 Welcome back from your break. Our first panel is Women Waging War, moderated by Dr. Mary Rom. Dr. Mary Rom is the Professor in National Security Affairs Department at the Naval War College, where she also teaches history of women in war and combat elective. She is the founder of the WPS chair at the Naval War College, as the provost mentioned, and served in this capacity from 2009 to 2016. Her forthcoming book is entitled Art, Artifact, Women, and War, will be published this fall. Please give a warm round of applause for Dr. Rom. Hey, good morning, everyone, and I'm really pleased to be your panel moderator for this morning for Women Waging War. First of all, please silence your electronic equipment if you have any of that on so that our panelists can go through their discussions freely without interruption. So we do have four outstanding panelists, of which you may see their remarkable bios in the program, who are both here in person virtually, representing independent scholarship, the Institute of World Politics, Gaidaizums University, and the Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies. We're going to open with Dr. Christopher Harman's discussion on the Tamil tigresses, and Dr. Namatrag Goswami will present on Female Indian Insurgents, followed by Shabana Fayaz on Female Radicalization in Pakistan, then in with, did you pronounce your name? Nami? Nami? Thank you. Nami W. Bird's Talk on the Revolution in Myanmar. So each panel will be given 15 minutes to present, and then we will open for questions for the last 15 minutes. I request that a panelist abide by the timeframe, and I'll notify you at about 13-minute mark so that you can come up with some concluding statements. So Dr. Harman. Thank you, and good morning to you. My paper, although lengthy, will be summarized briefly in the setting is the following. It's in Sri Lanka. The paper is focused on one particular commander, an insurgent leader on the political side of an important movement, and her manual, which she's written, and which has been somewhat neglected. So again, it's a rather narrow paper. The scene is in Sri Lanka. The years are sort of 1972 to 2009 in the most broad range, although she leaves before the end of the war. The situation in Sri Lanka is one of tremendous ethnic and sometimes a religious tension. The Tamil majority, out of which she is a partisan, is perhaps 17 percent of the population, and against a majority, which is a Sinhalese and largely Buddhist. Other factors that are important in this is a 1983 catastrophe in which there was a kind of informal pogrom against the Tamils by the majority, which did a lot to militarize the situation. And before that, an effort by the majority that Sinhalese to basically sidebar Tamil language as an official speech that's a part of the regular governmental business as well as culture in Sri Lanka. There are a lot of other factors which I try to get to in a somewhat long chapter. The Tamil nationalist movement then arises in the early and mid 1970s, and they sort of shove aside the more pacific or moderates, as many of these movements do, and the violence then is led in the end by the LTTE Tigers, the liberation Tigers of Tamil Ilang. The leader is Vallupalai Prabhakaran, and it becomes one of the most powerful of all modern insurgencies at a sub-state level. They have separate branches of martial service. They have well-trained infantry with very strong morale. There are training grounds in India as well as Sri Lanka, good logistics, armorers, an international effort to procure weapons and money for the fight, sophisticated media and all the rest. The open warfare begins from about 83 onward, and in the end will take something like 80,000 to 100,000 lives or perhaps more. The decision to involve women in all this is made by male leadership, of course. It's a fairly despotic organization by Prabhakaran. The woman who's involved from the outside who's intriguing and who's done this manual is Adele and Balasingham, who also happens to be married to the top diplomat in the movement. So that's the sort of setting. The author is then a lady from Australia. Adele Ann Wilby is her maiden name. She's introduced to the organization by her husband after they met and married. The effort is on her part is one that's highly political and one that's somewhat cerebral. She does a number of books, but especially the manual I want to emphasize for today, the Women's Fighters for Liberation, Ilam. She doesn't hold particular power this lady, but she does hold great repute. So her assigned positions aren't all that clear all the time, but she does an immense amount of work for and with the leadership. She emphasizes in her autobiography a second book, in these early days of the growth of the movement, I was the only woman with access to the leadership and its internal dynamics. Certainly I haven't ever studied one in this movement who outranked her of the females. The manual then, the manual was published in 1993. It was released under the authority of the organization, so it's very much official. It's about 40 pages long. It includes a number of different sections. There are some maps, there are some photographs of female commanders, not her, but we have pictures of her from her autobiography and from various magazine and news sources. The manual does not emphasize recruitment so much, but it does give a great deal of emphasis to training. That training occurred for women within Sri Lanka and also within India. The Balisinga manual then, Women Fighters for Liberation Tigers, takes up a number of themes. I want to mention four just quickly. One is certainly that already political efforts were made by the Tamil militants and non-militant politicos, and these failed and therefore justify a turn to violence. It's