Women & children: War victims no one talks about

In some places, they’re called the Children of Agent Orange. Not in Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia, but in the US. It wasn’t only American troops who returned who fell sick. Their children had odd birth defects — missing or extra limbs. For decades, any link was denied. Then more was revealed. Neurological conditions, gastrointestinal issues, spina bifida. Ravages of war didn’t spare soldiers’ families.Generational DamageAs epigenetics grows, scepticism over a link between Agent Orange and generational disability is reducing. There’s some recognition that what a young soldier had to do in the faraway fields of Laos 50 years ago could today be harming his grandchild. A 2016 ProPublica investigation reported, “The odds of having a child born with birth defects during or after the war were more than a third higher for veterans who say they handled, sprayed or were directly sprayed with Agent Orange than for veterans who say they weren’t exposed or weren’t sure.” Has anything come of it? Not yet.The world’s most powerful country, inured to its own gun violence culture, ignores the impact on American children at home when Washington wages war in the eastern hemisphere.Easy Targets, Innocent RecruitsSuch denial to what war visits on children is evident in every conflict. Palestinian children in food queues bombed, Ukrainian kids held by Russia on the pretext of “rescue”, guns pushed into the hands of 10-year-olds dehumanised as tools of battle are atrocities sheltered under the umbrella of Collateral Damage.Unicef estimates that 50,000 children in Gaza have been killed or injured since Oct 2023. Kyiv estimates 20,000 Ukrainian children were taken away by Russia. There is no accountability anywhere. There is no paucity of data either on child recruitment in Sudan’s Darfur — an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 children have been recruited by govt paramilitary group RSF since 2023.Burden Of WarWhen children are a blind spot, it should be no surprise that the well-documented impact on women is just as ignored. Every day, 500 women and girls in war-torn countries die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Bombed hospitals mean no access to maternal care for pregnant women.It’s women who must fend for children and elders in bombed quarters with resources and supplies running low. Also tucked under Collateral Damage. Rape as a weapon of war was once seen as a ‘wrong’ but, fact is, it is normalised. As wars find ways to extend in time and expand by area, there’s nothing to stop soldiers from targeting women, even little girls.Liberating WomenRegressive regimes like the Taliban, and most orthodox rulers, show their writ through subjugation of women. Far too many wars are underpinned by a western ambition to ‘liberate’ women — the status of women in a country is invariably a factor that drives ‘regime change’ activity.Take Afghanistan alone. British, Russian, American wars found cheerleaders who backed their battles for a “brighter future for women’s rights”. But as Al Jazeera noted, “If Western wars ‘liberate’ Eastern women, Muslim women would be the most ‘liberated’ in the world. They are not, and will not be, especially when liberty is associated with Western hegemony.” Today, the world has neatly abandoned Afghanistan’s women. They still bear the burden of war.