Listening for silences in Algeria: eliminating the structural silencing of survivors of conflict-related rape as entrenched in Africa during colonisation

2.1 Colonial violence and entrenchment of structural silencing of women victims of conflict-related rape: ‘indecent’ African women and ‘weak’ African men

Mama argues that sexual violence against African women was an integral part of colonisation.35 Relying on the well-entrenched patriarchal norms of feminine decency, colonial powers inflicted widespread rape to humiliate African women and the same treatment was meted out on the wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters of men who were suspected of being members of the resistance movements, similarly, to humiliate them.36 The sustenance of rape-shame requires the combination of patriarchal notions of a good decent women and a protective man premised on the imperial value of patriotic manhood. Both are affronted where there is conflict-related rape and work to enforce rape-shame. This dynamic is explained by Gargoffen as follows:

More than losing her status as a respectable person, she is now marked as an enemy collaborator, for her raped body is material evidence of her men’s impotence. Unable to protect their women from being penetrated by the wrong men, they too are shamed. Thus rape-shame’s double effect. It legitimates the genocide in the eyes of the perpetrators and enables it from within by unraveling the gender codes of the people targeted for destruction. Noting this we see that creating the genocidal us-them relationship relies on and enforces peace time gendered rules of sexuality.37

The racialised violence of colonisation was strongly gendered.38 The gendered dimensions of colonial power shaped the relations of power that sustained the political and cultural institutions of colonialism itself.39 Rape of African women was part of male communication and expression of power relations between the colonial powers and indigenous men. A re-enforcement of the colonial social order - with women at the very bottom. The rape of African women by colonial powers carried a message from the colonial men to the African men that their inability to protect their women, showed their lack of integrity and justified the need for continued domination by the more ‘superior’ colonial powers.40

In the context of the French-Algerian conflict, the gendered racial discriminatory aspect took a different flavour that led up the same road: discrimination of local African women. As a consequence of the changes in the positioning of the Algerian women in colonial society, women victims of conflict-relate rape were subjected to rejection by ‘possible suitors, their families, and society in general’.41 In Algeria, history documents that the attitude adopted by the French colonisers placed Algerian women as the marker of their Christianity driven mission to civilise the people of Algeria. They were perceived by French colonial historians and therefore the colonial administration as the unjust objects of strict social, religious, and physical protection under Arab Islamic families and patriarchal communities. For this reason, Algerian women served as the symbol of the influence of French civilisation on Algeria during the colonial period and during the war.42 Writers such as Fanon have elaborated on the manner in which the historical Islamic or cultural ‘veil’ of Algerian women has been the point of convergence between the colonial mission to rescue the women of Algeria repressed by barbaric rules and the violent fantasy of the colonial explorer to seduce and violently devour the African female. Knight-Santos states that a goal of the French army in raping Algerian women was in conquering the Algerian woman’s body, they gained a symbolic victory over Algerian society as a whole.43 Rape-shame that ensued in this context is then evidenced by the social-familial rejection Algerian women who voiced their rape allegations suffered as well as the denial of their allegations.44

2.2 Influence of colonial norms on ‘respectable women’ and ‘weak men’ on post-colonial rape in Africa

Mama has argued that the gendered coercive control and silencing entrenched by colonisation and the tolerance for violence against women has continued to characterise African social and political life since independence.45 Post colonial regimes have done little, if anything, to undo the colonial patriarchal foundations of rape-shame.46 They continue to influence the choice to rape in conflicts on the continent and the culture of silence that maintains impunity for conflict-related rape. In the case of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for example, Shmidt has argued that the male colonisers use of rape normalised the use of rape by Congolese men for decades and is still perpetuated in conflict.47

During the genocide in Rwanda, rape was specifically aimed at shaming the victim and the Tutsi community.48 Societal norms on respectability of women that was manipulated to weaponise rape in the context of Rwanda related to the stereotypes on the sexuality of Tutsi women who in the pre-war propaganda were portrayed as tools deployed by Tutsi men to destroy Hutu men with their beauty and sensuality.49 In many parts of the country, rape took place in public with the women still alive after the assault coerced to lay in plain sight on display.50 After the genocide, victims continue to deal with social stigmatisation the consequences of which include some of them losing husbands as a result of the rape and others becoming unmarriage-able.51