a central and early argument in the training manual, and to me it does seem absolutely vital because the group is known for some horrific terrorism, some astonishing terrorism, and so she's laying the groundwork, I think, by suggesting that earlier Pacific efforts had not sufficed. A second point is the oppression of women in Sri Lanka in her view. She calls it a patriarchal culture in which religious and ethnic majoritarian tendencies were always against Tamil women, who were of course very much outnumbered. The point then with this force, this new force, was to sort of flip the odds, and the author claims that opportunities and horizons which would never have entered the minds of Tamil women a decade ago are now open. Normally young women remain under the control of their father or brother, and male control follows them throughout their lives. A third point that Adele Balasingham makes has to do with feminism and personal liberation. If any of you know the work of Franz Fenon who explored some of the female belligerents in the Algerian Civil War, he pioneered that kind of approach in thinking and openly writing about that psychological dimension of it in Algeria. This manual makes no reference to it, but that's her line as well. Women must, she says, rupture the sexual division of labor and otherwise break some of the pieties of the society. Fourth and equally strongly she argues for Tamil nationalism. She wants to, wants it to get a chance. She insists that Sri Lanka is not a democracy, and in fact is a place where state terror is commonplace. Tamil nationalism will be some kind of solution to this. Her strategy in the manual is very interesting. It's a rather smart military strategy. She never quotes or cites any particular theorist, but I think there's a number of ways in which she's a bit like Mao in terms of strategy more than politics. She shows that strong emphasis upon needing to grow from weakness into strength. She addresses protracted warfare explicitly. She talks about the use of guerrilla war, but also the expansion of that into semi-conventional forms of warfare and even fully conventional offensive. So while we probably wouldn't call her a Maoist, she is somewhat Maoist-like with respect to strategy. In her force planning, the manual argues very strongly that the woman's force must be separate. She wants to see trained and worked and politicized and prepared a force which would have a separate structure. There are also groups in the Tamil insurgency which are integrated, but her point is to make sure that the women have a definite place of their own which can't be taken away from them. In military skills, naturally it's insurgency fighting that's most mentioned, but there are a slew of others, maybe a dozen, which make it into the manual. She sees a position for communications equipment, for battlefield medicine, for women doing military reconnaissance, intelligence work, technical work with weapons. She's rather proud of the notion that women would be very good in reconnaissance and emphasize that they can withstand the Spartan conditions and do meticulous study of the opposition and that in fact the casualty rate of the Sri Lankan military shows the effectiveness of these women. There was a one unit called Truth Tigers which was their media arm which is quite fascinating because they had not only radio but even television for a while in the movement and women were closely involved in that. She certainly underscores the difficulty of living in the jungle and in doing the brutish work that's more commonly associated with male conscripts or volunteers or members of a movement. Mining, construction, being porters, she gets in rather deeply to all that. There's one sort of unusual literary flourish where she said in this business dust replaces talcum powder and she emphasizes how truly hard a lot of the physical work is in building embankments and various barracks and bunkers and such. And again she has a considerable work to say effort to say to speak to the amount of physical effort all this would take. In terms of her impact she wants the reader to know that those who are coming into the movement to know how truly high a price they'll pay for national liberation struggle. She gives you case after case of named woman belligerents and commanders and such who she sort of builds up and sometimes with a tragic touch then snatches away from the reader with a suggestion of how bloody this struggle is and how many women are dying and how they must lose the fear of dying. The manual creates then and presents a number of legends. She claims they do extremely well and in fact boasts that as against the Indian government which enforces she says the women from the Tamil movement have confronted the opposite sex in fierce battles suffered badly but shocked the arrogant male chauvinistic and powerful Indian army when that had come in as a peacekeeping force at the end of the 80s. Some women are captured rather than dying in battle of course they wore the cyanide vial about which so much has been written and many others surrendered in fact at the end of the war without taking that some did take the cyanide. In short this movement pays a high high price in blood for its choices strategically we're looking at a movement that did consider certain political options but never took them very far limited forms of nationalism or federalism negotiations were widespread in this conflict during that long stretch but the leadership of the Tigers never took them sufficiently seriously there was international mediation which wasn't able to help so in the end the fight ends in a very conventional way with exceedingly high casualties in the last year alone quite a few women perished and quite a few of the guerrillas perished in