Afghanistan Aff

Impact – Patriarchy => Root Cause of War

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• Impact – Environment/Opium Nevit

Impact – Patriarchy => Root Cause of War Patriarchy is the root cause of war Workman 96 (Thom, Poli Sci @ U of New Brunswick, YCISS Paper no. 31, p. 9, January 1996, http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP31-Workman.pdf)IM These motifs shade into outright loathing. War may be hell indeed; but it is driven by an ideology of hatred. Misogyny is the theory; war is the practice. Myths surrounding woman as the enemy of man (and the things men do) lay at the heart of war-thought. Modern war is connotatively inseparable from the dehumanizing representations of woman. The drive "to war" is recessed within the myth of woman as man's worst enemy. Modern warfare is a relentlessly Pandoran affair. Its abundant coital imagery is organically inspired by its mysogynistic cradle. Common parlance routinely asserts that an enemy that has been consigned to ignominious defeat is an enemy that has been "thoroughly fucked" (which resonates culturally as being reduced to a woman). It has been observed that the construction of a soldier requires the killing of the woman within.17 The training of the soldier is replete with a litany of disciplining epithets regarding the feminine. The transformation from boy-recruit into man-soldier requires the extirpation of any feminine traits and identities; it demands the vanquishing of any lurking womanliness. War is femicidal. This foreshadows, moreover, the vigilance with respect to the subversive feminine being looming within the warring fabric. Soldier and policymakers guard against the association of their actions or ideas with feminine traits. Regardless of its particular manifestation or definition of a practice, ritual, or goal linked to militaries and to battle, the ideology of war requires a strict, unrelenting overcoming of anything understood as womanly. Its discourse of identity and achievement, in other words, repudiates and disavows the feminine as much as it is embraces the masculine. This mysogynistic reflex undergirds the representation of opponents (on the war front and the "home" front) as women. Those opposing war routinely are dismissed in feminine terms, as being too emotional, too sentimental, as lacking in firmness and determination, as naïve, unthoughtful, weak, confused, and, in the branding coup de grâce, as unmanly (it is commonly suspected that peaceful people or doves, after all, don't "have balls"). There is a common and essential association between women and peace, an association that has permeated a share of social activism and scholarly research. Military enemies, moreover, typically are represented as woman. Military targets, especially the ground or earth itself, also are connotatively feminized in war-think. The practice of war surfaces within gendered understandings and identities. War embodies the rehearsal of patriarchal consciousness. Numerous leaders (mainly male but occasionally female) overtly draw upon gendered understandings for policy guidance. It is this sense of war being constituted and inflected through gender that informs the claim that patriarchy lies at the root of war. Without gender it is unlikely that war would arise as such a frequent alternative in human life, and that entire societies could be so extensively militarized regardless of the costs and trade-offs involved. Impact – Environment/Opium Nevit America’s war on drugs is detrimental to the environment and women’s rights - makes opium growing inevitable Lance 8 (Jennifer, staff writer, 5/7, http://redgreenandblue.org/2008/05/07/us-drug-war-policies-spur-sale-of-afghan-child/) PJ The US Government’s Drug War has spurred many social and environmental consequences throughout the world. Widespread aerial herbicide spraying aimed at eradication has caused environmental damage from Central America to Central Asia. Recently, I learned you can add the sale of child brides in Afghanistan to the list of social ills caused by the Drug War. A bumper crop of Afghan opium was produced in 2007, which is expected to be repeated in 2008. Despite these record poppy crops, farmers are deeply in debt. The average Afghan poppy grower’s per capita income is about $300, and farmers have to borrow money for seeds, fertilizer, food, and basic necessities from traffickers. The farmers are unable to pay their debts when their crops are eradicated, or they are pressured by local governments and westerners to stop growing. Westerners don’t keep promises to provide free seeds for substitute crops, and creditors demand child wives in payment for debts. The growers’ daughters are called “opium flowers“, and moneylenders seek them out in case of crop failure or family emergency. It is a traditional Afghan custom for a family to pay off a debt by marrying a daughter to a relative of the creditor. Now the practice is being used to pay off debts to drug traffickers. Mr Isamuddin, 68, stopped growing poppies because of a government crack down; further up the valley helicopters sprayed the poppy fields with insecticide. He explained, “”If people here cannot earn enough to feed their families, they will start growing opium again.” Even though production of Afghan opium is high, world demand has not increased largely. Afghanistan is accused of stockpiling opium, and the US supports aerial spraying programs for eradication. Afghan and British officials oppose aerial spraying, as it would increase support for the Taliban for fear the herbicide would poison growers and their families. The Bush administration supports expansion of eradication programs, whereas Afghanistan wants to emphasize long-term crop substitution for opium poppy plants. One goal of the drug war is increase prices in order to deter usage, only the ones profiting from such prohibition are the drug traffickers. The farmers have tried other crops, such as wheat, but poppies bring in 10 times the amount and are hardier than grains. It is the only reliable cash crop they know. Opium growers ask for advances on their crops from the drug traffickers, which they are then unable to pay. Sayed Shah was forced to pay his debt to a trafficker with the marriage of his 9-year-old daughter. According to Newsweek: Shah borrowed $2,000 from a local trafficker, promising to repay the loan with 24 kilos of opium at harvest time. Late last spring, just before harvest, a government crop-eradication team appeared at the family’s little plot of land in Laghman province and destroyed Shah’s entire two and a half acres of poppies… “I never imagined I’d have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter,” says Shah…”It’s my fate,” the child says. Poppy eradication causes many Afghan daughters to be turned into child brides. Whether a farmer loses his crop to Drug War eradication or his substitute wheat crop fails, US policies should not be causing such practices to continue in Central Asia. “Until the end of my life I will feel shame because of what I did to my daughter,” said a former poppy grower. “I still can’t look her in the eye.” Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 0.73 Mb. Share with your friends: