Matrix Podcast · Social Science Matrix

Gendered Violence in Insurgencies: Interview with Tara Chandra

December 16, 2024·47 min·4 clips

Tara Chandra finds that counterinsurgent behavior can actually increase incentives for insurgents to target women.

This episode features UC Berkeley PhD candidate Tara Chandra discussing her research on gendered violence in insurgencies with host Julia Seizik. Chandra examines how counterinsurgency operations influence insurgent groups' strategic targeting of women. She challenges the notion that violence against women is an inevitable feature of war, building on scholarly work like Elizabeth Wood's argument that rape in war is not inevitable. Chandra's research analyzes changes in insurgent tactics over time and across conflicts, focusing on groups with similar ideologies. She cites Boko Haram's abduction of 270 schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria in 2014, which represented a tactical shift as abductions rose from 0.5% to 14% of their attacks. She contrasts this with al-Shabaab in Somalia, which enforced strict dress codes but avoided sexual violence until robust African Union counterinsurgency operations began. Chandra's core argument is that the identity of the counterinsurgent force shapes insurgent incentives, with domestic militaries being more vulnerable to undermining via gender-based violence than international coalitions. A key insight is that insurgents learn and adapt faster than conventional militaries, identifying specific "weak spots" in their opponent's political calculus. For domestic counterinsurgents like Nigeria's government, violence against civilians—particularly women—becomes an effective pressure point, as seen in the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Conversely, against international actors like the U.S. in Iraq, insurgents like al-Qaeda prioritized improvised explosive devices targeting soldiers, as American public sensitivity focused on troop casualties rather than Iraqi civilian deaths. Chandra proposes three mechanisms through which targeting women undermines counterinsurgents: suppressing information flow from civilians, emasculating the male-dominated security forces, and creating bargaining leverage for prisoner exchanges or ransoms. She details how targeting women can suppress information by intimidating potential informants or eliminating female sources who possess unique intelligence. The "emasculation mechanism" works by demonstrating the counterinsurgent's inability to protect "innocent" civilians, thereby eroding local trust. Chandra critically examines evidence, questioning simplistic "revenge narratives" for Boko Haram's abduction and highlighting the logistical costs and recruitment risks insurgents face when employing such tactics. She notes that excessive coercion, like forced marriages by al-Qaeda in Iraq's Anbar province, can backfire by alienating local communities. The discussion is analytical and research-focused, grounded in political science concepts like the "identification problem" in counterinsurgency. Chandra employs qualitative methods like process tracing to infer insurgent decision-making from observable "empirical fingerprints," acknowledging the difficulty of taking militant propaganda at face value. The tone is academic yet accessible, with concrete examples illustrating theoretical arguments. Listeners interested in international security, civil war dynamics, and feminist political science will find this episode compelling. Those seeking sensationalized conflict narratives or purely policy-oriented discussions might find the methodological details less engaging.

As heard by us

A careful conversation about how counterinsurgency can reshape incentives around gendered violence.

Counterinsurgency can change the incentives that shape violence against women, and Tara Chandra gives that possibility a political frame. In conversation with Julia Seizik, she pushes against the idea that such violence is inevitable, linking her work to research on sexual…

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Want to understand how counterinsurgency can change the incentives behind violence against women?

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