the conclusion of the war. It's too short of form here I don't want to steal from my partners on the panel to discuss too much more of the impact for the aftermath I wish to say this about the aftermath I think the most striking thing of all for this society is that at the end of a war which was in part racial and in part religious and very much divided the country and took fantastic casualties by the end the problem seems to me to be to turn from a victorious state or what we might call the state of Sri Lanka and consider it again to be as a nation it seems to me the nations were divided in the long insurgency to divide was was was was lethal and the challenge now for the government having won the war the challenge is to sort of re-knit that that sense of nationhood they have tried with various programs I got to interview a woman named Mal Heterachichi who helped run some of them she talked about their professionalism their compassion their discipline their security those programs for rehabilitation and reconciliation however I have had many critics as well it's it's a hard slog but the closing point would just be that we tend in in this country I guess when we get news of the of this part of the world to focus on either the political leaderships which was come and go or more recently the economic tragedy that's embraced the country and I think the larger problem will be for any government whatever the party will be to extend that magnanimous hand to the Tamils after their defeat in this insurgency because it's only good and proper attention to nation building and not just perpetuation of a state that seems to me to be the greatest challenge now it's going to take magnanimity thank you thank you very much dr. Harman the the other thing that you should know about dr. Harman is he has published on this and I encourage you to look into some of the items that you can find thank you for keeping the time to I'm going to move on in terms of the schedule and go to dr. Goswami next I believe is virtual no it's uh it's me oh that's you okay so um so first of all thank you for having me and it's a real honor to be here at the U.S. Naval War College so what I'm going to speak today in the seven minutes I have is to talk about a conflict that is one of the oldest insurgent conflicts in Asia which is the National Socialist Council of Nagalim Nagalim in Nagames means homeland and the Nagas are a minority population in northeast India and so if you see this particular map that's where they're located and they comprise about 2.21 million of a population of 1.4 billion but what is very important about the Nagar conflict is that it started in 1918 even before India became independent in 1947 and the reason why the Nagar conflict has continued till today it's an active conflict and basically the negotiations are at the level of the Indian Prime Minister so there is a lot of importance given to resolving this conflict and so there are three reasons why the Nagar conflict came about one is that Nagas historically saw themselves different from the rest of India second the whole conflict is about political representation and ethnic minority representation and the final reason is that they do want an independent separate state outside of India the conflict has been very violent at times since 1997 the Indian government has instituted negotiations with the Nagar group and till today resolution has not been found because of the conflicting and confrontational issue of sovereignty so what do you mean by Nagar sovereignty now the work that I do the one research question that I had that brought me to the panel today is that within the Nagar insurgent group what I wanted to find out was that what is the role of women and the question I had when I went for field work for over 10 years is to see where do women locate themselves in this group are they just combatants that are carrying out the operational and ideological narrative that male leaders put forward or are they actually part of the decision making at the highest level how do they see themselves in terms of the conflict and what kind of influence they have not just in the Nagar conflict but also in the entire Nagar population now the important thing again to remember is that there is the just a position of modernity and tradition in this particular conflict so there are five important frames through which I see this conflict one is that in my field work when I asked the women members of the group what did they see themselves as in part of the group so what was interesting was that they articulated four or five reasons why they join a group one is that they said it offered them employment so they got employment the group pays a particular salary to their members second women saw that as a bonding with the entire society and with the insurgent members that they saw as their ethnic kin so the word insurgent was never used it was either my brother or my uncle or a family member or a friend so it's a very interesting narrative which I kind of pointed out to the Indian government as well that the narrative changes when you talk to the insurgent group the third reason why women join was personal and physical security these are very deeply conflict affected areas and because there was the absence of governance and I also come from the particular area so the women members articulated that that was a big reason why they joined and then the final reason why they joined was also bonding with a particular male member so they already had some kind of relationship for which they actually joined the group now these were the antecedent conditions of joining but then it changed once they were part of the group so once they actually became a member of the group and spent certain years and these are women within