to its economic function, both could serve as a mechanism that raises our moral compass as a people to avoid mass slaughter and mass political contentment - again. Maybe. Maybe not.
Or: This is - at least - how I see it. And I know everything is complex. And comes in various shades of grey. But maybe it’s not so complex. And maybe not so grey.
   But this is my imperfect reality. This is my truth. Today. And how I know it. So: Do we need to suffer over and over again from the same thing? I think not. I think never.

But What If I Am Wrong?

This may not come as a surprise to you, but there are some words I really love. Words you’ll find here and there.  Words I overuse, misuse and probably to some extent recklessly abuse. One of them is hope. And promise. And possibility. And I also routinely love adding –ness to words. Like endlessness. Reasonableness.  Happiness. And I love the words magic and dreams. Since I use Bosnia and Rwanda as my case studies, lately my daily schedule includes sifting through tribunal documents and anything that’s related to these two conflicts. And I developed a bit of a frantic schedule because I am trying to defy the odds that I may not make my deadline. So, my routine usually includes ending my day with reading Samantha Power’s A Problem From Hell. As I mentioned before it’s about the (most recent) history of the failure of U.S. foreign policy to react to genocide. To these horrific atrocities we humans commit and do to each other for the sake of hm… power? So last night I picked up the chapter about Srebrenica, a former Muslim safe haven protected by UN peacekeepers during the Bosnia madness. The Serbs eventually rolled into the UN protected enclave, separated the men from women and children and systematically executed the men in soccer fields. I caught myself gasping at these two sentences and a picture of a  woman, a 22-year-old Muslim refugee, who hanged herself with a torn blanket in despair. I put the book aside. Then picked it up again. To read about the Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. This heroic man, who just couldn’t persuade the UN, the U.S., the international community to give him more troops (there is a very powerful Frontline documentary about him and the genocide). In 2000, he was found unconscious on a park bench in Quebec, “drunk and alone. He had consumed a bottle of scotch on top of his daily dose of pills for post-traumatic stress disorder.”  But Dallaire continued to believe in peacekeeping and in human rights and for Canada (and other "Western" nations) to be expected “by the less fortunate of this globe to lead the developed countries beyond self-interest, strategic advantage, and isolationism.” Yes. Guilty as charged. I love the word hope. And words like a perfectly blue sky, a warm autumn sun, sprawling emerald-green fields. To make sense amid all the senselessness. I guess. But what if I am wrong?

A Matter of Words

Sometimes it just comes down to this: words. And how we make them matter.

May I introduce you to a big part of my life: theory. I am working with Barry Buzan’s Securitization Theory in my dissertation. This theory broadened in the 1990s International Security Studies and removed the up until then Security Studies’ narrow/stale focus on the nuclear Cold War deterrence/realism point of view to other security issues such as terrorism, cyberspace, environment, health and gender. He argued in 1998 with Security – A New Framework for Analysis, for example, that securitization takes place once a referent object (e.g. rape during war) is being transformed from a political issue into a threat. The securitizing agent (states, the UN) says “someone cannot be dealt with in the normal way.” Once you securitize something (speak the word “security”), actors (states or/and international institutions) recognize the urgency and crisis mode and, hence, begin to abandon prior values, assumptions and norms (procedures, rules) and deploy extraordinary measures (UN resolutions and International Law/convictions of war criminals for the act of rape during war). So, the securitization of rape is elevating the act of rape from a natural / common / opportunistic” occurrence or assumed by-product of war into a security threat. By doing so, it also de-genderizes rape, removes women as “depoliticized” entities and re-establishes them as “active agents” (Buzan 247). I am exploring whether or not rape was successfully securitized after the conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda. I’ll argue yes. And no. Both conflicts serve as watershed moments that caused the (slow but gradual) recognition of rape as a systematic tool of war. But the question remains ”what does it matter”? I’ll argue that securitization of rape remains limited, unsatisfying, artificial, at best. Why? Is rape as a subject matter too abstract/different from cyber war, global warming etc. to be recognized as a security issue? What is it about mass rapes during conflict (e.g. currently in the DRC) that numbs our consciousness? What is it about rape that makes us look the other way?

May I spam your world?

Ok. Here we have it. It’s time to give this thing, called dissertation, a serious go and push into some finite and final direction. I have a timeline and a deadline – and it ain’t pretty. I am kind of (consistently) in despair over it, and I don’t want to bore you with my daily back and forth, ups and downs. But not to fear, given that the subject is kind of a downer by default, maybe you’ll find a few of these entries interesting, thought provoking, weird, controversial, horrific and maybe yet surprisingly hopeful. As a writer, I think, you write mainly for yourself . Secondarily, however, there is always this hope to touch somebody else. So, I found this book “A Problem from Hell. America and the Age of Genocide” by Samantha Power. Published in 2002, she won the Pulitzer in 2003 for examining the reluctance of the U.S. Government and its foreign policies to act when it comes to genocides. She chronicles the events from the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century, to the Holocaust, Cambodia, Iraq to Bosnia and Rwanda. I haven’t gone very far yet. But one sentence, for example, that kind of stood out was the advice she received when she started interviewing people : Guard yourself against two things: selective memory and absolute dishonesty. This reminded me of my trip to Rwanda, the testimonies I’ve read and the conversations I had. The reluctance to talk about rape during the genocide. The stigma attached to it. The coding of the truth. But how insular is this really? Isn’t it also a coding that goes beyond the local and the individual? Stretches into the media and international institutions, international law and foreign policies. When do we as the collective practice and apply selective memory and absolute dishonesty ourselves? Willingly. Consciously. Purposely. Conveniently. As I am framing my argument around why rape used for centuries as a systematic tool of war only recently has been recognized as such, when does such selective application (in foreign policies; security decisions) bother us ? When does it matter? Does it?

Une Lettre d'Amour Rwanda

You are not good at
this sort of thing
at saying good-bye
and other socially constructed matters of the oblivious heart
You came down in violent sheets
To stop me from leaving
Furious clumps of raindrops, turning the red into treacherous traps of no escape
into hazardous muddy quicksand of the most dubious kind
Slipping and sliding into the beautiful you
The green lushness of your mountains
The haunting innocence of your people
The blue depth of your soul
You kept your promises well
Surprised me to the very end
You even sought after the evil spirits
To cancel my flight
Sent me half-around the globe
across three continents
to reconsider
The red plastered my soul with tiny specks
Traces of you
One can’t leave you
Without scars
Without the mind marred by worries
Over you
you promised the sun if I’d stay
I promised a better world
We could be good at
this sort of thing
The long African good-byes
Trees planted in our fragile souls
promises of final returns
the foolishly constructed matters
of our hopeful hearts.

written March 21, 2011 on the plane Kigali to Addis Ababa