Baaz, Maria, and Maria Stern. "Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC)". International Studies Quarterly, Vol.53, No.2 (2009): 495-518.

Baaz, Maria, and Maria Stern. "Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC)". International Studies Quarterly, Vol.53, No.2 (2009): 495-518.

• The war in Zaire has been characterized by massive amounts of sexual violence perpetrated during the conflict, and continuing after its official ceasefire in 2003. The prevalence of rape in the conflict has frequently attracted the attention of the UNSC and other international bodies (495-496).
• International organizations and the global media usually characterized sexual violence in Zaire as a 'weapon of war' or place blame on the sexual appetites of the rapists. The authors believe that this characterization is incorrect and fails to explore the actual motivations of widespread sexual violence in Zaire (496).
• Rape was present in Zaire prior to the 1990s, but had not reached the enormous prevalence that it now has in the country. Testimonies indicate that prior to the First Congo War, rape was severely punished by traditional communal structures as an offense against the victim and her family. Since the war, these traditional structures have been destroyed by the military and sexual violence has massively proliferated (503).
• Quote from a Lieutenant in the Congolese Army about the nature of rape in warfare: "Rape [...] there are different types of rape. They are all forbidden. There is the rape when a soldier is away, when he has not seen his women for a while and
  has needs and no money. This is the lust/need rape [viol ya posa]. But there are also the bad rapes, as a result of the spirit of war [...] to humiliate the dignity of people. This is an evil rape" (495).
• The authors focus on the reasons behind the sexual violence committed by the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC]. which is one of the largest single perpetrators of sexual violence in Zaire. It is likely that is responsible for around 40% of all sexual violence perpetrated in Zaire, with another 23% being committed by government police forces (496-497).
• Rape has been committed in almost all historical conflict and it was often assumed that a conquering army would rape enemy women to demonstrate their victory over the enemy and as part of a wider process of looting the possessions of the conquered foe. This narratives assume that men have a 'natural' biological instinct to rape that is unleashed during war (498).
• Another common explanation of wartime rape is that soldiers are brutalized by experience of combat and that violence becomes normalized in their eyes. In particular, rape is viewed as a way to punish the enemy for the combat losses or atrocities against one's own population by harming the enemy's women (498).
• Militaries usually seek to imbue within their soldiers a sense of idealized masculinity, including among female soldiers, that stresses the ability to use violence. The linking of violence and masculinity in armies is particularly dangerous because it promotes sexual violence as a way to demonstrate a soldier's violence and masculinity simultaneously (499).
• Cynthia Enloe, a feminist IR theorist, outlines three idealized types of rape during wartime: recreation rape for the personal pleasure of the rapist; national security rape, used by the government to punish certain segments of the population for disloyalty; and systematic mass rape, committed during ethnic cleansing or genocide as way of destroying the societal fabric of the victimized population (499-500).
• Rape in Zaire cannot be understood primarily as national security rape or systemic mass rape, as those rapes committed by the Congolese Armed Forces lack the mens rea that characterize these crimes. Sexual violence by other armed groups may fall into these categories, but not that perpetrated by the Army (514).
• Zaire has suffered extremely despite its abundant mineral resources, moving from an exceptional brutal colonial rule to a violent dictatorship under Mobutu Sese Seko for another 32 years. When Joseph-Desire Kabila toppled President Mobutu in 1997, the country collapsed into the deadliest war since WWII, killing 5.4 million people and involving seven countries as well as innumerable Congolese armed groups (500).
• Violence since the end of the Second Congo War has remained high and is largely concentrated in the east of the country, which is fractured between the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a genocidal Hutu supremacist group that fled to Zaire after its defeat in Rwanda, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, a Rwanda-backed militia that protects Tutsi refugees in eastern Zaire, the Mai Mai, various militias formed by the indigenous peoples of eastern Zaire to fight the Tutsi and Hutu groups, and the Congolese Armed Forces (500-501).
• An official peace treaty was signed in July 2003, allegedly converting all of the armed groups into political parties that would engage in non-violent political competition and integrating former militias into the Congolese Armed Forces. The integration has been largely unsuccessful and only fractured the Armed Forces, while also granting effective amnesty to numerous war criminals (501).
• Violence in Zaire is only partially mobilized along ethnic lines. Ethnic identity was downplayed during the Mobutu government, with identities really only remaining salient in eastern Zaire. The lack of ethnic identity among most of the Congolese population is reflected in the lack of ethnic motivation in sexual violence (502).