the age group of 15 they start very young to the age group of 25 and then after that they tend to be moved out to more support function so when it came to direct function what was interesting was that once they became a part of the group the women tended to see themselves as buying into the narrative and the ideology of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim which is a separate homeland when they joined they didn't have that as much in terms of joining there were different reasons why they were joining now what did the group do about it so this was interesting so in my field work what I did was that I went to the people's consultative group that the NICN IM puts out which is within the ceasefire camp these are very remote areas in northeast India close to the India-Burma border and so had consultations with the group leaders what I saw was that in those consultations the leaders themselves who were all male tended to talk to me but wouldn't include the women in the highest talk table so they would talk to me about their movement their passion why they came about but the women were not involved in talking to me directly at the highest level so when I would actually ask for talking to the women then they would send me out to the field where they were training they were training for becoming military snipers for example they were very good at that for guerrilla operations they were very good at intelligence gathering they were very good at creating social networks so then when they allowed me to talk to the women what was interesting was that the women saw their role as really critical as well despite the fact that they were not part of the political decision making they saw that this agency given and never asked them leading questions so I would never ask them a question like do you want to be a part of a political group because I knew traditionally that could be difficult for them to process at times and so when I asked them that what do you think about the group's ideology what do you think about your own role they actually felt pretty empowered being a combatant or being a low-level combatant commander and they never actually interestingly questioned the fact that none of them were involved in the highest level of political decision making and I'll explain to you why this is the case and so the final interesting investigation I did was that so okay fine this is how the insurgent group is constituted what about tradition and modernity and which is what all of you responded to today in the survey 205 of you said that culture and tradition plays a critical role in women membership and this gets reflected in my 10-year study of collecting data among insurgent camps so when it comes to the stature of women in another society which is a very traditional society which does not reflect some of the constitutional obligation of India which requires you to have 33 person representation in government bodies the another state assembly which is a 16 member assembly has never elected a women they're very much patriarchal in thinking when there was a supreme court decision that you have to have 33 person representation there was a huge protest in the naga areas against this particular ruling so that particular framing the the pressure of modernity with tradition comes in when you think about the insurgent group as well and so when I talked to the women they kind of accepted that particular role but not all of them there were some who later talked to me and said that why is it that I was not involved in the table where you are asking those questions because I have a lot to say as to whether conflict is going wrong we should not be negotiating with the Indian government because they're not giving a sovereignty we should be very clear about it then I realized they had very strong perspectives and whether this got reflected with the male colleagues or their leaders it was very hard to find out because people wouldn't give you direct answers and this is something of a learning and humbling lesson for me as a conflict researcher that I can go there with certain theoretical frameworks certain understanding of peace and conflict but when it comes to local complexities the understanding of gender roles it is very difficult to navigate it at times and people can take offense sometimes in the questions you ask and you have to always keep that in mind and then finally I'll say I'll show you this particular pictorial depiction so once I studied the motivation of women insurgent members and low-level leaders then looked at whether they took part in political decision making at the highest level of the group the answer was no but that did not mean they did not have agency and did not feel ownership about the movement they were actually very surprised that I was out there in the remote areas wanting to hear their perspective and wanting to talk about what their passion and their desire for the naga ethnic representation should be but then in 2015 the government of India offered a final framework resolution to the group which meant that after nearly 100 years of fighting there has to be a recognition of naga history and naga ethnic minority representation at the highest level but then if you see that particular picture which is there you don't see a single woman so this is the entire political leadership of the group I've spoken to most of them and what is interesting is that they did not include even the lower level squadron leader at the highest political decision making and this might seem symbolic some might question that maybe they actually have ownership and power but did this kind of pictures have an impact on younger women and girls because I do have students from that area who'd see this picture and say that yes but we