Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

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Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by Somaliweyn »

For Somali Women, Pain of Being a Spoil of War


http://www.hiiraan.com/news2/2011/Dec/f ... f_war.aspx

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Thursday, December 29, 2011



MOGADISHU, Somalia — The girl’s voice dropped to a hush as she remembered the bright, sunny afternoon when she stepped out of her hut and saw her best friend buried in the sand, up to her neck.
Her friend had made the mistake of refusing to marry a Shabab commander. Now she was about to get her head bashed in, rock by rock.

“You’re next,” the Shabab warned the girl, a frail 17-year-old who was living with her brother in a squalid refugee camp.

Several months later, the men came back. Five militants burst into her hut, pinned her down and gang-raped her, she said. They claimed to be on a jihad, or holy war, and any resistance was considered a crime against Islam, punishable by death.


“I’ve had some very bad dreams about these men,” she said, having recently escaped the area they control. “I don’t know what religion they are.”

Somalia has been steadily worn down by decades of conflict and chaos, its cities in ruins and its people starving. Just this year, tens of thousands have died from famine, with countless others cut down in relentless combat. Now Somalis face yet another widespread terror: an alarming increase in rapes and sexual abuse of women and girls.

The Shabab militant group, which presents itself as a morally righteous rebel force and the defender of pure Islam, is seizing women and girls as spoils of war, gang-raping and abusing them as part of its reign of terror in southern Somalia, according to victims, aid workers and United Nations officials. Short of cash and losing ground, the militants are also forcing families to hand over girls for arranged marriages that often last no more than a few weeks and are essentially sexual slavery, a cheap way to bolster their ranks’ flagging morale.

But it is not just the Shabab. In the past few months, aid workers and victims say, there has been a free-for-all of armed men preying upon women and girls displaced by Somalia’s famine, who often trek hundreds of miles searching for food and end up in crowded, lawless refugee camps where Islamist militants, rogue militiamen and even government soldiers rape, rob and kill with impunity.

With the famine putting hundreds of thousands of women on the move — severing them from their traditional protection mechanism, the clan — aid workers say more Somali women are being raped right now than at any time in recent memory. In some areas, they say, women are being used as chits at roadblocks, surrendered to the gunmen staffing the barrier in the road so that a group of desperate refugees can pass.

“The situation is intensifying,” said Radhika Coomaraswamy, the United Nations’ special representative for children and armed conflict. All the recent flight has created a surge in opportunistic rapes, she said, and “for the Shabab, forced marriage is another aspect they are using to control the population.”

In the past two months, from Mogadishu alone, the United Nations says it has received more than 2,500 reports of gender-based violence, an unusually large number here. But because Somalia is a no-go zone for most operations, United Nations officials say they are unable to confirm the reports, leaving the work to fledgling Somali aid organizations under constant threat.

Somalia is a deeply traditional place, where 98 percent of girls are subject to genital cutting, according to United Nations figures. Most girls are illiterate and relegated to their homes. When they venture out, it is usually to work, trudging through the rubble-strewn alleyways wrapped head to toe in thick black cloth, often lugging something on their back, the equatorial sun burning down on them.

The famine and mass displacement, which began over the summer, have made women and girls more vulnerable. Many Somali communities have been disbanded, and with armed groups forcing men and boys into their militias, it is often single women, with children in tow, who set off on the dangerous odyssey to refugee camps.

At the same time, aid workers and United Nations officials say the Shabab, who are fighting Somalia’s transitional government and imposing a harsh version of Islam in the areas they control, can no longer pay their several thousand fighters the way they used to. Much as they seize crops and livestock, giving their militants what they call “temporary wives” is how the Shabab keep many young men fighting for them.

But these are hardly marriages, said Sheik Mohamed Farah Ali, a former Shabab commander who defected to the government army.

One young woman just delivered a baby, half Somali, half Arab. She said she was selected by a Somali Shabab fighter she knew, brought to a house full of guns and handed off to a portly Arab commander, one of the many foreigners fighting for the Shabab.

“He did whatever he wanted with me,” she said. “Night and day.”
She said she escaped when he was sleeping.


The Elman Peace and Human Rights Center is one of the few Somali organizations helping rape victims, run by Fartuun Adan, a tall, outspoken woman whose husband, Elman, was gunned down by warlords years ago. Ms. Adan says that since the famine began, she has met hundreds of women who have been raped and hundreds more who have escaped forced marriages.

“You have no idea how difficult it is for them to come forward,” she said. “There’s no justice here, no protection. People say, ‘You’re junk’ if you’ve been raped.”

Often, the women are left wounded or pregnant, forced to seek help. Ms. Adan wants to expand her medical services and counseling for rape victims and possibly open a safe house, but it is hard to do on a budget of $5,000 a month, provided by a small aid organization called Sister Somalia. Ms. Adan wept on a recent day as she listened to the 17-year-old girl recount the story of seeing her friend stoned to death and then being gang-raped herself.

“These girls ask me, ‘How am I going to get married, what’s going to be my future, what’s going to happen to me?’ ” she said. “We can’t answer that.”

Some of the women in Ms. Adan’s office seem to have come from another time. They have made it here, with help from Elman’s network, from the deepest recesses of rural Somalia, where women are still treated like chattel.

One 18-year-old who asked to go by Ms. Nur, her common last name, was married off at 10. She was a nomad and says that to this day she has never used a phone or seen a television.

