[Culture - Among soldiers]
Abstract: Some stunning thoughts of soldiers are revealed through personal interviews by Baaz in this article. As detectives usually invest much time on discovering strategies of criminals, one who wants to, or feels obliged for the concern of humanity, prevent women from further being suffered, one has to devote efforts to know why, why, why in the world, soldiers commit such horrible crimes. Baaz categorizes different rapes according to the intention of rape, based on the interviews by soldiers in Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), which is mostly blamed for the extensive rape as a war tool. That is,"normal" rape and "evil" rape.
Cynthia Enloe has outlined three main militarized rape: the "recreational rape," "national security rape," and "systematic mass rape."
There were, surprisingly, more stories than it appears to be: the dearth of "normal" sexual encounters in soldiers' own home.
- Soldiers have told that since they are not paid well and cannot give money to thier wives, resulting declining desire and love of wives toward thier husbands. Accordingly, these soldiers who feel that they have lost their supposedly expressive masculinity go out and "pick up flowers" in the warfield, which is usually villages where vulnerable women reside.
One soldier says, therefore, if they(soldiers) can be rescued from conitnuing poverty, they will not at all imagine committing such crime because the soldiers, as a household who deserves repect from families, will be satisfied sexually and economically. There is no reason for them to go out and kill, rape, and amputate people.
- Also, some said that they feel dutiful to do bad things. While reading those words, I couldn't help but thinking that those soldiers have been suffering from mentally and materially unsatisfying lives, which seem endless. They seemed to be shouting that they did not have any other outlet but do such things to, maybe distract from disruptive thoughts and desperative and depreciating live conditions. And thus, they think that they have "rights" to satisfy those desires, while not thinking of the equal "rights" of women.
Seemingly, their explanation seems to be reasonable enough about why they rape women, something understandable and admittable is undoubtedly different. The soldiers' thoughts have been constantly framed within satisfying their desires while living with other soldiers in the army, but were not trained to sympathize and think of the victims. Yes, it's hard to imagine how they shaped such thought. But they don't feel sexually attracted to female colleagues (soldiers).