are not involved in the highest level of negotiation and decision making and neither were they involved in the final framing of the conflict that happened and so I will end by saying in my presentation here that there are three key findings when you think about conflict affected areas I also study the Boko Haram I study the Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant and I teach at the Joint Special Forces University and the one thing I notice is that the the way women actually can play a role in insurgent groups despite the fact that they're not involved in decision making is to create networks through their strengths so this is what I saw the naga women do one was that they were very good as commandos and as short-range snipers very good at that they showed me they actually were so proud they took me to their training and felt very proud about the fact that they were good at guerrilla warfare guerrilla operations intelligence and social network so because it is so good at that they were actually able to talk to the highest level of leadership to include some of the women issues so it was their expertise that brought them the recognition within the group and then the second important thing is that they cannot escape modernity and tradition despite the fact that we from outside want them to have more power and more role because societal structures are so constructed that is very difficult sometimes even if you want to to come out of the traditional structure because it is very male dominated and finally even if there is constitutional mechanism and that is why when we talk about UNSC resolution where the first point is whether they are included in decision making that might not sometimes get operationalized on the ground and so I'm sorry I have very less time so if you're really interested in learning about another conflict I just published a book with Oxford it's called another ethnic movement for a separate homeland which details the entire conflict from my fieldwork and please get it I think you'll be interested in it so thank you thank you Dr. Goswami I'd also like to do a little pause here we have anthropology and fieldwork this is so essential to the WPS program so I think if you're looking for some really fascinating and frontline information these two individuals work is is just exceptional for that okay so let's move on like that are we going virtual now Dr. Fayaz yes please hi everybody I hope you have seen my screen and it's a part of a bit of research work that I've been engaged for more than a decade or so when I was engaged in my PhD work on Pakistan's response towards terrorism a female radicalization is as such a subject that is much not talked about in the all the facts or the books or the debates that have come up from the policy circles and this was something you might have been hearing the few BLA girls exploring themselves and others but unfortunately when you talk to the countering violence extremism people so then it becomes a bit of a delicate subject to speak on but nevertheless that that subject of thinking has changed overnight over the time and now people like us are making efforts to recognize the fact that the female radicalization in Pakistan is not something that is all pervasive or it is not something that that should be neglected in fact what this paper basically means is or what is my aim has been that there is an external perception regarding Pakistan that females are turning into the bombs and if one girl explodes the whole people like us the majority of the women are seen as one with a negative eye so this has happened in front of the Chinese embassy even one of the closest friends of Pakistan and it is something that tarnishes the image of the country and the women and you know brings a big question mark of the future young generation traveling for education purpose and the other pursuits so my idea is basically is number one to point out that it is a complex subject why it is complex because it is contextual in nature now I have been doing and engaged for this study as well an empirical gathering evidence and for that have been carrying out the off-record directs interactions with the with the female seminary's head who have been involved and are involved in perpetuating the certain mindset that rejects the constitution of Pakistan and that calls the actions of Pakistan government or army as an unlawful and an un-islamic such steps so basically what it means is one of the my key is that we need to have why I have taken Jamia Hafsa case this is a picture that came gathered a lot of international spotlight in 2007 and have been given an access to interview these girls who left before the operation silence and also the ones lady who still you know is doing her work and maybe not violent but perpetuating a certain mindset so the image if you see is the Burkha clan women with the sticks the stick is seen as the force to to hear it is portrayed as a force to protect themselves according to their version and to also protect the society which they believe should be cleansed and be a purely Islamic state according to their version of Islam so this is something I think I this Jamia Hafsa is the one of the only case in the history of Pakistan's counter-terrorism kinetic operations where a first time an operation was launched against the Lal Masjid that was a male part and it's affiliated Jamia Hafsa because the what is happening was that these were trying to encroach the government land or the state land and also trying to questions the behavior of the citizens of the country then according to them were the unislamic and they had a moral responsibility to cleanse it now why this came about very interesting as has been discussed earlier in Dr. Swami interpretation was yes the