Yesterday, March 7, 2011 I attended a guest speaker who discussed her participation with an international NGO called Women Without Borders. She talked about their work on helping bring together a recent dialogue involving Indian and Pakistan women’s ability to change terrorism. The program they had developed is called SAVE (Sisters Against Violent Extremism), which strives to encourage women in India and Pakistan to challenge against extreme ideologies to prevent terrorism. These mothers, grandmothers, sisters and wives are the most direct way of preventing terrorist attacks, which occur by the hands of their own male relatives and friends. By bringing these women from different countries and religions together in a peaceful way, they are proving that change can be brought about by words, not physical force. Teaching them how to raise their children away from violence will help prevent future terrorist groups from being formed. SAVE wants these women to understand “the other” and impact life immediately on the ground level rather than waiting for government actions to slowly trickle down the line.
Terrorist in India occupy a special space between the military and the police. The military can not always respond to all threats, and the police don’t have to power or ability to handle terrorist attacks, therefore with this, combined with a lack of communication and coordination between these two forces, terrorist groups are able to sneak through the cracks in devastating ways. For example, in 2008, an Islamic terrorist group led an attack on the city of Mumbai. At one point they moved north to launch an attack on one of the lead police stations. This slowed the police response and disrupted the central control node. The terrorist group was also able to kill the chief of Mumbai’s anti-terrorism squad and two offer senior officers, damaging any sort of response of counter force[1].
I believe what SAVE is doing has the potential to make great impact on the lives of Indian and Pakistan women, however, my concerns from the presentation rested on the fact that many of the women who were participating in these dialogues were very highly educated and higher socially ranked than most. As long as these women are passing along the message to other women in their communities that they play a vital role in helping prevent terrorism then this could work. As was explained in the presentation, through storytelling, workshops, confidence building swimming training and income generation programs, SAVE has been supporting the families of police officers effected during the attacks in 2008.
Also discussed was the ability to be able to tell whether or not the program was becoming successful or not. Because there is no quantitative way to determine how many people are being reached out to and able to stop terrorist attacks, they simply rely on the trust in the se Pakistan and India women to get their message across. However, SAVE is hard at work to promote their project and cause. On their website they have clips from documentaries, and personal reflections of those effected by the attacks. Having this first hand account of what these people are going through is the best way for those not directly affiliated with the cause to make a connection to these people. Seeing the suffering and pain of those who lost loved ones, touches people on a personal level, bringing them into the fight.
The picture below is an unnerving picture taken from the SAVE website. From this view, it looks as if the viewer is standing in the shooters shoes. Having those innocent people in the restaurant staring at you is a very powerful image. This photograph throws the viewer directly into the violence of the Mumbai 2008 attacks and gives them a perspective unlike any other. The photographer of this picture did a good job of making the violence seem real and relevant to the viewer. The restaurant in picture was one of the target areas of the 2008 attacks, and even if you are thousands of miles away looking at this picture, it truly brings you right into the action.
http://www.women-without-borders.org/save/news/5/
[1] Bill Roggio. "Analysis: Mumbai Attack Differs from past Terror Strikes." The Long War Journal. 28 Nov. 2008. Web. 20 Mar. 2011. <http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/11/analysis_mumbai_atta.php>.
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