This article is based on a talk given at a Party for Socialism and Liberation community forum.
U.S. politicians have continuously claimed a “responsibility to protect women’s rights” in order to justify wars and regime change in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. In reality, it is death and destruction disguised as humanitarian intervention. Examples of U.S imperialism devastating the situation for women can be found all around the world, but examples of the Middle East are particularly alarming and important to recognize.
The stereotype is that the people in the Middle East and their governments are inherently misogynistic and against women’s rights. However, history shows us this is a lie. Anti-colonial revolutions in Iraq, Syria and Libya in the 1960’s and 1970s led to the largest gains for women’s rights in the Middle East. Women had the right to vote, own property, run for political office, and receive an education. Women were also guaranteed equal pay and six months’ maternity leave—rights which we do not have here in the United States.
In Afghanistan, a socialist government that came into power in 1979 had prohibited the selling of women into marriage and their execution for “marital infidelity.” They promoted women’s legal equality and initiated a mass literacy campaign among Afghani women.
However, imperialist attack and ultimately an invasion would soon end this situation.
Improving women’s rights in Afghanistan was never the goal of the U.S. occupation. The Taliban had emerged in the mid 1990’s as the dominant force in Afghanistan, and the CIA had supported its top leaders financially and politically as they were struggling against the socialist government. The CIA then conducted its largest covert operation, using these top leaders along with Osama Bin Laden, to defeat the socialist government.
After years of fighting the Taliban, despite help from the Soviet Red Army, the socialist government fell and the Taliban took over in 1996, making anti-women ideas into state policy.
While the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, and women’s rights slightly improved, the conditions of life for the Afghani people steadily deteriorated under U.S./NATO occupation. The rate of suicide and attempted suicide among Afghani women continues to rise. In 2010, 2,300 Afghani women and girls aged between 15 and 40 committed suicide.
In Libya, women had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, own property and have an income. This changed drastically when the U.S. supported Al Qaeda affiliates in order to overthrow head of state, Muammar Ghadaffi. These affiliates are today known as ISIL.
Largely responsible for this atrocity is none other than so-called feminist, Hillary Clinton. As Secretary of State, Clinton pushed for the Libya intervention justifying it on, you guessed it, humanitarian terms. In reality, Clinton saw an opportunity to take out a sovereign government, despite the outcome being a destabilized and destroyed nation, with its people driven into abysmal poverty and women’s rights practically diminished.
It was preposterous seeing Hillary Clinton claim her candidacy as a step forward for women, when she is blatantly killing our sisters in Libya, Syria and Palestine. And it is extremely disappointing seeing women follow her “feminist” movement.
Just last week, an article was published in the NY Times titled: “Does feminism have room for Zionists?” Revolutionary feminism is rooted in fighting imperialism, and the author claims that the feminist movement—a movement that is necessarily pro-Palestinian—is non-inclusive, that her identity as a Zionist will bar her from the feminist movement. This is probably the only statement in the entire article where the author gets it right. Supporting Zionism, which is rooted in oppressing Palestinian people—Palestinian women, by definition is anti-feminist. Zionism is not welcome in the feminism movement, because the liberation of women means fighting for the liberation outside of these borders.
Syrian women have also suffered through a plight of after effects of imperialism. In 1963, the Ba’th Socialist Party had taken power in Syria, and pledged full equality between women and men as well as full workforce participation for women. In 1967, Syrian women formed a quasi-governmental organization called the General Union of Syrian Women, a coalition of women’s welfare societies, educational associations, and voluntary councils intended to achieve equal opportunity for women in Syria. Between 1970 and the late 1990s, the female population in schools dramatically increased.
The flourishing of reactionary, terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and ISIS is a direct outgrowth of the U.S. imperialist invasion of Iraq, the NATO war in Libya, and the intervention by the West and its allies in Syria. Since at least 2005, Syria has been in the crosshairs of the U.S. and its allies.
Syrian women are tragically targeted in kidnappings. When fighters fail to defeat their opponents militarily, they instead abduct their opponents’ female relatives as a means of blackmail into surrendering. With the majority of Syrian men either engaged in fighting or prevented from leaving conflict zones, the majority of displaced Syrians are women. Fleeing the war does not mean that they have escaped violence and degradation. When women refugees arrive in poorly-resourced camps, they face enormous difficulties in accessing basic services, in particular, reproductive healthcare.
Displacement also amplifies the economic and security factors that drive early marriage, making young girls even more vulnerable to this form of abuse. The rate of child marriage among Syrians in Jordan doubled between 2011 and 2012, the first year of the Syrian civil war broke out.
Recently, the Trump administration deployed more than 1,000 troops to Kuwait, to act as a reserve on the “war on terrorism” in Syria and Iraq, despite an alarming 6,000 troops already stationed there.
Again, we are seeing imperialism disguised as humanitarian efforts. How could you claim to want to help stop the war on terrorism and “liberate women” while bombing their country and killing them and their families?
Women in Palestine, Iraq, Syria and Libya suffer from intense psychological distress as they live in constant fear of being bombed, or becoming victims of violence or rape by the occupying military forces and anti-women death squads.
Rape and occupation go hand-in-hand. When researching examples of military rape cases, I was absolutely disgusted to find hundreds of examples from all over the world. What’s even more disgusting is that U.S. soldiers are not tried in local courts, but special military courts that rarely punish rapists.
In Syria, women must pass through areas controlled by armed groups, negotiating checkpoints where rape and sexual assault are commonplace. Just last year, a U.S. soldier was arrested in Tokyo on suspicion of raping and killing a 20-year old Japanese woman, and abandoning her body in a forest. He was not charged.
In South Korea, where more than 28,000 U.S. soldiers are stationed, local authorities cite continuing rise in rape as well as violent crime in general due to the occupation force. The bases in South Korea also viciously fuel the sex industry. As of 2009, 3,000 to 4,000 women were working as prostitutes, despite prostitution being illegal since 2004. South Korea has become a prime destination for trafficked, immigrant women in soldier camp towns, creating a military culture of misogyny and dehumanization of women.
Recently, poor living conditions have forced Syrian women into prostitution. In April 2016, the largest ever human trafficking network was uncovered in Lebanon in which 75 Syrian women had been forced into sexual slavery. Human trafficking happens here in the United States too, where between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into slavery every year, with foreign survivors more often found in labor than sex trafficking.
Labor traffickers carry out these brutal crimes by taking advantage of the desperation of poor and working people in countries subject to imperialist exploitation.
Imperialism is not a policy choice made by politicians; it is a stage in the development of capitalism. Because capitalism is an expand-or-die system, capitalists exploit workers and resources around the world, backed by military force. Countries that are invaded and occupied by imperialist powers are prevented from developing economically. They are only integrated into the world capitalist market in a way that will be most profitable for the imperialists. Not once are the needs, rights or future of the working people in those countries taken into consideration.
However, where there is imperialism, there are revolutionary women fighting back!
Last Friday, we heard an excellent talk on the women’s protest that sparked the Russian Revolution in of 1917, on International Working Women’s Day. After the revolution, women gained the right to vote and abortion on demand. Restrictions around divorce were removed. The Bolsheviks completely abolished the laws that enforced gender inequality and anti-gay laws. Women such as Vilma Espin, Tete Puebla, Melba Hernandez and Haydee Santamaria and Celia Sanchez were among the leaders and heroes of the Cuban Revolution, fighting in the guerilla movement alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
Celia Sanchez created the foundation for the guerilla’s re-entry into Cuba to re-start the revolution after the first attempt on the Moncada Barracks. She made necessary preparations and reinforcements to ensure the guerilla’s protection in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. She smuggled whatever supplies were needed. She trained new combat troops to join the struggle.
After the revolutionary movement seized power, capitalist institutions were discarded and a new socialist government took shape, making significant changes which benefited workers and, in particular, women. More than half of Cubans were illiterate, disproportionately women who the old system neglected to educate.
Before the revolution, there were only 2,000 nurses in the entire country. By 1999, there were close to 80,000 women nurses, and there are as many female doctors as there are male doctors in Cuba. Cuba has legally established the need to eliminate sexism, and acts of sexism are punishable by law. The Cuban Women’s Federation has a formal role in the highest levels of government, and 48% of the representatives in the Cuban National Assembly are women. That’s compared to a global average of 20% representation of women in parliaments.
Likewise, women were extremely important to the success of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. Their collective suffering and organization assisted in the fall of the Somoza regime. There was an unprecedented level of women’s participation in Sandinista Revolution. By 1987, it was reported that 67% of active members and 80% of guards were women—an estimated 50,000 women nationwide.
Nora Astorga was one of those revolutionary women and played a key role in the Sandinista revolution. Born to a Catholic, upper-class family, she used her bourgeois background as a front for her early days as a guerilla. It should be noted that she became politicized by the intense segregation and racism she saw while visiting Washington D.C. in the 1960’s. On International Women’s Day, she formed part of a kidnapping team that made international headlines, when they abducted General Reynaldo Perez Varga, a CIA operative and Somoza’s second in command.
Astorga and other Sandinista women ensured that within the ranks of the fighting units, the Sandinista Revolution was not just anti-imperialist, but also anti-machista (anti-sexist).
Outside military circles, Nicaraguan women, particularly mothers, formed the backbone of the Sandinista support network. They set up safe houses to feed, clothe and shelter guerrilla soldiers and political activists, organized shipments of first aid and medical supplies, built bombs and hid ammunition, carried messages and food to refugees hiding in the mountains, and rallied for the release of political prisoners.
On July 19, 1979, Nicaragua was free of tyranny. The following year, was dedicated to eradicating illiteracy and establishing institutions of power such as the People’s Army, the Sandinista Workers’ Confederation, the Association of Agricultural Workers, the Nicaraguan Student Union and others. The state also banned the sexual objectification of women in the media.
The involvement of women’s struggle is a decisive factor in revolutionary struggle. We have a world to win, but it can only be won when we adopt the struggle for all people’s liberation as our own struggle.
As Comrade Thomas Sankara so righteously proclaimed, “The revolution and women’s liberation go together. We do not talk of women’s emancipation as an act of charity or out of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the revolution to triumph.” As we continue to fight at home to end-sexual violence, for equal pay, for maternity leave, for Roe vs. Wade, for trans people’s rights, we must demonstrate solidarity with our sisters and brothers around the world who are brutally targeted by our very same ruling class. We must remember who is responsible for the destruction of women’s rights around the world.
Although the Women’s March on January 21st this year drew a crowd of over 4.5 million people countrywide, many are unaware of the atrocities and vicious attacks of imperialism against women. We need to organize, educate and continue to have a revolutionary anti-imperialist perspective. Moreover, we need to make it clear that anti-imperialism and feminism go hand in hand: you can’t have one without the other.
Women – just like all oppressed people – can and will only be liberated through organization and struggles against male supremacy, capitalism and imperialism. In the US, we must abandon the 2 war parties known as the Democrats and the Republicans. It is only when we realize the strength of ourselves and rely on our own strength that we can assert ourselves independently—that we can assert our needs to equal pay, abortion and reproductive healthcare, to an end to misogynist violence.
Only our independent action can rescue us from capitalism and bigotry. To win, we must organize and build a people’s party based on the needs of the people—a socialist party. We must organize ourselves to realize the power we have once we’re organized. There is no other option.
