Obliged to weep… drown drums of war—Ann Jones

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

“‘We are obliged to weep.

Sometimes we are obliged to hit our heads 

against the wall

Sometimes we just fall down.’”

Ann Jones is quoting a Congolese nurse reacting to stories from women raped during a decade of war.

She calls herself an outraged civil rights-women’s rights-peace activist. Ann Jones appeared today on Pacifica’s Democracy Now program. Her latest book documents “A Global Crescendo.” Released this month, the book title is War Is Not Over When It’s Over:  Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict. This is some of what she had to say on the program and on her website.

The architects of disastrous U.S. ventures seek unequivocal and terminal ‘victory.’ In their quest, they rely on bombing tonnage to erase enemies, military and civilian, and enable marines to raise a final flag.

U.S. leaders measure success in minimal American military casualties and fail to count civilian casualties among the ‘enemy’ or among American civilian contractors now doing so much of the work and reaping many profits of waging the country’s wars. They do not count the lost life of communities or social institutions. They do not record the moment in which a culture implodes. They do not acknowledge that when ‘peace’ comes, the war against women continues.

These limited terms of assessment, official American reports of the consequences of war, serve only to misinform and mislead. They obscure the true nature and conduct of contemporary warfare, what it does to people and societies.

Afghanistan

The civilian population in Afghanistan is suffering perhaps even more now than they did in the [George W.] Bush years. More and more Afghans outside the capital are saying conditions are worse for them now. In Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital — now a fortified city — is an island of relative security and many within the city argue for the presence of American troops to protect them; but outside the city, you get a very different story.

Violence against women continues, often worsening — even when conflict officially ends.

“Murderous aggression is not turned off overnight; when men stop attacking one another, women continue to be convenient targets. Opposing factions of men sit down to negotiate a peace settlement without ever letting up on rape, abduction, mutilation, and murder of women and girls. Whenever soldiers rape during war, rape becomes a habit taken up by civilian men and carried seamlessly from wartime into the troubled ‘post-conflict’ time, beyond the label ‘peace.’

“Wherever normal structures of law enforcement and justice have been disabled by war, soldiers and civilian men alike prey upon women and children with impunity.”

Global Crescendo

Jones led “A Global Crescendo” project in five countries: Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Thailand (where she worked with minority refugees from Burma).

“Working with the International Rescue Committee, [she and her colleagues] gave digital cameras to women and asked them to photograph the blessings and the problems in their lives.” Global Crescendo was “a project to encourage women to begin to articulate their own situation, to speak up in their own villages and communities on behalf of their own interests.”

The women who took part in ‘A Global Crescendo,’ having no stake in America’s or their own country’s wars, “help to set the record straight,” Jones says. “They care about their families, their children’s education, their spouse’s intermittent kindness, their income, their relationship to their gods, perhaps the acquisition of a new pair of sandals.” They addressed problems of getting safe water, getting safe access to their fields to work, getting education for their children, getting healthcare, getting places for community members to meet.

Jones says she listened with a head full of memories of what she had already learned about war in Afghanistan. She “saw that the practice and consequences of modern warfare are nothing like those planned and reported by American leaders.”

The women gave “a blueprint for peace.” Global Crescendo lends support to what the United Nations has been saying for the past decade — that durable peace anywhere in the world in the aftermath of conflict is impossible without women’s involvement “every step of the way.”

The hope, Jones says, is that “A Global Crescendo” will “drown out the drums of war.”



Sources and notes


Pakistan’s neighbor, Afghanistan’s capital
Kabul (Persian Kābol), the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Set along the Kābul River, in a triangular valley between the two steep Asmai and Sherdawaza mountain ranges, the capital city is the nation’s cultural and economic center. Roads connect Kabul with most other areas of Afghanistan, with Uzbekistan to the north, and Pakistan to the east [Britannica note].


Ann Jones
Writer, photographer, teacher, world traveler, chronicler, native of Wisconsin (U.S.), Ann Jones says she has “always been an outraged activist for civil rights, women’s rights, and peace.” She has spent most of her life traveling domestically and internationally, “working as a writer, reporter, photographer, and humanitarian, speaking up for people—especially women—who have trouble making their voices heard.” After 9/11, Jones went to Afghanistan to work as a humanitarian volunteer off and on for four years. She documented cases of women detained in prison, lobbied for women’s rights, taught Afghan high school English teachers; then wrote about the experiences in Kabul in Winter (2006).


Her latest book released this month is War Is Not Over When It’s Over: Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict. The book records what women in conflict and post-conflict zones — from the Congo to Burma to Iraq — have to say about war and peace in the home and in the country [http://www.annjonesonline.com/Bio.html].


Ann Jones: War Is Not Over When It’s Over: Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict
http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/2484/59/

Today on Democracy Now: “Ann Jones on ‘War Is Not Over When It’s Over: Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict,’” September 30, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/30/ann_jones_on_war_is_not


___________________________________________________________________

Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]