• Salaries for Congolese soldiers are extremely low, payment inconsistent, and official food and supplies often nonexistent. There is little loyalty towards either the Army or their officers, who are often viewed as greedy and corrupt -- a characterization that is usually accurate (501-502).
• The military has long exploited the civilian population of Zaire. The military was consistently poorly run and underfunded, forcing soldiers to obtain their own food and supplies, usually by preying on local civilian populations. This may have included sexual violence alongside other forms of illegal taxes and rackets (502).
• The authors' methodology is discussed on page 503 and page 504, the main points to note are that research took the form of interviews of groups of Congolese soldiers, who knew each other prior to the interviews, in the Kinshasa area in the late 1990s, including a substantial proportion of female soldiers.
• Soldiers, both male and female, explained sexual violence primarily as a result of a 'natural' male desire that needed to be satisfied by women (505). Libido was seen as distracting soldiers, meaning that sexual release was required for an army to perform well (506).
• Women are not seen as having sexual desire or needs, instead they are seen as having sex with men as a transactional relationship to obtain money or support from that man (508).
• Soldiers endorsed views that the army was masculine and that women should be relegated to support roles. The prevalence of female soldiers was explained away by either saying that they were essentially masculine, or by dismissing their value as soldiers because of their sex -- claiming that they were there as 'hookers' or 'poor widows in search of a living' (505-506).
• In response to questions about the impact of female soldiers on sexual violence by the army, soldiers responded that the presence of female soldiers would not reduce sexual violence because sexual congress between soldiers would create tensions within the army, because female soldiers were diseased, and because female soldiers were not seen as sexual desirable for a number of reasons, including their masculinity (506).
• Soldiers express regret that they feel unable to fulfill the traditional male role of provider because they are too poor to provide for wives and children. Many express fears that their wives might leave them for other men if they fail to provide for the family, and blame the breakdown of the family structure on their poverty (507).
• Sexual violence is often blamed on the inability to fulfill this traditional provider-homemaker dynamic. Lacking the means to fulfill male expectation of a provider in order to obtain sex, soldiers instead feel 'forced' to rape as an alternative means of fulfilling their sexual desire (508-509).
• Almost all soldiers interviewed said that they believed that rape was justified under these circumstances, seeing sex as a necessity for male soldiers that, under the circumstances, they could only access through rape (510).
• Female soldiers affirmed the view of male soldiers that sexual violence is mostly a result of the poverty of male soldiers preventing them from obtaining sex the 'normal' way of exchanging money for sex with women. One Major said that the reason that Zimbabwean soldiers committed so many fewer rapes than Congolese troops was that they were much better paid (509-510).
• Female soldiers reported that, although teasing and sexual harassment is widespread, rape of female soldiers by male soldiers is very rare (509).
• Soldiers distinguished between rape because of lust and 'evil rapes'. Evil rapes were differentiated from lust rapes by their form, often accompanying penetration by foreign objects, mutilation or murder, and by their motivation, a desire to humiliate or collectively punish a group rather than a 'natural' sexual desire (510-511).
• The distinction between the two kinds of rape are not always clear, as the account of a male Corporal demonstrates when he says that rape occurs as a result of anger and despair, which can also lead soldiers to loot, humiliate victims, and kill civilians. Sexual desire, and poverty preventing it from being relieved in a standard fashion, are a factor in these attacks, but they are mixed with other emotions (511).
• The motivations of soldiers that commit 'evil rapes' are also seen as complicated and deeply linked to the nature of war, which is seen as degenerating one's mental and moral state. The prevalence of drug use in the armed forces is also seen as a factor in generating the circumstances under which evil rapes are committed (511-512).
• Almost all soldiers recognized that rape is wrong and illegal in all circumstances, including while in the military. Some of the stories of rape shared were phrased as cautionary tales against rape, including a account were a soldier died of some sort of curse after raping a woman in a forest (512).
• The general condemnation of rape as wrong was matched with a explanation of rape as understandable and stemming from the sexual desires of male soldiers. The fact that it was understandable, however, did not make soldiers consider it any less wrong and immoral (513).
• While all rape is considered wrong, evil rapes are considered more wrong than lust rapes and also less understandable. Evil rapes are considered both immoral and unnatural, while lust rapes are immoral, but understandable (513).