patriarchal circle you know influence is very much there and this is one key point when you talk to the people who were involved and are involved in the certain view of life they themselves they're very proud of being associated with the groups who were at time involved in the so-called jihad whether it was in Afghanistan and whether it was beyond and in this case what we see is having interviewed the male part as well the women role has actually been the human shields and they were seen the women were basically they become the willing or unwilling agent of violence in the name of religion and ideology so what it really boils down is that that in case of Jamia Hafsa it is very interesting to note I don't have time to go into all the intricacies or the complex elements that were in place when the operation was undertaken a female radicalization trends in Pakistan is is of very complex nature it can be a violent at times and it can be passive at times and as we all know that in the world of research of this terrorism or kinetic means to influence the society by the non-state actors the sleeper cells are the most dangerous part of any non-state actor specifically for the people of the country who reside in a particular area so if you see that they are the aim of female radicalized institutions it is not that only madrasas are the radicalized one one of the interesting takeaway was it is distributed all over the country and even beyond the borders for instance in one of the interactions you know the women of the Taliban or the families of Khan Taliban who were living in Pakistan and because we have the border you know together and the half of the families are also divided they are also being the students of certain seminaries and so there is an interconnections and also from other Muslim countries so this is a thought pattern that flows but whether this thought patterns all the time go for the violence this is a big question for if you in in having interaction with the Jamia Hafsa that exists even today although being uprooted from its present where it was attacked or it was where the operation was launched it has more than 17 to 30 female seminaries that are associated with it they say the force or the violence was a matter was not a matter of choice it was imposed on us so this is for me this was a great learning experience because it clearly shows that there were a lot of distance between what the government was perceiving the threat or or calling it as a terrorist threat versus what the people or the women of the country perceive that and unfortunately after 9 11 what happened was that general Musharraf was seen as the agent of the west now now the US has withdrawn the Taliban of Khan Taliban's are running the scene in Kabul but again if you talk to these sort of Jamia Hafsa affiliated seminaries and even some of the public sector female institutes you see them as portraying you know the Afghan model as one of the healthiest model and this is actually a big shock for the women like us and specifically the majority of the women in Pakistan or the females in Pakistan who are very moderate who are keen learners who are entrepreneurs and who want to be on the you know are already at the international spotlight on business education arts cultures writing or medical profession or whatever so this is my key point is that we have to understand when we are talking about conquering violet extremism the women have to be in the driving seat I have done being engaged in certain civil society organizations and you know as a peace trainers and also part of the community training enterprises that is that women are the one who have the key to the peace but this does not mean that men don't have a place actually it means is that there has to be a partnership not only in instituting the plan but also in crafting the plan of the conquering violet extremism and this brings me back to the fact that what we see as the WPS whole program or idea of the UN 135 that whole idea is that is resolution is that the women are the female are the agency of peace for Pakistan I think the challenge is to be an agency to of peace how to give women and equal opportunities and these opportunities are not only economic in nature these are in legal in nature where you have you perceive a society and women a sacred or as a safe place to live in for the where the women don't feel afraid where they are living in they get tired to the different groups as has been discussed earlier because of achieving the sense of security the sense of empowerment so all these influencing and who is going to do it for me the answer is not only state it has to be the state and society partnership and here we must it brings me back to my final line is that we need to reframe the countering violet extremism being half being kinetic and more being non-kinetic and that basically means that we need to have a holistic framework of security and that security should not be a national security security also implies looking into security within a state and beyond the state so I will end here and we're looking forward to have your feedback in future thank you so much thank you doctor if I asked so that talk is a very interesting one because she really hits on the four pillars of WPS kind of in one situation in a case study the other thing that's intriguing about the talk and that I think is an important element of women peace and security she does mention education and that's an imperative in most of these societies and the society state partnership so thank you very much dr. Fayaz if you can please stay online because we'll have a question set after the final panelist yeah next we have dr. Byrd hey dr. Byrd I can see you so shall I share my PowerPoint I'm sorry would you repeat that can I