Syria has been on the news a lot lately, primarily because their government is using chemical weapons on it’s citizens. The international community is blaming the Assad government for attacking their own people. The Assad government is blaming the rebel movement, which the Syrian government has labelled a terrorist organization. There is little consensus in who is to blame for the killings, but there is an agreement that something needs to be done to prevent further harm to innocent Syrian peoples.
The UN will not authorize a full invasion of Syria, because two major players, Russia and China, are allies of the Assad government. As a result, President Obama has been pushing for Congress to approve American military force, specifically, targeted air strikes on Syria. Congress is currently in the process of debating this strategy, fearing that action in Syria will lead similar results as the Iraq war (where the US government ordered the systematic bombing of the entire country’s infrastructure, taking thousand of lives and producing very great animosity towards the US in the international arena).
According to the PEW Research Center, the majority of Americans are also against bombing Syria at this point, fearing that it will lead to long-term military commitments and backlash against the United States. A surprising piece of this poll is that women in particular are very adamant against air strikes in Syria. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlewaite, a professor of Theology at the Chicago Theological Seminary, suggests that, “One reason may be that large numbers of women, in the U.S. as well as around the world, know violence [is not the solution] because they have been treated violently.”
The Syrian conflict has taken a specifically hard toll on women. The rape of females has been a common tactic to keep populations submissive throughout history and continues today. As the cities in Syria become war zones, plundering has been a side effect, of both others goods and of their bodies. Um Firas, a women living in the Mafraq Syria, recalls for The Guardian, one of her most horrific memories of the war:
“I saw maybe 100 women stripped naked and used as human shields, forced to walk on all sides of the army tanks during the fighting. When their tanks rolled back into the Alawite neighborhood, the women disappeared with them.”
The result of this violence is thousands of people relocated across the borders to Jordan and Turkey in attempt to escape harm. Women head the majority of families found in these refugee camps because their husbands, sons, and brothers have been murdered or are left behind in Syria to fight. Although UN officials have been brought into many camps to prevent abuse, there is still common groping and lewd name-calling during the day, which often follows with much worse with actions in the darkness of night.
In an attempt to save their daughters from rape, mothers have resorted to marrying of their children to offer them some male protection. Small shops that rent wedding dresses have been popping up all over refugee camps. The average age of the brides is fifteen.
Needless to say, there is a problem, but as many people have realized; bombing a country, whether it is systematically or not, is not the solution. With the Iraq war in the not so distant past, the loss 4,488 US troops and more than 100,000 Iraqis gives people that many reasons to select a less violent approach to peace.
Madge Micheels-Cyrus said it well, “Nonviolence doesn’t always work- but violence never does.”
Sources:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/25/rape-violence-syria-women-refugee-camp
http://www.pbs.org/pov/thelightinhereyes/syrian-women-making-change-past-and-present.php
http://www.people-press.org/2013/09/03/public-opinion-runs-against-syrian-airstrikes/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/s…