Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: What War Does to Women.

• Author: Yousuf, Ambreen

Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: What War Does to Women

By Christina Lamb

London: William Collins, 2020, 416 pages, $18.99, ISBN 9780008300012

Woman is the first casualty in any war and her safety is undervalued in the dominant notions of security--which unambiguously emphasizes the survival of modern states. Women have suffered from Southeast Asia to the Middle East and Latin America due to armed conflicts. Our Bodies, Their Battlefields explores the intensity of the psychological and physical damage imposed by armed forces and militia on women. Christina Lamb documents numerous incidents of inhumane treatment and terrorism conducted by self-declared religious zealots and militias. Drawing from her in-depth reportage and ethnographic details compiled over a period of nearly three decades, Lamb brings out a detailed assessment of victims' ordeals and their heart-rending stories. Throughout the book, the author demonstrates how rape has been used as a workable tool for terrorizing the 'other' community on the pretext that they belong to a separate ethnicity or race.

Our Bodies, Their Battlefields opens with a harrowing account of sexual abuse committed, during war, against women, young girls, and children. Lamb argues that terror groups like the Army of Jesus, ISIS and Boko Haram have used rape as a weapon of modern warfare as much as they have used weapons like the Kalashnikov rifle and the machete (p. 22). Over time, rape has become a deliberate and systematic instrument to punish and disgrace the enemy. Lamb skillfully draws attention to the distortion of religious concepts by self-proclaimed religious leaders who increasingly invoke their religious and social position to affect the subjugation of women in their communities.

The book is organized into fifteen chapters, a prologue, and a postscript. Each chapter maps out sexual crimes perpetrated by terrorists, militias, or armed forces during warfare. Lamb argues that rape may be as old as war but is a preventable crime. Unlike killings, warfare rape is under-reported due to its stigma (p. 23). Using oral history as a method, Lamb shows how sexual violence is committed in the name of 'religion and 'region to drive out minority communities whose members are labeled 'non-human and 'infidel.'

Lamb first broadly focuses on the 'reign of rape terror' wreaked by terrorist groups-ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and Boko Haram in Nigeria. These terror outfits are characterized by religious extremism and...