If you managed to snatch some news on Friday not involving the “Kate loves Willy” theme, you might have come across this item:  wartime propaganda took a 21^st Century turn when Susan Rice told a room full of UN diplomats that Colonel Gadaffi was supplying his troops with wonderdrug Viagra in order to encourage rape.  In what appears to be an example of the truth catching a break, most of the reporting includes opinions of doubt by experts.  And aside from the well-publicized charges by Iman al-Obaidi, I haven’t seen analysis suggesting that rape by government soldiers is prevalent in the Libyan conflict.

I suppose one could dismiss Rice’s claim as only the most recent example of such fanciful propaganda.  Remember those stories of Iraqi soldiers tossing Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators?  Or the bizarre detail that Uday Houssein’s briefcase contained stacks of money, underwear, a single condom and a vial full of Viagra (not, to my knowledge, a hoax, but still curious for the details released).  The difference is that those stories possessed little potential to cause much harm in and of themselves (even if they indirectly fuelled the war effort). 

Mass rape as a strategy of war is neither fanciful nor joke-worthy, so I apologize for the catchy title of this post.  The Sudanese government’s reaction to MSF’s 2005 report of rapes in Darfur highlights the power of the charge of rape to humiliate and to polarize, even where charges of mass killings do not.  Governments have little trouble explaining major war crimes to their friends – “we bombed base camps of rebels, not villages of people” or “we are fighting a war, so it is inevitable that civilians will be killed accidentally” or “it’s not torture”.  But rape in war is impervious to justification.  It is never accidental and always a violation at the level of religious, community and personal mores.  In short, better to be accused of other war crimes than of rape.

We can only hope that Rice’s comments prove baseless and, almost as importantly, find as little traction among the men and women of Libya as they did among UN diplomats.  As any humanitarian worker in the midst of victims of conflict can explain, the weight of constant, pervasive fear can be as damaging as bombs and bullets.  This then is the true nature of terrorism – to propagate dread and fright far outstripping actual threat of harm. 

Rape is a crime, singular and unparalleled.  Falsely instilling fear of rape is not.  The deliberate manufacture of terror, though, should be.  What is both strange and sad is that this form of terror usually comes from the likes of thug militia groups such as the RUF or the LRA, using fear as a weapon against a population and against their enemies.  In Susan Rice’s accusation we have an example of a politician causing terror on her own side as a sort of collateral damage in the effort to win the battle for public support.   Thankfully, it has caused little stir on the worldwide stage.  I can only hope it has had as little effect in the minds of the people of Libya.