3.1 French authorities’ treatment of Algerian women as a colonial power tactic: the root of conflict-related rape-shame in Islamic Algerian society

Similar to the example of the Igbo tribe of Nigeria, pre-Islamic Algeria notes a history that captures elements of a matriarchal society with women in leadership roles as spiritual and war leaders.56 They had the same right to repudiate a marriage as men. This changed with the spread and interpretation of Islam.57 The introduction of French direct rule during colonisation had the effect of further entrenching feminised and masculanised gender roles in Islamic Arab communities.58 At the expense of women’s autonomy and equality, French colonisers in the early days concluded an agreement with Algerian Arab men allowing them to be excluded from the civilising mission of the French in exchange for land rights to the detriment of nomadic, semi-nomadic and sedentary tribes.59 This allowed Arab men to treat their wives as they pleased. Conversely, given its divinely mandated civilising mission in Algeria, benefits were promised to the Algerians who opted to abandon their ways and embrace the civilised ways of the French coloniser.60 This came with the condemnation of patriarchal Islamic practices such as polygamy, wife repudiation and child marriage.61

The French centring of women’s womanhood as a site for civilising Algeria came to a breaking point leading up to the war of independence.62 As part of its psychological warfare against Algerian freedom fighters, France staged a series of unveiling ceremonies in Algeria. In these proceedings Algerian women, many coerced, some voluntarily, unveiled themselves before large crowds as a sign of their emancipation.63

3.2 Historical harms: structural silencing and rape-shame for rape by French soldiers in Algerian War of Independence

During the War of Independence, reports of the rape of Algerian women following arrest or during raids on villages are numerous.64 However, establishing the number and identities of these women is extremely difficult.65 The wartime diary of Mouloud Feraoun suggests that rape was commonplace in Kabylia, notably during the huge military operations launched in 1959 as part of the Plan Challe.66 The historian Raphaëlle Branche also argues that rape was widespread, if not systematic.67 He records that in addition to plundering and serious mishandling, rape was a common occurrence. Algerian women were often sexually abused collectively by French soldiers before the eyes of their relatives.68 Although rape was strictly forbidden officially and punishable by a military court, many in command refrained from doing anything against it. On the contrary, they encouraged their soldiers to commit such offenses but with caution: ‘[y]ou can rape, but do it discreetly!’69

Public records of rape victims in Algeria from the War of Independence are few. In the domain of civil remedies, a victim of French crimes in Algeria successfully prosecuted a claim for reparations by way of compensation for his physical and psychological harm before French courts.70 Mohamed Garne was born in 1960 of the rape of his mother, an Algerian citizen, by French soldiers.71 The case represents legal recognition that French officers did commit abuses in Algeria and that their victims may be awarded compensation.72 Louisette Ighilahriz was able to talk about her rape at the hands of the French army only after the death of her father.73 As a consequence, she was shunned by her family and former militants (mujahidat) for revealing a secret that they have held for over 60 years.

Colonial patriarchal practices within Arab Islamic cultures in Algeria conform to the values on the decency and respectability of women. A good woman is inviolable.74 In addition, the values of male responsibility for the women in society and the role of the man as protector is a social norm.75 These factors created fertile grounds for rape-shame and the resulting structural silencing of victims of conflict-related rape in the Algerian War of Independence. Rape in this context left the perpetrator feeling innocent and the victim ashamed.29 It was not only a taint hidden by Algerian women but also an injury which men also needed to conceal, as it signaled their impotence, their failure to protect their women, the keystone of male authority and honour.76

Louisette Ighilahriz’s fellow mujahidat seemed to resent the foregrounding of her personal story in what had largely been an anonymous collective history. She was perceived by some to have broken the taboo ‘one sole hero, the people’.77 In line with this collective silencing after the war, Algerian society fell in line and ‘chose to forget’ to avoid the individual and collective rape-shame.78 The gendered harm of this collective amnesia is captured as:

First, grandmothers have experienced French colonialism and have been co-opted by Algerian grandfather’s narrative that cast the Algerian resistance to Frances’ colonial policies in collective terms that grandmothers have decided not to question even though these Algerian nationalisms underplay or deliberately submerge the different experiences of Algerian women whose own memories and experiences of suffering precede both the nationalist memories and then conflict with it.79

After independence, ‘the French state sought to prolong attempts to impose silence on its colonial violence through amnesties, censorship and denial. Colonial governance was therefore much concerned with the manipulation of memory and silence.80 For Algerian nationalists, on the other hand, after the war, the official narrative of the National Liberation Front (FLN, Front de libération nationale) in power in Algeria proved highly selective with respect to which aspects of colonial violence to commemorate’.81 Conflict-related rape was not commemorated. Afraid of the effect news of widespread rape of Algerian women by the French would have on men, women victims were instructed by the FLN not to speak of their rape.82 Besides the forced silencing that occurred after independence, victims were socially isolated in a social context that highly valued women’s virginity, connecting it to masculine honour.83

3.3 Ongoing ‘post-independence’ harms: structural silencing and rape-shame for rape by Islamists in the Algerian Civil War

The anti-colonial movement in Algeria was influenced by more radical Muslim reformers who saw the status of women as the site of liberation from colonialism.84 These reformers advanced the proposals that Algerian women had been degraded by a French misinterpretation of Islam and that their value had as a result been polluted by colonialism. The restoration of Algerian society was to these Muslim reformists in the re-islamisation of society.85 This required that the status of women be restored by putting women on a patriarchal proverbial pedestal. The result was that, post-independence, the role of women in public life was diminished and they were excluded from public affairs.86 A woman was valued in the private space ‘as a role model for her children, to act as the repository of family and national honour’.87 This status has been ascribed as the reason for the targeting of women during the Islamic Civil War.

In the 1990s, women became the privileged targets of terrorist violence. This was directly linked to the role they had been assigned as guardians of the family honour and reputation and the transmission of values to their children. In a period such as the 1980s and 1990s, with rapid social, political and economic change, social norms were fluid, and the resulting vacuum gave scope to the zealots. These people felt that there was a great deal at stake around women’s purity.88

Turshen tracks the developments in Algeria from women’s active participation in the war of Independence to becoming the targets of Islamic insurgents in the Algerian Civil War. She concludes that the condition of women in Algerian society at the time of the Algerian Civil War was a result of a series of events that culminated to their social situation in the time of the Algerian Civil War.89 She records the extent to which political transitions after independence installed governments that continued to make concessions with Islamic opponents to remain in power.90 This period was characterised by an intersection of Islamic religious patriarchal norms and state policy. This interaction resulted in the uptake within the state policies of a strict interpretation of Islam of the status of women in Algeria that was backed by patriarchal social norms. As part of the series of events that are noted by Turshen is the enactment of the Family Code in 1984.91

Similar to the case in sub-Saharan African states where impunity for rape persisted post-independence,92 Algeria’s failure to address the structural silencing of women and the patriarchal values that informed it remained entrenched in society. As a consequence, in the lead-up to the Algerian Civil War, where men felt threatened by the mis-placed assertive nature of women, they resorted to the learnt instruments of violence maintained after colonialisation by an unreformed patriarchal society.93

According to Khalida Messaoudi, there are 2,029 women who survived rape by terrorists during the Algerian Civil War.94 As in the Algerian War of Independence, the structural silencing of victims persisted due to sustained colonial entrenched rape-shame. In this instance it manifested in even more gruesome ways for survivors:95

On top of the sexual, physical, and psychological maltreatment that women endure, their own families rebuke them. This also makes them more likely to suffer from depression, drug use, prostitution, and suicide. Such condemnation and mark of dishonor can result in honor killings, a practice whereby the rape victim is executed by her own family -- or even by the community -- because of the perception that the victim herself has brought them disgrace.

The post-independence Algerian state’s failure to address the patriarchal social norms that sustained structural silencing of victims of conflict-related rape after the Algerian War of Independence enabled the continuation of the gendered harm on Algerian women in the Algerian Civil War. The post-independent state’s complicity in sustaining this gendered harm is further illustrated by its failure to recognise women raped by terrorists in the Algerian Civil Was as legal victims of terrorism, which would entitle them to an indemnity.96 In this way they are yet to see justice served for their violations.