She spoke of being raped by two Shabab fighters at a displaced-persons camp in October. She said the men did not bother saying much when they entered her hut. They just pointed their guns at her chest and uttered two words: stay silent.
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by gedo_gurl »

Pimping gabdaheena to Arab men in the name of Islam? I always knew they were mentally colonised niggers, but this is the biggest proof I needed.
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by Alphanumeric »

I don't accept written news as proof any more. Most certainly not with the case of Somalia.
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by gedo_gurl »

They named their sources. Fartuun Cali and her organisation are not hard to track down.
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by Rabshoole »

:down: :down:
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by gedo_gurl »

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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by abdisamad3 »

Image
:lol:
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by gedo_gurl »

I do not think this is a sheep issue abdisamad. Being a keyboard supporter of Al Shabaab is the epitome of said condition. If you genuinely believe they are incapable of inflicting rape in women you are in a small and dangerous minority. Anyone is capable of rape, particularly when they have guns and checkpoints at their disposal, it happens in many places and I do not care which colour flag they carry, they are rapists. To say otherwise is to ignore the victims. We all know that Al Shabaab recruit arbitrarily, it is 100% likely that the people they recruit are in it for reasons beyond Islam, rape is not beneath them.
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by caburiye1 »

hadii aad been sheegayso, been macquul ah ayaa lasheegaah. If Somali women are raped, They are raped by Somali government Soldiers not Alshabaab.

This is what is making people disbelieving in everything that is said about Alshabaab. Get something substantial for us next time or Iska aamus.
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by sadeboi »

Rape is the most cruelest of acts committed by humans, I feel sorry for any women who suffered through such ordeal in Somalia or elsewhere. However, I do believe we should examine how the suffering of these women is being used by some as a tool for political gains and condemn it too.
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by abdisamad3 »

gedo_gurl wrote:I do not think this is a sheep issue abdisamad. Being a keyboard supporter of Al Shabaab is the epitome of said condition. If you genuinely believe they are incapable of inflicting rape in women you are in a small and dangerous minority. Anyone is capable of rape, particularly when they have guns and checkpoints at their disposal, it happens in many places and I do not care which colour flag they carry, they are rapists. To say otherwise is to ignore the victims. We all know that Al Shabaab recruit arbitrarily, it is 100% likely that the people they recruit are in it for reasons beyond Islam, rape is not beneath them.
truth be told,
there are more rapes being committed in amisom/kenyan controlled areas of Somalia if you was genuine in your support for rape victims you would put your energy where its most needed instead of crying crocodile tears for some rape victims depicted in some american propaganda spin against the youth. p.s don't take this as me defending the youth I'm just against cheap propaganda gedo I also see you believe the Taliban rape small boys right when the truth is the opposite of what uncle sam feeds you to believe... :lol:
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by D-Runner »

I'm no fan of the Shabab but when I see people like the author of this thread bringing this painful news to our intention for some reason I am the least moved.
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by gedo_gurl »

abdisamad3 wrote:
gedo_gurl wrote:I do not think this is a sheep issue abdisamad. Being a keyboard supporter of Al Shabaab is the epitome of said condition. If you genuinely believe they are incapable of inflicting rape in women you are in a small and dangerous minority. Anyone is capable of rape, particularly when they have guns and checkpoints at their disposal, it happens in many places and I do not care which colour flag they carry, they are rapists. To say otherwise is to ignore the victims. We all know that Al Shabaab recruit arbitrarily, it is 100% likely that the people they recruit are in it for reasons beyond Islam, rape is not beneath them.
truth be told,
there are more rapes being committed in amisom/kenyan controlled areas of Somalia if you was genuine in your support for rape victims you would put your energy where its most needed instead of crying crocodile tears for some rape victims depicted in some american propaganda spin against the youth. p.s don't take this as me defending the youth I'm just against cheap propaganda gedo I also see you believe the Taliban rape small boys right when the truth is the opposite of what uncle sam feeds you to believe... :lol:
For starters, I am not naive or idiotic, when have you ever seen me lose perspective? I have never said the Taliban rape boys, towards the end I said its possible. But what I was talking about was their lack of action in these cases. If they have the energy to police a burkha, they should be able to police 'dancing boys' and other such atrocities.

I have never supported US propaganda, where is you proof for that? My heroes are African people you have never heard of. I have a huge problem with the fact that rape cases like these are not highlighted until there is a need from the US government. When all of these women were being raped by TFG and AMISOM, where were we? Why did we not do anything about it? How come we didnt publish these cases in serious and thorough reports and newspapers? Where were the campaigns from Somalis? On the other side I do not think it is productive to cry 'US Propaganda' when Al shabaab are raping and are capable of raping. Its not funny when either side are doing it and both cases are alarming.
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by kadarre »

abdisamad3 wrote:Image
:lol:
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
They claimed to be on a jihad, or holy war, and any resistance was considered a crime against Islam, punishable by death.
:-@
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Re: Shabaab Raping of Women: Women as Spoil of War

Post by abdisamad3 »

gedo I never seen you, speaking of the rapes happening in kenyan/amisom controlled areas. Even in your other thread dedicated to the rape victims I only sow you on mentioning shaabab shabab in every other reply you posted, I'm not saying there never happens rape in shabab controlled areas but, its not something the youth tolerate or condone, majority of rape cases take place in Amisom controlled areas. But this kind of new ,will never be written on the fancy western news papers you read. So why don't you seek the truth instead of helping spread the western propaganda bullshit..btw about the dancing boys, that is something practiced by the Northern alliance and only happens in American/Northern alliance controlled areas. You can say many things about the Taliban and the Youth but they don't tolerate this kind of filth...
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