share my PowerPoint now yes you should be able to okay all right can everybody see this we can see it okay all right hello hi everybody it's a little bit early for me here in in Honolulu Hawaii and so if I appear a little bit sleepy that is the reason so I thank you for inviting me to speak today on this panel I'm very honored and today you know I wanted to talk to you a little bit about also my ongoing research relating to women in the frontline fighting for democracy in Myanmar so before I Myanmar or formerly known as Burma whenever I talked about Myanmar or Burma it's you know people usually don't know where that is and why we should even care about it so I wanted to put in a little bit larger strategic context and relevance of Myanmar right so here is Myanmar I am it's at the it's mainland Southeast Asia country is believe it or not it is the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia has direct border with China so it's at the step of China and it is known historically known as the the China's backdoor to the Indian ocean because Myanmar is the only country that has the direct border with China that is on the east western end of the Malacca strait right Malacca strait is one of the most important strategic strait for trade global trade and everything else right so there it is and Myanmar also has the 2000 kilometer of coastline so Myanmar EEZ is almost as big as the country right and and then you know here I said a land bridge to the Indian ocean for China and and Myanmar was the only democracy in mainland Southeast Asia and of course they had a military coup in February 2021 so that that and post coup environment the resistance you know fighter pro-democracy resistant forces that are trying to restore democracy in Myanmar is what I'm going to talk about but I just wanted to make sure you understand that and then also how important Myanmar is to overall China because all the historical how historically major power that want to dominate Asia always needed Myanmar right so that's why British had Myanmar and then Japanese wanted Myanmar and today China really need Myanmar because of that that backdoor to the Indian ocean it solves it solves Malacca dilemma for China because 80 percent of China's energy needs went into goes into go through the Malacca strait so they're always worried that in time of war that we would choke you know we will close down the Malacca straight so where it's trying to get is that the western and the Malacca straight through Myanmar you know because as you can see Myanmar leading to the mouth the Malacca straight and the eastern end is the you know the South China Sea or the West Philippine Sea so that's the context I wanted to put in the you know larger strategic competition at how Myanmar sits right so so 2021 the coup happened the the Myanmar military throughout the democratically elected government and and the the whole country rise up against it so as of just in December we did the survey across the country and 91 percent of the people this the respondent reject the military even after two years of pain and suffering because military has violently cracked down all the protester and so but people are still you know rejecting the military and they started the protest started out very peacefully but military brutal crackdown right has transformed the the resistance the the protests into armed resistance and you know this is a slide showing showing you that the resistant forces that are countering the anti junta countering the military is 60 60 65 percent women 65 percent women so that is really unusual right and why why is that why are women involved well 10 years of democratic transition prior to the coup right that a lot of the eight packages came into Myanmar had women peace and security or some type of a women empowerment programs and that and as a result also that 10 years of a transition to democracy women gain a lot of rights right and under the military regime of six nearly 70 years women has lost their rights a lot of their rights so they regain they regain somewhat in that 10 years and as well as they were you know these empowerment program really increased their capability and capacity so when this coup occurred one they said they don't want to go back to the dark days right and two they now understand that political political arena is relevant to them in the past in in my culture and tradition women do not get involved in in politics well because one it was a military rule so military you know is a male purely not male dominated is a purely male organization right so that's one of the things they they felt like it's not relevant to them but in that 10 year they start to see that political system make decision for the entire society right and if you're not at the table their perspective and their needs are not considered so and they understood that so that so that's why they are now now they feel that you know the political arena is relevant to them and then they think that they have the capacity and capability to do this so that's why they're participating in it right and and here and many of them are in the online arena attacking the military and and they are also the primary group of people that are mobilizing and keeping the the population mobilized using the a lot of stratcom strategy they seems to many of the women that I interview they seems to almost innately understand how to use stratcom to keep the people communicate with the people to keep them mobilized and so here are some of the women online that are you know that are mobilizing people and this young woman in over here she is a major fundraiser overnight she when she fundraised overnight she can raise millions of dollars so for and they're raising it through a lot of diaspora Myanmar diaspora in this