4.1 Centring victims in decisions to determine appropriate reparations

A consideration of what appropriate reparation would be for the silenced women that have suffered under the repressive colonial structural silencing on conflict-relate rape requires that we place the women at the centre of the decision-making processes. However, this is a challenge given the ongoing nature of the harm and that the social context on the continent is such that they are not supported to speak. Speaking remains taboo as will their participation in discussions for reparations in a direct manner.98 This is aptly captured by Zerubavel:99

What we are socially expected to ignore is often articulated in the form of various taboos against looking, listening, as well as speaking. Those who defy or even simply ignore such prohibitions are considered social deviants. As such, they are often targets of social sanctions. A most effective way to ensure that we would in fact stay away from tabooed objects and not discuss, let alone even mention them is keeping them nameless.

4.2 Addressing the collective versus the individual harm through reparations

The consequences of rape-shame during armed conflict are not limited to the women and girls who were violated. It often erodes the fabric of a community in a way that weapons can.100 These incidences remind their families and communities of their collective defeat, which can be both demoralising and terrifying.101 Men take on the rape of their wives, sisters, mothers and daughters as part of their own anguish.102 Reparations aimed at addressing the system that forces the community and the individual victims to remain silent under these circumstances must strike a balance at the effect on the victim and that on the society at large. Trauma specialists point out that bearing witness is crucial to the individual and collective healing process.103 Historian Stora shares this perspective, noting that the state of amnesia surrounding various events of the Algerian War has been harmful to both France and Algeria. Warning that neither communities nor individuals can exist in a state of amnesia, he calls the repressed memories of the war a form of gangrene.104 The challenges to targeting a dual harm when considering appropriate remedial action is further illustrated by the manner in which conflict-related rape has been documented as also occurring against male victims and having been perpetrated by women against both women and men.

5.1 Public acknowledgment and symbolic reparations by France and Algeria

A first step in addressing the harm would require an acknowledgment of the existence of the harm. In this regard, instead of focusing on the rape event itself, the acknowledgment that would be sought from France and the government of Algeria is a public acknowledgment that there exist social norms that the state has sustained over the years that created a system that makes rape-shame a social culture. This can be done in the form of apologies and public acknowledgement of the systemic silencing that prevails on the question of rape during the Algerian War of Independence and the subsequent Algerian Civil War. The erection of a building in recognition of the violence that has been silenced over the years would also serve as a suitable form of reparations.108

5.2 Monetary compensation

Compensation for loss, with an expanded definition of ‘loss’ that is inclusive of all forms of material, ecological, physical and emotional deprivations.109 Once this is accepted, were France to advance a sum as compensation to victims silenced of their violence over the years, access to the fund should be on the basis of a procedure that seeks to place the victim’s concerns at the centre of the process. In this regard, consideration of a process that minimises the risk of public disclosure of victim’s particulars would be recommended.

5.3 State-led norm reform of gender stereotypes

Present-day government of Algeria has an obligation to tackle gender stereotypes and structural silencing by rape-shame that persist in society. Recommendations of interventions in this regard include public pronouncements by state actors as well as traditional and religious leaders denouncing conflict-related rape, and more significantly, the rape-shame attached to the victim. This can transform harmful social norms that continue to sustain the structural silencing of victims of rape.110 Ghoussoub noted the complexity of womanhood in Arab Muslim countries in her landmark essay ‘Feminism - or the Eternal Masculine - in the Arab world’.111 She highlighted the connection in Arab culture and politics between womanhood and religion and that between religion and nationality and statehood.112 In the absence of state and religious leaderships support of such interventions at altering social norms, such initiatives will be so negatively perceived as to amount to treason or, worse still, impiety to Islam.113

Reform of norms that continue to sustain rape-shame on conflict-related rape can be transformed by the instilling in public memory of the violation and the acknowledgment of the root causes of the violation. As part of post-colonial theory, the notion of colonialisms and their impact has extended to include oppression that is legitimised by social norms and cultural practices.114 Transformation of these social norms should be targeted at both men and women in a society. The liberation of Algerian women from the shackles that bind them to a culture of silence is dependent on the emancipation of the community at large.115