particular time Myanmar diaspora across the globe is also mobilized and and again the work of these women as well and they're utilizing social media to do that and and so this young woman she raised like four million dollars within 24 hours for anti anti-air drones because you know as you can as you know just recently Myanmar military has been bombing the villages because they can no longer win on the ground and so they're using the air air strikes to destroy the the the villages innocent civilians that's the only way they can put fear back into the people but instead people are instead of fear people are very angry and it every time they bomb people it increase their resolve to resist the military and fight back and all of that work is also many of them are being done by women women make sure that people understand that so and so here are some of the not only women are in the logistics and calm stratcom arena but they also are on the ground actually participating so here are like these are mine makers because they don't have enough firepower so all they can most of the most of the way they they try to slow down the military attacks is using mines by using mines in their convoys and and trapping with mines so and that they were saying when I was interviewing some of them they said that they start doing they start making mines because a lot of the men they don't want to do they don't want to do that they just want to go out in the front line and shoot but they knew the women said you know mines are more effective than their little you know musket rifles that they have so they started making mines and they said they don't mind doing that so so in overall you know what's unusual about this particular uprising nima has a lot of uprising in the past against the military but this uprising specifically unusual because of the women participation and because of the women participation you know it brings in a lot of innovative ways a non-lethal way to to you know attack the military actually and as a result military is losing grounds as of right now military control less than half of the country less than half of the country other half is being controlled by ethnic armed organizations and people defense forces and the national unity government these are all coalition of resistance forces and why it is one of the reason is the women are coming up with strategies and tactics that are you know they are they may be non-lethal but they're very effective they're very effective so so but challenges there's still challenges for the women despite their majority many women are not represented in the leadership and decision maker level so we should because they're 60 percent 65 participation at the leadership level we should see about 65 percent as well right but no like at the nug national unity government this is a opposition you know to restore democracy entity they have 17 ministries and out of 17 ministry only three are women and then so here is the opportunity is in 2022 us congress passed national defense authorization act with the barma act inside of it right it's authorized us to provide non-lethal assistant to all the pro-democracy forces right and one of the way line of effort that i think we can make a headway is using wps as a line of effort under the defense authorization because women when i i interview both men and women i interview men and women you know fighters and women totally they absolutely innately understand that you need to keep the population on your side and they find the most creative way to communicate with the the constituent in their area to keep them mobilized and provide support and because of that support they're able to keep a lot of the forces you know uh uh uh secure and save lives and one of the thing is um you know as soon as the this whole uh who happened and then when military started bombing villages the women uh uh uh came to me and said what can we do to keep people safe we need early warning system so that we can evacuate the elderly children and disable people so they bring in a bunch of uh women uh groups that are a part of um women and maternal health uh network and then uh you know i taught them a little bit uh how to you know surveil and how to you know uh uh how to do a little bit of uh uh surveil and intelligence work so that they can have a lot early warnings early warning to evacuate and now they're they have saved so many lives and that network has become the uh the basis for the intelligence gathering for the combat operation for the uh for the resistance forces at this moment right but it started out with the women maternal health and they are all their focus was to trying to keep people safe but that has turned into because there was the only only network that they had uh from the pro-democracy side uh to to get information passed along um so anyway so this is um opportunities for us and again uh overall back to strategic uh competition you know there's a uh a competition of two system authoritarian system and democracy democratic system right and yama is right in the front line in that in the front line to keep democracy are the the tip of the spear is the women so i think that i hope i can i make the case for you know the wps how wps can be used uh more effectively not just as a feel good thing but is a operational effectiveness for us so thank you very much thank you dr bird if you could also please stay online because we're going to open this up to students but what i think you've um got here was four incredible perspectives um on women waging war around the world in four different parts of the globe so i'm going to thank you all for uh bringing the information before the student body i think it's essential in the wps program and i'm going to turn it over to you for the question